Israel's Objective Was Always to Make Gaza Uninhabitable: BUTTU
The Trends Journal forecast that the Netanyahu government would be a disaster for peace with Palestinians because it is filled with religious extremists
Diana Buttu, a human rights lawyer and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in an interview Monday that Israel’s true objective from the beginning of the war was to flatten Gaza to make it uninhabitable.
Buttu told the Owen Jones podcast that Israeli politicians have spoken openly about their desire to flatten Gaza after the 7 October Hamas attack.
She cited an interview between former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Danny Ayalon and Al Jazeera’s Marc Lamont Hill earlier in the war. Ayalon admitted that Israel planned on collectively punishing Palestinians unless Hamas surrenders and recommended Palestinians exit the country through the Rafah border.
“We want to open a humanitarian corridor so they can leave,” he said.
Buttu noted that within a month of the interview, a document emerged including a funding request to create tent cities to accommodate fleeing Gazans. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the plan called for 25,000 tents and the plan was presented to Egypt.
She said she is not sure if people understand “just how more genocidal Israeli Society is today.”
She said you hear politicians talking about flattening Gaza daily, she said there are bumper stickers, and a popular hat that reads, “Make Gaza Flat Again.”
“All of this is happening because, as you put it, they haven't been able to meet any of the so-called goals that they wanted to meet. Now, we have to step back and ask about those so-called goals,” she said.
She listed the goals were: 1) Release hostages, 2) Defeat Hamas, 3) To make sure the problem will not happen again.
She said Israel knows it cannot achieve its goals so “it's been clear after seven months” that all they’ve been doing is “destroying and destroying and destroying.”
“I think that the ultimate goal for them is genocide and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu made this clear from Day One.”
She continued, “I think that they were hoping to have a genocide, coupled with a white flag, coupled with the release of the Israelis.”
She said Israel achieved none of those objectives but the one thing that they have been able to do is to “destroy Gaza as much as possible.”
The idea is to make life so unbearable in Gaza that Palestinians are either killed or end up fleeing, she said.
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal forecast that the Netanyahu government would be a disaster for peace with Palestinians because it is filled with religious extremists.
Buttu pinned an op-ed she wrote in The New York Times on the top of her X account from December 2022 also warning about the looming disaster.
She wrote that if there was any silver lining, the appointments of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to top posts in the government “will open the eyes of more Americans” to the conditions in which Palestinians live.