Netanyahu seeks 70% of Gaza in Israel’s own Generalplan Ost

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Netanyahu seeks 70% of Gaza in Israel’s own Generalplan Ost

 

By Juan Cole – Informed Comment – May 29, 2026

 

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday instructed his military to seize fully 70% of the Gaza Strip, according to Al Jazeera.

 

According to the ceasefire negotiated by Donald Trump last October, Israel retained 54% of Gaza territory in the first phase, with an eye toward an Israeli withdrawal. Since then, the Israeli army has annexed further territory, coming to 64%. Now Netanyahu wants to squeeze the some 2 million Palestinians of Gaza, already living amid rubble and squalor in the densest settlements on earth, into an even smaller patch of land. These actions will further displace families that have already been ethnically cleansed several times.

 

At Netanyahu’s announcement, an Israeli shouted, “Why not 100%?” According to The Times of Israel, the prime minister replied, “First 70 percent. We’ll start with that.”

 

I have sometimes been asked why Israel is so bent on destroying Iran. This is why. Iran is at least a minor obstacle to the complete expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank. It isn’t that Iran is a military danger to nuclear-armed Israel with its arsenal of sophisticated US fighter jets. It is that it is a complication for the project of expanding the territory under Israeli control so as to achieve Greater Israel.

 

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency reports that Israeli military forces have escalated killings and the displacement of civilians. They have demanded people depart from where they are sheltering, or stay inside small demarcated areas, especially in “the Israeli-militarised “Yellow Line” zone, including in Gaza City, Der al Balah, Maghazi, Bureij, and Nuseirat.”

 

Israeli officials continue to block essential medical supplies and have expelled most aid organizations, according to the World Helth Organization’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Dr. Renee Van de Weerdt. She pointed out that despite Israel’s ban on the organization, “nobody can replace what UNRWA is doing.”

 

Full at:

 

https://www.juancole.com/2026/05/netanyahu-israels-generalplan.html