By Seevali Abeysekera*

The destruction of Gaza by the modern-day equivalent of a medieval killing machine called the IDF has not only highlighted the absolute barbarity and bloodlust of the state of Israel, but also exposed the grotesque values of its sycophantic acolytes in the West and other parts of the globe.

That Israel has finally shown the world the true face of Zionism should have come as no surprise to anyone willing and able to understand the fundamentals of Zionism through an impartial and objective lens. All the evidence that any impartial, objective observer required to assess the true face of Zionism was already available long before HAMAS opened the gates of hell on 7 October 2023.

An impartial, objective observer who studied the history of Israel would have concluded that its standard modus operandi has always been to hoodwink and persuade the world that it was a liberal secular democracy instead of the settler colonial apartheid racist nation which has systematically carried out a policy of ethnic cleansing since its creation in 1948.

This masquerade was so convincing that the majority of the supposedly civilized and enlightened world accepted, in its entirety, the narrative Israel presented since 1948. The narrative is that of a liberal secular democracy whose citizens believe in the same core values that all other secular democracies have enshrined as part of their core society values – the rule of law, equality, and equal justice for all its citizens.

The Judeo-Christian world. . .

The Judeo-Christian world had convinced itself that Zionist Israel was no different to them in terms of believing in secular, multicultural values and the acceptance of a universal legal system where all citizens were deemed equal.

The Judeo-Christian West refused to accept the prima-facie evidence that was obvious where a country which defined itself as a homeland only for a particular ethno-religious group was, in its very definition, racist!

The Judeo-Christian West refused to accept, as racist, the prima facie evidence which showed that Israel had multiple levels of citizenship and rights for its citizens based on their ethnicity or religion.

The Judeo-Christian West refused to accept as racist the prima-facie evidence where Israel had a legal system which entitled any Jew, born anywhere in the world, to automatic citizenship and rights to be in Israel and yet deprived the indigenous Palestinians, both citizenship rights and any rights of return to those exiled since 1948 or 1967 due to the first and second Nakba’s.

The Judeo-Christian West refused to accept, as ethnic cleansing, the prima facie evidence that showed the mass expulsion or transfer of the Palestinian population out of Israel in order to accommodate white Jewish settlers from America and Europe.

Or perhaps the Judeo-Christian West did accept all of the above but gave Israel special dispensation to carry out its policy of ethnic cleansing as ”recompense” for the evil that was the Holocaust?

Or perhaps the Judeo-Christian West did know all of the above and allowed it to happen because here was the last bastion of settler colonialism, which the white Judeo-Christian West had been forced to give up as a result of the end of empire?

Whilst Israel has always been an apartheid racist state masquerading as a secular democracy, the conceptual, racial, and special infrastructure of systemic ethnic cleaning was formulated during the decades following the Oslo peace process. This was required to provide the facade of a potential two-state solution and was done with the direct support of America, Great Britain, and the EU.

Since 7 October 2023, however, there is no need for the facade of a two-state solution, and Israel has embarked on a near textbook case of ethnic cleansing and genocide, designed to cleanse or eliminate a population of 2.3 million in Gaza, with the same process now unfolding in the West Bank.

As described in my previous piece, the contrast between European settler colonial genocides of the previous centuries and Gaza is the technology that live-streams the unfolding horrors directly to our living rooms, PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

The ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza continues unabated as it is protected by the diplomatic cover provided by the West. Taeli narrative that Palestinians are” human animals” who deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth.

Whether this is his cover is enhanced by the unquestioned support from Western mainstream media who are eager to promote the Isrdue to the ownership of the media organisations controlling the narrative or purely down to the anti-Palestinian racism that appears to have metastasized amongst vast swathes of the Western media remains to be seen.

Great Britain and the EU will continue to protect Israel, providing direct and indirect diplomatic, political, military intelligence and media support, ensuring that Israel remains above international law. This will continue until Israel decides to either retreat from Gaza due to losses in manpower and machinery, make Gaza uninhabitable for human life, or ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians by forcing them to flee as refugees to Egypt or drown in the waters off Gaza. America,

In addition to the criminal complicity of the West, the Arab nations and India, too, have” blood on their hands” for their indifference to the slaughter of the Palestinians and even support for Israel, which has been grotesque.

The near obliteration of Gaza is systematic and designed to deliberately turn it into an almost uninhabitable landscape where Palestinians would either be reluctant to return or be physically prohibited from returning to what are the ruins of their homes.

This Israeli strategy of the destruction of Gaza is called the ”Dahiya Doctrine”, which encompasses the complete and total destruction of the civilian infrastructure deemed to be hostile as a measure calculated to pressure enemy combatants and endorses the employment of “disproportionate overwhelming force” (compared to the amount of force used by the enemy) to secure that end.

The “Dahiya Doctrine” was named after a suburb of Beirut, which in 2006 was obliterated by Israel in response to Hezbollah inflicting heavy losses on the IDF during Israel’s invasion of Southern Lebanon.

The Dahiya Doctrine is explained as one where if Israel cannot defeat an enemy on the battlefield, then those civilian areas from where the enemy combatants come should be destroyed using overwhelming force in order to inflict enormous civilian casualties and the near destruction of civilian infrastructure. This is done to remind the enemy combatants that their families will pay the ultimate price.

This strategy was referred to as” collective punishment” when used by the Nazis during World War 2, but the term is not used today as that will imply, quite rightly, in my opinion, that Israel’s modus operandi is either similar to or the same as that as used by the 3rd Reich.

Israeli academics, diplomats, politicians, and commentators are now very candid and open in their demand for the IDF to ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians and, once that is accomplished, to rebuild Gaza as an integral part of Israel with an entirely Jewish population.

If that is not a textbook definition of ethnic cleansing, what is?

However, they first need to flatten Gaza, ethnically cleanse the population or “transfer” as the Israelis refer to that process and defeat the Palestinian resistance on the battlefield. They will achieve their first objective due to their cutting-edge weaponry and the Dahiya Doctrine.

They will, however, not achieve the second and third objectives as neither will the Palestinian population of 2.3 million allow themselves to be ethnically cleansed, and, for all the military technology available to them, the IDF is taking huge casualties amongst the rubble of Gaza. The Palestinian resistance, many wearing Adidas track bottoms and flip-flops, are inflicting huge casualties on the IDF, both in human and material terms.

According to Israel’s figures there are more than 20,000 soldiers listed as ”disabled” with more than 5,000 having had amputations of various limbs. 9,000 plus Israeli soldiers are receiving psychotherapy and are having multiple PTSD-related conditions, and will not return to combat. The official IDF death toll in Gaza at the moment is around 200, but according to most commentators, the actual death toll is much higher and is not disclosed for fear of affecting the morale of the armed forces.

Severe trauma

Israeli soldiers on the ground have reported severe trauma and inability to fight due to the brutality they have both been a part of and witnessed. The impact on Israeli society of ex-soldiers having serious mental issues will be a lot worse than what happened in the USA post-Vietnam. Israel is also a fraction of the size of America in terms of population and land mass.

The rate of attrition of Israeli armour, especially the much-vaunted Merkava main battle tank, which was supposed to be the gold standard compared to all other main battle tanks in the world, is equally horrendous. There are daily YouTube clips uploaded by the Palestinian resistance fighters of Merkava tanks being blown up using locally made shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons. Each tank has four crewmen, and each armoured personnel carrier (APC) has up to eleven soldiers.

It is estimated that Israel has lost more than 200 tanks and APCs since the Gaza ground invasion.

What is certain is that the Palestinian civilian death toll will continue to rise as the bloodlust amongst all sections of the Israeli population—soldiers, politicians, diplomats, commentators, and the public—is not only grotesque but almost deranged.

What is, however, truly revealing is not so much the blood lust amongst Israelis. To those who have always understood what Zionism meant in reality, the Israeli desire for revenge and bloodlust is not at all surprising. They have had a set of values inculcated from the cradle which has convinced them of their entitlement, and those delusional set of values, together with the narrative that Palestinians are essentially lesser human beings, or ”human animals“ as multiple Israeli politicians have called them, has made Israelis what they are.

What is truly revealing and depressing is the revolting double standards being applied by the West in their response to the indiscriminate slaughter and ethnic cleansing that Israel is openly engaging in. Whilst the response of conservatives within the West is predictable as their mindset is predominately based on a combination of Judeo-Christian values, ignorance, prejudice and outright racism, what is shocking is the response of the left, who pontificate about the sanctity of human life, are supposedly more enlightened, always promoting multicultural values and advocate peace and harmony whenever an opportunity arises.

However, when it comes to Israel and Zionism, all the pretentious values promoted by the left have been found to be nothing more than repugnant sanctimonious humbug, and their moral bankruptcy has been proved to be absolute. At least the conservative alt-right never pretended to be anything but an integral part of the Eretz Yisrael.

What is equally revealing is just how many academics, scholars and media personalities in the West are openly encouraging the indiscriminate slaughter and ethnic cleansing in Gaza on the grounds that the 2.3 million Palestinians caged in Gaza represent an existential threat to Israel.

For them, the decapitation of tens of thousands of women, children and even babies on incubators is justifiable on the grounds that they represent the ultimate threat to Israel and Zionism.

Whilst we cannot change their repugnant and revolting views, at least the fake mask of being civilized human beings they have always worn has finally been removed forever.

Once the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza stops, the West, including the Christian church and the obligatory NGO, will shed their crocodile tears, pretend they care and spout out weasel words about how sorry they are for the loss of innocent lives.

Until 7 October 2023, America, Great Britain, and the EU extended their protective cover for Israeli apartheid, racism, settler colonialism and state terrorism whilst upholding liberal and humanitarian facades. Since 7 October 2023, however, America, Great Britain and the EU have stopped pretending that they care about the Palestinians.

Despite the UN and indeed government agencies within America, Great Britain and the EU describing what is happening in Gaza as catastrophic, apocalyptic, and destruction greater than that in Germany during the Second World War, the American, British, and European conscience is unshaken in their commitment to Israel and Israeli actions.

What is happening to Palestinians—non-white, olive-skinned and predominantly Muslim—does not and will not result in rage and shock amongst the Americans, British and Europeans. Their rage and shock are reserved for when their colonial violence, typically reserved for those they have categorised as not their own (non-white), rebounds and hits them. 7 October 2023 is a classic example of how settler colonialism and oppression rebounded with a vengeance.

The standard operating procedure to deflect any criticism of Israel is to accuse those who point out the truth about Israel as being  ”antisemites“.

Do all those who …

Do all those who accuse Saudi Arabia or Syria of barbaric actions against their people get called Islamophobic?

Do all those who accuse Sri Lanka of discriminating against the Tamils get called anti-Sinhalese?

Do all those who accuse Myanmar of discrimination and violence against the Rohingya get called anti-Buddhist?

Do all those who accuse India of discrimination against Muslims get called anti-Hindu?

Do all those who accuse China of brutality or worse against the Uighur get called anti-Chinese?

The answer is a resounding NO!

Why, then, are those who point out that Israel is an apartheid racist settler colonial nation that systematically brutalizes and oppresses the Palestinians called” anti-Semitic “?

Are the Palestinians the only people in the world who have no rights?

The settler colonial aspect of Israel

Or does, as described above, the settler colonial aspect of Israel require America, Great Britain, and the EU to align themselves with Israel as they consider Israel to be the last bastion of colonialism, which is, after all, how America was created, and which was how both Great Britain and the EU enriched themselves?

The Palestinians, olive-skinned, non-white and mostly Muslim, are simply expendable human collateral who need to be eliminated in order for the last great bastion of white settler colonialism to exist and prosper.

If the answer is not as suggested above, then the answer is influence, money, and power.

Have the West, the Arabs, the Indians, and many others been bought and paid for by the Zionist lobby that, quite literally, seems to control not just our actions but our very emotions to the point that we are all morally bankrupt?

*Seevali Abeysekera is a retired UK businessman who scribes a blog on current affairs and reflections and thoughts of his own life journey. seevaliabeysekera.wordpress.com [IDN-InDepthNews]

By Norman Solomon

Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war. We are not. What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the actual war as a pointed finger is from the moon.

The media words and images reach us light years away from what it’s actually like to be in a war zone. The experience of consuming news from afar could hardly be more different. And beliefs or unconscious notions that media outlets convey war’s realities end up obscuring those realities all the more.

Inherent limitations on what journalism can convey are compounded by media biases. In-depth content analysis by The Intercept found that coverage of the Gaza war by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”

Close to invisible for the U.S. public

What is most profoundly important about war in Gaza—what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized—has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public. Extensive surface coverage seems repetitious and increasingly normal, as death numbers keep rising and Gaza becomes a routine topic in news media. And yet, what’s going on now in Gaza is “the most transparent genocide in human history.” With enormous help from U.S. media and political power structures, the ongoing mass murder—by any other name—has become normalized, mainly reduced to standard buzz phrases, weaselly diplomat-speak and euphemistic rhetoric about the Gaza war. Which is exactly what the top leadership of Israel’s government wants.

Extraordinary determination to keep killing civilians and destroying what little is left of Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza has caused extremes of hunger, displacement, destruction of medical facilities, and expanding outbreaks of lethal diseases, all obviously calculated and sought by Israeli leaders. Thinly reported by U.S. media outlets while cravenly dodged by President Biden and the overwhelming majority of Congress, the calamity for 2.2 million Palestinian people worsens by the day. “Gazans now make up 80 per cent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege,” the United Nations declared this week. The UN statement quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”

Israel is waging a war toward extermination

Israel is waging a war toward extermination. But for the vast majority of Americans, no matter how much mainstream media they consume, the war that actually exists—in contrast to the war reporting by news outlets—remains virtually invisible. Of course, Hamas’s Oct. 7 murderous attack on civilians and its taking of hostages should be unequivocally condemned as crimes against humanity. Such condemnation is fully appropriate, and easy in the United States. “Deploring the crimes of others often gives us a nice warm feeling: we are good people, so different from those bad people,” Noam Chomsky has observed. “That is particularly true when there is nothing much we can do about the crimes of others, so that we can strike impressive poses without cost to ourselves. Looking at our own crimes is much harder, and for those willing to do it, often carries costs.”

