Baud explained that since last year’s Oct. 7 attack, there has been a “consistent approach of the Israelis to eliminate Palestinians.” His remarks come amid continued hostilities, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again rejected a ceasefire deal that would have ensured the release of all remaining hostages captured during the attack. This decision has sparked outrage among the families of Israeli hostages, who accused Netanyahu of failing to honor “a key element of the plan: a full Israeli military withdrawal,” according to The Washington Post. “They are not trying to solve the problem on the political dimension or the political side — as we normally should for a counterinsurgency — they are doing that by brute force, meaning they destroy people and that’s the name of the game,” Baud said. “By the way, what we see in the West Bank shows exactly what the Israelis want to do. That means pushing the Palestinians out of Palestine and there is nothing new on that,” he continued. “This was already written in the [1940s]," he said. "You had already people theorizing the establishment of the Israeli state and this was clearly said, that Palestine will be exclusively Jew. And that has always been the consistent policy. The only problem is that they don’t dare to do it in one shot, so meaning that they are doing that” in incremental steps. “The ultimate goal is to empty Palestine of Palestinians,” Baud added. During the nearly nine months of war following last year’s Hamas attack, the Israeli ground offensives and bombing campaigns have killed more than 37,000 people in Gaza, roughly three-quarters of whom are women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures have been confirmed as “totally reliable” by Israeli intelligence. Netanyahu has repeatedly pledged to continue the war until reaching “total victory” against Hamas. However, senior officials within his government have openly acknowledged the impossibility of completely defeating Hamas, leading to widespread skepticism about Netanyahu's true aims. After the war, Netanyahu faces not only an inquiry into the events of Oct. 7, but also a trial on corruption charges that could potentially result in a ten-year prison sentence. "They already have plans to rebuild,” Baud said. “The idea is to completely empty Gaza and then to rebuild the kind of colony [Israel] had until 2005,” when Israeli forces withdrew from the territory.In a recent episode of "Going Underground," hosted by Afshin Rattansi, Swiss Colonel Jacques Baud, a former high-ranking NATO official, asserted that Israel's ongoing conflict in Gaza aims to rid the region of the Palestinian population.
