However, to the amazement of the residents of Gaza, Israel agreed on a truce with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) last Sunday evening after “just” three days of heavy Israeli bombardment. The memories of the 11-day-long May 2021 Israeli-Palestinian conflict are still alive on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank that witnessed 256 deaths of civilian Palestinians, including 66 children.

Unlike the May 2021 carnage, the current killing spree was initiated by Israel without any documented “provocation” from the Palestinian side.  As usual, in a typical, threadbare and cruel manner, Israel has labeled the current assault as a “preemptive” act of self-defense against the PIJ. But this Israeli stance has been blasted by Francesca Albanez, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, in very blunt words: “Israel cannot claim that it’s defending itself in this conflict.” This neutral assessment of Albanez, who is physically present in Gaza, corroborates the fact that the Israeli air raids were totally baseless and unjustified.

On Aug. 1, in the Jenin refugee camp in West Bank, Israeli soldiers arrested Bassam al-Saadi, a high-ranking official of PIJ, but his arrest did not lead to any kind of protest on the streets. In fact, Saadi’s arrest was considered to be a routine matter for two reasons: one, Saadi has already been arrested seven times in the past; and two, Saadi is a relatively less-known figure, even within the ranks of PIJ.

There were no reports of any protests, nor any threats of rocket attack on Israel from PIJ to avenge his arrest. It was a “routine” arrest. Surprisingly, despite complete silence from PIJ on Saadi’s arrest, Israel suddenly restricted traffic around the “Gaza envelope”, the residential area of Israeli communities adjacent to the Gaza-Israel boundary.

This time the aerial strikes were mainly focused on a residential building in Gaza City. Several missiles targeted with precision three apartments in that building and killed Taiseer al-Jabari, another lesser-known commander of the northern division of al-Quds Brigades (Saraya al-Quds), the military wing of the PIJ. Apparently, this is naked state-sponsored terrorism that has been unleashed by Israel against the innocent Palestinian civilians without any justification. 

The Israeli military spokesperson, who even forgot the name of al-Jabari during his live-media talk, alleged that al-Jabari was planning to launch “anti-tank” attacks on Israeli civilians and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.

Many theories are being thrown in the air to trace the reason behind Israel’s abrupt attack on the innocent Palestinians. One key proposition links this attack with domestic politics of Israel. With less than two months in office as a caretaker, Prime Minister Yair Lapid, a civilian politician who never served as combat soldier unlike most of his predecessors, is trying to bolster his political stature for the forthcoming general elections in November.

By deliberately starting this campaign of aerial attacks on the Palestinian communities, in a military-loving country, he wants to cultivate a strong aura of security to counterbalance his lack of military experience.

His main opponent, former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, has launched a massive political campaign against Lapid as a leader who has compromised with the Islamist United Arab List and its leader Mansour Abbas to remain in power. There is no doubt that the support of Abbas and his alliance would be extremely crucial for Lapid to form a majority in the future government as well.

Another assumption is that Lapid has targeted PIJ with an agenda to sabotage the prospects of revival of the defunct nuclear non-proliferation treaty between the United States and Iran, considered to be a major patron of PIJ. Reports about renewed attempts to revive the talks on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty between Iran, the US, China, Russia and the European Union have certainly created panic in Israel, which is trying to scuttle this process.

By attacking PIJ, Israel wants to build a case against Iran as a sponsor of terrorism in Israel with a view to dissuade its “close friends” from further engaging with Tehran.  But this theory seems to be a little overstretched. Whatever may be the reason behind Israel’s recent onslaught against the Palestinian territories, it reflects extreme cruelty, hatred and barbarism that have seeped deeply into Israel’s strategic outlook with regard to the Palestinians.

Spilling the blood of innocent civilians and destroying their homes just to promote the domestic political agenda is a most condemnable and heinous crime. Sadly, both Fatah and Hamas, considered to be the protectors of the Palestinians, showed very lukewarm condemnation of, or even indifference toward, this episode.

Although it of course condemned the Israeli attack, Hamas, the de facto ruler in Gaza, has not as yet joined in the fighting, at least not officially.  For obvious reasons, Israel has been trying to drive a wedge between Hamas and Fatah and between Gaza and the West Bank. There are clear indications that Israel wants Hamas to “manage” Gaza. Just like the relations between Israel and the Palestinian authority in Ramallah, relations with the Hamas government in Gaza are also evolving into some kind of compromise: economic concessions in exchange for peace and quiet.

Yet another shocking aspect of the whole episode is the complete indifference of the US and other Western countries to this reprehensible act of Israel. As a matter of decades-long routine, both Washington and London have very casually categorized it as “Israel’s right to defend itself”. The stark dichotomy in the response of the Western capitals, who claim to be the champions of human rights, toward the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians is even more vulgar and callous when seen against their totally opposite reaction to the killing of the civilians in the Ukraine war.

The same is the case with the UN and other global human-rights organizations that are letting the Israeli politicians, whether Lapid, Netanyahu or their predecessors, kill innocent Palestinian civilians on a whim, merely to gratify their domestic political interests.

Courtesy of the Abraham Accords and continued patronizing by the Western capitals, the arrogance and haughtiness in Israel’s behavior has reached the point where Israel considers itself above any accountability for what many believe to be a planned genocide of the Palestinians, whether in the international arena or domestic arena.

The blood of the Palestinians, of course, does not count at all in this game.

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The writer is a freelance columnist on international relations.