By Ben Norton – May 24, 2025
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to colonize Gaza, saying, “We will take control of all the territory of the Strip”. He is using starvation as a weapon, as Donald Trump tries to expel Palestinians to Libya or other countries. The US imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to protect Israeli war criminals.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Israel’s goal is to colonize Gaza.
“We will take control of all the territory of the [Gaza] Strip”, Netanyahu pledged on 19 May.
Israel had agreed to a ceasefire in January, but unilaterally violated the agreement in March and restarted its brutal war on Gaza.
Donald Trump personally gave Israel the green light to break the truce, according to Israeli officials.
Israeli minister boasts: “We’re destroying everything… We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza”
Israel’s extreme-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Israeli security cabinet and Netanyahu ally, boasted that the IDF is “destroying everything left in the Gaza Strip”, and that “the army is leaving no stone unturned”, reported the top Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Smotrich admitted that Israel is intentionally killing civilian members of the government of Gaza, including those who are not part of Hamas. “We’re eliminating ministers, bureaucrats, money handlers”, he said with pride.
“We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed”, bragged Smotrich.
In January 2023, before the latest Gaza war, Smotrich described himself as a “fascist homophobe”, telling Israel’s LGBT community, “I won’t stone gays, [as long as] you won’t feed me shrimp”.
In November 2023, just a few weeks after the war started, Smotrich publicly called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, through so-called “voluntary migration”.
Then, in April 2024, Smotrich demanded the “total annihilation” of Gaza. He invoked a Biblical passage in which God ordered the complete destruction of the nation of Amalek, including the killing of all women and children: “You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven”. This was an explicit call for genocide.
After Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November 2024, Smotrich tweeted that 2025 would be the year when Israel fully colonized and officially annexed “Judea and Samaria”, the term Israeli settlers use for the West Bank — which according to international law is Palestinian territory that has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
In Gaza, Israel uses starvation as a “bargaining chip”, UN humanitarian chief says
As Israel unilaterally restarted its brutal war in March, it also imposed a suffocating blockade on Gaza, preventing food and medicine from entering the densely populated strip.
The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, stated on 13 May that all 2.1 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza faced famine conditions.
Fletcher called on the UN Security Council (UNSC) “to stop the 21st-century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza”.
The UNSC has been unable to take action, however, because it has been paralyzed by the United States, which has repeatedly used its veto power to protect Israel. This was true under the Joe Biden administration, and it has continued since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Fletcher serves as the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
“I can tell you from having visited what’s left of Gaza’s medical system that death on this scale has a sound and a smell that does not leave you”, Fletcher recalled. “As one hospital worker described it, ‘children scream as we peel burnt fabric from their skin’”.
The UN humanitarian chief stated that “Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians”.
Instead of allowing in UN aid, the US and Israel created an alternative mechanism that Fletcher described as a “cynical sideshow” and “deliberate distraction”, which is merely a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement”.
The US-Israeli plan for Gaza “makes starvation a bargaining chip”, the UN humanitarian chief said.
A week later, on 19 May, Fletcher warned, “There are 14,000 [Palestinian] babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them”.
“We run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food through to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they’re malnourished”, the UN humanitarian chief explained.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel’s mass starvation strategy
Israel is using mass starvation as a tactic to try to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, or kill those who refuse to leave.
The independent website Drop Site News reported on speeches given by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which frankly outline their sadistic strategy.
Netanyahu revealed that he only allowed a few aid trucks to enter Gaza in order to minimize international condemnation and ensure continued US support.
Drop Site News reported (emphasis added):
“We’re going to take control of all the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu vowed [on 19 May] in a video released by his office announcing that Israel would begin delivering “minimal humanitarian aid: food and medicine only.” Netanyahu claimed that international pressure, including from pro-Israel Republican senators and the White House, required the appearance of humanitarian intervention. “Our best friends in the world—senators I know as strong supporters of Israel—have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge,” he said. “They come to me and say, ‘We’ll give you all the help you need to win the war… but we can’t be receiving pictures of famine,’” Netanyahu added. To continue the war of annihilation, he asserted, “We need to do it in a way that they won’t stop us.”
Smotrich, the far-right member of the Israeli security cabinet who called for “total annihilation” of Gaza, made similar remarks.
Drop Site News reported (emphasis added):
Smotrich said the aid scheme would allow “our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory.”
In what he described as an emergency press conference to address criticism from his own base, Smotrich laid out the Netanyahu government’s genocidal agenda and explained why the appearance of allowing aid is necessary on a strategic level. “The [aid] that will enter Gaza in the coming days is the tiniest amount. A handful of bakeries that will hand out pita bread to people in public kitchens. People in Gaza will get a pita and a food plate, and that’s it. Exactly what we are seeing in the videos: people standing in line and waiting to have someone serve them, with some soup plate,” Smotrich said.
Smotrich previously suggested that it would be “justified and moral” to starve to death all 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, but he lamented that the international community would not permit it.
“We bring in aid because there is no choice”, Smotrich said with regret back in August 2024. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned”.
Over 80 Percent of ‘Israelis’ Endorse ‘Forced Expulsion’ of Gaza’s Population: Poll
Trump plans to expel Palestinians and ethnically cleanse Gaza
Trump has floated various plans to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza and expel Palestinians to another country.
Egypt and Jordan rejected Trump’s pressure to facilitate the ethnic cleansing, so the US president has eyed Libya as an alternative.
The Barack Obama administration unilaterally froze more than $30 billion of Libyan state assets back in 2011, as Washington led a NATO war against the government of revolutionary anti-colonial leader Muammar Gadhafi.
After NATO killed Gadhafi and destroyed the Libyan state, unleashing chaos in North Africa and fueling widespread slavery and human trafficking, the US never returned the Libyan assets that it had seized, in violation of international law.
As leverage, Trump has promised to give Libya its frozen assets if it agrees to take the Palestinians he and Israel hope to expel from Gaza.
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan (center), in November 2024, charged Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza
Trump’s ICC sanctions paralyze the Hague, protecting Israel from legal consequences
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant in November 2024 for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
In February 2025, just two weeks after he returned to the White House, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC, accusing it of “engag[ing] in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.
“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest”, the White House warned.
The Trump administration invoked the 2002 American Servicemembers’ Protection Act. This law, which was passed under the George W. Bush administration, is commonly known as the “Hague Invasion Act”, and threatens military intervention in the Netherlands to stop the prosecution of US officials and their allies.
The US-based Center for Constitutional Rights denounced Trump’s sanctions on the ICC as a “direct attack on the rule of law” that is “intended to embolden perpetrators across the world and to inhibit the pursuit of international justice against the most powerful”.
The Associated Press reported in May that Trump’s sanctions on the ICC have paralyzed the Hague and prevented it from investigating the crimes committed by top Israeli officials.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who is a British citizen, had his bank accounts in the UK frozen.
Microsoft even cancelled Khan’s email account.
Microsoft has provided the Israeli military with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services during its genocidal war on Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
A non-governmental organization that helps the ICC compile evidence had to move its money out of US bank accounts, due to Trump’s sanctions, according to the AP.
“The Hague-based court’s American staffers have been told that if they travel to the U.S. they risk arrest”, the AP added.
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
