Israel is creating a power vacuum in Gaza by backing armed looters — and killing anyone who tries to stop them by Faris Giacaman and Tareq S. Hajjaj

Israel has been waging a war on Gaza’s ability to govern itself and maintain law and order as a part of its 18-month-long genocidal campaign. The broad objective of this strategy has been to create a civil and humanitarian vacuum in Gaza that would lead to chaos and lawlessness…

… To make sure this administrative vacuum is maintained, Israel has launched periodic assassination campaigns targeting members of Gaza’s civil government — the police force, the security forces, the Civil Defense, and the healthcare system.

Israel has instrumentalized the fact that all these civil branches of government in Gaza, by definition, fall under Hamas control, given that it is the ruling faction in the strip. Consequently, it labels any Gaza civil servant as a “Hamas operative,” an association that has allowed Israel to legitimize the targeting of an entire category of civilian workers. They have included firefighters, medics, nurses, doctors, first responders, police officers, and other civil servants who were killed in the line of duty.

But none of these strategies of targeting civil government personnel are new. Israel has deliberately targeted leaders and low-level civil servants over the past 18 months, especially the police force and security units assigned to protect aid convoys from looting.