With the U.S.-backed war on Gaza now in its fourth month, “looking at our own crimes” can lead to clearly depicting and challenging the role of the U.S. government in the ongoing huge crimes against humanity in Gaza. But such depicting and challenging is distinctly unpopular if not taboo in the halls of government power—even though, and especially because, the U.S. role of massively arming and supporting Israel is pivotal for the war. “For the narcissist, everything that happens to them is a huge deal, while nothing that happens to you matters,” scholar Sophia McClennen wrote last week. “When that logic translates to geopolitics, the disproportionate damage only magnifies. This is why Israel is not held to any standards, while those who question that logic are told to shut up. And if they don’t shut up, they are punished or threatened.”

Further normalizing the slaughter are the actions and inaction of Congress. On Tuesday evening, only 11 senators voted to support a resolution that would have required the Biden administration to report on Israel’s human-rights record in the Gaza war. The sinking of that measure reflects just how depraved the executive and legislative branches are as enablers of Israel.

The horrors in Gaza are being propelled by the U.S. war machine. But you wouldn’t know it from the standard U.S. media, pointing to the moon and scarcely hinting at the utter coldness of its dark side.

Or what happens when legal proceedings at the ICJ expose Western media bias and Israeli state propaganda.

This month, the world watched South Africa initiate International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings on the genocidal acts Israel committed in Gaza. In a two-day session on January 11 and 12, the court heard the extensive evidence the South African legal team had gathered to support their case against Israel, and the rebuttal by the Israeli team.

The hearings were historic for two reasons. First, this was the first time that Israel’s decades-long aggression against the Palestinians was articulated in detail for the world to hear, without having to pass through the distorting lens of Western media or politicians. Second, this was the first time that Israel was substantively held to account in public under international law, without being shielded from such accountability by its Western backers, as it has been for the past century.

The unprecedented nature of the hearings drew international attention. The media around the world covered the proceedings extensively, often with live feeds of both presentations. But in the West, once again an anti-Palestinian media bias became apparent.

Channels like the BBC were accused of not fully showing the South African presentation, while broadcasting more of the Israeli one. American, Canadian and British newspapers were chastised for not featuring the ICJ case on their front pages.

The bias was clearest in the glaring parallels between the main points in Israel’s presentations to the court – which reflected the longstanding main themes of Israeli propaganda – and the reporting of Western mainstream media, with some exceptions. Indeed, Western coverage of the war has been skewed since day one.

The US progressive publication The Intercept did its own analysis of three leading US newspapers – The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times – and found that their reporting “heavily favoured Israel”. It said that they “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7.”

According to the Intercept’s analysis, the word “slaughter” was used in reference to Israeli deaths vs Palestinian deaths in a ratio of 125 to 2; the word “massacre” in a ratio of 60 to 1. Anti-Semitism was mentioned 549 times, while Islamophobia just 79 times.

This anti-Palestinian bias in print media “tracks with a similar survey of US cable news that the authors conducted last month that found an even wider disparity,” it concluded.

Many other such studies and examples of Western media bias towards Israel are now available.

Tweeting the Intercept report, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, asked a pertinent question: “After months of western media misrepresenting or not reporting the unfolding genocide in Gaza and all sort of int’l law violations against Palestinians: I have a question. Don’t journalists have codes of conducts and professional ethics to abide by and be held accountable to?”

To answer her question: They do, in principle. But in practice, journalists and their media managers and owners operate in the context of most Western media playing a central role in the continuing legacies of Western-Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide against the Palestinians.

Consequently, the majority of citizens and politicians are convinced that they must support Israeli policies, even if these include settler-colonial brutality and apartheid.

It is no surprise that American, and most other Western, public opinion in the last half-century or so heavily sided with Israel over the Palestinians – because citizens mainly heard Israeli perspectives that dominated the news media and the statements and policies of their governments.

Over the past three months, however, the war in Gaza has revealed just how much Israeli state propaganda shapes US policy and the media’s dominant narrative of events. As Norman Solomon, media critic and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, put it in a January 18 Common Dreams article:

“What is most profoundly important about the war in Gaza – what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed, and traumatized – has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public … With enormous help from US media and political power structures, the ongoing mass murder – by any other name  – has become normalized, mainly reduced to standard buzz phrases, weaselly diplomat-speak, and euphemistic rhetoric about the Gaza war. Which is exactly what the top leadership of Israel’s government wants.”

This dual legacy of the US’s distorted reporting and dysfunctional state policies is no longer as potent as it used to be, as the global public reactions to the ICJ genocide hearing have shown.

The global protests in solidarity with Palestine revealed that Israel and its Western protectors and media parrots, who repeat largely discredited Israeli propaganda arguments, can no longer convince global audiences to the same extent they did in the past. This is due to Israel’s own brutal actions, but also the changed global information system.

The world now sees daily on social media and some alternative media Israel’s genocidal actions and apartheid policies. The ICJ presentations and thousands of associated articles, commentaries, webinars, public talks and other events across the world exposed these Israel-Palestine realities.

Changed information flows have caused serious concern in Washington, as well as Tel Aviv, because decent, justice-loving citizens reject the US’s fervent support for Israel’s military brutality – and many say they are likely to reject voting for “Genocide Joe” Biden in the presidential election this November. This is what happens when ordinary citizens see the full story of events in Palestine – for the first time in modern history.

A new US opinion poll confirms that likely voters are more inclined to vote for candidates who supported a ceasefire in Gaza, by a 2-to-1 margin (51-23 percent). Among young and non-white voters, who are crucial for a Democratic win, between 56 and 60 percent said they would back ceasefire supporters.

But the growing awareness of what is going on in Israel-Palestine has had an impact well beyond US politics. As South African journalist Tony Karon noted in an article in The Nation on January 11: “So Israel is waging a classic colonial war of pacification of a native population resisting colonization – at a moment when much of the global citizenry is producing the receipts of centuries of Western violence and enslavement, demanding justice and a reordering of global power relations. Standing up for Palestine has become shorthand for that global struggle to change how the world is ruled.”

Indeed, the intense global support for Palestine, which peaked during the ICJ hearing, represents the Global South challenging the political and economic hegemony of the North. People across the world are saying they support justice and will continue to resist Western colonial forces that have ravaged scores of societies for half a millennium.

 Aljazeera

Israel said on Thursday that it expects the International Court of Justice to “drop” the charges against it in South Africa’s lawsuit for genocide in Gaza.

Israeli government spokesman Elon Levy said in a briefing to reporters via the Zoom platform: “We will wait for what the court says.”

Levy added: "We of course expect it (the court) to completely dismiss the false and misleading accusations made by South Africa."

The International Court of Justice said in a statement on Wednesday that it “will issue its order on Friday regarding the request to indicate interim measures submitted by South Africa in the case related to the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.”

It added: "A plenary session will be held at the Peace Palace in The Hague, during which Judge Joan Donoghue, President of the Court, will read the court order."

On December 29, 2023, South Africa filed an “application to institute proceedings against Israel regarding alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide with respect to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” according to a court statement.

“In its application, South Africa also requested the Court to indicate interim measures in order to protect against further grave and serious crimes and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention” and “to ensure that Israel complies with its obligations under the Genocide Convention not to participate in Any acts of genocide."

Public hearings were held on South Africa's request on January 11 and 12.

South Africa is asking the court to issue nine interim decisions, including ordering Israel to immediately cease military operations in Gaza, and not to take steps that would enhance any military operation in Gaza by any group under its control.

It also calls on South Africa to take all necessary measures to prevent genocide against Palestinians, to refrain from any action that falls within the scope of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, and to ensure that displaced persons return to their homes and have access to humanitarian assistance, including food, water, fuel, medical materials, adequate hygiene, and shelter. And clothes.

Also take the necessary steps to punish those involved in acts of genocide, preserve evidence of genocide and not prevent international personnel and other officials from accessing Gaza for this purpose, submit regular reports to the court on the implementation of the aforementioned measures, and refrain from actions that would complicate or prolong the case. Extend it.

Zvi Barel

Joseph Borrell, the European Union's foreign relations chief, had an important takeaway when he said how the war should be ended and the conflict resolved. He said during a speech last Friday at the University of Valladolid (University of Valladolid) in Spain, where he received an honorary doctorate, “We believe that the two-state solution must be imposed from the outside, in order to reach peace. This is despite the fact that Israel repeatedly confirms its opposition to this solution.” In order to prevent it, they went so far as to even establish Hamas. The government of Israel funded Hamas to weaken the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Authority.

Israel was not the one that established Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority is not Fatah, but Borrell does not need to go into marginal details. Borrell has an organized plan focused on preparing the way for an international conference to examine the appropriate methods and tools required to reach a two-state solution. It was presented during the European Union foreign ministers' meeting held last Monday in Brussels, in which the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan participated, as well as the representative of the Arab League and Foreign Minister Israel Katz. Borrell has issued harsh statements against Israel. He said, "The other solutions they [meaning the Israelis] have are to make all the Palestinians leave the country? To kill them all? The way they are destroying Hamas is not the appropriate way. They are sowing hatred for generations to come." These sharp statements come from a foreign minister who has not recorded any notable achievements in the field of the European Union's external relations.

The idea of holding an international conference to discuss a solution to the conflict was not invented by Borrell. It was raised by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas more than two months ago during his meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. This conference, under international sponsorship, and American in particular, could be evidence that the American administration actually intends to advance the two-state solution, and thus achieve the basic condition set by the Palestinian Authority in order for it to be prepared to bear responsibility for the Gaza Strip after the war.

The United States has not yet expressed its willingness to hold such an international conference. Simply holding it could put it on a collision course with Israel. Washington, which coined the term “renewed Palestinian Authority,” has not yet presented the list required for this renewal - the things that Abbas must do to obtain a certificate from the White House, and most importantly, whether the authority will actually be “renewed,” and whether the United States is able to force Israel to grant The Palestinian Authority has the powers to administer Gaza, and under what conditions?

According to sources in the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian journalists, the American envoys who met with Abbas spoke to him about the need to appoint a deputy with powers, in addition to purging the authority of corruption, and including young groups in the leadership of the PLO. They stressed that in any composition or structure of power, Hamas cannot be a partner.

Hamas leaders conducted irregular dialogues on this issue with PLO officials, with the aim of reaching understandings regarding the framework within which Hamas could join the organization. However, the Hamas leadership still rejects the two basic conditions put forward by Abbas for Hamas to join: pursuing peaceful resistance against the occupation, instead of armed struggle, and recognition of international resolutions, including the Oslo Accords, which includes recognition of Israel. These conditions were rejected last July, when the Palestinian factions met in Egypt with the aim of advancing reconciliation, and there are no indications of any changes in the movement’s position. Despite this, the official Palestinian position was and still is that Hamas, during and after the war, is an integral part of the Palestinian people, and must be represented in the PLO as a movement.

This position contains fundamental contradictions, as the leadership of the PLO does not currently have any response to the intellectual differences regarding the issue of the final solution. While the organization recognizes Israel and aspires to a two-state solution, Hamas is in a completely different position. More than 3 months after the war, Hamas published an 18-page document, entitled “This is our story - why the Al-Aqsa flood?” In it, she explains the reasons that prompted her to plan and initiate the attack on Israel. This document is political, and is not directed to the Palestinian public, but rather to Arab and international public opinion. There is no need to address the flawed details and facts it contained, or the efforts made to describe the “horrific crimes” as mistakes, or even a failure to control the forces. In addition, it could have been expected that the document would include any direction regarding the future role that Hamas wants to play in the future, or at least the political vision.

In the final part of the document, Hamas presents eight demands. They all address the continuation of the armed struggle, calling on the international community and the Arab countries to boycott and punish Israel, pushing for a ceasefire, and in particular curbing all plans that aspire to shape the future of Gaza, according to the ambitions of the Zionist occupier, and “no one has the authority to impose His care lies with the Palestinian people, with the exception of the Palestinian people themselves.”

There is no mention in the document of participation in the PLO, the required political solution, or willingness to discuss the two-state solution equation. As Palestinian journalist and researcher Hisham Dibsi asked in an article published on the Lebanese website “Janoubia”: “Is Hamas even capable of reaching any solution outside the framework of Palestinian legitimacy, or will it continue to conduct separate negotiations with Israel and the United States, under Qatari sponsorship?” Dibsi, who strongly criticizes The “Hamas” document presents the position of “Hamas” as one that prefers the “historical right” to the “political right.” This is an important distinction that clearly illustrates the gap between the position of the PLO, which is ready to adopt political solutions that require giving up “historical rights” to control all of Palestine, This includes the right of return for refugees, and the position of Hamas, which sees preferring the right to a Palestinian state as a concession to historical rights.

Language is unable, no matter how eloquent, to bridge these ideological positions that prevent both Hamas and the PLO from building a practical and applicable common denominator that could push towards joint administration of the promised State of Palestine. At the same time, as long as the organization and its leaders, including the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, remain committed to the political and institutional partnership with Hamas, calls for a two-state solution will remain empty. Therefore, the American demand for the Authority to carry out administrative reforms that enable it to be a partner in the management of Gaza, is heading towards the comfortable tactical path, but it ignores the intellectual and ideological separation between the PLO, especially Fatah, and Hamas, which makes the chances of its success slim. This is at a time when Israel, the United States, and the international community in general still embrace the principle that there is no place for Hamas as a partner in the administration of the Palestinian state, especially the administration of Gaza. It must be remembered that all countries that now oppose Hamas, as a component of any future Palestinian administration, maintain political and economic relations with governments in Iraq, and also in Lebanon, where “terrorist” organizations are an integral part of its legitimate political system.

