AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where the nearly two-month ceasefire has been shattered by Israel as it carries out a second day of intense airstrikes. At least 27 Palestinians were killed in overnight strikes. This comes a day after Israel killed over 400 Palestinians, including at least 174 children. The group Defense for Children said it was, quote, “one of the largest one-day child death tolls” in Gaza’s history. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, quote, “This is just the beginning,” unquote. The attacks come as Israel continues to block food, aid and fuel into the Gaza Strip.

We go now to Muhammad Shehada in Copenhagen. He’s a writer and analyst from Gaza, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Muhammad, thanks so much for joining us. Can you describe what’s happening right now in Gaza?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Thanks so much for having me, Amy.

It’s basically the most unprecedented, most savage attack that Gaza has witnessed in over a year. You have about 200 kids whose lives were extinguished in a matter of seconds. And now you have about 700 wounded civilians that are languishing in hospitals that are dysfunctional because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. There’s, for example, a girl that is about 6 years old, Eileen Abu Zouz, who has an apple-sized shrapnel stuck in her chest, and doctors are trying to race against time to remove it to save her life. Doctors are saying that Palestinians that were wounded in those airstrikes in critical condition are under a death sentence because there’s no capacity whatsoever.

You have entire families that were extinguished completely, a whole bloodline that vanished from the civil registry. So, I have a colleague whose sister, her husband, their kids, their in-laws and their grandchildren were killed in a single airstrike.

And the viciousness of all of this is compounded by the fact that there was not a single Hamas militant that was hit in that airstrike. Not a single Hamas militant was declared dead. The most prominent figures that were killed in those airstrikes were basically four government officials: the acting prime minister, the acting minister of interior, the acting minister of justice and the head of the Internal Security Agency. What Israel is doing there has nothing to do with Hamas whatsoever. It’s been made clear by Israeli officials yesterday, who said that, basically, whoever thinks that those attacks will make Hamas more flexible is completely blind, is missing the point.

The attack was completely predictable. You had the Israeli journalist Ori Misgav in Haaretz saying a couple of hours before Israel killed those 460 people in Gaza — he said that Netanyahu is about to attack Gaza because the walls are closing in on him. He had a bunch of crises: a national crisis having to do with his attempt to fire the attorney general, the head of the Shin Bet; a crisis in terms of passing the budget — it was about to falter; there was a crisis about his corruption trial testimony that was scheduled yesterday, and he was trying to get it canceled; and there was another crisis about, basically, the demonstrations that were scheduled in Jerusalem yesterday in protest of all of this. So, the Israeli right-wing government always goes through the same dynamic: When you’re in crisis, nothing would unite your government, nothing would suppress any sort of protest or opposition, more than killing Palestinians, than destroying Palestinians and sort of parading their pain and misery on TV.

There was another dimension. So, as soon as the airstrikes unfolded in Gaza, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extremist, far-right Israeli former minister of police, he rejoined Netanyahu’s government in convenient time to pass the budget.

The other dimension is that Netanyahu is trying to kill the Egyptian-Arab plan for Gaza’s early recovery and reconstruction without any mass transfer of the population there. There was an Egyptian major conference, international conference for Gaza’s reconstruction, scheduled in April. And there were reports that Trump gave sort of an initial approval to the Egyptian plan, with a lot of inquiries and questions about it. So, by resuming the genocide in Gaza, you get all these things off the table.

It’s insane that they’re getting away with it. It’s even more insane how mainstream media is covering it up and manufacturing consent for the resumption of a genocide.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Muhammad, I wanted to ask you about the reaction of the West on this. There was a U.N. Security Council meeting where Britain, France and Russia all condemned the new bombings, but no resolution, the United States representative defending Israel, its attacks on Gaza.

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: The reaction was absolutely underwhelming. Four hundred people killed in Gaza, that is Gaza’s own October 7th. There’s been way more kids that were killed in Gaza, over 200, compared to October 7th, where 36 were killed. The reaction of the international community is absolutely disappointing and shameful.

But there’s another dimension to it. As you said, like, the most you would get is basically expressions of concern or condemnation, without any action whatsoever. And European Union leaders have made this to us clear behind closed doors over the last year, where they said that 80% of European governments are OK with Israel doing whatever it wants in Gaza, are OK with giving this carte blanche.

The other dimension is that you have a Trump administration now willing to give Israel the heaviest bombs in its arsenal, the 2,000-pound bombs, that as soon as it’s used, it creates a fireball of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and it kills people within the radius of 350 meters. And now Israel is raining those on Gaza again like candy, with a White House that is willing to whitewash Israel’s genocide in Gaza in real time.

It’s absolutely insane and shameful what’s going on in this regard, and even more shameful how it’s being covered up, how Israel is being given the benefit of the doubt. So, you see it in headlines where basically it says that that number of people in Gaza were killed despite the ceasefire. It does not call — actively call out Israel for violating, destroying, obliterating the ceasefire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And is it your sense that Netanyahu and the Trump administration are now seriously continuing to entertain the idea of removing Palestinians from Gaza?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Yes, absolutely, especially for Netanyahu. It immediately brought Ben-Gvir to the government, who’s been actively calling for depopulating Gaza. You have other ministers on record, like Bezalel Smotrich, calling for the same thing and even openly saying that the IDF will create or is creating now a division that is actively looking for countries to take Palestinians.

There is the other dimension: Israel never, never, never respects a ceasefire with Palestinians whatsoever. It’s been the same dynamic over and over again. My late friend Refaat Alareer put it best. He said a ceasefire is basically when Palestinians cease and Israel continues to fire. Israel’s defense minister and — former prime minister and former defense minister, Ehud Barak, he put it — after Operation Cast Lead, 2008, he said, “As soon as a ceasefire is signed, nobody is going to bother with the details.”

So, as soon as the ceasefire in Gaza was signed, you had Israel killing over 150 civilians in the course of over a month. You had Israel — like, can you imagine if a single Israeli was scratched, let alone killed, a soldier or a civilian, during the ceasefire, how all hell would have broken loose on Palestinians? It shows how Palestinians are basically the most self-restrained people on the face of the Earth. That Israel has killed over now 700 people in the course of the ceasefire without a single bullet being fired from Gaza shows how Gazans are sort of desperate, keen, very much persistent to end the war, whereas Israel is sort of salivating for a carnage.

Israel was allowing into Gaza about 10% of the tents that were allowed to go — that were supposed to go in, 30% of the fuel that’s necessary to run hospitals and sewage treatment plants and water infrastructure. They were basically preventing people from leaving for medical treatment, restricting the number of people that are allowed to leave. They violated it in every single way along the way of the last over 40 days or 50 days, in order to provoke a Palestinian reaction that points a finger and says, “Look, Palestinians are the ones that don’t want a ceasefire.” It’s insane.

But, like, Israel never even started the negotiations of phase two of the ceasefire in the first place that was scheduled on February 6th. And now what you have with the Israelis is, basically, you had a channel between Trump’s envoy for hostage negotiations, Adam Boehler, with Hamas that managed to produce a preliminary outline that would see a truce in Gaza for five to 10 years, Hamas laying down their arms, a new government in Gaza. You would see hostage negotiations and hostage release. Israel’s reaction was to immediately leak it to the media, torpedo the talks and get Adam Boehler’s confirmation or nomination revoked before it was even confirmed in the Senate. So, you see who is very desperate for this war to go on forever.

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

Coming up, the United States is facing a constitutional crisis as President Trump escalates his attacks on federal judges, as the White House suffers legal setback after legal setback. Stay with us.