Under the cover of region-wide conflict the war on Palestine intensifies
The “little excursion” as Trump has called the illegal, senseless war the US and Israel are inflicting on the region is turning out to be as confused in its possible end game as it was in the reasons given for its inception.
As Amos Harel writes, “constant warfare is good for Netanyahu” and he has 93 percent of Israel’s Jewish population behind him as he seeks to smash not just Iran’s military capacity but also Hezbollah (and reportedly soon, the Houthis) in order to expand Israel’s borders and impose Israel’s total military dominance in the region. But Trump has discovered that Iran is not Venezuela, and Iran’s threat to the Strait of Hormuz and the spiraling cost of oil is likely to damage the world economy and make the war ever more unpopular at home as the November elections approach.
A war for Israel?
A day before the US and Israel launched what has turned out to be a region-wide war, the Omani Foreign Minister Badir Albusaidi –– who had been mediating indirect talks between the US and Iran –– told CBS News that substantial progress had been made and a peace deal was “within our reach.” After what the Pentagon admits to be a US airstrike that annihilated some 170 elementary school girls on Feb. 28 (Day 1 of Operation Epic Fury) while Israel dropped 30 bombs on Supreme Leader Khamenei’s compound that killed him and dozens of his family members and close associates, the Trump administration gave conflicting messages about the war’s necessity and objectives.
On March 1, Netanyahu was more forthright, saying that destroying Iran with the assistance of the US was what he “has yearned to do for 40 years: smite the terror regime hip and thigh.” In an effort to clarify the administration’s befuddled message, Secretary of State Rubio told reporters on March 2 : “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” On the same day, a lengthy New York Times article described the steps leading up to the war and concluded that “the US decision to strike Iran was a victory for Mr. Netanyahu, who had been pushing Mr. Trump for months on the need to hit what he argued was a weakened regime.”
Both Trump and Netanyahu swiftly denied that Israel had pushed the US into war and Rubio tried to walk back his statement. But it was reinforced on March 4, when Brian McGinnes, a Marine veteran in full uniform and a Green Party candidate for a North Carolina Senate seat, shouted “no one wants to fight for Israel” and had his arm broken while being violently dragged out of a Senate hearing by Capitol police and Republican Senator Tim Sheehy. And on March 11, poll results were released showing that some 46 percent of Americans thought Trump was more responsive to Israel than to the American people.
The human cost of an unpopular war
The cost in lives lost is rising swiftly: by March 14 the estimated numbers were more than 1,350 in Iran, over 825 in Lebanon, 15 in Iraq, at least 13 American soldiers, 14 Israelis, and some 17 people in the Gulf, all but one of them foreign workers. Israel’s March 7th airstrikes hitting 30 oil depots in Tehran unleashing towering toxic clouds of black smoke will have a profound environmental impact and long-term health consequences. So will attacks by both sides on oil tankers and other ships in the Strait of Hormuz, with the US on March 13 bombing the military infrastructure on Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil storage site. In the water-starved region the attack on a desalination plant in Iran and a subsequent attack by Iran on a desalination plant in Bahrain are severe blows. Iran’s extraordinary cultural heritage in Tehran and Isfahan dating back to the 14th and 15thcenturies and other historical monuments have been damaged, along with hospitals and schools.
Some 3.2 million people have been displaced from their homes in Iran, according to the UN. And in southern Lebanon and Beirut, where Israel has forced more than 800,000 residents to flee from their homes, “the massacres are multiplying,” as journalist Lylla Younis describes. In one instance in Beirut “a drone fired several bombs on these displaced people in their tents and on the sidewalk, killing eight, injuring at least 30 others.” As in Gaza, a bomb that struck a house in the village of Arab Salim wiped out three generations of a family as they gathered for their Iftar meal. And as in Gaza, Israel has targeted medical workers, with strikes on ambulances and health centers that have killed “at least 31 health professionals and wounded 51 others,” according to The New York Times. With the daily toll in Lebanon now approaching 50 per day, Israel appears to be implementing what Faris Giacaman calls the ‘Gaza Doctrine’: waging war against a society “not only to subjugate it, but to destroy it and prevent its conditions for life.”
Other costs that receive scant attention
The cost to American taxpayers is already considerable. According to the Pentagon, just in its first six days the Iran war cost more than $11.3 billion. While Trump claimed on March 2 that the US has enough supplies to fight “forever,” the military is “burning through munitions” and Trump wants the Pentagon budget to increase to at least $1.5 trillion in the coming year. Meanwhile, on March 6, he approved a $151.8 million weapons sale to Israel (probably financed by American taxpayers through the Foreign Military Sales Program) without getting the approval of Congress.
