Saturday 23 August 2025
The Israeli War Ministry has declared its intention to occupy Gaza City, “the last Hamas stronghold”. Every time they occupy a city, they say the same thing: “It’s the last stronghold.” They said that for Jabalia, for Beit Lahia, and for Rafah. Now it’s Gaza City.
The problem is that 2.3 million Gazans are already living on 20 % of the surface of the strip, the other 80 % being occupied by the Israeli army. After the occupation of Gaza City, those 2.3 million people will be squeezed into just 10 % of the enclave’s surface, i.e. 35 square kilometres.
Ever since that announcement, I keep getting phone calls, from my friends and lots of other people: “What should we do ? Is this serious? Do they really mean it ?” Sabah, my wife, asks me the same questions. I give optimistic answers: “No, they won’t occupy Gaza city, now is the time if ever to reach a cease-fire !” But deep down inside, I know that anything is possible.
When Israel was preparing to occupy Rafah, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and other western leaders said: “Rafah is a red line.” But Israel is the spoiled child of the West and did as it pleased, and look what happened to Rafah: it’s a wasteland. With Netanyahu there are no red lines. As long as the war lasts, so does his political career. But it’s hard to come right out and say that. So I don’t have any other answers for my family and friends.
Hitting the road with just one bag, not knowing where to go
Everybody also asks me if I have some idea for a “Plan B”, as I usually do.
Sadly, this time I have none. Neither for myself nor for the hundreds of thousands who have nowhere to go. At the beginning of the war, when we were forced to leave, there were two solutions: either go to the centre of the Gaza strip, towards Deir el-Balah, or towards the south, Khan Yunis, Rafah, al-Mawasi.... In and around those towns, there were still rooms to let, patches of land to plant a tent. Today, that’s almost impossible.
Some people have managed to find places to stay down there with friends, in warehouses, garages, in case they have to move on. Like us they have already been displaced. They no longer want to set off with just one bag not knowing where they’re going, obliged to start from scratch, find a tent, a place to set it up, clothes, etc. But hundreds of thousands of others haven’t even got that possibility. And above all, there just isn’t any room. Other friends went to check out al-Mawasi in the south, near the coast, already crammed with hundreds of thousands, to see if there were a bit of land still available where they good arrange to put a tent. It was practically impossible. The private piece of land where we have set up our tent with those of five other families, at Deir el-Balah, is completely full.
And so I don’t have a Plan B. I don’t know what to do. I don’t like to spread worry and fear around me, especially to my wife and children. I know Sabah is going to read what I’m writing, and so will my friends.
Unfortunately we have no choice. We have nowhere to go and no way to get there. The only way to reach the south now is along the coast road, where cars are banned. And anyhow there are no cars or petrol. So we’d have to go on foot, or in a cart drawn by animals or in one of the rare auto-rickshaws still in service.
Deportation will be the only way out
But to where ? That’s what scares us Gazans. The Israeli army is bombing the neighbourhoods of Shuja’iyya, Zeitoun and Sabra. They are in the process of encircling Gaza City on the north, south and east. To the west is the sea. And since people know they have no other way out, they prefer to ignore the evacuation orders and die at home.
I know full well we are at a turning point. Either it’s the end of the war or deportation to some foreign country, there’s no third option. If we have to leave, it will be for Rafah, that place which the War Ministry calls the “humanitarian city”. In other words we’ll be imprisoned in a huge camp set up on the ruins of Rafah, guarded by soldiers, living in tents under inhuman conditions. After which , “for humanitarian reasons”, some countries will agree to accept us. Deportation will be the only outcome. Of course the word deportation won’t be used, any more than “ethnic cleansing.” They’ll talk of “offering a better life to those poor Palestinians who live in such terrible conditions”. Voilà. It’s either that or the end of the war, which everyone is hoping for.
