Israel doesn't care about the captives. It always planned to reboot the genocide
What excuses has Israel given for renewing the genocide:
1. Israel says it is trying to force Hamas to release the captives in Gaza.
Yet, as we know from those already released, the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza only increases the chances the captives will be killed. There is no plausible scenario in which dropping US-supplied 2,000lb bombs across Gaza makes any Israeli held in the enclave safer or brings them home sooner.
In any case, there was a known and easy way for Israel to get the last of the captives back. They were due to be freed in the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, already well past its implementation date. But weeks ago Israel decided to tear up the agreement it had signed and impose new terms in which the rest of the captives would have to be returned – and without Israel either ceasing its fire or withdrawing from the enclave, as it had agreed to do.
What Israel’s return to genocide shows is that the Israeli government would rather kill the remaining captives – vaporising them with Trump’s latest shipment of 2,000lb bombs – than either make a concession to secure their release or place any limitation on its ability to slaughter the people of Gaza.
2. Israel claims Hamas was re-arming and planning a new attack.
As ever, Israel is inverting the truth. It was Israel that was re-armed by the Trump administration with the bombs now tearing apart Gaza's children. Hamas – isolated from the outside world – had no obvious route to re-arming.
And as for plans for another October 7, both Hamas and the world were shocked its fighters managed to break out of the tiny, besieged territory of Gaza the first time. Hamas assumed it would be a suicide mission. It succeeded only because Israel had grown so complacent in its 17-year siege of the enclave, it imagined the 2.3 million people there were permanently entombed.
Israel’s assumption was the Palestinians would never manage to find a way out of the giant concentration camp Israel had built for them. Israel will not likely drop its guard again any time soon.
In other words, Israel is flat-out lying about its reasons for renewing the slaughter. It is lying as it has done over and over again, throughout the past 18 months.
Israel always intended to reboot the genocide as soon as the Trump administration had been able to take credit for negotiating the ceasefire. Then they could work together to concoct a new set of pretexts – based on lies about who was violating the ceasefire – to justify why more of Gaza's children needed to be murdered.
Certainly, Joe Biden and his officials must be put on trial in the Hague for the first 15 months of the genocide. But it is Trump and his administration that are responsible for every Palestinian death from here on out.
[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]
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