Netanyahu's provocation. Netanyahu's war.
Israeli and western media pretend to be shocked by the outbreak of war in Israel and Gaza.
But how much were the Palestinians, particularly but not exclusively in Gaza, supposed to endure?
Netanyahu will undoubtedly blame his security and military leaders for what is claimed to be their lack of preparedness.
But this is a war Netanyahu has wanted and provoked and certainly must have expected.
Israel was never the democracy that its defenders constantly claim it to be. How could an apartheid state, one that denies the existence of the Palestinian people and their rights, be a democracy?
Like our own Donald Trump, Netanyahu has built a far-right coalition whose goal is to destroy whatever few Israeli institutions stand it their way of creating an even more theocratic fascist state while seizing more land to occupy.
The liberal Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, places the current violence directly on Netanyahu.
After his victory in the last election, he replaced this caution with the policy of a “fully-right government,” with overt steps taken to annex the West Bank, to carry out ethnic cleansing in parts of the Oslo-defined Area C, including the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.
This also included a massive expansion of settlements and bolstering of the Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as boasts of an impending peace deal with the Saudis in which the Palestinians would get nothing, with open talk of a “second Nakba” in his governing coalition. As expected, signs of an outbreak of hostilities began in the West Bank, where Palestinians started feeling the heavier hand of the Israeli occupier.
There are reports this morning of over 600 dead with more to count and more to come.
Many are children.
Netanyahu says he wants more.
All with the support of the United States.