The ‘Flour massacre’ is a precursor to Israel’s ‘day after’ in Gaza

The politics of unleashing genocide under the watching eyes of the world are complicated. While Israel has the firepower to kill just everybody in Gaza, they must find a way to “criminalize” their targets. When they suspect that a resistance fighter hides, or just lives, in a building, that serves as a justification to destroy the whole building, and sometimes the buildings around it too. Being “the startup nation,” Israel’s genocide army has even industrialized the process of criminalizing civilian targets using artificial intelligence.

But even with the indiscriminate and bloody way the Israeli onslaught has been conducted, the massacre of the hungry bread-seekers on Al-Rasheed Street in Gaza last Thursday was different. Israel did not even claim that its troops were attacked or that there were resistance fighters anywhere around. This massacre happened as Israel was claiming “to take care” of the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population. And rather than an isolated tragic incident, the “Flour Massacre,” as it has come to be called, can actually be understood as a harbinger of the new order that Israel is trying to impose on Gaza’s people after its planned, yet so far elusive, elimination of Hamas. It was a reflection of Israel’s “day after” plan for Gaza and all of Palestine – permanent military occupation.

Israeli manufactured hunger and chaos

Israel’s current operation in Gaza is multifaceted and extends way beyond just the daily barrage of deadly bombardments from the sky and destruction being carried out by ground forces. Israel is also manufacturing hunger and chaos throughout Gaza.

First, the hunger. Until now, Israel has intentionally minimized the amount of humanitarian aid that enters Gaza. The main obstacles are obstructive Israeli “inspections” of all the supplies that enter, either from Egypt through the Rafah crossing or directly from Karm Abu-Salem. In addition, the army and the police have intentionally allowed extreme right-wing thugs to obstruct the movement in the inspection sites and the crossings, each arguing that it is the other’s responsibility to keep order there. On February 22, Kan, the official Israeli broadcasting service, reported that, due to the disruption by protesters, no aid trucks could enter Gaza that day. When the very limited aid finally enters Gaza, it faces destroyed roads and might still be shot at by the Israeli army.

Then the chaos. Israel is waging an attrition war against all humanitarian organizations that try to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza. Many aid workers have been martyred by Israeli attacks. A month ago, OCHA, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported that 337 health workers and 145 UN staff have been killed – and the killing is continuing uninterrupted.

The case of UNRWA is well known. Israel does not hide its desire to abolish the agency, accusing it of “perpetuating” Palestinians’ existence as a people struggling to return to their land. The Western powers hurried to cut essential financing from UNRWA, preventing life-saving assistance from millions in Gaza at the times of horrible human-made catastrophe, based on unproven Israeli claims against a few of the organizations’ employees. Along with this, on February 25, Amira Hass reported in Haaretz that Israel is systematically blocking work visas from international aid NGO workers in the West Bank and Gaza, forcing them to leave the country. All in an effort to isolate Palestinians and make life truly unlivable in Gaza. 

In addition, to further generate chaos, Israel has been attacking Palestinian police whenever they were facilitating the delivery and distribution of aid in Gaza. Kan reported that, due to Israeli attacks, the Palestinian police stopped securing aid convoys and that, as a result, humanitarian organizations announced their suspension of aid distribution activities, fearing for the safety of their workers.

This hunger and the chaos in Gaza are not only being generated by the Israeli leadership to inflict pain but also to create an opportunity. 

In an article in Ynet on February 28, Ronen Bergman reports that the two supposedly “centrist” ministers in Israel’s war cabinet, former generals Gantz and Eisenkot, intended to exploit the hunger and chaos in Gaza to force the release of Israeli captives. As Bergman reports, Gantz and Eisenkot “tried to propose, already about a month ago, to condition the continuation of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip on the release of hostages, but this proposal was rejected.”

Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for the New York Times. But he is also a deeply involved Israeli, with, according to his own testimony, deep connections high up in the Israeli military establishment. In his article, he accuses Netanyahu of “unnecessary gestures” in Gaza, like letting some medicine and fuel in. While the “centrist generals” want to starve Gazans to force Hamas to give up its prisoners without prisoners’ exchange, Netanyahu aims at the perpetuation of the war as the only way to save his government and keep himself at the top job. 

Netanyahu’s ‘Day After’ plan: permanent aggressive occupation 

Given his ties deep inside the Israeli establishment, it is interesting to take note of Bergman’s observations. He describes how Netanyahu is sabotaging the negotiations for prisoners’ exchange: “… the same unknown parties who spread the false news in the media about the great optimism surrounding the negotiations [among the Israeli team negotiating prisoners’ exchange – YH], and that there are breakthroughs and the situation is good, do so to in order that, when Hamas returns with a negative answer to an offer that it is clear that it will not accept as it is, it can be blamed for blowing up the negotiations.”

Bergman adds that “people who are familiar with what is going on in Netanyahu’s environment believe that he is doing everything to thwart the deal, and is manipulating public opinion with all the means at his disposal so that even if a deal comes along that seems reasonable to negotiators on the part of the security establishment, he will refuse it. And, if this is leaked out, as one of the senior officials swore on his life, he, Netanyahu, will present them, all of them, as losers who are not ready to fight Hamas until complete victory.”

Bergman speaks for parts of the military establishment and paints a very pessimistic picture of Israel’s war situation. “The bottom line,” he summarizes, “is that the IDF is stuck in Gaza. The abductees are gradually perishing. The Israeli public is inundated with distorted or false information. The army voted with its feet and got out of the Strip – five divisions that participated in the war became five brigades that are participating in a limited operation in Khan Younis. Senior military officials say that a ceasefire is necessary, that a deal is necessary, but the army chiefs will not say so explicitly.”

But for Netanyahu and the extremist majority of his government, things are looking up. There is no meaningful international pressure to end the war. The Israeli government is not ready to even consider a political solution, so their strategy is a grinding war of attrition, believing that Israel’s military superiority will extinguish the staying power of the Palestinian population, even if it would require years of bloody conflict.

Toward this end, after a long delay, Netanyahu presented the basic components of what is supposed to be his vision of “The Day After” in Gaza, or rather in all of Palestine. It is a vision of full Israel military control between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. No independent Palestinian entity will be allowed.

To thwart international pressure, Israel wants to show that it can care by itself, with some “nonpolitical” local Palestinian proxies, also for the daily management of the population. In his article, Bergman reports that the Israeli war cabinet decided to deliver humanitarian aid to devastated North Gaza after all. This was after it chased away the Palestinian police and jeopardized all humanitarian organizations, as described above. And this brings us to the “Flour Massacre.” The Israeli army decided to secure the convoys by itself, and what better way to secure an aid convoy than by accompanying it with formidable tanks? When hungry Palestinians on Al-Rasheed streets tried “to loot” the supplies, the soldiers in the tanks shot at them with their machine guns.

On a smaller scale, shootings of unarmed Palestinians by soldiers who “felt threatened” by their very presence happen daily in the West Bank. Trying to explain the massacre on Al-Rasheed, the Israeli army claimed that its heavily armed cowardly soldiers felt threatened by the unarmed civilians who came too close to their positions. It is not the Gazans that came too close – it is the Israelis that thrust themselves where they should not be.

Netanyahu’s government wants to keep its military presence in Gaza forever. It does not officially speak of new settlements there yet, but many elements within the coalition are working on it. The massacre of the hungry bread seekers is a stark reminder that to stop the bloodshed, it is not enough to only demand a ceasefire now. It is no less important to demand immediate and complete withdrawal of the bloody occupation army.