Jewish Rabbi Moshe Friedman said that what Israel and the United States are doing against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip represents an “unprecedented process of genocide,” stressing that capable countries must intervene by force to stop this massacre.

Friedman, who is a conservative Haredi Jew, stressed - in an interview with Al Jazeera Net - that his religious and humanitarian duty requires him to raise his voice and do something to stop what is happening, because history “will condemn everyone who remained silent in the face of the bloodbath flowing in the Gaza Strip currently, which exceeds all the massacres of history.” Including the Holocaust.

The former chief rabbi of the Jews of Austria refused to compare what is happening in the Gaza Strip to the massacres witnessed previously in history, and said that the German city of Dresden, which was subjected to massive bombing shortly after World War II, had escape ports, while Gaza had none.

Moreover, Friedman adds, the German city had food, drink, and health services despite the lack of a mechanism to transfer what it was exposed to to the rest of the world, while Gaza was denied everything.

Immediate intervention is required

From this standpoint, what Gaza is currently being exposed to, in Friedman’s opinion, “is completely different from what happened in the past, and should not be dealt with through descriptions or manipulation of words, but rather through the intervention of the world or parties capable of delivering aid by land, sea and air to keep the Palestinians there alive.”

In addition, making these comparisons does not serve the peace process in the first place, from Friedman’s point of view, “because the children in Gaza will gain nothing from these approaches, and they need immediate action to save their lives.”

Friedman said that world governments are required to intervene immediately and unconditionally "to relieve civilians and children trapped in this massacre, without playing with words in order to slow down time."

Counterfeiting the Torah

Regarding the view of some Israelis on the extermination of the people of Gaza as an application of biblical texts, Friedman said that “there is no comparison between what happened in the Torah against the Amalekites and what is happening in Gaza,” stressing that “the extermination of the Amalekites is restricted by conditions, because the Hebrews (during that massacre) forbade besieging the Amalekites” from all directions."

He added, "The siege was imposed on the Amalekites from three sides, while the fourth left them as an escape hatch. Any comparison between the annihilation of Gaza and what happened to the Amalekites is wrong. Moreover, at that time there were no such images of genocide that amounted to complete erasure from the map."

Moreover, the theological and modern opinion of Friedman “was unanimously agreed upon in the time of Chief Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (in Andalusia) that the conditions of what happened to the Amalekites were no longer suitable for repetition,” adding that “the great rabbis believe that implementing the Amalekite conditions requires the existence of two Jewish and Palestinian states so that a decision can be made.” What should be done, while emphasizing that the Palestinians are not Amalek.”

He stressed that from the biblical perspective, the State of Israel “has absolutely no relationship with the current entity, even if this entity amends its policies.”

In view of these biblical data, Friedman asserts that some people issue arbitrary rulings to exterminate an entire race claiming that they are the Amalekites, even though the truth is quite the opposite, according to Friedman, who stressed that “history will condemn all those who hesitated to save these innocents, and those who aborted attempts to save them. Because what is happening is a bloodbath that history has never witnessed before.”

The Court of Justice will not stop the massacre

Friedman expressed his concern about the appointment of the former president of the Supreme Court in Israel as a member of the International Court of Justice, which is examining the case brought by South Africa, because he said publicly that “the killing of 5,000 Palestinians is a legitimate act if it leads to the liquidation of 5 members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).” .

He added, "This biased statement carries a prejudgment that requires the immediate removal of this judge from the court, and this did not happen despite the fact that the Court of Justice in The Hague is more stringent than all European courts."

Friedman stressed that he is “not comfortable with the work of the court in its entirety,” adding, “Everyone knows that its ruling against Israel will not be implemented and will not provide anything for the people of Gaza,” adding, “There are forces that are biased toward Israel, and others that support the Palestinians, and the latter can intervene forcefully to save people regardless of the positions of others.” .

Regarding the Palestinian tragedy in general, Friedman said that it will not end on its own and that others must end it, adding, “All international and humanitarian forces must put an end to what is happening in Gaza so that it will be the beginning of what is to come, because the occupation will not end on its own.”

History condemns Biden

He said that history will condemn US President Joe Biden for what he does and does not do regarding this genocide, and that he must not place obstacles in the way of those who try to stop what is happening if he is afraid of stopping it, adding, "What is happening will have catastrophic repercussions on the entire world."

He concluded by saying that he does not want to distract attention from what is happening in Gaza by talking about other matters, stressing that what concerns him now is "pushing the world towards saving the innocent people who are helpless."

Source: Al Jazeera

A team of more than 600 lawyers from around the world submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court as part of a case they filed against Israel on charges of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.

This came in two separate meetings held by lawyers with the court’s Public Prosecutor’s Office and its Victims Department.

This team, led by French lawyer Gilles Defer, submitted to the International Criminal Court last November a 56-page lawsuit demanding the opening of an investigation into the incidents attributed to the occupation army in Gaza since the seventh of last October.

The text of the lawsuit traces the threads of the case from its beginning, starting with the period of the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, then the Nakba of the Palestinian people, the various Israeli-Arab wars, the Oslo Accords of 1993, the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip and Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, then the ongoing war on the Strip.

The submission of new evidence in the case file comes a day before an expected decision by the International Court of Justice regarding the lawsuit filed by South Africa against Israel on charges of committing genocide in Gaza.

The United Nations court said that it will hold a plenary session at the Peace Palace in The Hague, during which the president of the court, Judge Joan Donoghue, will announce the order of the committee consisting of 17 judges.

The court may issue an order to Israel to stop its war on Gaza within the framework of so-called "temporary measures", in order to protect the Palestinians of Gaza until the essence of the case is decided, which may take years.

Since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza that, as of yesterday, Wednesday, left 25,700 martyrs and 63,740 injured, according to data from the Ministry of Health in the Strip.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies

The Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority said that 66% of the people of the Gaza Strip suffer from the spread of water-borne diseases such as cholera, chronic diarrhea, and intestinal diseases, due to the lack of potable water and the closure of all water desalination plants as a result of the ongoing Israeli occupation aggression.

It explained, in a statement, that the Israeli occupation’s bombing of sewage lines and their flooding leads to a health and environmental catastrophe, especially the Sheikh Radwan Pool, whose level has reached a critical level, due to the accumulation of rainwater and the leakage of wastewater into it.

It pointed out that some areas suffer from a lack of containers, and residents of other areas experience a complete disruption of waste collection services during the raids, stressing the need for urgent intervention to improve waste management and ensure continuity of service, and for the international community to pay attention to the situation in Jenin Governorate and provide the necessary support to improve the infrastructure. It ensures the provision of basic services to citizens in the face of these humanitarian challenges.

Geneva - The Israeli army has killed 94 university professors, along with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, as part of its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, ongoing since 7 October 2023, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a statement issued on Saturday

According to Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army has targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the Strip in deliberate and specific air raids on their homes without prior notice. Those targeted have been crushed to death beneath the rubble, along with members of their families and other displaced families.

Initial data indicates that there is no justification or clear reason behind the targeting of these people, said the Geneva-based human rights organization.

Those targeted include 17 individuals who held professor degrees, 59 who held doctoral degrees, and 18 who held master’s degrees, the rights group stated. Due to challenges with documentation brought on by movement difficulties, the disruption of communications and the Internet, and the existence of thousands of unaccounted-for/missing individuals, Euro-Med Monitor estimates suggest that there are additional numbers of targeted academics, including those with advanced degrees, whose deaths have not been tallied.

The targeted academics studied and taught across a variety of academic disciplines, and many of their ideas served as cornerstones of academic research in the Gaza Strip’s universities. The rights group added that given the systematic and widespread destruction by Israeli forces of cultural buildings, including institutions of great historical significance, it is highly likely that Israel is intentionally targeting every aspect of life in Gaza.

Israel systematically destroyed every university in the Gaza Strip in stages over the course of the more than 100-day attack. The first stage included the bombing of the Islamic and Al-Azhar universities. The other universities suffered similar assaults; some, like Al-Israa University in southern Gaza, were totally destroyed after initially being used as military barracks. The Israeli media released a video clip on Wednesday 17 January, capturing Al-Israa’s explosion. The explosion occurred 70 days after the Israeli military transformed the school into barracks and, later, into a temporary detention facility.

According to preliminary estimates, the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of university students, reported Euro-Med Monitor. The rights group pointed out that destroying universities and killing academics and students will make it more difficult to resume university and academic life when the genocide ends, saying it may take years for studies to be resumed in an environment that has been completely destroyed.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 4,327 students have been killed and 7,819 others injured, while 231 teachers and administrators have been killed and 756 injured during the ongoing attacks. Meanwhile, 281 state-run schools and 65 UNRWA-run schools in the Gaza Strip have been completely or partially destroyed.

Ninety per cent of state-run schools have been subjected to direct or indirect damage, and about 29% of school buildings remain out of service as a result of their being completely demolished or severely damaged. There are 133 other schools being used as shelter centres in the Strip.

Israel’s widespread and intentional destruction of Palestinian cultural and historical properties, including universities, schools, libraries, and archives, demonstrates its apparent policy of rendering the Gaza Strip uninhabitable, Euro-Med Monitor warned. The attacks are creating an environment devoid of basic services and necessities and may eventually force the Strip’s population to emigrate.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stressed that the targeting of civilian objects by armed forces, particularly those that are historical or cultural artifacts protected by special laws, is not only a serious breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but falls under the purview of the crime of genocide.

“He’ll keep some of the hostages forever,” Jacob Nagel said. “This will be his insurance policy that no one will kill him." But Gershon Baskin expects a fight to the death.

A Wednesday NBC report echoed recent assessments that the IDF is likely closing in on Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, but experts differed in their estimations of when Sinwar expects to meet his end and on what terms. 

The report comes after the IDF found cages deep under Khan Yunis in which hostages are believed to have been held, a possible indication of the whereabouts of the terrorist leader, who is believed to have surrounded himself with hostages as human shields.

“It is a fair assumption that Sinwar and Hamas leadership were close to where those hostages were kept— and then they all moved on,” said Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman who is now a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies thinktank. “I think being close to hostages has saved his life more than once.”

The article noted, however, that “Israeli forces… cannot rule out the possibility that [Sinwar] may have crossed into Egypt through a tunnel.”

Does Sinwar want to make it out alive? 

Different defense analysts and Israeli leaders gave different assessments of Sinwar’s end-game with respect to his own life and the lives of the hostages.

“He’ll keep some of the hostages forever,” Jacob Nagel, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is quoted as saying. “This will be his insurance policy that no one will kill him.”

Gershon Baskin, the Israeli diplomat and former mediator between the Jewish State and Hamas, said he is more inclined to expect a fight to the death.

“This is not Yasser Arafat in 1982 escaping to Beirut with the Palestinian Liberation Organization,” Baskin said, citing Hamas’s religious fundamentalism. 

“I believe Sinwar knows he will die a martyr,” he added. “This is Hamas’s distorted version of Islam. Life on earth is short, and paradise is eternal.”

Today (Thursday), the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) considered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements against Qatar regarding its mediation in the hostage issue in the Gaza Strip “reflecting the reality of the occupation’s position, which obstructs reaching an agreement.”

Taher Al-Nono, media advisor to the head of the Hamas political bureau, said in a statement, a copy of which was received by Xinhua News Agency, "Netanyahu's recent statements reflect the reality of the occupation's position, which obstructs reaching an agreement on the prisoners."

He added, "We denounce the occupation leaders' targeting the State of Qatar due to its pan-Arab and humanitarian stances towards the aggression and massacres taking place in the Gaza Strip."

He added, "We affirm that Qatar is playing its active political role in order to stop the aggression against our people and achieve achievement in the exchange file."

Yesterday, Wednesday, Qatar strongly denounced statements attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding its mediation in the hostage issue in the Gaza Strip, considering that if these statements are true, Netanyahu is obstructing and undermining mediation efforts for narrow political reasons.

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majid Al-Ansari said in a post on his official account on the (X) website, “We strongly denounce the statements attributed to the Israeli Prime Minister in various media reports about the Qatari mediation.”

Al-Ansari added that if the circulating statements turn out to be true, the Israeli Prime Minister will obstruct and undermine mediation efforts for narrow political reasons instead of prioritizing saving lives, including Israeli hostages.

He stressed that if the statements are proven true, they are irresponsible and obstruct efforts to save innocent lives, adding that they are "not surprising."

He stated that for months, after successful mediation last year that led to the release of more than 100 hostages, Qatar has engaged in an ongoing dialogue with all parties, including the Israeli party, in an attempt to establish a framework for a new hostage agreement and ensure the entry of the necessary humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

He concluded by saying, "We hope that Netanyahu will be busy working to overcome the obstacles to reaching an agreement to release the hostages," instead of being preoccupied with Qatar's strategic relationship with the United States, as he put it.

Israeli media quoted Netanyahu in a leaked recording during his meeting with the families of prisoners detained in Gaza, saying that Qatar’s mediation between Israel and Hamas represents more problematic than the United Nations and the Red Cross, according to what was reported by the website of the Qatari Al Jazeera satellite channel. .

According to the leaks, Netanyahu stated that he was disappointed that the United States, which extended its presence at the military base in Qatar, was not putting more pressure on Doha and that Doha was not putting pressure on Hamas even though it had influence over the movement because it financed it, as he put it.

Last November, Qatar, Egypt and the United States mediated to reach a temporary truce that lasted a week between Israel and Hamas, during which dozens of detainees in Gaza and Israel were exchanged, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged coastal strip was facilitated.

This January, Doha, in cooperation with France, mediated an agreement between Israel and Hamas, which includes the entry of medicines and a shipment of humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip, in exchange for the delivery of medicines needed by Israeli detainees in the Strip.

Yesterday, Wednesday, the people of the town of Abasan Al-Kabira, east of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, were able to rescue a young Palestinian man alive after he spent 8 full days under the rubble of a house bombed by Israeli occupation aircraft.

The townspeople transported the injured young man to the hospital in a civilian car, and his body showed symptoms of extreme emaciation and weakness.

