AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As we continue on Gaza, we go right now to Muhammad Shehada. He is a writer and analyst. He is from Gaza City.

We thank you so much for being with us. First, though, I want to get your response to the prime minister, Netanyahu, speaking.

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: [inaudible] you have with Netanyahu is, as soon as he started the ground invasion of Gaza City, he asked the court in Israel to reduce his appearances. He said, “I cannot testify in court at the same time, and I cannot attend as many court hearings at the same time as we are launching a major operation in Gaza City.” So, that wraps up the essence of it.

What you have is, Netanyahu has done over the last two weeks three things simultaneously: invade Gaza City to annihilate the largest urban space remaining there, destroy every home there one by one, as he stated, so that people would have nothing to return to, and they would leave; and, number two, bomb the negotiating table in Doha, so that there is no one to sort of save Gaza diplomatically or through dialogue or negotiations; and, number three, attack the Freedom Flotilla that is trying to bring food and aid into Gaza, so that Gaza would be rendered entirely on its own in the face of a killing machine.

And what you have right now is basically the IDF — literally, this morning, they were describing it themselves in the Israeli newspaper Walla! They were saying they are swarming Gaza City right now with a huge — sorry? They are basically swarming Gaza City right now with a huge amount of drones, as well as armored personnel carriers that have been robotized. They turned it into giant bombs. They fill it basically with explosive ammunition to the brim and send it and detonate it from a distance into largely populated and overcrowded areas.

So, my friend Ibrahim yesterday, he woke up to one of these robotized vehicles exploding underneath the building where he was sheltering with his family and in-laws, and he started running. Half of the building collapsed; the other half was intact. So he narrowly escaped death. And he just grabbed his 4-year-old, his wife, and they started running until they reached the south of Gaza. Ever since, he’s been calling me every few minutes to ask — begging, literally, to ask for a tent or for food. And I’ve been trying everywhere to find him something as simple as a tent to sleep in, and I couldn’t find anything.

Yesterday, we had three people die from starvation in Gaza, in addition to the 60 people killed and murdered by the IDF throughout the Gaza Strip. What you have is, basically, right now about 370,000 people left Gaza City, according to Israel. And the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth headlined it with “It’s a Death March.” It’s a literal death march.

Like, my friend Ibrahim is now sleeping on the street since yesterday, unable to provide any food or shelter for his family. That’s why you have the overwhelming majority of people still in Gaza City unable to leave, refusing to leave, because there’s basically no place to go that would be safe or where they would be able to find shelter.

And you have, basically, right now the internet has been cut off from northern Gaza and Gaza City since this morning, as well as the continuous bombardment. It’s like 9/11-style Israeli bombing of high-rise towers throughout the Gaza Strip, especially in Gaza City, to terrorize people into fleeing, while at the same time they understand that those people cannot flee. Yesterday, Israel called on a family to flee south. As soon as they took a car and tried to flee, they bombed them on the way, killing every single member of the family. So, it’s just extermination for the sake of extermination.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Muhammad Shehada, the United Nations inquiry has found that Israel has committed genocide during this two-year assault on Gaza. What’s the significance of this to you at this moment?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, it’s way long overdue. It’s not just U.N. officials, but I’ve heard it from European Union officials for the last 14 months, 15 months, where they have been saying behind closed doors that Israel has shown a clear intent to annihilate Gaza and finish off the Gaza question once and for all. Last year around July, so exactly 14 months ago, I met with a European Union leader, and as soon as I entered the room, he circled his tablet, his personal iPad, around the table to show satellite imagery that the EU has been collecting of Gaza, neighborhood by neighborhood. And I kept zooming in to try to figure out anything. There was nothing recognizable. And the top European leader, he interjected and said, “Israel is destroying and annihilating the urban space in Gaza. They are destroying everything there, so that as soon as the war stops, people would have no option but to leave,” which is the literal definition of genocide. Either you stay and perish, or you leave where you cannot exist as a group anymore. And nonetheless, those officials, same officials, would go in front of a camera and say, “No, there’s no genocide happening at the moment.”

So, what you have now with the U.N. decision, it makes it way more difficult for those shameless frauds to deny the effect on the ground, when you have this wall-to-wall consensus, from the U.N. to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even Israel’s own Physicians for Human Rights and the largest Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem. So, it makes it difficult to deny it, but you still have European and Western leaders nonetheless trying to deny it vehemently, like you saw with Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, a few days ago emphatically saying that there is no genocide in Gaza, to which the answer from the human rights community is: Just open your eyes and look at what’s unfolding there. It’s impossible to see what’s happening and conclude that there’s anything else but genocide unfolding.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you, as well — you were in Istanbul, Turkey, a few days before Israel bombed Doha. While you were there, the entire Hamas leadership in Istanbul took a flight to Doha to respond to Trump’s proposal. Your response to this Israeli attack on those who were seeking to negotiate peace?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Absolutely. So, Israel could have assassinated those Hamas leaders in Istanbul the day before they flew to Doha. They could have assassinated them in Tehran when they assassinated only Ismail Haniyeh, or they could have done it right after October 7th. But they didn’t do it in any of these instances, because the Israeli military was telling Netanyahu, “We need someone to talk to.”

