Updates & Analysis

Since the mid-March collapse of Gaza’s ceasefire, Israel’s assault has killed or injured tens of thousands, crushed what remains of vital infrastructure, and forced more than 640,000 people into an ever-shrinking patchwork of so-called ‘safe zones.’ Even ‘humanitarian aid’ distribution sites and food lines have been made fatal, prompting UN calls for an independent inquiry. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Green Line, the Israeli cabinet rubber-stamped 22 new settlements—and legalised nine outposts—while bulldozers resumed razing homes in Nur Shams refugee camp, Tulkarm. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and its acceleration of land grabs in the West Bank reveal a single, coordinated strategy of expulsion and enclosure that is reshaping Palestinian life from river to sea.

Over the last week Israel bypassed the UN and seized sole control of aid deliveries to Gaza. The new scheme funnels the besieged population toward four fenced distribution points in the extreme south of the Gaza Strip, guarded by drones, Israeli forces, and 300 heavily armed U.S. contractors from the hastily formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Over the past month, the demolition machine never paused. Between 28 April and 27 May, the army carried out 50 separate demolition operations—an average of one and two-thirds raids every day—erasing 169 Palestinian structures. Each sunrise brought the almost certain prospect of another five or six family homes, animal pens or water tanks being reduced to rubble.

The Government Media Office in Gaza made a press statement, estimating that a daily minimum of 500 trucks filled with aid and 50 trucks of fuel are urgently needed in order to save the lives of 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza. Already, 26 people have died in the last 24 hours due to imposed starvation and a lack of medicine.

This violence flows necessarily from the transformation of monopoly capitalism into its imperialist stage: as capital concentrates in ever larger private conglomerates, the export of surplus value demands new markets, raw materials and zones of cheap labour.  In practice, this drive for accumulation subordinates entire territories to the logic of capital, converting land and people into resources to be extracted by force.  The resulting military interventions, enforced border regimes, and settler-colonial occupations are therefore not aberrations but the logical consequence of capitalist accumulation crossing its own spatial limits.

Over the last month, members of the Good Shepherd Collective have travelled across California, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. In this short period, we held over 25 public and private meetings with organizations, community support groups, small activist formations, and student organizers to discuss our experiences, share our insight, and learn from others’ hard-earned wisdom as well.

While people could argue that it is par for the Trump administration’s course to issue such policies, we believe that Gaza has unveiled a new reality where Empire no longer needs to pretend to care. We are witnessing a reshaping of the entire West’s “humanistic” basis into what it truly stands for.

Ahmed Manasra has finally been released from occupation prisons after nine and a half years of imprisonment, neglect, and torture. Manasra was first abducted at the age of thirteen.