With the intensification of the Israeli aggression against Khan Yunis in recent days, civil defense crews were unable to reach the homes targeted by the occupation, especially with the occupation soldiers shooting at everyone who moved and targeting ambulances.

The Israeli aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip resulted in the death of 25,700 peeople and the injury of 63,740 others, most of whom were children and women, in addition to the massive destruction and unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe caused by the occupation’s aerial and artillery bombardment.

Source: Al Jazeera

Ami Ayalon - a former head of the Israeli internal security service (Shin Bet) - said that the war in Gaza cannot be won, and warned of the outbreak of a new intifada in the West Bank, stressing that Israel awaits what is worse than October 7, 2023 if it rejects peace. 

With these ideas, Le Monde newspaper summarized an interview - conducted by its special correspondent Kerem Maharal in Israel, and edited by Jean-Philippe Remy - with Admiral Ami Ayalon (78 years old), author of the book “Friendly Fire... This is how Israel became its own worst enemy,” and who undertook an intellectual and political journey that led him to question... About the concept of the enemy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and about the blindness of the Israeli security vision, which threatens - according to him - an endless war.

Ayalon began his speech - bypassing the journalist's question about the transformation represented by the withdrawal of part of the Israeli forces from Gaza, and does it mean the beginning of the end of the war? - saying that the problem facing all liberal democracies lies in the tension between terrorism and human rights, because any society that suffers from fear gives Priority is given to security over rights, especially if it is not his own rights, but rather the rights of others and the rights of minorities.

Ayalon: There are Palestinians who support Hamas not because they are committed to its ideology, but because they see it as the only organization fighting for their freedom and ending the Israeli occupation, and it is important to understand this in order to imagine what will happen next.

You must have a plan for the next day

This is what happens in Europe, the United States, and Israel, and the concept of victory when a democratic state confronts a terrorist group - according to Ayalon - is different from what it is in wars between countries, and is impossible to achieve, which means that reaching a political deal is better than military action, because any A "terrorist organization" will never surrender by raising the white flag.

Israel may kill members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), as Ayalon says, but Hamas will not disappear. He explained that there are Palestinians who support Hamas not because they are committed to its ideology, but because they see it as the only organization fighting for their freedom and ending the Israeli occupation, and it is important to understand this. It's up to us to imagine what will happen next.

But the Israeli government refuses to consider a clear solution for the “day after” in Gaza, and for the political system that will prevail after the war, and focuses on dismantling Hamas’ military capabilities and eliminating the movement’s political leadership. These are two goals that the Israeli army can achieve, but it takes two years to do so. Will we have the time?

Ayalon: We must fight for the Palestinian state, not because we love the Palestinians, but for the sake of our security and to save our identity (French)

Ayalon believes that there is a need to have a plan “for the next day” because the absence of political goals makes war an end in itself rather than a means to an end. When war becomes an end, it turns into an endless war, and those who do not have political plans cannot determine what victory is.

The former head of Shin Bet said that there are only two options for any political solution: either one state for all, and this will never succeed, because Islam and Judaism do not separate religion from the entity of the state, or the existence of two states in two different regions.

The two-state solution

Ayalon advises trying the two-state solution, but only after "understanding why it has not succeeded so far, taking into account that each camp has its own reading of the events of the past 30 years."

The Israelis - according to him - believe that they were willing to give up part of the land in exchange for security, but instead the intifada, attacks, etc. broke out, while the Palestinians say that they wanted to establish their own state, but instead they saw the establishment of more settlements and more Violence, restrictions on their movements, etc., and thus both sides felt betrayed and were convinced of the necessity of fighting all the time.

When asked what makes the two-state solution more likely to succeed now? Ayalon responded by saying, “Because from now on there is no solution other than an explosion of violence. I am trying to make clear to everyone who says I am wrong that if we reject peace, what awaits us will be more violent than October 7 (2023).”

Did the Hamas attack surprise you that day? The journalist asks him, and the former Shin Bet head responds that he said two weeks before October 7 in a television interview, “We are heading towards a major wave of violence. The energy is there, we feel it and we see an increase in attacks in the West Bank. We feel it in speeches and statements. This is based on "Instead of understanding what our enemies are telling us, our politicians focus on dividing Israelis just to elect them."

Ayalon added, "I did not imagine this attack in its particularities, but I was certain that we were heading toward a major series of acts of violence."

He concluded that Israeli civil society, which protested 10 months before the war, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to destroy its democracy through his judicial amendments, will return to demonstrating and “I hope that they will resume to demand the real solution, which is security, democracy, and ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, because the three are inseparable.” We must fight for the Palestinian state, not because we love the Palestinians, but for the sake of our security and to save our identity.”

Source: Le Monde

Can the occupying state achieve the goals set by the government for the aggression against Gaza? Today, after 111 days of war against the Gaza Strip, it seems clear that the occupation army is unable and weaker to achieve the two main goals that it announced at the beginning: eliminating Hamas and returning all Israeli hostages, in light of continued military pressure.

In this context, the prominent intelligence analyst, Yossi Melman, saw in the Hebrew newspaper (Haaretz) that the talk is about goals that cannot be achieved in any way, adding that the goals are nothing more than empty and vague slogans launched by Israeli politicians from personal standpoints, and that it is Impossible to reach, as he put it.

He added: “Victory cannot be achieved without specific goals, and therefore the war will not stop unless several developments occur, including the withdrawal of Ministers Gadi Eisenkot and Benny Gantz from the government, and the enemy of the masses towards the entity to demonstrate in the streets, which will force decision makers to provide the date of the general elections,” explaining that “the chances of this scenario occurring are weak, and therefore the displaced from (the Gaza envelope) will not be able to return to their homes in the near term, and in return, Hezbollah will continue the bombing in the north, and thus will prevent the residents of the border settlements from returning to their homes.”

In connection with the above, writer Anshel Baber said in Haaretz, “A number of officers from various ranks in the Israeli army believe that the tunnel network in the Gaza Strip is much larger and more complex than initially estimated.” Moreover, there is increasing conviction among senior officials in the Israeli army that their forces will not destroy all, not even most of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad tunnels in the Gaza Strip.”

He added: “The tunnels existed in Gaza before the establishment of Hamas in 1987, and it is now clear that, for the most part, they will remain in place after the current war.”

He continued: “More than ten years have passed since the discovery of the first tunnel near the Erez Crossing in 2005, before the security establishment began the work of constructing the underground obstacle, and work on establishing the obstacle was completed at the end of 2021, with great promises, and the security leadership was certain “It will prevent any large-scale attack on Israeli territory.”

The writer quoted an intelligence source who has been following Hamas for many years: “The obstacle led to the decline of the issue of tunnels inside the Gaza Strip on the army’s list of priorities.” That doesn't mean we didn't care. But there was an impression in the security establishment that as long as these tunnels did not cross the border, they did not pose a threat to us.” But the obstacle did not pass the test on October 7, and the above-ground wall was abandoned, and the tunnels inside the Strip swallowed more than 150 kidnapped persons.”

The writer, whose article was reported by the Institute for Palestine Studies in Al-Arabiya, stressed that “the assumption that (operationally seizing) the land above the tunnels for several weeks will force Hamas members to leave them due to the loss of oxygen, water, and food, turned out to be a wrong assumption, as it became clear that the tunnels “Not only are well supplied with food and drink for a long stay, but it allowed the movement of troops between several areas of the city, and in the Strip.”

He pointed out, “Throughout the war, the army announced the destruction of the Hamas brigades in the northern Gaza Strip, but it found itself fighting the remnants of these brigades in other areas.” Every time there was evidence of the presence of kidnapped people in the tunnels, it turned out that they had been transferred from there to another tunnel some time ago.”

He also said: “Last week, the New York Times quoted senior officials in the security establishment as estimating that the length of the tunnel network in the Gaza Strip was estimated at 700 km, and this is in contrast to intelligence estimates that reached 400 km at the beginning of the war.”

He added: “In recent weeks, instead of seeking to destroy the entire network of tunnels under Gaza, the army set a new goal: preventing Hamas from military use of the tunnels in the future. But it is not clear how to do this, and if all the central tunnels were discovered, and even those that were discovered, there would not be time to destroy them. So far, the army has found 1,000 tunnel openings throughout the Strip. It is plausible that there are thousands more that have not been detected, and it seems that the resistance fighters can remove the fill from the openings and restore the tunnel network.”

He concluded: “The security establishment must acknowledge that destroying the tunnels was an unrealistic goal from the beginning. Perhaps the army can confront them as a military threat, but these tunnels will remain under Gaza,” as he put it.

The Chinese Ambassador to the State of Palestine, Zeng Jixin, confirmed to Al-Quds that the People's Republic of China has worked hard over the past months and continues its efforts to achieve a possible ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, stressing that China supports peace efforts in the region and rejects the interference of foreign countries in the internal affairs of Arab countries.

Jixin said, in response to Al-Quds’ questions, during his meeting at the embassy headquarters in Ramallah yesterday, with journalists working for local media outlets, “The escalating conflict in the Gaza Strip is causing huge losses among innocent civilians, and it leads to serious humanitarian disasters and the scope of negative impacts expands rapidly”, China has always stood for fairness and justice, and worked hard to achieve a ceasefire and violence, restore peace and protect civilians.

During his speech at the beginning of the meeting and his welcome to the journalists, Jixin said: “Chinese President Xi Jinping had the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity 11 years ago, in order to push all countries to build the planet Earth on which we live as a large, harmonious family, which received wide applause and a positive response from Middle Eastern countries and other countries of the world.

Jixin continued, “In the face of the turbulent international and regional situation, China cooperated with the countries of the Middle East in moving forward with all courage, and advancing the consolidation of the concept of a community with a shared future for humanity in the Middle East with concrete steps, the most important of which are: broad Chinese-Arab consensus on building a community with a shared future, creating a successful model for implementing the Global Security Initiative, and China's commitment to justice and fairness in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

Meanwhile, in response to a journalist’s question, Jixin said, “We believe that with regard to war and peace, life and death, countries with great influence must play a constructive role in the ceasefire, make every effort to limit civilian casualties, and stand to "The aspect of peace and life, and this is what China does."

According to Jixin, “The call has become widespread in the international community for an immediate ceasefire. However, the United States is using various excuses to prevent reaching a consensus on this issue in the Security Council by using its veto power. This is a blatant disdain for international justice and fairness and the authority of Security Council".

He continued, "On the one hand, the United States and Western countries are promoting the lies of the century regarding China's Xinjiang, and accusing China of practicing what is called (genocide) and (forced labor) in Xinjiang, under the pretext of being keen to protect human rights, and through which they seek to contain China and distort the facts." On the other hand, it began to ignore the horrific conditions in the Gaza Strip, which confirms its adherence to double standards in its entirety.

Jixin stressed that China worked as a large and responsible country to establish a community with a shared future for humanity, by implementing the Global Security Initiative and advancing the resolution of differences through dialogue and consultation, as happened in the “reconciliation of the century” between Saudi Arabia and Iran, supporting Syria to return to the League of Arab States, and supporting the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore its legitimate national rights, and make efforts to bring peace to Gaza.

Jixin stressed that China believes that the peoples of the Middle East are the masters of the region, and has been supporting Middle Eastern countries to resolve differences through dialogue and consultation and to maintain the security of the region through solidarity and cooperation.

On the other hand, Jixin affirmed, in a question to Al-Quds, that China remains in solidarity with the Arab and Islamic countries, and steadfastly supports the just cause of the Palestinian people and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, which is its established historical position and will not change it, noting that in November 2023, the joint delegation of foreign ministers of Arab and Islamic countries chose China as the first stop for its international mediation tour, reflecting the good tradition of mutual understanding and support between the two sides.

Jixin noted that China participated in the draft resolutions presented by the Arab countries at the United Nations, and succeeded in pushing the UN Security Council to pass the first resolution since the outbreak of the conflict during its period as its rotating presidency of the Council.

Jixin also stressed that China has been supporting Middle Eastern countries to achieve strategic independence, opposes the interference of external forces in the internal affairs of countries in the region, and plays a constructive role in promoting peace and stability in the region.

Jixin noted that in March of last year, thanks to Chinese mediation, Saudi Arabia and Iran achieved historic reconciliation, followed by the wave of reconciliation in the Middle East that prompted Syria’s official return to the League of Arab States, which set a model for settling disputes and disagreements and achieving good neighborliness between the countries of the region through dialogue and consultation.
Jixin said: “The reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is an important victory for dialogue and peace, and came as a useful exercise in resolving hot issues by ways with Chinese characteristics. China has remained a positive, reliable mediator with sincere intentions, and has never sought to use force, pursue selfish geopolitical interests, or impose Its will over others, and it continued to support the peoples of the Middle East to explore development paths with their own independent will, and supports the countries of the Middle East to settle differences through dialogue and consultation.”
"China will continue to promote security and stability in the Middle East, conduct cooperation for development and prosperity, promote solidarity and self-strengthening, and make more contributions to achieving reconciliation, peace and harmony in the region," Jixin continued.

On the other hand, in response to journalists’ questions, Jixin said: “China is strengthening its humanitarian aid to extend a helping hand to the people of the Gaza Strip who are going through ordeals, and has provided urgent cash aid worth two million US dollars to the Palestinian National Authority and the International Relief Agency (UNRWA), in addition to urgent humanitarian supplies worth 15 million Chinese yuan, including food and medicine, to the Gaza Strip via Egypt, and China will provide two additional batches of urgent humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

Jixin pointed to the efforts and cooperation between Palestine and China in several areas, including advancing negotiations on establishing a free trade area. China will also continue its humanitarian efforts and provide humanitarian aid, especially to the Gaza Strip, noting the visit of President Mahmoud Abbas last year to China and that 6 cooperation agreements were signed between the two countries in the presence of Presidents Abbas and Xi Jinping.

