With Gaza under a total communications outage, it is difficult to confirm the Israeli army’s announcement.

Israel’s military has claimed it has encircled Gaza City and divided the besieged coastal strip into two, as Gaza came under its third total communications outage since the start of the war.

“Today, there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on Sunday, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against Hamas.

Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours. Strong explosions were seen in northern Gaza after nightfall.

But the “collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by the Palestinian telecom company Paltel made it even more complicated to convey details of the new stage of the military offensive.

  • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
    12320·
    1 year ago

    It seems to me that they’re planning on squeezing the people from the north into the south, then closing off the north from any return. This is consistent with a plan of annexing and depopulating Gaza.

    If so, this would be ethnic cleansing. This strategy appears to be genocide.

    • BabyWah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      339·
      1 year ago

      No, they’re just going to kill everyone in the north then turn around and attack the south, pressuring Egypt into opening its borders and displacing the rest of the population into the Sinai Peninsula. The blackout is back, so they can kill indiscriminately now.

      Then use Gaza as a neutral zone, something like North and South Korea have to cut off all ties.

      Then it’s just a matter of time to do the same to the West Bank.

      They’re already lobbying the EU and US to put pressure on Egypt to give up the Sinai peninsula (like it’s so normal to give up an entire fucking peninsula). That’s why Sisi said Europe should take in Gazans themselves if they care so much about human rights.

      You know about Netanyahu’s plans we heard about a few days ago and everybody shrugged it off as a 'theory/study? This is exactly what’s happening.

      This also explains why they don’t care about civilian casualties. There will be no Gaza anymore, and the more Palestinians they kill right now, the less future terrorists for them (their opinion).

    • spirinolas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      233·
      1 year ago

      Israel doesn’t give a shit about Gaza. Gaza is a distraction. The real deal is the West Bank were the settlers/militia are being armed by Israel. There are already videos of Ben Gvir giving assault weapons to the settlers and riling them up. They are the ones who will commit the genocide in Israel’s behalf. Shit is already going down. The militia is depopulating villages, commuting murder and arson, all while the IDF just stands and watches. But the media only shows Gaza. Even Biden already realized what happened and is shitting his britches realizing he supported what is about to happen. This are the first stages of a genocide.

      • orrk@lemmy.worldEnglish
        101·
        1 year ago

        they want both Gaza AND Palestine, that’s why Netanyahu was supporting Hamas, to use them against the PA in the west bank

      • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
        91·
        1 year ago

        I agree with you. I’m not sure where we’re in disagreement.

        I don’t know the precise planning. I’m guessing Israel would prefer to focus on depopulating Gaza first, and let the Settlers terrorize the West Bank until they’re ready to reallocate troops. Then I think that once they’ve got secure control of Gaza, they’ll wait for an opportunistic terror attack in the West Bank as pretense to redirect the troops. But I think they want to fully conquer Gaza first to avoid dividing their forces.

        Like I said, though, I think we all agree on the overall plan, we just don’t know the exact battle plan. But Genocide is the intent.

        • spirinolas@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think we’ll see the army blooding their hands in the West Bank. We’re going to see major atrocities there (executions, mass graves, etc) but it will be by the armed militia (aka settlers). The army will just observe to keep plausible deniability.

      • dx1@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. He removed the portrait after he entered politics.[5] He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology.[6]

        Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election, and is represented in what has been called the most right-wing and hardline government in Israel’s history.[7][8][9][10] He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel.[10] Ben Gvir is “widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities”.[11] Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz has said Ben Gvir represents “Jewish fascism”.[12]

        […] In the 1990s, he was active in protests against the Oslo Accords. In 1995, Ben-Gvir came to public attention for the first time, when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car, and declared: “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.” Several weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir.[14][24]

    • roo@lemmy.oneEnglish
      113·
      1 year ago

      It does make sense in terms of working in a box for military awareness of enemy combatants. No expert, but that is something we’ve seen before.

    • Patrick S@lemmy.worldEnglish
      147·
      1 year ago

      This was my thought as well. No one will ever be allowed back in that city. It will either be a military base or a wasteland for decades.