Israel is moving ferociously, murderously, and at a furious pace to lock down the surviving Palestinian people in Gaza into tiny concentrations camps. 

The Israeli military has been building up a base that runs across the whole width of central Gaza, splitting it in half. This base goes from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the border with Israel on the east. This is what Israel calls the Netzarim Corridor. This militarized corridor has been carved out of Gaza through destroying homes, a resort hotel, a university, and a courthouse. They were all blown up and turned to rubble, then bulldozed away to make more space for this corridor.¹ 

Before October 7, the north was home to most of Gaza’s population, including what had been Gaza’s largest city (Gaza City). Now, the Netzarim Corridor has split Gaza into two walled-off sections, the north and south. 

The corridor serves two genocidal purposes: 

First, it has trapped people in the north, where Israel is basically carrying out a policy of “kill anything that moves.” And it has trapped people who fled from the north to the south, preventing them from attempting to return to their homes. 

Second, the corridor serves as a high-speed expressway, allowing Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers, and troops to quickly strike with death, terror, and destruction, to the north and south, throughout Gaza. 

Dividing Up, Locking Down Gaza

On December 2, the New York Times reported that in the previous three months, Israel has widened and further militarized the Netzarim Corridor. This includes an expanded a network of outposts equipped with communications towers and military installations. To do that, Israel demolished more than 600 additional buildings.

This rapid and massive expansion of the Netzarim Corridor is accompanied by demands from high-level Israeli politicians that military control in Gaza should pave the way for renewed Jewish settlement there.

Amir Avivi, a retired general who is closely connected with Israel’s top military establishment, told reporters that many of Israel’s military leaders now believe that “withdrawing and separation are no longer options.” Not “withdrawing” translates to permanent Israeli military occupation. No “separation” implies some form of annexation of Gaza into Israel, without any attempt to pretend to respect international law that defines Gaza as Palestinian land illegally occupied by Israel.

Pointing to the Netzarim Corridor, Avivi said, “That’s why they’re building all of this. At the end of the day, the facts speak for themselves.”

Mass Starvation as a Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing

Even as Israel is moving to wall off northern Gaza, it is also making northern Gaza unlivable. All food aid has been choked off for months! 

The following November 27 report from the aid agency Oxfam begins to capture the situation:

Israel is in the late stages of ethnic cleansing of the North Gaza governorate [political district, like a state in the U.S.], Oxfam says. For 50 days, Israel has prevented Oxfam, its partners, and other humanitarian agencies from delivering life-saving aid to thousands of starving people in north Gaza.

Amitabh Behar, Oxfam Executive Director, said: “Our staff in Gaza have been desperately trying for nearly two months to reach starving civilians but have been blocked by the Israeli military. We know that many children are trapped and will be starving to death.

“Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the North Gaza governorate proves once again that it is operating with impunity from the dictates of international law. It is laying infrastructure for a long-term military presence – a de facto annexation of the land – and burning any remaining hope of a just and peaceful solution.

“The international community remains impotent and, in some cases, fully complicit. This is a dark moment in history as Israel is subjecting thousands of men, women, and children to starvation as a weapon of war while world leaders look on in full awareness and choose to do nothing,” Behar said.

Here, I have to insert a comment. The “international community” that is “fully complicit” is overwhelmingly the United States government, which continues to arm, fund, and enable all of this. The Oxfam report continues:

Around 50-75,000 people are trapped [in northern Gaza] without access to food, water or power. Israel claims them as combatants because they have not left, or been able to. It is impossible to know how people are surviving there or how many are dying, including from malnutrition.

Assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital

The Israeli military has laid siege to northern Gaza’s one still-operating (but crippled) hospital. 

On December 6, Israeli forces attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital on the northern edge of Gaza, near the Israeli border. According to witnesses, Israeli drones shot people inside the hospital. Video from the hospital shows desperate visitors and staff attempting to treat victims of nearby Israeli massacres of civilians. 

