He said it without hesitation. The word did not come from Bezalel Smotrich or Itamar Ben-Gvir, who do not officially speak for Benjamin Netanyahu. It came from Defense Minister Israel Katz, a senior figure in Netanyahu’s government and Likud.
No Israeli official had ever gone this far when it came to Gaza. There had been threats to destroy it, depopulate it, occupy it — all of which have been done — but never to annex it. That taboo has now been broken: Gaza will be Israeli, or it will cease to exist.
Katz was quick to point out that this is a tactic aimed at pressuring Hamas to release the 60 hostages still held since Oct. 7, 2023. Perhaps he was sincere. Perhaps Israel will not annex Gaza — that it will decide it is not worth the trouble and that other approaches might yield similar results.
But there is no longer any doubt about Netanyahu’s plans. At the end of this war, even if Hamas is completely defeated, even if the coastal enclave is fully demilitarized, even if the Egyptian and Israeli blockades remain in place, Gaza will fall under Israel’s direct or indirect control. Or it will be emptied of its population.
Since Netanyahu recognizes no limits, everything will depend on U.S. President Donald Trump and the Arab countries: on the former’s ability or willingness to twist the arms of his allies to take in survivors, or on the latter’s ability or willingness to propose an alternative plan acceptable to Israel. In the end, only the balance of power matters.
The longer the months drag on, the harder it becomes to write about Gaza. We are condemned to constant outrage — forced to decipher, analyze and comment on Trump’s plan to turn the enclave into a second “Riviera,” or on the U.S.-Israeli idea of “relocating” Gazans to East Africa. It all stems from the same playbook. That same logic is at work in the West Bank, where settlers and the army, with a green light from the U.S., are imposing new facts on the ground in preparation for eventual annexation.
For decades, Israel has sought to erase Palestinians politically. Now, it aims to do so in the most literal sense: to cleanse the land of a people who challenge its “divine right” to dominate every corner of it. With U.S. approval, Israel may finally succeed.
And Israeli hubris will not stop in Gaza or the West Bank. Because it is the strongest, and because it is backed by the strongest, it can act as it pleases throughout the region.
It can bomb Syria and Lebanon, occupy parts of their territories and dictate their behavior. Is Israel still interested in normalizing relations with Arab countries? And to what extent? It is clear that it will make no concessions, not even to Saudi Arabia, to achieve that goal. Just as it is clear that what matters most is to put a final end to the Palestinian question and to render all its neighbors harmless — by force, more than by diplomacy.
It is customary, at this point in an editorial, to point to possible courses of action to change the tide. To call on Europeans and Arab nations to unite and act, at least in their own interests, since eventually this will come back to haunt them. All the more so because, if they won’t, no one will. But this time, we will refrain. Even wishful thinking feels pointless.
This editorial was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.