On the other hand, Jixin confirmed that the first Sino-Arab summit was held in 2022, and President Xi Jinping reached important consensuses with the leaders of Arab countries, which led Sino-Arab relations to the best period in history.

Jixin added that over the past decade, China and the Arab countries have achieved fruitful results, as the volume of trade exchange between them exceeded $430 billion in 2022. This is equivalent to two times what it was 10 years ago, and the balance of direct investments exchanged between China and the Arab countries exceeded 30 billion dollars, an increase of about two times what it was 10 years ago. The two sides have also implemented more than 200 major projects within the framework of the Belt and Road construction, and nearly two billion people have benefited from this cooperation.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza announced on Thursday that the number of victims of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Strip since October 7 has risen to 25,900 killed and 64,110 wounded.

The ministry said in a press conference by its spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra, “The Israeli occupation committed 21 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, claiming 200 killed and 370 wounded during the past 24 hours.”

The ministry added, "The Israeli occupation is committing genocide in UNRWA shelter centers and in the Al-Mawasi area, which it claims is safe."

Al Jazeera confirmed that 20 Palestinians were killed and 150 others were injured in an Israeli bombing of citizens while they were waiting for humanitarian aid at the Kuwait Square, east of the Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City.

It explained that the occupation tanks fired shells and direct bullets at the citizens after they surrounded the area, noting that the area where the citizens gathered is the only point from which the already very limited aid enters.

For his part, Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that the Civil Defense forces are unable to reach the area as a result of the occupation forces’ siege on it.

On the 111th day of the aggression against Gaza, the Israeli army focused its bombing on Khan Yunis and targeted the Nasser Medical Complex and a center for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) housing thousands of displaced people, resulting in more than 50 dead.

Medical sources said that 3 Palestinians - including two children - were killed in an Israeli bombing that targeted the Al-Satar Al-Gharbi area, north of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli occupation aircraft also continued its violent bombardment in the Al-Amal neighborhood and the vicinity of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, west of the city of Khan Yunis.

A published poll showed that more than one in three Americans believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.

According to the Economist/YouGov poll, roughly equal numbers of adults believe that Israeli military attacks against Palestinians, which are estimated to have killed more than 25,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them civilians, since October 7, amount to genocide: 35% They say so, and 36% say it is not so. t, with 29% undecided.

The United States insists it is trying to bring aid into Gaza, and the United Nations warns millions of 'risk of famine'

Among younger Americans, and along political affiliations, the divisions are more pronounced. Nearly half of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 29, or 49%, say Israel is committing genocide, while 24% disagree and 27% are unsure.

The numbers also look very similar for registered Democrats, with 49%-21% believing in the genocide characterization, while 30% are undecided. As for Republicans, they are more supportive of Israel's actions, as 57% of respondents said that there is no genocide, while only 18% said that there is genocide, and exactly a quarter of them are not sure.

The vote, which was held between January 21 and 23, comes as the International Court of Justice in The Hague prepares to issue a provisional ruling on Friday (26/1) on the South African genocide case against Israel, and a separate lawsuit against the Joe administration. Biden on charges of genocide. It advances the “failure to prevent genocide.”

The ICJ case, which was heard over two days earlier this month, is seen as an important barometer of international sentiment towards the Israeli campaign in Gaza. South Africa claimed that more than 50 countries agreed with its assertion that Israel demonstrated a “chilling” and “indisputable” intent to commit genocide in Gaza during its military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks.

South African lawyer Adila Hashim said: “This court has the benefit of evidence obtained over the past 13 weeks that demonstrates, indisputably, a pattern of conduct and relevant intent that justifies a plausible allegation of genocide.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said these allegations were false. He added: “We are fighting terrorists, and we are fighting lies. “Israel is accused of committing genocide while fighting genocide.”

In a related case, a first hearing is scheduled for Friday in a federal lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) alleging that the Biden administration failed to enforce its duties under US and international law to prevent Israel from killing civilians in Gaza.

“The United States has the means available to have a deterrent effect on Israeli officials who are now pursuing acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the complaint stated.

The United States categorically rejects the accusation that Israel is violating the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

South Africa is seeking a ruling from the judges of the International Court of Justice for an immediate ceasefire or cessation of hostilities.

The lawsuit, filed by CCR in California on behalf of several Palestinian groups, asks the court to prevent the United States from providing weapons, money and diplomatic support to Israel.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that he presented - during his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - a plan to move from a temporary truce to bring in aid and release hostages towards a permanent ceasefire.

Cameron explained - via a tweet on his account on the "X" website - that the plan aims for a long-term political solution and includes the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The President briefed the British Foreign Secretary on the latest developments in the occupied Palestinian territory, especially in the Gaza Strip, and stressed the necessity of immediately stopping the Israeli aggression against our people in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, and the necessity of accelerating the introduction of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, and enabling shelter centers and hospitals to do their part to alleviate the situation. The suffering of citizens, as well as stopping the attacks of the occupation forces and terrorist settlers in the West Bank.

The President renewed the State of Palestine’s categorical rejection of displacing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, including Jerusalem, stressing that there is no security or military solution for the Gaza Strip, and that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state, and it is not possible to accept or deal with the plans of the occupation authorities in Separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, including Jerusalem, reoccupying it, or cutting off any part of it.

The President stressed the need for the Israeli occupation authorities to stop their oppressive practices, ethnic cleansing, undermining the two-state solution, the crimes of terrorist settlers, and the attacks of the occupation forces, and to stop withholding Palestinian “clearance” funds.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats in the US Senate supported a statement that reaffirmed the United States’ support for the two-state solution to end the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” after statements by Netanyahu sparked global controversy, in which he declared his opposition to the two-state solution project.

49 out of a total of 51 Democratic members of the Senate supported an amendment that supports a negotiated solution to the conflict, leading to the existence of two Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side, ensuring the survival of the occupying state and meeting the “legitimate aspirations” of the Palestinians to establish their state.

Senator Brian Schatz proposed this measure as an amendment to a bill that would provide national security aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. “What will determine the future of Israel and Palestine is whether there is hope or not,” Schatz said in a press conference. “The two-state solution must be that hope.” .

As the Israeli occupation war in Gaza raged, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press conference this month that he opposes the establishment of any Palestinian state that does not guarantee Israel’s security, while his speech raised international concern, including in the United States, Israel’s largest supporter. Washington insists that the two-state solution is the only possible way to achieve lasting peace in the region.

Many members of the Democratic Party, to which President Joe Biden belongs, are pressuring the administration to do more to deal with the heavy losses inflicted on Palestinian civilians due to the Israeli occupation war against Gaza.

Israel is experiencing an internal dispute over the occupation of the Philadelphia border axis between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, a desire supported by the Israeli extreme right and opposed by the army, while Cairo rejects it in a way that is not firm enough, according to experts and analysts.

Talk about occupying the Philadelphia Axis - which is known in Palestinians as the Saladin Axis - came back again after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the necessity of keeping the axis under Israel’s control, claiming that it is an arms smuggling corridor that must be closed.

But Cairo denied these allegations through the head of the State Information Service, Diaa Rashwan, who said that Netanyahu’s speech was a prelude to reoccupying the axis, a clear violation of the Camp David Agreement signed between the two sides, and reflects the Israelis’ desire to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Rashwan said that the occupation of the axis may expose relations between the two sides to a serious and serious threat, stressing that Egypt will not mortgage its borders to a group of extremist Israeli leaders who want to drag the region towards instability.

According to Hebrew media, Cairo has recently rejected Israel’s military operation in the region, and has also rejected arrangements proposed by Tel Aviv to monitor the axis technologically.

The motive is not military

Therefore, Netanyahu’s talk about occupying the axis is nothing but a reflection of his desire to completely occupy the Gaza Strip. Because he considers it an integral part of the Balfour Declaration, and therefore he tries to restore it whenever he finds a suitable circumstance, says military expert Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi.

During his participation in the program “Gaza... What Next?”, Al-Duwairi said that controlling the axis is not useful from a military standpoint, because Egypt dealt with the tunnel crisis and flooded it with water up to 30 meters, and confirmed this matter publicly.

Accordingly, talk about reoccupying this axis does not represent a military need, but rather represents a need for the extreme right, which dreams of returning to Gaza again, according to political analyst Muhannad Mustafa.

While the extremists are trying to push towards a complete occupation of the axis, the military establishment wants to launch a quick operation and then withdraw after reaching new understandings with Egypt that allow Israel to monitor the region technologically, in Mustafa’s opinion.

Mustafa attributes the absence of consensus regarding occupying the axis - which is actually on the table - to the high political and military cost that Israel will pay, “because the process is very similar to the experience of southern Lebanon, which cost it a lot and did not achieve security.”

Breach of the Camp David Accords

Despite the increasing possibility of Israel moving forward with its plans, it will clash with the Camp David Accords, of which the axis is part according to the 2005 annex, as journalist Muhammad Al-Satohi confirms.

Accordingly, Israel's occupation of the axis - in Al-Satohi's opinion - represents a complete Israeli violation of its agreement with Egypt, which will face great danger if it loses security control over this border strip.

From this standpoint, Al-Satohi believes that Egypt will not allow Israel to take unilateral steps in this region, “which explains the statements made by Rashwan, which somewhat broke the calm language that Cairo had adopted from the beginning of the crisis,” he said.

The statements of the head of the Egyptian State Information Service reflect Cairo’s feeling that Israel has a serious intention to occupy the axis in preparation for its larger goal of displacing the residents of Gaza towards Sinai, as Al-Satohi says.

Al-Duwairi agrees with the idea and quality of the Israeli intention to occupy the axis unless control is achieved through a new agreement with Egypt, but he confirms that invading the region requires crushing more than a million displaced people who are currently in the region.

Although Israel entered this region in the past and demolished tents on those in it, the situation is different this time, not only because of the presence of more than a million people, but also because of the strong resistance it will face on the ground.

Facilitating displacement

Aside from the security goals that Netanyahu talks about, the real goal of the attempt to occupy the axis is to facilitate the process of voluntarily or forcibly displacing the population, says Mustafa, who confirmed that Netanyahu had previously backed off from this step due to Egyptian-American rejection, but he returned to it again due to right-wing pressure on him. .

The same opinion was shared by Al-Satohi, who said that Egypt must use a more assertive language than its current language, and not be satisfied with private channels with Tel Aviv and Washington, because it is already facing the possibility of pushing more than a million people into its territory.

Al-Satohi believes that Israel was slow in displacing the population due to the Egyptian and American positions, but it did not back down from it and is working to implement it in every way. He added, “Israel may bomb the fence separating Sinai and Gaza and then push the population towards Egyptian territory by force, which requires a strict Egyptian position.”

He concluded that Egypt faces a major problem related to its image internally and regionally if it allows Israel to occupy this region and displace its residents, “which may push it to take a more decisive stance during the coming period, in addition to the possibility of intervention by Washington, which will not sacrifice Egyptian-Israeli relations, which represent the cornerstone of the stability of the region.” ", as he put it.

As for Al-Duwairi, he believes that “Egypt paved the way for Israel to occupy the axis when it allowed it to control everything that entered Gaza, in clear violation of the Camp David Accords.”

Therefore, Cairo is currently “using harsh language in which it explicitly declares the prevention of any attempt to occupy the border strip,” in Al-Duwairi’s opinion.

But Mustafa does not believe that there is a final political decision to occupy the axis, and says that what is happening is an attempt to pressure Egypt to accept new security arrangements in the region.

Source: Al Jazeera

An Israeli army fighter wrote down his bitter memories of the settlements in Gaza that ended in 2005 and the existing settlements in the West Bank. He also wrote his opinions about the Israelis’ ambitions to regain control of Gaza, strongly criticizing that.

Alon Sahar, who was a fighter in the Givati Infantry Brigade, said in a report in the Israeli newspaper “The Jerusalem Post” that controlling Gaza is deadly for the Israelis and Palestinians, and that the settlements did not protect Israel, as the right-wing parties claim, and that as soldiers they always protect the settlements at the expense of the Palestinians.

Below is what Sahar recorded in his own words:

I was the last to leave Gaza in 2005

On August 22, 2005, I was among the last soldiers to close the gate as we left the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip, for the last time. We served there for a year and a half of what can only be described as hell.

As a soldier sent to protect the Gush Katif settlements – the main settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip that includes 21 settlements, I saw and experienced first-hand the price of clinging to isolated enclaves in the heart of a hostile environment.

I lost friends when Hamas fighters penetrated our forward military positions. I rode home with the settler mothers who raced with their children in the back seat, to avoid being shot. I thought then, on that summer day in 2005, that I was leaving all that violence behind me.

They seek to open the gates of hell

Now, the Israeli settler right and their false prophets are doing everything they can to reopen the gates of hell.

According to recent opinion polls, they have the support of at least 25% of the Israeli public. As a filmmaker and anti-occupation activist, I have spent the last decade of my career trying to address the moral sensitivities of Israelis by showing the deep injustices that Palestinians are forced to endure every day.

I hoped that by arousing compassion, our citizens would come to see that permanent occupation—leading to untold human suffering—is not the way.

Now, in the new and terrifying post-October 7 reality, it seems there is no longer room for compassion in Israeli society. In this case, now is the time to expose the other side of the coin: the terrible price we pay as Israelis for accommodating the policy of imposing our rule on others because this is not just about the Palestinians; It's about us too.

Our worst nightmares

As a former occupying soldier, my comrades and I felt the heavy cost in the Gaza Strip. We have an obligation to speak out about the calls for Gaza settlement that are escalating in Israel. Those who refuse to see the humanity of Palestinians at least owe it to us, the soldiers who protected their settlements, to listen to us talk about the sacrifice we made before we were dragged there.

The atrocities of October 7, and the realization of our worst nightmares, sent every Israeli, including me, into a state of deep sadness. Now, settler leaders are exploiting our grief and anger to promote the dysfunctional idea of resettling what they see as part of their biblical right, while they parrot the age-old defense of settlements as a security necessity.