There is also the cost to the US Constitutional system which Trump defied by refusing to consult Congress which has the sole power to declare war, and to the relationships the US has formed in the Gulf region where it has established military bases targeted by Iran and hoped to expand the Abraham Accords. According to Hussein Ibish, “all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries have been attacked…there is dismay at Washington and deep and growing suspicion of Israel’s regional agenda.”
The war further erodes international law as European countries – which have a thriving arms trade with Israel - have largely refused to condemn the unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation mounted by Israel and the US. Some have been bullied into cooperating with the US by offering the use of military facilities. Only Spain has denounced the war as “reckless and illegal” under international law.
On March 11, Russia and China abstained when the UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution co-sponsored by 135 countries apparently fearful of the war’s economic impact which demanded that Iran stop its attacks on its neighbors. The Security Council rejected a subsequent resolution drafted by Russia that, without naming the warring parties, called for fighting to end and negotiations to resume. The following day nine UN Special Rapporteurs in a strongly worded statement opposing the unprovoked war declared that the “US and Israel should stop waging and expanding wars, and considering themselves as above international legality.”
Economist Jeffrey Sachs was unsparing in his language when he declared on Democracy Now! that the Israel-US “war of aggression…is the most blatant, frank violation of the UN Charter…These two countries are committing flagrant aggression. And they’ve done it twice now in the context of negotiations, which makes it all the more pernicious….This is so out of control, without any logic, any rationality…We have not seen anything like this since the fascists of World War II. And it is extraordinarily dangerous, what’s happening. It will lead to world war, the way we’re going, because we have two malignant narcissists, Netanyahu and Trump, that are leading us to disaster.”
One of those narcissists has just asked Israeli President Herzog to dismiss the corruption charges he faces so he can focus on the war: “ Tremendous things lie ahead,” Netanyahu said in a March 12th press conference, “and I am working on them right now. I would like to be completely unencumbered.”
A war with the potential to be apocalyptic
On March 11, the novelist Arundhati Roy told Zeteo: “The theater of this new war could expand to consume the whole world. We are on the brink of nuclear calamity and economic collapse. The same country that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be readying itself to bomb one of the most ancient civilizations in the world.”
The US-Israel Axis consists of two nuclear powers. Three months before the last US-Russia arms control treaty expired on Feb. 5, 2026, Trump said he had ordered the immediate resumption of nuclear weapons testing. Israel refuses to acknowledge the existence of its nuclear arsenal and never signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Iran, whose nuclear program the US and Israel claim to have obliterated in June 2025, has signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson told Democracy Now! in a March 10th interview in which he detailed the long list war crimes being committed by Israel and the US that he thinks that Netanyahu is “ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks like it might right now.”
This might not be unthinkable for Netanyahu’s government, since one of its far-right ministers, Amichai Eliyahu, had suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. On March 2, after an attack by Iran killed nine Israelis, Netanyahu invoked the Biblical command to “destroy Amalek” – the Israelites’ ancient enemy.
As Arundhati Roy fears, such an action might not be entirely unthinkable to Christian nationalist ‘War Secretary’ Pete Hegseth, who has denounced the “stupid rules of engagement” meant to limit harm to civilians and asserted that God “stands with the people of Israel against their enemies and blesses those who bless Israel.” And would it be unthinkable to those military commanders who are reportedly telling their troops that the war on Iran is “part of God’s divine plan” and that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth?”
Israel’s other war: on Gaza
With global attention focused elsewhere, Israel has continued to pursue its genocidal aggression in the Gaza Strip and its takeover of the West Bank.
On Feb. 28, the day the US and Israel launched the war against Iran, Israel slammed shut all border crossings into Gaza indefinitely on ‘security grounds.’ Fuel, humanitarian aid stocks and basic food items in markets were rapidly depleted as prices soared and fear of a return of famine loomed. On March 4, reportedly under US pressure, Israel re-opened the Kerem Shalom Crossing on a very limited basis. The Rafah Crossing into Egypt is still shut, preventing patients who urgently need medical care from reaching hospitals outside the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, there has been no end to attacks on Palestinians, with the number of those killed since the sham ‘ceasefire’ was implemented reaching 663 by March 15 when nine police officers were murdered by a missile strike on the van in which they were travelling. At least 1,762 Palestinians in Gaza have been injured. Hospitals in Gaza are struggling to operate with intermittent electricity and fuel, and minimal medical supplies.
