Twelve hours before truce ends, Israeli official says no agreement on extending cease-fire

JAY: So the debate, when you look at the sort of debate in the Israeli press, one of the things jumped out at us. This is a piece by Moshe Feiglin, he has an article he just wrote, an op-ed, where he said his plan for Gaza. And it more or less comes down to let the people of Gaza know that the attack is coming and give one warning; allow people out, in other words let people leave and go to Sinai, but I thought the Egyptians would have something to say about that, and in his piece he doesn't mention that; and then flatten the place, more or less. And then occupy the place completely and essentially ask people to leave, encourage people to leave, give people money to leave, and then occupy Gaza with Jewish settlers and claim Gaza a fully as a piece of Israel. In other words, a forced expulsion, that's his strategy for Gaza, and bomb the hell out of the place to get there. How serious a position is this within Isreali discourse?
BLUMENTHAL: Well, (...)

Now, during Operation Protective Edge there's a sense of frustration in Israeli society that they didn't quite finish the job. The sense is that, okay, oh, 1,800 people have been killed, all the Israelis I've been speaking to are aware of the level of civilian casualties. Over 300 children have been killed in the last month, most of them under 12 years old. But the soldiers are very frustrated, Israelis are frustrated, that they feel like in another year or two there'll be another operation like this and 2,800 will be killed, nd how long will they have to live with the Gaza Strip? How long will they have to live with rockets and tunnels? They want to finish the job. And Feiglin is catering to that mentality by calling for this plan of expulsion and reoccupation.
Many of the Israeli soldiers, as they were going in during Operation Protective Edge, were singing, "let's go back to Gush Katif", referring to the settlement that was evacuated in the Gaza Strip in 2006. Many of the people I see at right-wing protests are former residents of Gush Katif, and they're really pushing for reoccupation of northern Gaza.

Finally, just a word about Feiglin's view of the Gaza Strip and the view of many of the people in the religious nationalist camp, who were an incipient political movement in Israel. They believe that the Gaza Strip is part of Israel because it had been inhabited by Jews some several thousand years ago before it was inhabited by Palestinian Arabs. And so this idea of actually expulsion from the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula is part of this messianic plan for fulfillment of a kind of religious revival and redemption in the land [crosstalk] Israel.

But beyond that is there's the genocidal aspect of Feiglin's remarks. And genocide, incitement to genocide, is incredibly common right now in Israeli political discourse. It's not just Feiglin. There's Giora Eiland, who was one of the heads of the Institute for National Security Studies, which consults for the Israeli military. He's a former national security adviser, someone who's deeply embedded in the military intelligence apparatus. And today he published a piece in Yedioth Ahronoth, which is the main newspaper in Israel, pretty much calling for genocide in the Gaza Strip, or at least justifying it. He's basically making the case that there are no civilians in the Gaza Strip because they elected Hamas as Germans elected Hitler. This is the same rationale that Osama bin Laden used to justify the 9/11 attacks and the indiscriminate slaughter of Americans, because they had elected governments which had attacked the Middle East, which had attacked Muslim nations. So you're hearing this from mainstream figures, not just from crazy old Feiglin, who's willing winning lots of fans and followers with this kind of rhetoric, who's really keeping up a public profile.

JAY: Yeah, once you can defend the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the name of defense of American security, then you have created this whole rationale that it doesn't--collateral damage, the death of thousands of civilians, it's okay, 'cause I'm alright, Jack.
BLUMENTHAL: Exactly. In Operation Cast Lead, which was Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009, I think a lot of your viewers will remember that Israel used white phosphorus on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, which heats up your flesh to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. They actually attacked the UN shelter with white phosphorus. And when they were criticized and accused in the Goldstone Report of committing war crimes, including through the use of white phosphorus, Asa Kasher, the ethical adviser to the Israeli army who I just described, issued a paper for a think tank in Jerusalem basically pointing to the U.S.'s deployment of white phosphorus in the attack on Falluja--and I think it was 2004--as Israel's legal precedent for being able to use white phosphorus on a civilian population.

INTERVIEW: Palestinian Leader Stresses Pro-Hamas Rallies in Gaza Are Fake
 
 
Mudar Zahran, a Palestinian journalist, political commentator and prominent dissident who decided to come to the West Bank and to cover the conflict during this crucial period of time, stresses that most Gazans are now opposed to Hamas, while many Palestinians in the West Bank have become Hamas supporters in the wake of Operation Protective Edge.

“While the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reported that most Gazans are against Hamas, we just saw pro-Hamas rallies in Gaza. So is one of the most prestigious research groups in the world mistaken or was Lisa Daftari, the Fox News reporter who spoke to Gazans on the ground, mistaken,”

Ce n’est pas la foule des grands jours. Le Hamas n’a réussi à remplir qu’une petite partie de la rue al-Mokhtar, l’artère principale du centre-ville de Gaza. Il y avait des familles, des hommes, des femmes et des enfants parfois très jeunes, drapés de vert, aux couleurs du mouvement islamiste. Leur discours est toujours le même.
 
En début de manifestation, le Hamas leur a expliqué ce qu’il fallait dire aux journalistes : « On vient ici aujourd’hui pour soutenir la délégation palestinienne qui se trouve en Egypte pour négocier avec les Israéliens, afin que Gaza puisse vivre dans la fierté. On veut montrer que la population de Gaza est derrière la délégation palestinienne. »