Israel Issues “Leave-or-Die” Orders in North Gaza, Shoots People Who Try to Leave

Israel is force marching Palestinians who have survived starvation, devastation, and lack of medical care, out of north Gaza. The November 27th report from the Oxfam aid agency, cited earlier, includes this:

Around 100,000 people have recently fled north Gaza under Israeli forced displacement orders. Oxfam staff trying to support them have heard harrowing testimonies. Israeli soldiers have told people fleeing “don’t dream of northern Gaza again” and made false promises of food being available at the end of their forced marches out. A man from Beit Hanoun described living in a damaged school with his young son, having to sift insects from flour to make dough and lighting fires inside a classroom for fear of attracting the attention of military drones outside.

Another person told Oxfam: “There was an elderly man in a wheelchair whose chair got stuck in the sand. The soldiers ordered us to move on without him.”

And Israel is killing people trying to flee! On December 5, Al Jazeera posted video showing people in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia, ordered by Israeli troops to “leave or die,” and then being fired on by Israeli forces and armed drones as they attempted to flee.

What Happened to the American Indians of the Dakotas?

The starvation, the imposed death-by-disease, the terror and murder, and forced death marches of Palestinians out of north Gaza, all bear a striking resemblance to similar events in U.S. history.

In a piece posted on December 5, journalist Seymour Hersh asked a source that he identified as an American official, this question: “What is to happen to the two million or so Palestinians still being bombed and starved and deprived of clean drinking water or any semblance of decent housing and sanitation, with no sign of support from the Arab and Western world and no way to flee Gaza?”

Hersh characterized the answer he got from the American official as a question put back to him: “What happened to the American Indians in the plains of the Dakotas?”

USA: Born in Genocide, Enabling Genocide

What did happen to the American Indians in the plains of the Dakotas?

Before European settlers arrived, Native Americans affiliated with different Dakota tribes lived throughout what are now the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. 

As the European settlers stole Dakota land by force or by deception, they signed treaties promising to leave some land for the Dakota people. Every treaty was broken. Land allotted to the Native Americans got smaller and smaller. By the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, the Dakota peoples were left without land or resources necessary for survival. When they invaded settler’s farms for food, they were massacred by the U.S. Army. Hundreds of Dakota were executed without trial, with the personal approval of President Abraham Lincoln. 

During the winter of 1862-1863, 1,600 Dakota women, children, and elderly were locked up in a U.S. concentration camp. Disease quickly spread, killing hundreds. In April 1863, the U.S. cancelled all treaties with the Dakota. Soon after, Congress passed legislation making it illegal for the Dakota peoples to live in Minnesota (source: “US-Dakota War of 1862,” University of Minnesota Holocaust and Genocide Studies project). That genocidal law remains on the books to this day.

Monstrous Crimes Throughout U.S. History, Right Down to Today

In his social media message REVOLUTION #44, revolutionary leader Bob Avakian spoke to the connection between Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, and the foundations of the United States in genocide. Now before I share this, I want to challenge people who think that the U.S. backing of Israel's genocide is a betrayal of what America is all about. No, it is a perfect example of what America is all about.

This is from REVOLUTION #44: “Israel’s continuing genocide against Palestinians—and Joe Biden’s continuing support for this genocide,” posted in May 2024:

Biden has been hit with the fact that the genocide Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people, with massive military aid and “diplomatic cover” provided by the U.S., has exposed the actual bloodthirsty nature of not only Israel but the U.S. as well. This shines a glaring light on the hypocritical efforts of the U.S. imperialists to present themselves as a force for decency, democracy, freedom, and so on—in opposition to those terrible “autocratic” rulers in countries like Russia and China, who oppress their own people and carry out destructive violence against other countries! It is very important for the ruling class of this imperialist country (the “good ole USA”) to attempt to cover over its own monstrous crimes, throughout its history and right down to today, as sharply manifested now in U.S. support for Israel in its war against the Palestinian people.... [emphasis added].