Israel is using the illegal war on Iran to continue to kill and starve Gaza, steal more Palestinian land, and restrict movement in the West Bank. Don't look away.
DIANA BUTTU. MAR 09, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t have appeared happier; he looked almost giddy. By launching an illegal attack on Iran with the United States, Netanyahu’s lifelong goal was achieved. He said as much. While standing on the rooftop of the Israeli military headquarters (Israel’s Pentagon), nestled among residential and commercial buildings in the heart of Tel Aviv, Netanyahu proclaimed, “This coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years: smite the terror regime hip and thigh. This is what I promised – and this is what we shall do.”
Let’s leave aside the “40 years” comment for the moment – though it is clear that Israel has posed a threat to Iran for at least that time, given its years of attacks on the country and its allies. It’s the rest of the sentence that is equally disturbing. Just as Netanyahu made a Biblical reference to the tribe of Amalek – an enemy that must be completely wiped out – as a justification to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza, including children and infants, he is now invoking a phrase from the Old Testament’s Book of Judges in which Samson “smote them [the Philistines] hip and thigh,” to justify the war with Iran. In plain English, Samson attacked the Philistines mercilessly and viciously. Not coincidentally, Israel’s widely-reported nuclear deterrence strategy is known as the “Samson Option,” in which Israel will resort to using nuclear weapons if it deems necessary. By the way, unlike Iran, Israel has never submitted to international inspections, and Israel has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that 191 countries (including Iran) have signed.
This out-and-proud combination of unchecked military aggression, coupled with deranged Zionist biblical references, foretells what’s to come, but it also underscores what we’re already witnessing in Palestine, making it all the more important that we don’t look away from what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank as the war in Iran rages on.
Just take Gaza, for instance.
As expected, since the US-Israeli attacks in Iran began, Gaza has once again slipped from the radar. After killing more than 72,000 Palestinians (including more than 615 since the October 2025 “agreement”) and flattening more than 90% of Gaza’s housing infrastructure, Israel’s genocidal policies continued unhindered over the last week. Now, instead of fast-paced live-streamed killing, Israel’s death policies include monitoring virtually every morsel of food that enters Gaza. And despite (hesitatingly) agreeing to allow aid trucks into Gaza (as an aside, why does a genocidal regime have a say in this anyway?), Israel continues to turn away needed goods. For days, Israel prevented any supplies from entering Gaza – including food and medicine – before allowing a mere trickle of supplies last week. Despite glitzy reconstruction plans – funded by the same countries that the US has now put in the line of fire – Palestinians continue to languish in flooded tents. The instant meme of Trump’s so-called Board of Peace becoming ”Bored of Peace” rings eerily true. And, of course, Israel’s killing machine continues to grind on (Israel has killed more than a dozen Palestinians in Gaza since attacking Iran, including a 12-year-old girl, a journalist, and a paramedic over the weekend) while Israeli settlers clamor for the establishment of settlements in the enclave.
In the West Bank, Israel has imposed a blanket ban on Palestinian movement while Israeli settler-militias, emboldened by their leaders and an army that thinks it is cool to stand by and watch Israelis terrorize Palestinians, carry out their attacks on Palestinians in an attempt to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. After an especially violent February, which saw settlers carry out hundreds of attacks against Palestinians, ranging from killings (including an American citizen, if that still matters to anyone) to stealing land, destroying homes, uprooting trees, and burning fields, the violence has only gotten worse. Just since the start of the war in Iran, Israeli settlers have killed at least five Palestinians. That includes two Palestinian brothers who were murdered by settlers last Monday in Qaryut. Three others, including a third brother, were wounded in the attacks. On Saturday, settlers killed another Palestinian man in Masafer Yatta. And on Sunday, Israeli settlers murdered two Palestinians in the village of Khirbet Abu Falah (a third man died after getting hit with a tear gas deployed by the Israeli military). All the while, the Israeli army continues to arrest Palestinians across the West Bank. Why? Because Palestinians are not allowed to defend themselves or their land. That right is reserved exclusively for those trying to steal land – i.e., Israelis.
And, alarmingly, in Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque, usually packed with worshippers during Ramadan, has been effectively closed. Even prior to the Israeli-American attack on Iran, Israel decided to limit the Palestinians from the West Bank who can worship in Al-Aqsa to women over 50 and men over 55, and capped the number at 10,000 – less than 3% of the number that can be accommodated. Now, however, Israel has canceled Friday prayerscompletely for “security reasons.”
Meanwhile, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, Israelis traipsed through Jerusalem chanting what now seems to be Israel’s national anthem, “May your village burn.” With the rise in Israel destroying Palestinian homes, ethnically cleansing Palestinian towns, and settlers terrorizing Palestinians so that they can build more settlements, it is unsurprising that the UN commissioner for human rights has warned that Israel aims to bring “permanent demographic change” to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Israeli ministers are now doing their usual boasting and bragging as they do when they commit war crimes. In particular, Israel’s actions in Gaza – rather than being an embarrassment for the war crimes committed – are a source of pride: a model for the future.
Last week, Israel issued “evacuation orders” (aka ‘leave or risk death’ orders) for the residents of southern Lebanon, an area encompassing nearly 10% of the country’s entire area and 100 villages and towns, as well as Dahiyeh, the densely populated southern neighbourhoods of Beirut, an area about the size of lower Manhattan and home to an estimated 800,000 people. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezelal Smotrich has promised that, “Very soon Dahiyeh will resemble Khan Younis.” Why wouldn’t he say that? Makes sense, given that Israel intends to bomb the place to the ground, just as it did in Gaza. And, violent election promises bring votes, and we are only months away from an election. With 93% of Jewish Israelis supporting this war (I have never seen a society more intent on war – the prime minister has “yearned” for this for 40 years! – and the so-called “opposition” is fully in support), one can see that the next election victor will be the person who calls for more killing and more land theft. He will be the stronger Samson.
But maybe Israel’s leaders – drunk on destruction and the impunity with which they have been allowed to kill – should recall Samson’s fate: his final act was to bring down the pillars of the temple of Dagon, apocalyptically killing his enemies…and himself.
Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues. She is also a practitioner in residence at Georgetown University in Qatar. She writes Zeteo’s ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel.’
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