Megan Stack writes:

“You do whatever you want,” President Trump said he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu, it seems, took Mr. Trump at his word.

Israel has clamped Gaza back under near-total siege, barring desperately needed humanitarian aid and other goods from entering the hungry and bomb-decimated enclave. Food, medicine, tents, fuel — for the past week and a half, supplies have not been permitted into Gaza, where some two million Palestinians are trying to survive in the wreckage. And Mr. Netanyahu keeps tightening the screws: On Sunday, Israel cut off the last trickle of electricity into Gaza, forcing a key desalination plant that provides drinking water to slow operations. With hunger setting in, people reduced to living in tents or in the precarious shelter of half-crushed buildings, and clean water and fuel in vanishing supply, it feels too generous to say that Gaza is on the brink of collapse; in many respects, Gaza has already collapsed.

Israeli officials are essentially starving Gaza as a negotiation tactic. Rather than proceed on the agreed-upon schedule to the second phase of the cease-fire, Mr. Netanyahu is now demanding a seven-week extension of the preliminary stage.

This makes sense, of course, for Mr. Netanyahu — the first stage is the simplest, allowing for more hostages to be released without grappling with the thornier (and for Mr. Netanyahu, politically radioactive) elements contained in the second phase, including withdrawing troops from Gaza and making concrete plans to end the war. But so far, Hamas has refused to go along, pointing out that Israel is unilaterally veering away from its obligations under the agreement.

And so, consistent with the cruel corporeality of this conflict, Israel has locked the people of Gaza back into an impregnable box, with little access to food or supplies, and warned that if Hamas doesn’t quickly agree to release more hostages, all-out war could resume. [Continue reading…]