The Israelis were just waiting for an excuse to carry out this plan
Hamas is faced with a Netanyahu who keeps setting new conditions to stop the massacres. But I hear more and more people around me saying that Hamas should stop negotiating with an enemy who holds all the cards and is playing with the very existence of the Gazan population. They wonder, “Why is Hamas waiting to raise the white flag ?” Hamas, as a movement, has nothing to lose. It’s the population that is paying the price. Of course Hamas’ popular base is in this population. But politically they have nothing to lose. The problem is that we easterners, or Arabs in general, are too proud to admit our military defeats, especially by an occupier. After Hiroshima, the Emperor of Japan raised the white flag, saying that if he didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a single Japanese left alive. and that Japan couldn’t exist without the Japanese. Similarly, Palestine would not exist without the Palestinians.
But Hamas clings to its ideology of liberating Palestine through armed struggle. It has learned nothing from the other factions that came into existence long before it, especially Fatah, which also tried armed resistance then gave it up to achieve perhaps, one day, the creation of a Palestinian state. Hamas still believes that raising the white flag would mean that resistance has failed and that Palestine will never be free. They believe they cannot persuade their cadres give up armed struggle. So they’d rather the ship go down with all on board, so it can never be said it was only Hamas that lost and capitulated but the whole population. They prefer the total destruction of the Gaza strip and the deportation of its whole population. `
Sadly, the Palestinian population has paid a heavy price for this way of thinking. We could have avoided everything we are going through now. We could have avoided these massacres. We’ve known since the very first day, since 7 October, that the war’s real objective was the deportation of 2.3 million people. The Israelis were only waiting for a pretext to put this plan into effect. We shouldn’t have given it to them. Especially in view of the silence of the rest of the world and the complicity of the US, which provides Israel with all possible support, military, financial and political.
The Gazan population is guilty of nothing. It simply wants to resist the occupation and remain on Palestinian land. But with the choice of armed struggle, everybody loses. Hamas will claim it resisted until the last minute, to the last scrap of land, that it was defeated by the whole world’s complicity with Israel.
It’s serious if this is the way Hamas is thinking. Because it’s Palestine that’s going to lose. Palestine will cease to exist. Gaza will be an Israeli city. And perhaps an American “Riviera”. Everybody will have lost, including Hamas, even if it refuses to admit it. Ever since Hamas has been governing Gaza, it has been Israel which declared the beginning and the end of each war. The war of 2009 left 1200 dead. That of 2014, over 2000. That of 2019, hundreds more. The Gaza strip has been under blockade for 17 years. But Hamas will always claim victory, because it is still here, and so is the population. Maybe. But this time, there won’t be any Palestinians left.
That is the choice : either the obliteration of Palestinian existence in Gaza or the end of the war. I appeal to those who are negotiating in a foreign country in the name of 2.3 million people. I ask them to take into consideration the fact that in defeat or victory it is the very existence of the Palestinian people that is at stake. I say to them there is nothing shameful about ending a war, on whatever terms, when one is fighting a super-powerful army which is massacring us daily. We are experiencing a genocide, an ethnic cleansing, a starvation, in the 21st century while the whole world looks on. It’s not shameful to decide to breathe a little.
We know full well that one day Palestine will be free. We know full well that one day justice will prevail, that the Palestinians will have their rights. History attests to this, logic attests to this, nature attests to this: injustice cannot last forever. But in the meantime, we must preserve what we have. We have to distinguish between courage and wisdom. Wisdom, sometimes, requires great courage. The wisdom to stop fighting, even in the knowledge that as a resistance movement we will lose. Yet we will win, because as Palestinian beings we shall remain on Palestinian land. We can rebuild, we have already done so many times. And the mere fact of existing, of remaining on Palestinian soil, will be a great victory.
The Israelis know perfectly well that the real threat to the existence of Israel and for the liberation of Palestine is the Palestinians. And that is why they are trying by every means to drive us out, be it from Gaza or the West Bank. They know full well that they are occupying a land that does not belong to them. This bloodshed has to stop. This is a message for Hamas. Even if Netanayahu changes the parameters at the last minute, it doesn’t matter. He has the upper hand, he can set his conditions. By accepting his conditions, we will win: there will be no deportation from Gaza or the West Bank. Netanyahu will have no pretext for deporting 2.3 million people or for annexing Gaza. And the Palestinians will still be here.