What you have is, basically, Netanyahu laying a trap with Trump, Trump issuing a proposal last minute and then inviting and summoning Hamas to congregate in Doha to discuss and study it and articulate a counterproposal. And as soon as they entered into the meeting room, Israel drops the 10 bombs on the headquarters, the office of Hamas in Doha, to obliterate the negotiating table. So it was a premeditated, deliberate attack to kill any chance of a ceasefire happening in Gaza. Netanyahu did not want to take the least chance on Hamas approving or saying yes to Trump’s proposal.

And you have, basically, a White House that’s willing to play along with it, no matter what Israel does. So, you got reports, basically, saying that Trump was frustrated with Netanyahu and saying, “Every time there’s progress, Netanyahu sabotages it or bombs people.” But at the same time, you had Marco Rubio immediately flying to Israel and saying there, “There may not be a diplomatic solution for the war in Gaza. The military option is the only one,” right on the day before Israel invades Gaza with everything they have.

So, basically, they’re giving the absolute green light to the Israelis to turn Gaza into a howling wilderness, into this apocalyptic scene that cannot even be described in words. Like, there is apocalypse. There’s catastrophe. There’s disaster. There’s genocide. And then there is Gaza. It’s beyond anything that the human language can capture at this moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, you have Rubio saying, “Sometimes when you’re dealing with a group of savages like Hamas that’s not possible.” He was talking about a ceasefire. And you have Netanyahu going to be visiting the White House for the fourth time since Trump took office this time. And you have thousands of Israelis protesting outside Netanyahu’s house — he’s been in trial for corruption — demanding an end to its war on Gaza. The significance of this?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, basically, right now you have the entire Israeli military and members of the government, ministers from Netanyahu’s government, saying, “This is enough. The job in Gaza has been accomplished. Gaza is no more already. What we need to do is basically prevent reconstruction, end the war now, continue to carry out Lebanon-style assassinations and targeted bombings. No one’s going to stop us. And the genocide can proceed slowly, quietly and without even the public appearance of it, if you just lock Gaza, close it off and give people only one option: leave or stay and perish.”

But on the other hand, you have Netanyahu, who is willing to burn everything, willing to turn Israel into a pariah state. He stood up in front of a podium two days ago and said that Israel was becoming Sparta, and Israel was becoming increasingly isolated. He saw it as a positive thing that Israel is now standing against the whole world, because he wants to be remembered as Winston Churchill/FDR, the person that oversaw a great disaster and then managed to achieve victory, or at least an image of victory that would wipe away that shame from his reputation.

On the other side, he wants to see the job in Gaza completed to the end. He doesn’t believe that if Gaza City remains half-destroyed or 70% destroyed, that this is enough to push people out. I have family in Gaza City who have literally burrowed underneath the rubble of their homes and chose to stay there, instead of leaving southwards and sleeping on the street. So, basically, what you have is Netanyahu saying, “I want to see it with my own eyes that every single home, every single building in Gaza City is flattened completely, that there is absolutely nothing left there, and that the Gazan population would be overcrowded on the Egyptian borders with conditions of an immense, catastrophic disease outbreak and civic collapse, so that Gazans themselves would invade the Egyptian borders, breach it and cross in on their own.”

I asked Egyptian officials, “What would you do in the event of Israel opening a major hole in the fence and pushing people into your territory at gunpoint?” And they said, “We will respond with force, because this is declaration of war.” And then I rephrased the question. I said, “What if Israel creates the conditions remotely that would drive Gazans on their own to open a hole in the fence and cross in? What would you do?” And the answer unanimously was no one in the Egyptian military would think about firing at fleeing civilians. So, that’s exactly what Netanyahu has in mind: concentrate the population there, create conditions for disaster and have them run towards Egypt on their own.

AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, I want to thank you for being with us, writer and analyst from Gaza, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, speaking to us today from Copenhagen.

Up next, the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, formally charged with murder. Among the evidence against him, inscriptions written on bullets. We’ll talk to a senior Wired reporter, Makena Kelly. Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City,” rendition of Zeshan B in our Democracy Now! studio.