War criminal Ariel Sharon’s legacy returns to haunt Gaza

The brutal Netzarim corridor is being reinstated in Gaza to divide north from south

Netzarim was unrivaled when it came to physically bisecting the Gaza Strip with its very presence, embittering the lives of its inhabitants and abusing them. That’s why it was built.

The terrifying checkpoint and the threatening voice over the loudspeaker that stopped the busy traffic between the northern and southern sections of the Gaza Strip whenever a settler mother drove her child to an after-school activity in an armored, heavily guarded convoy – that is something I will never forget.

The children from the community center kissed the liberated soil. They didn’t believe that it was now possible to travel from Gaza City to the southern city of Khan Yunis without going through the scary Abu Holi checkpoint, or to go from the seaside Muassi neighborhood to Khan Yunis without traversing the equally threatening Tofah checkpoint.

Gideon Levy on the Zionist settler evacution of Gaza 2005/6 – written in August 2020

The Zionist forces have reinstated the Netzarim corridor dividing north from south in Gaza.

When I spoke with friends in Rafah days before they were again forced to flee to another even more decimated area of Gaza, they told me that Zionist forces were on the ground in the corridor that separates north from south. They told me checkpoints had already been established and that crossing from south to the north was impossible. During the Rafah exodus some tried to return to the north and were shelled by Israel on the beach road.

The infamous Netzarim corridor that separated Gaza into southern and northern sectors was bitterly resented by Palestinians in Gaza. It was an instrument of segregation and torment as described by Levy.

The map below is taken from a Le Monde article ‘10 Maps to Understand Gaza’s Tumultuous History’. It is evident that apartheid flourished in Gaza under Israeli occupation just as it does in the Occupied Territories.

A Washington Post article which is archived here – ‘What Israel’s strategic corridor in Gaza reveals about its post-war plans’ – describes a large scale project by the Zionist regime and military to reshape Gaza in the image of Ariel Sharon’s ‘Five Fingers’ project, entrenching Zionist military in sections of Gaza and partitioning the enclave into dissected cantons.

According to the article:

At least 750 buildings have been destroyed in what appears to be a systematic effort to create a “buffer zone” that stretches at least 500 yards on either side of the road, according to an analysis by Hebrew University’s Adi Ben-Nun, a geographic data specialist. Another 250 buildings have been razed in the area of the U.S. pier’.

This excerpt is from an ABC Australia 2021 documentary – Stone Cold Justice, Israel’s Torture of Palestinian Children. It is an interview with Daniella Weiss, extremist leader of the Zionist settler movement who worked with Ariel Sharon in the 1970s to break Palestinian territory into segregated ghettos to prevent a Palestinian State:

In 2005 when Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw all settler and military from Gaza, Ghali Hassan wrote:

According to Sharon’s adviser, Dov Weisglass, Sharon decided to disengage from Gaza to consolidate the illegal settlements in the West Bank and, more importantly, to prevent any future negotiation with the Palestinians. The ‘engagement’ plan is the best pretext for the expropriation of about 58 per cent of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including all water aquifers and fertile land, to build more illegal settlement. A criminal policy of land theft supported and financed by the current US administration.

As for Palestinians living in Gaza, Israel will continue to control Gaza’s borders, coastline, airspace, telecommunications, water sources, and electricity supply. Egypt, which is well-known for its harsh treatment of Palestinians, may be given the role of Israeli enforcer on its border with Gaza. US-made F16 fighter planes and Apache helicopters will continue as often as possible to rain their deadly missiles and bombs on Palestinian population centres there. Palestinian identity will be further weakening – by Israel’s policy of fractionation –, and Palestinians in Gaza will be more isolated from not only the rest of the world, but also from the rest of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

As Ur Shlonsky, a professor of Linguistics at Geneva University in Switzerland wrote, Israel’s aim is to:-

Terrorise the civilian population, assuring maximal destruction of property and cultural resources. The daily life of the Palestinians must be rendered unbearable: They should be locked up in cities and towns, prevented from exercising normal economic life, cut off from workplaces, schools and hospitals. This will encourage emigration and weaken the Resistance to future expulsions”.

When Ariel Sharon died in 2014 Richard Becker wrote:

The false claim that Sharon turned into a “man of peace” hinges on his decision to withdraw military bases and the small, non-viable Israeli settlements from inside Gaza. And while Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the withdrawal, Israel continued to keep Gaza surrounded and blockaded.

Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza, while denounced by some fascist settlers, was based on a determination to secure even more control of the West Bank
In a July 21, 2000 interview with the Jerusalem Post, several months before he became prime minister, Sharon called for Israel to “retain greater Jerusalem, united and undivided…under full Israeli sovereignty.” This refers to the Palestinian Old City and all of the surrounding areas that Israel illegally annexed after the 1967 war.

The Palestinian “state” that Sharon proposed was one that would be unlike any other country in the world. It would not control its own resources including water, or its airspace, or even its own borders, and would be a defenseless entity smack up against one of the world’s most highly militarized states.

False headlines notwithstanding, Sharon will go down in history not as any kind of imagined peacemaker, but instead as the blood-stained and racist mass murderer that he was.

Nothing has changed and the Zionist vision for a Palestinian State is even more extremist in 2024. I have already written about Netanyahu’s dystopian project to convert Gaza into a ‘free trade zone’ with ‘normalised’ Palestinians living in ‘safe areas’ ultimately controlled by Israel, the US and allied Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain.

As the ‘military experts’ explain to the Washington Post – the re-emergence of the Netzarim corridor is part of a large-scale, long-term reshaping of Gaza’s geography, harking back to past Israeli plans to carve Gaza into easier-to-control cantons.

“What we need is full freedom of operation for the IDF everywhere in Gaza,” said Amir Avivi, a reserve brigadier general and former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division.

