“Surrender or Starve”: Israel Weighs Plan to Liquidate Northern Gaza as Siege on Jabaliya Intensifies

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Israel’s intensifying attacks and siege on northern Gaza comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering implementing a “surrender or starve” policy in the area.

We’re joined now by the Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport, recently wrote an article for +972 headlined “A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam.” Meron is an editor and writer at the independent Israeli news site Local Call, a columnist at +972 Magazine. On Saturday, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Dove for Peace by the International Research Institute Disarmament Archive in Rome, Italy. In his acceptance speech, he said, “Although journalism alone cannot bring peace, it can open spaces of humanity.”

We welcome you, Meron, to Democracy Now! If you can start off by talking about what you are saying, what the policy of Israel now is in Gaza, the separation of Gaza, what it means as you talk about the starving of Gaza?

MERON RAPOPORT: Hello.

Of course, we don’t know exactly what is the Israeli plan now. The general’s plan, what is called the plan offered by ex-Major General Giora Eiland, speaks about offering the Palestinian northern Gaza, north of the Netzarim Corridor, meaning all Gaza City and its surrounding, offering them a week to evacuate Gaza and go south to the humanitarian area, what is called, near the Mawasi, near Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. And then, after a week, there will be a total siege on northern Gaza, and a siege meaning no food, no water, no electricity, no medicine, nothing. And in a week time, all those who stay will be considered terrorists that could be hit. The idea is that the civil population will leave, only the Hamas militants will stay, and therefore Israel will be able to clean this area. This is the plan by General Eiland.

The plan was not adopted officially, neither by the government, although it is said that Netanyahu is considering it, and nor by the army officially. The operation now in Jabaliya that we heard about is officially not part of this plan, but it does seem that many parts of this plan are being implemented on the ground. We heard that there’s no supplies coming into northern Gaza at all in the last two weeks. We are seeing this evacuation order to the population of northern Gaza and to the hospitals in northern Gaza. So, we have the sense here that this plan is being actually implemented without being officially adopted.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the people who escaped the Jabaliya refugee camp told the Financial Times, “It seems that the Jabalia camp will be deleted from Gaza’s geography.” If you can talk more about the intentions of Israel right now? I mean, just in the last week, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes around the camp, thousands more trapped, Israel encircling the area, leaving only one exit. And what do — as we speak to you in Tel Aviv, you’re an Israeli journalist. What does the Israeli population understand what’s happening in Gaza? In the United States, in the corporate broadcast media, you hardly see anything about Gaza now. It’s much more focused on Lebanon. And these major networks do not keep repeating that Israel does not allow international journalists into Gaza.

MERON RAPOPORT: So, again, the Israeli public is also much focused on Lebanon, but even — and certainly after what happened last night, when a drone attack on an army base in Binyamina, which is some hundred kilometers south of the Lebanese border, killing four soldiers. So, the whole attention is on Lebanon. And this is maybe one of the reasons that we see this attack in Jabaliya, because the international attention is on Lebanon, and not in Gaza.

Anyhow, even before that, there was very little attention in the Israeli media and Israeli public to the consequences of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. And if there was some attention, it was mainly seen as what Israel is doing is right, that destroying Gaza, destroying physically Gaza City and its neighborhoods and the camps around it, is a logical thing to do as a response to October 7, because if there will be no Gaza, then there will be no threat. That is how very, very many Israelis see it. So, this is, generally speaking, the Israeli response.

People don’t really understand the connection between this and returning the hostages, don’t see a connection with this and continuing of the war. I think there is a large support for this, although, I must say, of course, the images are not shown on Israeli TV. People don’t see, you know, children burning alive in Gaza, as in the Arab world and elsewhere maybe people see. So, the whole of the information is not in front of most of the Israeli public.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a piece that you wrote in +972. Haaretz also wrote about this “surrender or starve” plan that was proposed last fall by Major General Eiland. Explain who Major General Eiland is, the idea that anyone who remains behind would face hunger and be treated as Hamas operatives and legitimate military targets, as you’ve described, Meron, and what exactly this will constitute in Gaza.

MERON RAPOPORT: Again, the plan by Major General Eiland, and the ex-general, is, as I said, to give the population a week, an opportunity to leave within a week, and then there will be a siege, and those who stay will be considered as terrorists.

Eiland himself is not really a right-wing, in the sense he’s not part of the religious right. He’s not even a supporter of Netanyahu. He comes from a military background, even what is in Israel considered center-left background. So, he is not a fanatic supporter of Netanyahu, not at all.

He says, he claims in all his interviews that this conforms — that this plan conforms with international law, that siege is a legitimate way of war, as long as you give the population, the civil population, time to leave. What does not exist, really, in his plan — and I think it’s not by chance it’s not detailed in his plan — is, first of all, what will happen with this population if they will leave. Will they be able to come back? Because this is not written in the plan. It says only that they will have to leave, they will be given humanitarian aid, but there’s no promise that they will be able to come back even in a month’s time, two months’ time, three months’ time to their homes. So, this is not there. So, therefore, the fear for another Nakba is there.

And more importantly is, he does not detail what will happen if most of the population, as we see now in the description we heard just now, most of the population refuses to leave. It refuses because it saw what happened to the people who left in the beginning of the war, that there is no safe shelter in Gaza, neither in the south. They refuse also for political reasons, because they’re afraid that this is the beginning of a new Nakba and the idea is to really clean Gaza and maybe open it to resettlement by Israelis. So, he does not say what will happen if tens of thousands, if maybe even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will decide to stay after this week. What will happen to them? Will Israel starve a half a million people, 300,000 people, 200,000 people? Nobody really knows the exact number of the people north of Netzarim Corridor, in the northern part of Gaza Strip. So, what are we talking about here? Are we talking about Israel committing an extermination of hundreds, of tens of thousands of people if they will choose to stay? This is not detailed in his plan, and I think it’s not by chance it’s not detailed.

AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] low-lying, really somewhat low-tech drone that Hezbollah sent into Israel, near Haifa. Explain the significance of Binyamina, this military base that houses the Golani Brigade, and the deaths of four Israeli soldiers and the wounding of 60, what this means for Israel right now.

MERON RAPOPORT: I think, of course, the base itself is not that important. It’s a relatively small base, quite far from the border. It’s a training base. It’s not a combat — it’s not for combat units. It’s for training. So the base itself is not extremely important.

But the fact that a drone arrived so far, almost a hundred kilometers from the Lebanese border, and was very precise, hitting a dining room in this army base, you know, what it made is the whole euphoria that was very present in Israel after the pager attacks, after the assassination of Nasrallah and all the leadership of Hezbollah, where most Israelis thought that here Israel is winning the war, that the war will be over, that the Hamas and Hezbollah will surrender and that Iran will back off — what we are seeing now, that this is far from over. And the fact that Hezbollah, after being hit so hard, is still able to hit at the heart of Israel is, of course, very destabilizing, you know, this state of euphoria that was — existed for a few weeks, but I think now it’s dissipating.

AMY GOODMAN: Meron Rapoport, I want to thank you for being with us, editor and writer at the independent Israeli news site Local Call, columnist at +972 Magazine, his piece headlined “A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam,” and writes for The Nation magazine.