Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip: gradual encroachment and forced displacement

By Dr. Ahmed Youssef
Whoever contemplates the bloody scene in the Gaza Strip today understands that what is happening is not a transient war or an immediate military response, but part of an extended Israeli strategy based on two principles: gradual territorial encroachment and the forcible displacement of populations. The massive destruction that has struck cities and towns, the targeting of hospitals, schools and infrastructure, and plunging people into the hell of mass displacement are tools in a larger project aimed at changing the demographic and political map of the Strip, just as occurred at earlier stages in the history of the conflict.

Since the early days of the Zionist project, the idea of a Hebrew state was not the product of a fleeting historical moment but the result of planned Zionist thinking that harbored the obsession of a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. Theodor Herzl laid the intellectual foundations, while Ze’ev Jabotinsky formulated theories of an “iron wall” and imposed realities by force. David Ben-Gurion — the founding father of the Hebrew state — was the architect of practical expansionist policy through war and mass expulsions, followed by generations of leaders for whom the doctrine of expansion and territorial seizure became entrenched.

In 1948 that vision was embodied in its most horrific form, when Irgun, Haganah and the Stern Gang raided Palestinian villages and carried out horrific massacres to drive people to flee south and east. The Nakba was a systematic plan to uproot more than 750,000 Palestinians and for Israel to seize around 78% of historic Palestine.

In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Israel swept into the Gaza Strip and annexed parts of its borderlands, revealing its continual expansionist ambitions. Although it later withdrew under international pressure, that episode was further proof that the policy of encroachment and expulsion is not accidental but a consistent approach in Zionist strategic thinking.

Today Benjamin Netanyahu — whom the author describes as the most brazen heir of this mindset — is leading what amounts to a campaign of annihilation and ethnic cleansing against the Gaza Strip. The man who long proclaimed a “pure Jewish state” does not hide his desire to effect radical changes to the Strip’s demographic map. His strategy, the article says, rests on:

Comprehensive destruction of residential areas and civilian facilities.

Targeting hospitals and schools to paralyze life.

Imposing a suffocating siege that cuts off the lifelines of survival.

Pushing residents to flee south toward Rafah, paving the way — even partially — toward Sinai.

What is called in Hebrew media “buffer zones” or “population repositioning” is, the author argues, a misleading label for an old-new policy: seizing land inch by inch and emptying it of its indigenous population, in preparation for its eventual annexation within a “Greater Israel” project.

Decades have shown that the Zionist mindset shaped by Herzl, Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion continues to govern Israel today, and that Netanyahu is merely a continuation of this bloody settler legacy. He is carrying out the same plan, albeit in modern political language and under the banners of “security” and “the war on terror.”

However much Netanyahu and the mindset behind the Zionist project try to impose a new reality by force, the Palestinians — as a people and as a resistance — reaffirm at every moment that they will not leave their land and will not relinquish their historic and religious rights. Gaza today is not merely a battlefield; it is the first line of defense for Jerusalem and Palestine.

The message our people under the rubble and wounds send to the whole world is:
“Here we remain.. we die and Palestine lives; the nation’s cause and the centrality of the struggle” .