Israel escalates Gaza attacks as Netanyahu stalls ceasefire for polls

A ceasefire intended to halt Israel’s genocide in Gaza has become a cover for continued Israeli military operations. Since the ceasefire, Israeli forces have killed at least 880 Palestinians, raising the total to 72,797. With elections expected in September, analysts and human rights officials warn that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is stalling the peace process to satisfy right-wing coalition allies. UN human rights officials say Israel has transformed the ceasefire into cover for ongoing war crimes and is engineering a humanitarian disaster through restrictions on food and medicine. Rights monitors report renewed demolition campaigns and forced evacuations, including phone warnings followed by destruction of residential blocks in central camps. They warn the operations lack legitimate military objectives and aim to make the territory uninhabitable.

"Seven months after a ceasefire was brokered to halt Israel's genocide in Gaza, the agreement has morphed into a deadly cover for continued Israeli military operations in the enclave. Israeli forces have killed at least 880 Palestinians since then, increasing the total from the war to 72,797, according to Gaza's health ministry. With Israel's next national election expected in September, analysts and human rights officials have warned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately stalling the peace process to appease his right-wing coalition allies and voters."

"Mai El-Sheikh, spokesperson for the United Nations Human Rights Office in Palestine, told Al Jazeera that Israel has transformed the ceasefire as cover for its ongoing war crimes. She warned that a humanitarian disaster was being deliberately engineered by Israel through restrictions on food and medicine in order to spread panic among displaced families. This relentless violence has been accompanied by a renewed, systematic demolition campaign by Israel that has forced Palestinians to inhabit an ever-shrinking space in the besieged Palestinian territory."

"The Gaza Rights Center documented at least 12 cases in May where Israeli forces ordered forced evacuations by phone before obliterating residential blocks in the central camps of Nuseirat, Bureij and Maghazi. That coincided with the extensive razing of land east of Deir el-Balah still controlled by Israeli forces. The rights monitor warned that the operations lack any legitimate military objective, and that its targeting of dilapidated structures in the 35 percent Gaza it does not directly control is a way of making the whole territory uninhabitable."

Read at www.aljazeera.com