Israel escalates Gaza attacks as Netanyahu stalls ceasefire for polls

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. Systematic demolition and displacement 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. …