Gaza an inalienable part of Palestinian territory

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would allow a "basic amount of food" to enter Gaza after an 11-week-long blockade, but it planned to take "control of all of Gaza". Israel will continue the war until "total victory is achieved", he said.

This indicates a likely further worsening of the situation in the Palestinian enclave that is home to 2.1 million Palestinians who have suffered from the conflict and hunger since October 2023.

Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued an offensive against Gaza ever since, killing nearly 53,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian sources.

Notably, one day before Netanyahu's statement, the US administration indicated it is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, according to US media reports. The plan is under serious consideration as the administration has discussed it with Libya's leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former US official told NBC News.

In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would apparently release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the US froze more than a decade ago.

No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration's discussions, the same sources said. So people have enough reason to believe Tel Aviv's latest attempt to tighten its grip on Gaza and the reported US plan are interrelated.

Tel Aviv's announcement that it will continue its military operations has been widely condemned, even by some of the US' allies. The United Kingdom, France, and Canada all issued stern warnings to Israel on Monday, calling for an immediate cessation of military operations in Gaza and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid or face "further concrete actions".

"We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel's military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday's announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate," the joint statement said.

The three nations also accused Israel of denying vital humanitarian assistance, warning that such actions "risk breaching International Humanitarian Law".

The Arab League Summit in Baghdad last week also strongly opposed Israel further escalating the tensions in Gaza.

But in a statement issued late on Monday, Netanyahu claimed that the UK-France-Canada joint call for halting the Israeli war on Gaza is "offering a huge prize" for what he called "the genocidal attack" on Israel in October 2023.

But in fact it is Israel that faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions.

Behind the Gaza conflict is the delay in resolving the question of Palestine, and the question of Palestine has always been at the core of the Middle East issue, so until the two-state solution is implemented, the logic of repaying grievance with grievance will not cease and the cycle of violence will not end.

China calls on all parties to support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and to admit Palestine as a full member state of the United Nations.

Israel should stop using retaliation for the Hamas attack in October 2023 as a cover for its plan to annex the Gaza Strip, which is a Palestinian homeland and a part of Palestinian territory.

The US has actually brokered a ceasefire agreement and led the charting of the course for the follow-up negotiations. These diplomatic efforts should continue.

In the process, the principle of "Palestinians governing Palestine" should be upheld in the post-war governance of Gaza in line with the two-state solution with an ultimate goal of achieving peaceful coexistence between Palestine and Israel, as well as long-term peace and stability in the Middle East.