The psychological manipulation behind the Generals’ Plan

by Ramona Wadi

Israeli soldiers are deployed in the Upper Galilee region of northern Israel near the border with Lebanon on September 29, 2024. [MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images]

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contemplated implementing the Generals’ Plan in Gaza, backed by former Israeli Defence Forces planning and operations chief General Giora Eiland who has described the siege as “compliant with international law”. The plan, Eiland explained, would give Palestinians a week to evacuate and anyone who remains becomes a legitimate military target.

This week, Axios reported that Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant assured US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin that the Generals’ Plan would not be implemented. Presumably, the US is now reassured that Palestinians in Gaza will not be starved by Israel, nor considered legitimate military targets.

Can we consider for just a few seconds that Israel does not need the Generals’ Plan to lay siege to and starve Palestinians, and encourage its soldiers to kill them? As macabre as the plan might sound, it is also another weapon of alienation used by governments to silence the cries of genocide, even as Israel is still committing genocide.

Palestinians are being starved already. That’s a fact.

Besieging, forcibly displacing and crowding them into increasingly smaller pockets of land makes it easier for Israel to kill more civilians with a single air strike. That’s a fact too. Burning them to death in tents? Fact. Does Israel really need to bring up the Generals’ Plan?

“What matters to [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar is land and dignity, and with this manoeuvre, you take away both land and dignity,” is how Eiland summed up the plan. Yahya Sinwar does not constitute the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, and Israel has been stealing Palestinian land since its inception and before; the early Zionist colonial settlers were laying the foundations of land appropriation for the settler-colonial, genocidal project. Israel does not need the Generals’ Plan to remove land and dignity. It has been stealing land for decades but, despite colonising Palestine, Israel can never strip Palestinians of their dignity. It is Israel that is entirely without dignity; a grubby monstrosity that needs to stand in front of a mirror and terrify itself with its own image.

Last month, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that 83 per cent of food aid is not allowed by the occupation state to enter Gaza. The US is not concerned with the ongoing starvation, which is already tangible, but with the possible implementation of the Generals’ Plan. Likewise, the US is not concerned about stating that a military campaign cannot defeat an ideology, with reference to Hamas, but can still make itself complicit in a military campaign to kill thousands of Palestinians in a genocide that world leaders are conveniently ignoring. Sickeningly, the US Department of State has claimed that it cannot say whether burning Palestinians to death can be considered to be another war crime committed by Israel.

In the midst of all this doublespeak, what are the assurances for Palestinians?

The Generals’ Plan may or may not be implemented, but the genocide continues as Israel picks and chooses how it empties Gaza of Palestinians.

Instead of getting caught up in speculation, why not focus on the fact that Israel is carrying out a livestreamed genocide in Gaza which world leaders are still reluctant to call out? The psychological manipulation of Israel mulling over the Generals’ Plan needs to be exposed and challenged. Starvation is no less terrifying if it lacks a grandiose name. The truth is that Israel no longer needs a plan when it is allowed to act with apparently endless impunity.