I experienced terror in my body

This enthusiasm for the messianic salvation they so desperately desire, and the inevitable human price it will exact, will come as no surprise to those who weren't there the last time. But I experienced the horror of my body in the Gush Katif settlement in the Gaza Strip.

Right-wingers often refer to these settlements as the country's "bulletproof vest." But in reality, we soldiers were those jackets. There was nothing we didn't do for the Palestinians in the name of keeping the settlements safe: we carried out dozens of operations in the middle of their crowded neighborhoods.

We stormed their homes and turned them into military posts, clearing away their properties and orchards around the settlements to create buffer zones. If there was a choice between impacting the lives of Palestinians or the comfort of settlers, the choice to be made was quite clear.

Hamas was a force in Gaza long before Israel demolished its settlements and withdrew military forces during the 2005 disengagement. There were rockets, mortars, roadside bombs and tunnels like the one from which Hamas blew up the IDF's Orhan outpost in 2005. Rocket and shell fire was common, but it was only part of the story.

I survived several serious accidents

Not every soldier has 9 lives, but apparently, I did. I was once shot at on my way to the bathroom, moving between an armored vehicle and a military position. Another time, an RPG was fired at me while I was riding in a car during one of our operations. Fortunately, it didn't hurt me. I stood right next to an explosive device as grenades were thrown at me, but they did not explode.

I was covered in pieces of his flesh

One time, when I was about to arrest a Hamas activist, he blew himself up next to a Shin Bet (Israeli security agency) officer. I still remember being covered in pieces of his flesh, and my ears ringing from the deafening explosion. I started to question what the hell I was risking my life for.

Today, the Israeli messianic right is frank about its aspirations. We will know we have won “when a Jewish child can walk in Gaza without fearing for his life,” said MK Simcha Rothman, one of the architects of last year’s judicial reform. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a former senior Defense Ministry official, speaks frankly about prolonged Israeli control of Gaza.

They are trying to impose permanent control over Gaza

Make no mistake. It will happen. How many are aware that earlier this year, the Knesset repealed the disengagement law in the northern West Bank, effectively paving the way for settlers to return to areas from which they had previously been evacuated? The same lawmakers who proposed this bill also recently introduced legislation to repeal the Gaza Disengagement Law.

At first, they will tell us that it is “just a security zone,” and later, an outpost will appear there. It is likely named after one of the decimated kibbutz communities near the Gaza border. After a while, we find out that the military provides security for it and actually has satellite outposts around it.

The settlers' imagination is our nightmare

We cannot allow ourselves to get around the issue of what happens after the war. We have to think about our vision of a free, safe and sustainable life here for both Palestinians and Israelis.

The Israeli public has let messianic ideas corrupt this place for too long, under the pretext that the settlements are vital to security. We must not believe that.

The settlements did not protect Israel - we as soldiers protect the settlements, always at the expense of the Palestinians. The settlers’ imagination was a nightmare for us... nothing more.

Source: Jerusalem Post + Aljazeera

By Zuhair Hamdani

Benjamin Netanyahu was nothing but a prominent figure in the complex crisis that Israel is experiencing. The predicament of the Israeli war on Gaza, which he and his government are led by extremists, has revealed the deep and most dangerous rifts of their kind in which Israeli society and the establishment are experiencing. These cracks strike the foundations of the fragile project that was based on the temptation of the “nation-state” with its settler-colonial, religious, and racist character.

All the arrows inside Israel and abroad are directed towards the Israeli Prime Minister as a factor that broke unity during the war, and who failed to achieve any political or military gains, while Netanyahu is merely an element that expresses the exposure of the political confusion, the societal gap, and the many rifts that caused a defeat that did not befall him personally, but rather With the project of Israel itself.

In promoting itself, Israel has always relied on the narrative of the only democratic state in an environment of tyranny (hostile to it) that is economically and technologically superior, and that has been able to fuse various components into a stable, pluralistic, liberal democratic project, and as a result, it is militarily superior. But the pillars of that narrative have become subject to many doubts.

Other than the factors of internal corrosion, this project was not subjected to an existential test. The lightning and decisive wars waged by Israel as an essential part of the security theory had reinforced all of these statements internally and externally, but the shock of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the collapse of the lightning war theory that concealed the factors of weakness for a long time, and the continuation of the war on Gaza for more than 3 months without achieving any goals, it revealed the weakness of all these narratives.

"Al-Aqsa Flood"... The revealing war

The "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation came at a time when the Israeli entity was in a state of extreme fragility, as the crisis deepened and the gap between its components increased. The statements of the resistance leaders in Gaza indicate that they were deeply aware and accurately knowledgeable of the Israeli internal scene and the apparent disintegration and confusion.

The Israeli aggression against Gaza represented a turning point in the future of the Israeli project itself. It proved that the Israeli military and political establishment and societal structure were no longer prepared for the lightning wars that used to strengthen the foundations of the project, and the losses since October 7 violently shook the foundations of this project at the strategic level. The issue of prisoners and detainees put severe pressure on the structure of Israeli society.

The war on Gaza, which has continued for the fourth month, has deepened the cracks in the Israeli project with the confusion and weakness that the Israeli army has shown, and the moral deviation it has shown in its operations, and the strength and determination that the resistance has shown, and the disintegration of the entire Israeli institution that has been revealed, and what it has provoked. The pessimism and doubts regarding the notion of stability on the ground based on brute military force, and the global rejection of its crimes that Israel received increased over time.

In this context, the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé points out that what is happening in Israel confirms “the beginning of the end of the Zionist project,” which he considers “a long and dangerous phase, and we will not talk about the near future, unfortunately, but rather about the distant future, but we must be prepared for that.”

The indicators of the end of this project, according to Pappe, were evident in “the Jewish civil war that we witnessed before last October 7, between the secular camp and the religious camp in the Jewish community in Israel,” indicating that this war will be repeated, considering that “the cement that unites the two camps, which is the security threat, "It doesn't seem like it's going to work anymore."

Ilan Pappé builds his theory of the end of the Zionist project primarily on the factors of internal disintegration between the secular and religious camps, which will increase and deepen with the test of power that was not in Israel’s favor this time, economic and social pressures, and the loss of certainty in the continuity of the project itself. There are clear indicators of the failure of this project, including:

The collapse of the Israeli army’s ability to protect the Jewish community in the south (Gaza) and the north (south Lebanon), the collapse of the “people’s army” theory, and the fall of the option of lightning and pre-emptive war, and the war necessarily became inside the Israeli depths, with the losses that this represents.

The war has put severe pressure on Israeli society, and a state of pessimism, fear of the future, and existential anxiety has spread. The Israeli project is no longer attractive to new immigrants, and the rates of reverse migration have increased.

The new generations of young Jews in Israel and the United States (the largest supporter of Israel) are no longer as convinced of the Zionist project as their parents. Criticism of the legitimacy of Zionism and the justifications for its continuation has increased, given that Zionism has achieved its main goal, which is the establishment of a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine.

The brutal racist nature of the Israeli entity, its transgression of international norms and laws, and the unprecedented support for the Palestinian cause in the world have been exposed, and the transition to “a new phase with the shift of pressure from societies to governments.”

On the economic level, the gap has become large in Israel between those who have and those who do not have, and there is a disparity between the rich and the poor, and without the continued American support, the Israeli economy would not have survived, according to Ilan Pappé.

Increasing American doubts about viewing Israel as a project in the region to serve its interests and the growing disagreement with Benjamin Netanyahu in his vision of war and solution.

Israeli writer Gideon Levy summarized in Haaretz newspaper the most important indicators of Israel’s failure vis-à-vis the Palestinians by saying: “We are facing the most difficult people in history, and the process of self-destruction and the Israeli cancerous disease have reached their final stages, and there is no way to cure them with iron domes, fences, or nuclear bombs.”

Transformations of a hybrid society

Israel was not formed naturally, like all countries, based on a social development based on the interaction of the population with the land. Rather, it was founded from a hybrid society of multiple races, nationalities, and cultures, contrary to the fact that it came within the framework of an imperial project to play a functional role in the region, and thus it lacks a civilizational dimension. Humanitarian, Israeli society remained heterogeneous and divided horizontally and vertically. The state continued to protect its survival by brute force in the face of the people who were robbed of their land.

The process of forming the Israeli entity was built on the idea of a replacement colonial settlement whose goal was to abolish the civilization and culture of the Palestinian people and liquidate their existence in various ways, but the Palestinian resistance remained a wedge embedded in the heart of the Israeli project.

David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, was not unaware of the danger of mixing this hybrid formula into a unified state, so he spoke about what he called the “melting furnace” by saying: “With the end of the battles. This great people of different colours, we must melt them again into A new crucible from which to create a new nation.”

The temptation of the project was reflected in its beginnings in mobilizing Jews from various parts of the world, and the Zionist movement and the Jewish Agency succeeded in bringing Jewish immigrants to the land of Palestine, but failed to melt them into one crucible, as Ben-Gurion wanted. The elements and components were discordant in such a way that the smelting process was not suitable for producing a solid component, and cracks gradually appeared.

In a speech considered a warning, former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin spoke since 2015 about the danger of division in Israeli society - about what he called “four clans” - secular, religious nationalist, and extremist, in addition to the Arabs, noting that “they do not live side by side, and their children do not live side by side.” "They don't go to the same schools, and they don't even read the same newspapers."

Rivlin believed that these disparate groups have different visions of what the State of Israel should be, while "mutual ignorance and the absence of a common language increase tension, fear, hostility and competition between them."

“Judicial reform” projects, strikes, demonstrations, and manifestations of racism and extremism were nothing but an expression of the state of structural disagreement that was expanding between those “four clans,” and the military and security establishment were drawn to it by the refusal of large sectors of reserve soldiers to join the service, and the refusal of Air Force officers to do so with their tasks.

Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo expresses the seriousness of this by saying that the greatest threat to Israel is the Israelis themselves as a result of the self-destruction that has been underway in recent years, and he stressed the importance of "stopping this disastrous path before the point of no return, because Israel is self-collapsing." There are doubts about the possibility of managing and resolving these differences democratically.

Israel is the only country that has not drawn up a constitution, and this resulted mainly from the failure to resolve the existing contradictions and the inability of the different groups in Israeli society to agree on the nature of the state, its identity, its borders, and its political system. Therefore, it is a state that still cannot define itself internally and externally except as a “state.” "For the Jews."

For its part, the Center for National Security Research at Tel Aviv University (INSS) indicates that the political conflict poses a strategic threat to Israeli national security, and that there is a serious decline in social and national immunity that has reached the point of threatening social disintegration with the escalation of security threats and damage to relations with the United States. And the economic crisis.

The ethnic problem and the state of social conflict between European Jews (Ashkenazi) and Eastern Jews (Sephardic) clearly emerge, which has taken on a class and cultural character, as the Ashkenazi continue to occupy the center position in society and the state.

The Jews of the East, as well as the Jews of the Falasha and the Arabs, remain at the bottom of the social and economic ladder in terms of income, employment, and opportunities, and the level of racism among Jews increases, and what the former Mossad chief called “free hatred” that constitutes the real existential threat to the future of Israel.

Leftists, secularists, and younger generations fear the dominance of the religious right and the transformation of Israel into a state that lives on religious identity and historical myths. Religious people (or Haredim) take a radical stance against Zionism and the state, boycotting its schools, most of its institutions, the army, and its media, and they even adopt their own time.

Premonitions of ancient prophecies

Under the weight of defeat in the first days of the October 1973 War, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir spoke of the “destruction of the Third Temple,” which was echoed by many Israelis before and after the October 7 invasion based on an ancient prophecy, known as the decade of eighty, in which the Jewish state would end.

In his book “The Third House,” writer Aryeh Shavit points out that this “destruction” will be in the hands of the Israelis because they have become their own biggest enemy, noting that “security challenges can be addressed, but the disintegration of identity cannot be overcome.”

For his part, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak himself pointed this out, saying in an article in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper: “Throughout Jewish history, the Jews have not had a state for more than 80 years except in two periods: the period of King David and the Hasmonean period, and both periods marked the beginning of its disintegration in the eighth decade. Lessons must be drawn from the fragmentation and division that afflicted the former Jewish kingdoms, which began to disappear on the threshold of the eighth decade.”

The emergence of these prophecies of demise was linked to the escalation of internal disputes wrapped in ethnic, religious and class dimensions, and also to the pressures of war and the shock of the invasion on October 7 and the refuge of tens of thousands of Israelis from the settlements of the south and north towards the interior, the pressures of the issue of prisoners and detainees and the failure of the Israeli army to achieve any goals.

These prophecies also appear as a psychological reaction, since the idea of stability on the land (as one of the most important pillars of the state) is considered questionable by the Israelis because they live on someone else’s land, realize that they are in the middle of a hostile environment, and know that the owner of the land is still resisting.

Countercurrent migration

In conclusion, the army no longer protects the people, there is no longer a sense of security, there is no longer economic prosperity with declining income and high unemployment rates, there is no longer political stability, there is no longer international support as before, and there is no longer complete American cover. All of this pushes the Israelis to abandon the “Israel Project”, so that the option of reverse immigration becomes strongly present, as the Israeli statistics themselves prove, and it is the most dangerous thing that the leaders of the Zionist project were warning about.

The demographic factor associated with the immigration of Jews to Israel was a major concern for David Ben-Gurion, who said: “Israel’s final victory will be achieved through massive Jewish immigration, and its survival depends only on the availability of one factor, which is widespread immigration to Israel.”

Estimates indicate a significant decline in immigration to Israel in the last two years, and it stopped after the “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Zaman Israel newspaper quoted the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority as saying that about 370,000 Israelis left the country from October 7 until the end of November, in addition to 600,000 who traveled abroad during the holidays and remained there.

According to an opinion poll conducted by the official Israeli radio station Kan last March, more than 25% of adult Jews (over 18 years of age) are seriously considering emigrating from Israel. Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper also reported last April that 47% of those who immigrated or left do not intend to return again.

