It has become increasingly obvious as the war goes on that the endgame of "Israel" is to subject the Gaza territory not just to a blockade, as it has been doing, but to an all-out military occupation akin to that it has done to the West Bank. To this end, "Israel’s" leadership describes the plans as “being responsible for the security arrangements” of the strip and giving it a so-called “limited Palestinian sovereignty.” However, it has also been reported that the more extremist and hardline right-wing Zionist advocates of the Netanyahu government have also recommended exiling or displacing its population. Additionally, they are pushing a gradualist program of Israeli settlement building, similar to what is being done in the occupied West Bank.

The West, despite being self-professed advocates of human rights and self-determination, predictably has had a weak response to it, one which reveals the gap between rhetoric and action from these countries. For example, the British foreign office stated, “Gaza is an Occupied Palestinian Territory and will be part of a future Palestinian State. The U.K. firmly rejects any suggestion of the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.” We then raise a main question: does the British state take any steps to oppose "Israel" to match this rhetoric? The answer is no, they are not prepared to impose any penalties on "Tel Aviv" or prevent this from happening. Rather, if one thing is clear, it is that they have already in effect endorsed the erasure of Palestinian statehood and rewarded aggression in its entirety.  

Throughout this war, Benjamin Netanyahu has successfully called the bluff of the West. That is, he has made the calculation that even if he unleashed unimaginable brutality on the Palestinian people, the West will not take any punitive measures, in the form of boycotts, sanctions, or other diplomatic censures to challenge "Israel" and that, in turn, he will have a free reign to exhibit such aggression, to the extent that even if some states make a small rhetorical grumbling against him, they will ultimately not dare to act with punitive measures in any way.

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Why so? First of all, the Western countries that do make small criticisms, such as the UK, have already completely silenced all criticism of "Israel" from high-level public debate and made it an effective taboo. The ruling Conservatives have already offered unconditional backing to "Israel’s" war and destruction of Gaza, despite now condemning its settlement plans, and when it has called for a ceasefire, this has never been taken seriously and was effectively ignored. Secondly, the opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer has brutally purged criticism of "Israel" from his organization with a smear campaign accusing MPs of “Anti-Semitism”, which he used to crush the Corbynite faction and could not even bring itself to support a ceasefire.

Thirdly, how can Britain and other countries be serious in saying that Gaza is part of a Palestinian state when they do not, in fact, recognize such a state in the first place? This only goes to show how non-serious and hollow their support for a "two-state solution" actually is. Then fourthly, the British example reminds us that all mainstream media outlets effectively endorse the Israeli war too on an unconditional basis, which means the only people who are prepared to take a strong line against "Tel-Aviv’s" campaign of destruction and settlement plans are members of the public and fringe politicians and public figures who came to realize that their views are effectively not welcome. This case study demonstrates how the British government’s “opposition” to settlement plans (which can be applied to others) for Gaza is hollow, toothless, empty, and meaningless. To put it bluntly, what are they going to do? The answer is nothing.

This, of course, takes us back to the initial problem that Western unconditional support for "Israel" makes it impossible to oppose them even when they go to the greatest extremes. We have seen how the US and its allies are capable of pushing thousands of sanctions on other countries over perceived acts of wrongdoing, such as Russia, DPRK, or China, yet every Israeli crime is allowed to go effectively unanswered. This means that if "Israel" is already planning to occupy and pursue settlements in the near future, they will do so and get away with it too. After all, is the British government speaking up or condemning existing illegal settlement construction in the West Bank? Or taking any measures to stop it? Of course not.

Therefore, if "Israel" has aspirations to colonize Gaza, we should again expect it to happen via the strategy of “salami slicing”. That is, like they do in the occupied West Bank, gradually doing it one bit at a time to minimize condemnation and steadily shift the status quo. For example, what would happen if one Palestinian resists? He gets his house knocked down and replaced by a settler, and so on bit by bit. The west will moan and groan, but otherwise will not take any serious measures. The rest of the Arab world should wake up to this and stop appeasing Israeli aggression.