In the words of the International Middle East Media Center, “For families in Gaza, survival now extends far beyond the immediate threat of bombardment. It has become a daily struggle to navigate a landscape where homes, infrastructure, and community life have been systematically torn apart, with no clear path to recovery.”
Neither does there appear to be a path to any kind of justice for victims of Israel’s war atrocities. On March 12, the Military Advocate General threw out the indictment against five soldiers who had brutalized and raped a detainee in the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp with such force that he was left with seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, and ruptured bowel and rectum. Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Katz, who both deemed what some called the ‘right to rape’ case a ‘blood libel,’ celebrated the ruling.
“While All Eyes Are on Iran, Jewish Terrorism is Rising in the West Bank”
This is the headline of the lead editorial in Haaretz on March 8. The editorial states that “Jewish terrorism in the West Bank is escalating, claiming Palestinian lives, and no one in Israel cares.” It details the systematic violence and fatal shootings of Palestinians around the West Bank while “the army turns a blind eye at best and contributes its own share at worst,” and concludes that “the Jewish terror in the West Bank has a goal: expulsion.”
On the day the editorial appeared, three Palestinians – Thair Farouk Hamayel, Fara Jawdat Hamayel and Mohammad Hasan Murara - were fatally shot in the head and seven others were wounded by masked settlers who raided their village of Khirbat ‘Abu Falah in the middle of the night.
On the day before, settlers from an outpost near Hebron drove their sheep and cattle onto the privately-owned fields of Wadi al-Rahim in the Masafer Yatta area near Hebron. When there was an attempt to shoo the animals away, a settler wearing an army reservist uniform appeared on the scene and fatally shot Amir Shnaran at close range while severely wounding his brother – who may be permanently paralyzed - and others.
Five days earlier, two other Palestinian brothers, Mohammad and Faheem Mo’mar, were shot and killed by a settler in a reservist uniform in the village of Qaryut near Nablus as they tried to stop a bulldozer that had entered a village olive grove. Another brother and two others who were wounded could not be reached by an ambulance for over an hour because of checkpoints closing off movement in the area. As Qassam Muaddi reported in Mondoweiss, since the latest war on Iran began, Israel has locked down the West Bank with new road closures, iron gates and checkpoints and largely prevented Palestinians from entering Jerusalem during Ramadan to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Both Al-Aqsa and Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron were entirely closed for several days after the war on Iran began.
When they are not shooting at Palestinians, settlers are setting fire to their villages and property and destroying their water cisterns. Meanwhile, soldiers cut pipelines supplying water to towns and villages, and have intensified their military raids on Palestinian communities, with 331 Palestinians arrested in just the first six days of March.
In a New Yorker interview about “the massive acceleration of the policy of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank,” Yehuda Shaul, the co-founder of the group ‘Breaking the Silence,’ stated that since 2023 some 5,500 settlers have joined army reserve units.
“So, if you are a Palestinian who was being beaten up by the settler who lives in an outpost above you, the same settler who has been trying to displace you for years, suddenly October 7th happened, and that settler is now part of the regional-defense battalion and has been issued a uniform and a gun. He is now the military. So when, in the middle of the night, he enters your house, puts you on the floor, beats you up, puts a gun to your head, and says, ‘You have forty-eight hours to leave. If not, we’re going to shoot you’, you leave. So, since October 7th, there has not been even a pretense of a buffer between violent settlers and the Army. It’s the same people.”
The March 14th murder of four members of the Odeh family in Tammun in the northern Jordan Valley – a day after Israel issued military orders confiscating 65 acres of land mostly belonging to the town- illustrates the monstrous nature of the occupation and the casual impunity with which Israeli armed forces take Palestinian lives. The family was reportedly on its way home from purchasing clothes for the Eid al-Fitr feast that ends Ramadan. Ali Bani Odeh, his wife Waad and two sons, aged 5 and 7, were executed at point blank range. Their two other children who were in the car were wounded and the army reportedly blocked the Red Crescent ambulance from reaching them.
We must not let Palestine be forgotten! With international law being disparaged and ethnic cleansing and genocide being normalized, we must build our strength to confront the barbarism that threatens us all.
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine