Will 100 000 dead Palestinians be ‘enough’ for Israel?

Alameen Templeton

Did the US and Israel “sell Iran the dummy” by convincing it to hold off a missile strike as retaliation for the murder of Hamas martyr Ismail Haniyeh because a ceasefire deal was coming?

Five slow weeks have ticked by since Haniyeh’s murder, with Israel expanding its atrocities to the West Bank while maintaining the blitz against Gaza, attacking neighbouring countries and thumbing its nose at “peace talks”.

Even in the United States, commentators are saying it is now abundantly clear that the US-led ceasefire talks have become a tool for the perpetuation of Israel’s genocidal murder campaign.

‘Genocide – as bad as it gets’

And Israel remains marching in lock step with its allies on its path to perdition, content in the knowledge that it’s guilty of genocide, that it was already guilty of genocide just a few weeks after October 7 and the charge will remain the same even if it wipes out 100 000 Palestinians.

So, as long as the US has its back, things can’t get worse for Israel – if it stops today, with the body count at 40 988, it will be guilty of genocide; if it stops at 100 000, the charge cannot get any worse.

So, it seems Tel Aviv has committed itself to the latter ambition of 100 000 dead Palestinians, with little or nothing being done to rein in its bloodlust.

Perhaps, now is the time to ask: will 100 000 dead Palestinians be enough?

If America and the rest of Nato continue supplying arms and providing diplomatic cover for Israel at the UN and through a network of trade and technology deals that keep its economy ticking over, Israel will keep on killing until either the bombs and bullets or the lives run out.

Deaf to warnings

Monday night’s attack on the Al-Mawasi “safe zone” is a case in point. The Zionists dropped heavy bombs that can obliterate an entire city block with one strike on a sand dune covered in flimsy tents housing nearly 15% of Gaza’s still-surviving population.

The strikes killed 40 and injured at least 60 civilians. Rescuers no longer point out that about 70% of the victims are women and children.

The strike shows Tel Aviv cares nothing for legal advice that its allies, in continuing to support its military misadventures, are also guilty or war crimes and even less for Teheran’s warnings that “only a casefire” will prevent it from launching a withering missile response in retaliation to Haniyeh’s murder on its soil.

Israel is making it clear that warnings from Teheran can only embolden it because that’s exactly what it wants – a regional war targeting Iran that will draw in the US to a “final confrontation” in Arabia.

Hamas said in response to Monday night’s atrocity “this brutal attack on an area declared as a safe zone by the occupation confirms the ongoing genocide carried out by the Nazi-like Israeli government against the Palestinian people”.

‘Genocide is genocide’

Al Mayadeen reports Hamas accused “Israel” of deliberately committing “heinous massacres with full support from the US administration, which is complicit in the aggression,” showing no regard for international or humanitarian law or the resolutions calling for an end to the violence.

That is all true, but it doesn’t change the absolutism of the charge. Being guilty of genocide didn’t stop Israel on November 7, a month after the Gaza Holocaust started, and it won’t stop it tomorrow or next month.

Hamas refuted the Israeli occupation forces’ claims mujahideen were present at Al-Mawasi, calling them “blatant lies” through which the Israeli occupation seeks to justify its crimes.

It appealed fruitlessly again – and as it will probably repeat as fruitlessly in coming months – to the  international community, the United Nations, and political, humanitarian, and judicial institutions to “assume their responsibility in stopping this massacre,” urging them to take necessary measures to “bring Zionist war criminals to the International Criminal Court and hold them accountable.”

Shared guilt

Al Mayadeen reports: “It held the US administration and its president, Joe Biden, fully responsible for the “heinous crime” in Khan Younis “and all the crimes of the enemy against our people,” red guiltconsidering it a key partner in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people as it continues to provide international cover and military support to the “Nazi Netanyahu government.”

The movement further stressed that the Israeli occupation’s justifications for the crime are “false and absurd as it continues to kill and terrorize as part of a series aimed at breaking the will of our people and displacing them from their land.”

Sunjeev Bery, writing for The Intercept, says it is already “abundantly clear that the US-led Gaza ceasefire talks have become a tool for the perpetuation of Israel’s genocidal war”.

“The so-called ceasefire negotiations are a form of camouflage that is being deployed by Biden and Harris to distract from the reality of their support for Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza,” he says.

He adds: “To even use the word “ceasefire” to describe what the Biden administration is pursuing is itself a form of linguistic violence.

“The latest draft “ceasefire” proposal announced by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken essentially endorses continued Israeli occupation of Gaza with no permanent cessation of war …

Invisible retaliation

“Meanwhile, it was just one week ago that the State Department announced the sale of another $20 billion in US weapons to Israel.”

Which brings us back to Teheran and the invisible “retaliation”. We can strike through “concerns an attack may upend ceasefire talks” as a reason for not responding. It did say repeatedly, if its vengeance did not inflict significant damage to Israel, “blood for blood”, then its retaliation would have failed.

It seems Teheran’s concerns to the impact of a “Zionato” response to any retaliation is the real reason Iran has not triggered a missile attack on Israel. It seems Iran’s worries about its economy, its trade deals and its infrastructure run just as deep as those in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE.