Israeli officials’ ceasefire demands show that they aren’t just using ceasefire negotiations to prolong their genocide of Gaza, but also to secure permission to further deepen their colonization of Palestine, a UN expert has said.
In the latest ceasefire talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been insistent that Israel be able to maintain a permanent military occupation of Gaza’s border with Egypt and a corridor built by Israeli forces cutting across the middle of the Gaza Strip, which Israelis respectively call the Philadelphi Corridor and Netzarim Corridor.
Israel’s insistence on maintaining control over these corridors is a clear show of their intention to expand their ethnic cleansing and “eat up” more of Palestine, said Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Under the guise of ‘ceasefire negotiations’ Israel is trying to create the conditions for permanent occupation and more land grab. Those familiar with Palestine’s history recognize in what is happening to the Palestinians under Israel’s unlawful occupation, the pattern of settler colonialism,” said Albanese on social media on Thursday.
Albanese shared an observation from University of Edinburgh international relations professor Nicola Perugini, who noted: “Corridors are key tools of fragmentation, enclavisation and land dispossession in the history of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. Corridors (Allon Plan etc) were key in settling the West Bank.”
The Allon Plan was a proposal drawn up by then-Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon after the 1967 war to annex Gaza, forcibly transfer Palestinians, and partition the West Bank. As part of the plan, corridors would be built to connect the areas partitioned to Israel and Jordan. The plan was never put in place, but experts have noted that its principles of annexation and forcible transfers have echoed across decades of Zionist policy.
Indeed, over the past months, Israel has built two corridors in Gaza that analysts say indicate their intention for a permanent military occupation. According to Forensic Architecture, as well as the Netzarim Corridor, Israel has been building a road that gives Israeli forces direct access to Gaza City. The construction of these two corridors are “infrastructural indications of an intended military presence” in north Gaza, the group said.
At the same time, a permanent Israeli takeover of the Philadelphi corridor — a major sticking point for Netanyahu in negotiations — would mean that Israel gets to control the entirety of Gaza’s border, as its border with Egypt is the only side of Gaza not surrounded by Israel. Hamas has been strongly opposed to Israel’s occupation of the two corridors in negotiations.
In essence, Israel’s position in the ceasefire talks is for there to be no ceasefire — for Israel to be allowed to continue its genocide for as long as Israeli leaders desire — and for mediators to give Israel permission to expand its occupation of Palestine. This means that, if U.S. officials agree to an Israeli “ceasefire” plan, they are not only giving the green light to the genocide, but also for Israel to take steps toward annexing Gaza.
Corporate media outlets have covered the ceasefire talks with abandon, willingly repeating U.S. officials’ claims that Hamas, not Israel, is opposed to a ceasefire — despite Hamas leaders’ clear acceptance of President Joe Biden’s three-phase ceasefire deal.
These outlets seemingly seek to obfuscate the truth of the negotiations and run endless cover for Israel; in fact, perhaps sensing Israel’s positioning in the talks, The Atlantic published a much-criticized article recently essentially seeking to redefine the entire concept of settler colonialism in order to absolve Israel of the bloody practice.
Experts and commentators have noted that the true purpose of the ceasefire talks and the U.S.’s participation in them, is to give license for the genocide to continue.
Like the Oslo process in the 1990s, analyst Mouin Rabbani said recently, the ceasefire talks serve as a way to “buy time” for Israel’s genocide. “[T]heir purpose is process, and their objective has therefore been to avoid reaching a ceasefire agreement rather than concluding one,” Rabbani wrote.
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