The far-right Israeli regime continued its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday, bombing a school, a market and a cell phone charging station, killing at least 25 people. As the carnage continued, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the region to finalise a deal that would give Israel everything it wants in Gaza and pave the way for war in Lebanon and the wider Middle East.
The Mustafa Hafez school building in western Gaza was “razed to the ground,” leaving 12 people dead and dozens injured, according to a civil defense official. He explained that many of the bodies may never be recovered due to a lack of rescue equipment, suggesting that the actual death toll could be even higher. Like many schools in the enclave, the building served as a shelter for displaced people until Israeli forces attacked it without warning. The massacre followed just over a week after the bloody massacre at Tabeen School in the same city, in which over 100 people were killed.
Although the official death toll in Gaza has just passed the 40,000 mark, the actual death toll is much higher. British Medical Journal The Lancet estimated last month that nine months after the genocide, around 186,000 people or more had been killed by the Israeli attack.
American imperialism and its Zionist attack dog in the Middle East – the same forces responsible for the endless death and destruction in Gaza – are trying to dictate the terms under which the barbaric onslaught that has been going on for over a decade could be temporarily ended. To call the agreement Blinken attempted to conclude in meetings with Egyptian and Qatari leaders on Tuesday a “ceasefire agreement” would be a distortion of reality. Just three weeks ago, Israel, with the tacit approval of the United States, assassinated Hamas’ political leader and chief negotiator in the talks, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.
If a deal is reached, it is becoming increasingly clear that it would be on Israel’s terms only. Israel could resume the bombing at any time and continue to ravage Palestinians with hunger and disease by keeping a stranglehold on aid deliveries to the devastated enclave. Above all, a pause in the fighting in Gaza would allow Israel to launch a war against Lebanon on its northern front and, with the support of the United States and its NATO allies, lay the groundwork for a regional conflict with Iran. As Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it on Tuesday, Israel’s “center of gravity” is shifting from “south to north.”
Washington responded to the killing of Haniya and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shokr in Beirut by sending an additional aircraft carrier battle group to the region. For America’s ruling class, Israel’s “final solution” to the Palestinian issue is an essential part of American preparations to open the Middle East front in a rapidly developing third world war to secure its unchallenged hegemony against its rivals. This was underscored by the decision to sell Israel $20 billion worth of weapons, including dozens of fighter planes to be delivered over the next five years. While Iran represents a major regional obstacle to American ambitions for dominance in this energy-rich region, Russia and China are Washington’s main targets in its attempt to re-divide the world according to its interests.
On Monday, US President Joe Biden delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago endorsing war criminal Kamala Harris as his successor in the White House, while accusing Hamas of “backing away” from a ceasefire agreement that Israel was willing to accept. In reality, the Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have repeatedly changed the rules of the game in months of talks to give their bloodthirsty regime a cover for its ongoing massacre of Palestinians. When Hamas accepted a ceasefire proposal in early May that would have prevented Israeli forces from invading Rafah, Israel blatantly ignored the offer and launched an offensive that displaced a million people from Gaza’s southernmost city and virtually halted aid deliveries.
Netanyahu made clear on Tuesday that Israeli troops would not withdraw from Gaza under any agreement accepted by his government. “Israel will not leave the Philadelphia Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor under any circumstances,” he said, referring to a strip of land between Gaza and the Egyptian border and the line drawn by Israeli forces dividing the enclave into north and south.
Hamas has declared its opposition to an agreement allowing the continued presence of Israeli soldiers in Gaza and indicated it would support an initial proposal by Biden that called for a complete withdrawal of Israeli soldiers in two phases. But Washington has apparently abandoned that offer and instead proposed a so-called “bridge agreement” this week that takes into account Israel’s demand for a continued military presence. Commenting on Israel’s latest demands, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said: “This means that a large military force will remain in the Philadelphia corridor and at the Rafah crossing, which in turn means that aid can only be provided with Israeli approval.”
Israel continues to use humanitarian aid as a weapon of war. Although the number of trucks entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing increased slightly in July compared to June, only 8 percent of all deliveries were humanitarian aid, or just 37 trucks per day. Before the war, about 500 trucks carrying humanitarian aid reached Gaza daily. During the period from May to July, the number of humanitarian aid entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom fell by 61 percent compared to the period from January to April.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on August 16 that only 46 of 109 aid missions to northern Gaza were approved by Israel between August 1 and 15. The rate of rejected aid missions rose from 15 percent to 29 percent compared to the previous month.
Arwa Damon, founder of the charity Inara, told Al Jazeera that it was becoming increasingly impossible to distribute aid even when it reached Gaza. She cited as an example the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital ran out of bandages. “This meant that a 13-year-old child, whose body was 50 to 60 percent burned, did not get enough bandages to clean the wounds. This led to him suffering from blood poisoning and showing signs of early sepsis,” Damon added.
The risk of a major polio outbreak spreading beyond Gaza is also high after a child in central Gaza was diagnosed with the disease last week. The World Health Organization has stressed that a major vaccination campaign in two rounds in late August and September is necessary to prevent the further spread of the debilitating disease, which can cause lifelong paralysis. But such an initiative will prove impossible if the genocide continues.
Another manifestation of the Zionist regime’s barbarism is the systematic torture of Palestinian prisoners, which has come to light in a series of revelations. The most recent revelation concerned 33 Palestinian prisoners released from Ofner Prison, where torture similar to that practiced in the notorious Sde Teiman facility was reported. One released prisoner told Al Jazeera:
I was tortured day and night. My ribs were broken, my shoulders were dislocated. We were tortured in every way you can imagine.
All prisoners lost at least 90 percent of their physical ability. I was blindfolded and handcuffed for 70 days. We were all mistreated, humiliated and tortured.
The threat of regional war and the barbaric practices of the imperialist-backed Zionist regime can only be stopped by an international anti-war movement led by the working class. This movement must combine its opposition to genocide and war with a socialist program to end the imperialist world war and capitalism through the struggle for workers’ power.
