+972 Magazine reports:

The “Generals’ Plan,” published in early September, has a very simple goal: to empty the northern Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population. The plan itself estimated that about 300,000 people were still living north of the Netzarim Corridor — the Israeli-occupied zone that bisects Gaza — although the UN put the number closer to 400,000.

During the first phase of the plan, the Israeli army would inform all of those people that they have a week to evacuate to the south through two “humanitarian corridors.” In the second phase, at the end of that week, the army would declare the whole area a closed military zone. Anyone who remained would  be considered an enemy combatant, and be killed if they didn’t surrender. A complete siege would be imposed on the territory, intensifying the hunger and health crisis — creating, as Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University, put it, “a process of starvation or extermination.”

According to the plan, providing the civilian population advance warning to evacuate guarantees compliance with the requirements of international humanitarian law. This is a lie. The first protocol of the Geneva Conventions clearly states that warning civilians to flee does not negate the protected status of those who remain, and therefore does not permit military forces to harm them; nor does a military siege negate the army’s obligation to allow the passage of humanitarian aid to civilians.

Besides, the lip service to humanitarian law falls flat when considering that the man spearheading the plan, Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, has spent the past year calling for collective punishment against the entire population of Gaza, for treating the enclave as if it were Nazi Germany, and for allowing disease to spread as a step that will “bring victory closer and reduce harm to IDF soldiers.” After rattling off like that for 10 months, he recognized an opportunity — in consultation with a number of shadow advisors, to whom we will return — to pilot an extermination plan in northern Gaza. He diligently delivered it to politicians and the media, disguised in a mask of lies about adhering to international law.

The media and the politicians did what they always do: manufactured a distraction. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant hastened to deny, anonymous officials and soldiers in the field were already briefing the media that the plan was starting to be implemented. [Continue reading…]