Middle East Monitor / March 14, 2022
Chief of Staff of Israeli Army, Aviv Kohavi, has claimed that his army is ready to invade Gaza and other Palestinian cities more effectively than what happened in Jenin in 2002, Arab48 reported yesterday.
Israel’s Kan 11 reported Kohavi speaking on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Jenin along with other West Bank cities in 2002 in an attempt to suppress the Second Intifada.
The Israeli army’s attempt to stop the Intifada failed despite the massacres and war crimes it carried out. Then Israeli Prime Minister, the late Ariel Sharon, then ordered the construction of the illegal Wall.
Kohavi said that the scenario carried out in Jenin in 2002, cutting communications, water and electricity to the city, could be repeated in Gaza in 2022, “but in a more effective way.”
He claimed that the Israeli army’s “ability to occupy Palestinian cities and administer them gave the political and military Israeli leaderships, as well as the field commanders of the Israeli army, wide credibility that the army is able to reach everywhere.”
Israel’s last invasion of Gaza was in 2014, when it killed over 2,200 Palestinians including 551 children. Since then it has carried out a number of offensives against the Strip, the latest of which was in May 2021 when 254 Palestinians were killed over 11 days. The occupation army regularly shells Gaza, flies reconnaissance drones overhead and damages crops in the besieged enclave.
