Nearly two years after Hamas militants stormed southern Israel, the war in Gaza has entered a darker, deadlier phase. The territory now faces a reckoning its residents describe as annihilation.
Israel’s latest military campaign in Gaza and its West Bank annexation plans have left observers warning that the age-old Palestinian presence across both could soon be erased.
On Wednesday, Israel’s government unveiled plans to annex 82 per cent of the occupied West Bank. The escalation comes despite mounting international alarm.
Donald Trump’s administration, which abandoned Qatari-mediated truce talks last month amid accusations it was “moving goalposts”, has openly endorsed Netanyahu’s stated objective: the capture of Gaza City – the strip’s largest urban centre – and the forcible displacement of its 1 million residents to the enclave’s far south as a means of forcing Hamas’ unconditional surrender.