One of the priorities of the Zionist invasion of Gaza after October 7th was to separate northern Gaza from the South and to have easy access to the Al Rashid coastal road that runs north to south. The corridor also bisects the arterial Salah Al Din road that runs north to south through central Gaza. Completion of the Netzarim Corridor was in March 2024 according to satellite imagery (Washington Post).

Unsurprisingly ‘the forward operating base on al-Rashid Road sits next to a jetty constructed in mid-March to receive aid for distribution by the World Central Kitchen charity. The U.S. floating pier is expected to be in the same area, with IDF troops providing security for shipments by sea.’ Washington Post makes no mention of the gas reserves sitting off the Gaza coast only 20 nautical miles from the hastily erected Biden ‘humanitarian pier’.

Extensive demolition of buildings, the destruction of agricultural land and the theft of civilian property and infrastructure was carried out to enable the construction of the pier and the corridor. Not to mention the buried remains of Palestinian civilians swept up in the bulldozed rubble used to construct the “aid” handling port.

Israeli troops also appear to have commandeered nearby civilian structures and turned them into military outposts. One is a former school in the village of Juhor ad Dik, about a mile from the border with Israel. Protective sand berms appeared at the location between March 15 and March 30, according to satellite imagery. The rest of the village has been destroyed. […]

Israeli troops also appear to be using the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, which once specialized in treatment for cancer patients, as a base of operations. The hospital shut down in the first week of November due to nearby airstrikes and lack of fuel, and thousands of cancer patients have been left without care. Sand berms appeared around the hospital in late November.

An Israeli soldier filmed himself tearing down large parts of the hospital with an earth mover in February. Images published online on May 8 by the Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi and geolocated by The Post show Israeli soldiers using the hospital as a sniper position.

By March, Israeli forces had cleared hundreds of acres around the hospital — demolishing greenhouses and blowing up Israa University and the Palace of Justice, which housed Gaza’s high courts.

The Nakba of 1948 that actually began even before this date has never ended – it has continued with different phases, projects, road maps and with varying intensity but the endgame has always been the same. The Zionist final solution. The permanent and irreversible ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory of Palestine.

We should never forget that Israel has destroyed many of the Government offices in Gaza including those that potentially held civilian records – property rights, birth certificates etc – so, under Zionist-allied rule how will these Palestinians make legitimate claim to their property or their land post-genocide? How will they secure a right to return?

Gaza’s history has been systematically erased – ‘The attempt by the occupation to destroy everything beautiful, to erase Palestinian memory… is making Palestinian cities uninhabitable’ – Yahya al-Sarraj, head of Gaza’s municipality

 

There is, allegedly, a debate raging among the members of Netanyahu’s administration. War Minister, Yoav Gallant is advocating Palestinian control of Gaza:

“The idea is simple. We will not allow Hamas to control Gaza. We don’t want Israel to control it, either. What is the solution? Local Palestinian actors backed by international actors.”

This links to Netanyahu’s post-genocide Gaza project where Palestinians ready to renounce all resistance and to normalise with Israel will be permitted to live in “safe zones” controlled by Israel-allied Arab states.

So, while this debate is being portrayed as confrontation between Gallant and many military officials versus Netanyahu and his far-right coalition members like Ben Gvir – the probable reality is we are witnessing another Zionist sleight of hand. Creating internal opposition to an extremist policy to appear balanced while aiming for a policy that incorporates aspects of the extreme and the conservative.

Yoav’s post-genocide plan announced in January envisaged a Hamas-free Gaza, a multinational task force to rebuild the enclave, Egypt perhaps maintaining the rebuild monopoly and with Israeli military able to act freely to “ensure Gaza no longer poses a security threat”. Yoav said:

“Hamas will not govern Gaza, Israel will not govern Gaza’s civilians. Gaza residents are Palestinian, therefore Palestinian bodies will be in charge, with the condition that there will be no hostile actions or threats against the State of Israel,”

How different is this plan when compared to the recently revealed Netanyahu project:

Phase One – The priority is to cleanse northern Gaza of Hamas, a plan which is until now unsuccessful. In the future Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan and Morocco will be given control of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza strip but only to “safe” areas. Selected Palestinians from Gaza will be given control of the concentration camp with the supervision of the normalised “Abraham Accord” nations.

Phase Two – Israel to maintain overall security responsibility which means military rule, oppression, apartheid and mass imprisonment, torture and ritual abuse of Palestinians. Arab states will create a “multilateral body to oversee, guide and fund the Gaza Rehabilitation Authority” aka the reprogramming indoctrination committee.

Palestinians from Gaza will form the “Rehabilitation Authority” which will manage the “safe areas” and ensure they are free of “radical resistance ideology”. Comparisons to the Marshall Plan are to be ridiculed when taken in the context of the protection and renaissance of Nazism under US/UK protection in the West since the end of WW2.

Final Phase – the selected Palestinians will govern areas of the Gaza enclave and will join the Abraham Accords.

The fact is, Gallant and Netanyahu are effectively on the same page, the infighting is either cosmetic or a genuine challenge for leadership of the project. The US would probably prefer partnership with Gallant whom they perceive as more pragmatic and to offer better PR optics than an increasingly unhinged Netanyahu.

Plans are always fluid and shape-changing but one thing is certain – the ultimate Zionist goal is to reduce the Palestinian presence in “pure” Israel down to subdued, powerless dots on the map of greater Israel once the Resistance is purged and Zionist ethno-supremacy can rule unimpeded.

However, we should always bear in mind that the best laid plans of mass murderers and war criminals can always go awry when confronted by an increasingly powerful and united global resistance against genocide.

War criminal Ariel Sharon’s legacy returns to haunt Gaza