In light of the imminent strategic defeat, and the collapse of Israel’s image militarily, socially, politically, and economically, many Israelis have resorted to their original nationalities and passports. It is expected that the percentage of those wishing to leave the “Israeli project” will increase, and that reverse immigration will escalate, which will lead to a demographic crisis, the erosion of Israeli society, and the outnumbering of the population. The Arab population gradually increased due to their high population increase.

Researchers liken Israel to be merely a multinational enterprise with shareholders of various stripes, including investors abroad. The beginnings of establishment and the first successes overshadowed the weaknesses and areas of disagreement, and external support postponed the bankruptcy of the project, whose failure was gradually revealed in the face of the many pressures, challenges, and mismanagement, which Netanyahu represented for nearly 16 years.

Netanyahu - who is currently running this project - is not much different from other Israeli politicians in his extremism and denial of Palestinian rights, and they do not differ from him in the brutality of what he is committing in Gaza. His problem is that he returned to power again with higher doses of extremism, and in a moment of extreme confusion for the Israeli project in which he was an active party.

He had to suffer the greatest military shock to Israel in its history, to receive blows from the Palestinian resistance that was managing the battle intelligently and competently, and to accumulate mistakes on the back of losses that undermined his personal future and created more cracks in the structure of Israeli society and the state.

Source: Al Jazeera

Emptiness generates a stronger echo than sounds. This principle applies to politics, especially to political settlements. Although the Palestinian struggle has been ongoing for longer than any other and has generated more conflicts, coups, and turbulence than any other, it is always subject, when it comes to solutions, to exploitative initiatives that do not achieve their objectives. This has been the case since the beginning, and it remains true to this day. Indeed, there is talk of a European initiative being prepared and will be launched once the concerned parties are consulted. Its initial draft has been published. Alongside an introduction about the motives behind it, it includes a ten-point proposal by Mr. Borrell aimed at achieving a comprehensive Palestinian-Israeli-Middle Eastern settlement.

Mr. Borrell's initiative reminds us of the “Roadmap” plan, which intended to save the Oslo Accords in stages after the latter began to gradually collapse. The Quartet at the time represented the entire world. To remind readers, it included the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations. The Palestinians and Israelis were allowed to note their reservations on particular stipulations, provided that they agreed to it first. The Roadmap withered, the Quartet faded away, and the Oslo Accords continued to die under the watchful eye of its major sponsors.

We remind our reader of this plan and its fate, as well as the fate of the international framework that gave rise to it, to put Mr. Borrell's plan in its proper context. This is not a question of the text but about its chances of success. To know if this plan could potentially lead to a settlement, we must first determine the weight of those standing behind it. Assuming it was agreed upon by Europe, this grouping of states gave birth to the Oslo Accords, which is named after one of its capitals. However, the US and Israel colluded to push it out, reducing its role to providing funds. Sometimes it was called upon to persuade the Palestinians to acquiesce to the unacceptable.

Let us assume that Mr. Joseph Borrell is encouraged by the US; that would be a point against the plan, not for it. US encouragement would mean it is not serious, or that the initiative is meant to feel room.

It would be more beneficial for the US to put an initiative forward itself, which is not on its political agenda, unless we believe the leaks that suggest it is preparing something of this sort.

Moving on from the question of the US link to Mr. Borrell's initiative, and whether it is being launched in coordination with the US or encouraged by it, what deserves careful consideration is... Israel. With Netanyahu in power alongside his more fanatical coalition partners, is Israel ready to consider this initiative or even discuss it? Netanyahu answered this question himself. He stressed that he strongly and unequivocally rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state. In fact, he argued that his remaining at the head of the Israeli government served one primary function, preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state, even if the whole world, including the US, agreed to its establishment. The treasuries and archives of the Palestinians are filled with settlement projects. Their leaders have welcomed texts and proposals drafted by world leaders promising a reasonable solution to their chronic struggle. The influential global actors of our era have encouraged, supported, and adopted them, but the Palestinians have not seen tangible results, even after everything that has been said and continues to be said about the importance of resolving the Palestinian issue for stability in the Middle East and the world at large.

The proposal that Mr. Borrell has put forward in Europe’s name should not be evaluated solely based on the text, nor should it distract us from the urgent priorities that the world has failed to address, even minimally. Indeed, it does not make sense to believe that the same people who cannot stop the genocidal war, which continues and escalates in Gaza and the West Bank, and threatens to expand into a regional war, are capable of ensuring much more significant results. 

Finally, it is essential to remember that the Arabs had put forward an initiative of their own early on. In terms of its weight and purpose, their initiative is more substantial than any other, including the one being presented by the Europeans, for example. Whether the Arab Peace Initiative can be a foundation for any serious attempts to end the conflict and solve its main issue is a question not only directed at Mr. Borrell but everyone around who wants the Middle East to become a hub for peace rather than a hub for wars.

By Meron Rapoport in Tel Aviv, Israel

Both the prime minister and the military want to keep fighting for personal reasons. But something might tip the balance the other way

It is too early to say whether the loss of 21 Israeli soldiers in one day in central Gaza's Maghazi refugee camp will turn out to be a pivotal moment of the war in Gaza.

There are, certainly, precedents. One is the loss of 73 soldiers when two helicopters collided over Northern Galilee in 1997. That was the starting point of a protest movement which led to the withdrawal from Lebanon three years later.

But the loss at Maghazi of soldiers who were mostly reservists could certainly add to the growing war fatigue of the Israeli public, who are increasingly at a loss to understand what the war on Gaza is achieving.

While a majority continue to back the war, they are not buying the army’s claims that 17 out of Hamas’s 24 battalions have “collapsed”, that one-third of the Palestinian movement’s fighters have been killed, and that the Israeli military controls 60 percent of the territory in the Gaza Strip.

The soldiers at Magazi were mining houses for demolition in an area under army control. “Control” is becoming a relative concept, as Hamas’s hit-and-run strikes prove only too clearly.

Nor is it clear what the army is achieving in Khan Younis, more than six weeks after the army spokesman said that they have entered it. Khan Younis is not that big a place, and it’s certainly no Stalingrad.

There are two competing coalitions at play in Israel and yet neither have the decisive upper hand, for the moment.

This is Netanyahu's war

The first coalition is led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As the conflict drags on, it is very clear that this is his war.

It’s his war because the moment he stops it, his government crashes and Israel will turn on him for having let Israel’s guard down on 7 October.

It’s his war because he has raised the stakes so high, stressing each day that it has been his life’s mission to prevent a Palestinian state being created, and by saying Israel should have a permanent presence in Gaza - an objective that has not been approved by the war cabinet, which contains former rivals.

The army absolutely does not share that objective and is resisting Netanyahu’s wish to reoccupy the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along Gaza’s border with Egypt, without which no permanent Israeli military presence in Gaza can function.

The army’s primary war aim is to restore its lost honour and to restore the principle of deterrence on which the armed forces is built, the concept that heavy strikes deter Hamas and Hezbollah from attacking. The military and its ideology admit that peace does not exist but claim that Israel’s enemies are deterred.

This obviously did not happen on 7 October, or during the three and a half months that followed. Hamas is plainly not deterred from striking Israel at will despite the overwhelming military odds, the total destruction of Gaza and a growing famine.

The army high command is not happy with Netanyahu’s political leadership. They are not rushing to fulfil his order to take over the Egyptian border around Rafah, and they have withdrawn some of their forces from the northern part of Gaza.

The army does not have a clear position against a Palestinian state or the Palestinian Authority taking over Gaza post-war, as Netanyahu does. But it is clear about wishing to continue the campaign, because it would hate to see a situation in which war ends without a clear victory.

Once the army turns against Netanyahu, it would be very difficult for the prime minister to continue in power. But that moment has not yet come.

While neither Netanyahyu nor the army has succeeded in their basic war aims, both the army and the embattled prime minister have adopted the concept of endless war.

This coalition is uneasy, and both sides in this partnership have problems.

Netanyahu faces a hunger strike on his doorstep, demonstrations tens of thousands strong in Tel Aviv calling on him to quit, and mounting protest from the families of the 132 remaining captives, who on Monday broke into Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

The army, on the other hand, faces what a leading expert on relations between the army and Israeli society, Professor Yagil Levy, calls a “Blue Collar rebellion”.

Levy says there is an unprecedented level of defiance among the rank and file in Gaza. Soldiers are taking pictures of themselves and Palestinian detainees in defiance of the army’s values. They are taking photographs in mosques, they talk of revenge, reoccupation - all messages that contradict the army’s basic codes.

There is also the suspicion that parts of the army were reluctant to withdraw from Gaza and that the military said the order was delayed “for technical reasons” to mask this.

Mounting doubts

On the other side there is a coalition of interests that leans towards a political outcome to the war.

Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, political opponents of Netanyahu who entered the war cabinet following the 7 October attack, do not in any way endorse the PA’s return to Gaza or a political solution that would create a Palestinian state. But neither have they said anything against it.

They appear at ease with the US push for a two-state solution and with the Saudi initiative, which predicates recognition of Israel on the creation of a Palestinian state.

Eisenkot said at a meeting held on the 100th day of the war that "we need to stop lying to ourselves, show courage and lead to a big deal that will bring the abductees home”, adding: “we are walking in like blind people.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant followed him and said openly that "a lack of political decision could harm the progress of the military operation". And it was reported on Channel 13 that even Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said that because a strategy for "the day after" has not been built, "we are facing an erosion of the achievements we have achieved so far in the war".

The doubts are not just in the war cabinet. Within Israeli society the pressures are mounting. Everyone predicts the economy this year will be disastrous, with skyrocketing deficits and mass layoffs.

Closely related to this are the army’s reservists, whom Gallant warned not to plan any holidays for the summer. Cases of conscious objection to a war, as happened in the First Intifada, are rare, and if a reservist refuses the call-up, he or she may get at most a month in prison.

It’s more often the case that refusers cite personal reasons, such as childcare, the risk of business failure or a pending university examination, and usually they don’t get prosecuted for that. Refusal is kept a private matter. But the reluctance to fight an endless war will inevitably grow.

There is also the reluctance of the population of southern Israel to return to their homes and kibbutzim while a war is raging on the other side of the fence. This can work for both camps. It could easily be used as a reason to prosecute the war until the very end.

The army is telling them they can go back home, but most refuse. They are far from being anti-war, but they don’t want a war of attrition. They want a decisive defeat of Hamas. Dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza or the return of the PA is all the same for them.

In the north, the threat of rockets from Hezbollah is substantial, particularly after the group’s use of long-range anti-tank missiles, for which Israel’s Iron Dome defence is worthless. There were 200,000 Israelis displaced after the Hamas attack. The majority of these will not go back to their homes in the foreseeable future.

Most of these elements are pushing for some kind of political deal to end the war. But the real problem in Israel is that no lobby is strong enough to end the war in a political settlement.

Facing them down are Netanyahu and the extreme right wing in his government, for whom the stakes are very high. An end to the war could lead to a dramatic change in the politics of Israel and the right wing understand what is at stake and will do everything in their power to stop it.

As yet neither coalition - the coalition of endless war, or the coalition which could conceive of a negotiated end to it - are dominant. A very small shift could tilt the balance between them.

By Craig Murray

It was quite something to be in the court to witness Israel's nonsensical claim that this is an 'armed conflict' at the same time as denying the legitimacy of any armed resistance to it

I was the only journalist inside the courtroom at the International Court of Justice for South Africa's genocide case against Israel. Thirty accredited journalists were in a press room in another wing of the building, watching what the director showed them on a screen. Rather more journalists waited outside the building.

I got into the courtroom by sleeping on the pavement in the sub-zero temperatures of the Hague, in the queue for one of the 14 seats available in the public gallery. You can't beat being in the court - the interactions between the delegations, the body language and expressions of the judges in response to particular arguments. If you were not there, you are not really covering the case.

It has taken a week for my body to fully recover and about the same period for my mind to sift the drama and tension of the court from the actual arguments advanced. 

The most striking thing was, of course, the highly belligerent attitudes of the opposing sides, with South Africa talking of the Nakba and 75 years of apartheid in Israel, while the Israeli side responded by accusing South Africa of complicity in genocide themselves through support of Hamas.

The total dissonance of alleged facts was also truly remarkable. Israel simply denied responsibility for the destruction of infrastructure and housing - which they blamed on over 2,000 Hamas missile misfires and Hamas' booby-trapping of buildings. Israel claimed that more food per day now entered Gaza than before 7 October.             

Israel also stated explicitly that every single hospital in Gaza was "a military base".

Findings of fact would be established by evidence at a substantive hearing of the ICJ, probably in around two years' time. What we had now was a request for provisional measures, where argument, probability and procedure were being considered, not evidence weighed.

I want to look now at some aspects of the argument that seem to me insufficiently considered elsewhere.

'Unispute'

Israel's base argument was that this was an “armed conflict”, not a genocide. They used the term repeatedly.

In an armed conflict, there are inevitably civilian casualties. These might be “horrible”, but are always there, and are worse in urban warfare. Hamas was responsible for the civilian casualties by embedding its forces within civilian populations and structures. 

Israel stated explicitly that Hamas operations were centred in hospitals, schools, water treatment and electricity generation facilities, and United Nations facilities. Civilian casualties in such places in armed conflict were therefore both inevitable and the fault of Hamas.

The difficulty here is that Israel both claimed that what is happening is “armed conflict”, and denied the legitimacy of any armed resistance to it. 

If Israel claims it is in armed conflict, it must acknowledge the legitimacy of the arms of those it is fighting

In attempting to have the ICJ dismiss the case on procedural grounds, Malcolm Shaw KC said that South Africa had no right to bring the case as it had no dispute with Israel at the time of filing. It was not, he said, a dispute but a “unispute”.

On a similar logic, Israel's position depends on it being in “armed conflict” but denies there are two legitimate parties to the armed conflict. Israel stated in terms that it must not stop its operations because Hamas continues to fire on Israeli forces and launch rockets into Israel.

