Destroy, displace, dismantle: Israel’s Gaza doctrine comes to Lebanon

OPINION. Al Jazzera

Opinion|Israel attacks Lebanon

By Jonathan Whittall Humanitarian leader and political analyst from South Africa.

Published On 13 Mar 2026

Israel has killed almost 600 people in Lebanon and displaced more than 750,000 in less than two weeks. This is the opening act of Israel’s Gaza doctrine applied to a new front. The formula is consistent: Displace – either by ordering people to leave or by destroying their means of survival. Demolish civilian infrastructure to prevent return and expand territory through so-called “buffer zones”. Fragment any coherent governance by carving territory into disconnected enclaves where military action continues at a lower intensity.

I spent three years working in Palestine before being expelled by Israeli authorities. I watched this doctrine develop in real time. Now, from Beirut, I am witnessing its replication.

In the West Bank, Israel has spent decades fragmenting territory and denying Palestinians any contiguous geography. Water wells sealed with cement, homes demolished over impossible-to-obtain permits, herders pushed from their land by illegal settlement outposts. In Gaza, the same logic was applied with far greater speed and fury.

In October 2023, Israel announced that every Palestinian north of Wadi Gaza had to leave immediately. Days earlier, Israel’s defence minister had declared a complete siege: No electricity, no food, no water. By labelling an entire population as the enemy, Israel created a class of expendable people. The military released maps with Gaza divided into numbered blocks. When your number was called, you were forced to leave. Evacuation orders became the alibi for the crimes that followed. People were ordered into al-Mawasi, a stretch of coastline Israel designated a “safe zone”, a concentration area for hundreds of thousands living in tents, where air attacks continued. So-called evacuation zones were depopulated and destroyed.

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Smoke rises following an Israeli air strike on a building in Beirut's Bashoura neighbourhood, Lebanon, March 12, 2026 [Wael Hamzeh/EPA]

War in Iran, chaos in the Gulf, repression in the west: and the thread that binds them all is Palestine

Gardian Opinion

Newrine Mali. March 15

Awar spiralling in the Middle East. A death toll now in the thousands across Iran and Lebanon. Energy prices soaring. The Gulf seized up with Iranian strikes. It’s one of those eras that feels bewildering, incomprehensible, out of control. But there is, at the heart of it, a simple logic: everything that is unfolding is a result of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.

As the conflagration spreads, the connection to Palestine becomes obscured. But it is clear how much of the stability of the Middle East was secured at the expense of the Palestinians. Look at the region before 7 October 2023. US policy on the Middle East focused on “integration’’: containment of Iran, signing up more Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel and the creation, therefore, of a bloc of economic and security interests under the US military umbrella.

Iran would be isolated by this Israeli-Arab alliance, and the Palestinians’ file would be closed. Arab countries would pay lip service to them, through demanding guarantees that there would be efforts towards the creation of a Palestinian state, or that the West Bank should not be annexed. But in reality what was on the cards was a continuation of the occupation of Palestinian territories in perpetuity.

Faith in the durability of that status quo was always wishful thinking: a form of denial about how volatile, unpredictable and explosive the situation will always remain if you occupy and settle the lands of 3 million people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade and isolate another 2 million or so in Gaza. All while not working towards any meaningful prospect of self-determination.

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Good news...

Middle East Monitor, March 19

Germany has stepped back from its earlier pledge to support Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Gaza genocide case, in a significant shift from its position when South Africa first brought proceedings in 2023.

A German foreign ministry spokesperson said this week that Berlin will not intervene on Israel’s behalf in the case at The Hague, despite having announced in January 2024 that it would support Israel and rejecting South Africa’s allegations as unfounded.

The move marks a notable change in Germany’s public position. When South Africa filed its case accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention through its military assault on Gaza, Berlin was among the first Western governments to rally behind Israel, arguing that the accusation of genocide had “no basis”.

According to the foreign ministry, Germany’s decision is tied to its own legal difficulties at the ICJ. Berlin is itself defending a separate case brought by Nicaragua, which accuses Germany of violating international law, including the Genocide Convention, through its political, military and financial support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.

That case has already exposed Germany to growing scrutiny over its arms exports to Israel and its suspension of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Although the ICJ declined in 2024 to order emergency measures against Berlin, it allowed Nicaragua’s case to proceed, leaving Germany to continue defending its conduct before the court.

Berlin has not said that it now accepts South Africa’s genocide allegations against Israel, and German officials have continued to reject claims made against Germany in the Nicaragua case. But its decision not to formally join Israel’s defence is likely to be read as an attempt to avoid further legal and political exposure as international pressure mounts over Israel’s Gaza genocide and Germany’s complicity.

The development comes as more states line up to take part in the case. The Netherlands and Iceland have now joined the ICJ proceedings, filing a declaration of intervention on 11 March, adding to the growing list of countries seeking to weigh in on S

A view of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) building where Nicaragua will present its arguments in case accusing Germany of facilitating genocide in Gaza by providing political and military support to Israel in The Hague, Netherlands on April 08, 2024. [Dursun Aydemir – Anadolu Agency]