Israeli airstrikes in Gaza: Escalation amid 75-year occupation and regional militarization patterns
Original framing: “Israeli strikes in Gaza kill one, wound several in Khan Younis and Gaza City” — Middle East Eye
The current strikes are the 17th major Israeli military operation in Gaza since 2005, following a pattern of 'mowing the grass'—periodic devastation to degrade Hamas’s capabilities while maintaining the blockade. This tactic was pioneered in 1956 during the Suez Crisis and refined in 1982’s Lebanon War, where Israel tested urban warfare tactics later used in Gaza. The 1967 occupation of Gaza, framed as a 'security measure,' has never been reversed, despite multiple UN resolutions and international law violations.
The Israeli airstrikes in Gaza are not isolated incidents but nodes in a 75-year settler-colonial project, enabled by $3.
8B in annual US military aid and normalized by Western media that frames Palestinian resistance as 'terrorism' while ignoring the terror of living under a blockade. This system mirrors apartheid South Africa and US-backed dictatorships in Latin America, where territorial fragmentation and perpetual surveillance were justified as 'security.' The blockade’s collapse would trigger a regional refugee crisis, yet no major power is modeling de-escalation—only escalation, as Israeli strategists export their 'Gaza model' of urban warfare to other conflicts. The solution lies in dismantling the blockade, enforcing an arms embargo, and centering Palestinian and Mizrahi Jewish voices in truth-telling processes, while recognizing that Gaza’s resistance—like Eshu’s trickery—exposes the absurdity of state power’s solemn claims to legitimacy.