It is a strange armed conflict where one side is not allowed to fire. If Israel claims it is in armed conflict, it must acknowledge the legitimacy of the arms of those it is fighting. It cannot use “armed conflict” as an excuse for over 25,000 dead but then also claim it is not an armed conflict but some kind of limited anti-terrorism operation.

In short, if this is an armed conflict, the Palestinians have a right to fight back. Which of course they do. There is no doubt in international law that a people under occupation have the right to armed resistance. I don't think anybody disputes that, not even the British or US governments.

Legal nonsense

The key question here is: have the Palestinians no right to resist a genocidal attack because it is Hamas - designated by the West as a proscribed terrorist organisation - doing the resisting? This, in my opinion, is massive hypocrisy. The appalling consequences of branding a de facto government simply as “terrorist” are playing out in the violent killing of hundreds of children every day. 

The Hague has to pick its way through the legal nonsense of an “armed conflict” in which only one side is allowed to fight and in which the large majority of casualties are entirely innocent women and children, a distressing proportion of them infants; in which one side has every weapon of the most modern and expensive of armies and massive air power it uses to kill indiscriminately on an industrial scale, and the other side has a few light arms and improvised rockets.

In the West, we have painted ourselves into a similarly ridiculous legal position. Some protesters have now been arrested in the UK for opposing this genocide. I have personally been forced to flee the country while the police puzzle over whether supporting the Palestinian right in international law to armed resistance is “terrorism” or not.

On 20 January, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu had a conversation about Palestinian statehood, which again confirmed the US view of a Palestinian state which would be an utter sham.

In particular, it would be permitted no arms or military forces and would not have control of its own borders or foreign policy. Israel would have power over both goods and people entering this “state”, which would be territorially fragmented and powerless in every way.

This, of course, is the ultimate culmination of the apartheid Israel scheme. Time passes, and people mostly do not know how much the vaunted “two-state solution” mirrors the planned apotheosis of apartheid. I had the South Africa desk in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the mid-1980s, and I can tell you.

The Black population of South Africa was to be confined to a number of “homelands”. These were to become “independent states''. One of them, Bophuthatswana, was actually declared as independent. 

Their “sovereignty” was to be limited in exactly the ways Biden and Netanyahu think may make a puppet Palestinian state possible. Ultimately, over 80 percent of Black South Africans were planned in these “independent” states, removing the Black majority from South Africa, for which they would function as a permanent pool of cheap labour with no rights.

Colonial propaganda

Palestinians had, even before the current hostilities, been ethnically cleansed from 85 percent of their land. A “two-state solution” which cements that and leaves them under permanent Israeli military dominance will not solve this conflict, the answer to which is not the effective entrenchment of the status quo.

The desire to deny the Palestinians the right of a people to self-defence is bolstered by the endlessly recycled atrocity stories of 7 October. Now, I do not doubt that some crimes were committed by Palestinians on that day. They must be thoroughly investigated and if possible perpetrators punished - though strangely it is almost never possible to punish western military perpetrators of crimes in lands they have occupied.

I also do not doubt that Israel's version of the 7 October attacks has been amplified by the media, although the reality is far more complex and troubling. Strangely, this has been much more openly admitted and discussed in Israeli rather than western media.

The sustained hype over the 7 October atrocities portrays Palestinians as barbarians who should never have the right to defend their homes and families

But there is of course a point to the systematic and sustained hype over the 7 October atrocities. It portrays the Palestinians as barbarians who should not ever have the right to bear arms or defend their homes and families.

This is a well-recognised pattern of colonial propaganda. Sustained occupation and deprivation of an occupied people leads to occasional frenzied outbursts of resistance, and unconventional warfare due to a disparity of arms. 

Such outbreaks always contain atrocities that mirror the sustained violence to which the occupied people have been subjected. Those atrocities are then endlessly retold and amplified by the colonisers. The Black Hole of Calcutta or the stories of Mau Mau rape and murder are good examples. 

These are, always, characterised as examples of the “bestiality” of the occupied and colonised, and proof of the validity of the civilising mission, and evidence of the moral superiority of the coloniser. There then follows more repression.

It is astonishing to me that postcolonial studies is now such a well-established discipline but that almost none of its core insights have fed through into public, and particularly media, discourse. What is happening in Palestine is perfectly plain.

Hebrew media reported, this evening, Wednesday, that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi refused to receive a phone call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to disagreements between the two sides in light of the continued Israeli threats to carry out a military operation in the Rafah area and the Philadelphia axis located between Egypt. And the besieged Gaza Strip.

This came according to what Israeli Channel 13 reported in its evening bulletin, and it quoted two sources it described as “informed” that the National Security Council, affiliated with the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, approached the Egyptian side with a request to coordinate a conversation between Netanyahu and Egyptian President Sisi, “to no avail.”

The channel pointed out that the last conversation between Sisi and Netanyahu took place last June, following the operation carried out by the Egyptian Central Security Officer, Mohamed Salah Ibrahim, in the border region in the south of the country, where he crossed the border and killed three Israeli soldiers, and wounded a fourth, in an exchange of gunfire. 

The channel reported that this comes against the backdrop of escalating disagreements with the Egyptian side over Israeli plans to deal with the Philadelphia Axis.

The channel pointed to intense, continuous and ongoing talks among professionals between senior Israelis and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, who is considered a key figure in Egypt and close to the right of President Sisi.

According to the channel, an official in Netanyahu’s office confirmed these details, but no official comment was issued.

Sama News

The toll of the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has risen to 25,700 killed and 63,740 injuries since October 7, at a time when the occupation aircraft and artillery continue to launch raids and intense bombardment on various areas of the Strip for the 110th day in a row.

The occupation's raids and bombings during the past 24 hours left dozens of killed and hundreds of injured, while 24 massacres were committed against families in the Gaza Strip, killing 210 people and 386 injured according to the Ministry of Health.

International organizations warned that hundreds of thousands of besieged Palestinians, especially in the northern Gaza Strip, would be exposed to starvation, and called on many countries to stop the aggression against Gaza and end the suffering of the Palestinians.

This comes as reports spoke of intensive mediation efforts to reach an agreement in stages, leading to an exchange of prisoners between Hamas and Israel and a ceasefire.

White House spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that President Joe Biden's Middle East advisor, Brett McGurk, is in the Qatari capital, Doha, to hold discussions on the possibilities of concluding another prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.

This is McGurk's second trip to Doha this month to discuss the issue of detained prisoners, after a visit he made on January 9.

According to what the American website "Axios" reported on Sunday, McGurk is expected to meet with the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani in Doha, during his visit.

McGurk visited Cairo yesterday, Tuesday, to hold “serious” discussions regarding the release of prisoners detained in Gaza, and reaching a humanitarian truce in Gaza, according to what Kirby announced.

In recent hours, information has increased about the possibility of reaching a new truce in the Gaza Strip, according to which more prisoners and detainees from both sides will be released. In this context, Reuters said yesterday, Tuesday, that Israel and Hamas have largely agreed, in principle, to the possibility of exchanging Israeli detainees for Palestinian prisoners during a month-long truce.

The agency quoted three sources as saying that the framework plan was delayed due to differences between the two sides regarding how to reach a permanent end to the war in Gaza.

Today, Wednesday, the Israeli occupation government ruled out a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. A government spokeswoman denied media reports indicating the possibility of reaching a new agreement with Hamas, according to which the fighting would be halted in exchange for the release of prisoners.

Spokeswoman Ilana Stein said in a press briefing: “Commenting on news about ceasefire agreements, Israel will not abandon the destruction of Hamas and the return of all hostages, and Gaza will not pose a security threat to Israel.” She added: "There will be no ceasefire. There were truces for humanitarian purposes. Hamas violated this agreement."

The American Wall Street Journal had previously said that the United States, Egypt and Qatar are pressuring Israel and Hamas to reach a prisoner exchange deal, which would lead to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip.

The new proposal, supported by Washington, Cairo and Doha, according to the newspaper, aims to reach a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza, by agreeing on prisoner and detainee exchange deals between the two parties.

This comes as the official spokesman for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed Al-Ansari, confirmed on Tuesday that Qatari mediation regarding the Israeli war on Gaza is continuing, and that much of the information published in this regard is false.

Al-Ansari said, in a press conference, that there are serious negotiations taking place in this regard, and that the Qatari mediation is working to reach a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza, explaining that there is no “direct impact so far of the killing of Israeli soldiers in Gaza on the negotiation process.”

Source: Reuters, Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed

A decision is far from Israel's reach, according to what its military analysts confirm almost unanimously, for many other reasons, including: its inability to achieve significant progress in causing damage to what they describe as "weapon and ammunition manufacturing factories" in the possession of "Hamas."

The Palestinian resistance’s confrontation with the Israeli war machine in the Gaza Strip, as well as its steadfastness, despite the war approaching the end of its fourth month, requires more Israeli recognition of the impossibility of reaching a decisive point in the ongoing battles.

The culmination of these confessions, in the past few days, was represented by what was issued by two former senior military and security leaders: the first is the former Chief of Staff of the Army and Minister in the Military Ministerial Council, Gadi Eisenkot, who confirmed that anyone who talks about absolute decisiveness does not say the truth, he tells fairy tales. The second is the former head of the General Security Service (Shin Bet) and former minister, Yaakov Peri, who indicated that the Israeli army is still far from resolving the war and from achieving the goals that were set to achieve resolution.

Coinciding with the time of writing these lines, soldiers in the Israeli army and officers in the reserve formations organized a protest activity against their discharge from military service under the slogan “We were discharged without the battle being won.” Although the protest expresses anger due to the lack of intention to reach a resolution, at the same time, it reveals the inability to achieve it, and what Israel has not been able to achieve until now due to its declaration of war on Gaza.

It is noted in more than one place in the published Israeli war literature that among the direct motives for talking about decisiveness and the eagerness for it and its necessity, there is the most prominent motive for Israel to achieve what is described as a distinguished achievement that would be equivalent to the great achievement recorded by the Al-Aqsa Flood attack by the movement. Hamas on October 7. To clarify what is meant, it is sufficient to quote what the former Knesset member and former Secretary of the Israeli Government, Zvi Hauser, said: The worst portent of the Al-Aqsa flood attack, which should preoccupy Israel for a long time, is that there is a loss of any feelings of fear and dread from it, which is something that would lead to a strategic achievement. Long-term, on a level beyond the Palestinian arena, it will only be squandered by a parallel Israeli strategic achievement embodied in the dismantling of Hamas’ capabilities, which is something that no indications have yet accumulated that it is actually happening, or is about to happen. In his opinion, the measure of restoring Israeli deterrence lies in restoring this feeling of fear of the strict Israeli reaction, and this is not suggested by the developments of the war in Gaza.

We must go on to say here that what is important about these approaches, and others like them widely spread in various Israeli media outlets, is to highlight some of the failures that affect the Israeli military performance in the context of the ongoing war on Gaza. However, it may be an appeal for Israel not to feel itself more powerful than it was, and at the same time, it indicates, albeit unintentionally, the capabilities and capabilities of the Palestinian resistance.

We must also add that a solution is out of reach for Israel, according to what its military analysts almost unanimously confirm, for many other reasons, including: its inability to achieve significant progress in causing damage to what they describe as “weapon and ammunition manufacturing factories” that it possesses. agitation"; The difficulty of releasing prisoners and abductees; Its inability to harm the leaders of the military wing of the Hamas movement. In addition to what was reported by foreign media from high-level Israeli military sources regarding the war not progressing according to the pace that was expected by the Israeli military establishment at its beginning. There was an expectation that the army would have operational control over the cities of Gaza, Khan Yunis, and Rafah by the end of 2023. But while this goal was achieved in Gaza City, the battles in Khan Yunis continue, and Israeli forces have not begun any serious operations in Rafah, located in the far south of the Strip.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague will announce, the day after tomorrow, Friday, its decision on accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has been witnessing an ongoing war for 110 days.

Earlier this month, South Africa asked the International Court of Justice to order an emergency suspension of Israel's devastating war in the Gaza Strip, accusing it of carrying out state-led genocide.

Israel rejected the genocide charge as "grossly distorted" and claimed that it had the right to defend itself and that it was targeting Hamas, not Palestinian civilians.

In the initial ruling, the ICJ will not deal with the main question of whether Israel is committing genocide. The court will only consider potential emergency measures, intended as a type of restraining order while the court considers the entire case, which usually takes years.

On the 12th of this month, during the second session of the International Court of Justice regarding its accusation of committing genocide crimes in its war on Gaza, which has been ongoing for 98 days, Israel claimed that its response to the attack of last October 7 was “legitimate and respects international law.” 

It claimed that the Israeli army “did not violate the rules of war, there will be an Israeli judicial investigation, and there was no intention to carry out genocide.”

Israel's legal team called on the court to "reject South Africa's request, because it deprives Israel of defending itself and of recovering 136 hostages."

In the first session of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, South Africa accused Israel before the International Court of Justice of committing acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and stressed that the attack launched by Hamas cannot justify what it is committing in the Gaza Strip. It called for the immediate suspension of Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will continue its war against the Gaza Strip until “overwhelming victory and the achievement of its goals,” indicating that the International Court of Justice “will not stop” the ongoing war on the Strip.

Reports indicated that the prevailing expectations in Israel are that the International Court of Justice will issue a precautionary decision against it in the framework of the South African lawsuit.

The legal expert, Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, pointed out in the newspaper "Haaretz" that "whatever the decision in The Hague will be, it is important to realize that only a short distance separates us from the accusation of genocide or other crimes against humanity."

He added earlier this month, "This distance will remain short, and will bring us into an area of extreme danger. If Israel responded to the statements of the reckless ministers and tightened the noose around the necks of all Gazans to the point of starvation and death, many countries would stand against us in The Hague, committed to preventing the crime of genocide and punishing its perpetrators. The credit for this goes to the United States” by obliging Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.