BY RAMZY BAROUD

This article was written shortly before Israel assassinated the Deputy Head of Hamas Political Bureau Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on January 2. The assassination is a further illustration of the Israeli government’s desire to escape the consequences of its disastrous war in Gaza, by igniting a regional conflict. The clashes between Hezbollah and Israel are the closest to an actual war that the Lebanon-Israel border has seen since the war of 2006, which resulted in a rushed Israeli retreat, if not outright defeat.

We often refer to the ongoing conflict between Lebanon and Israel as ‘controlled’ clashes, simply because both sides are keen not to instigate or engage in an all-out war. Obviously, Hezbollah wants to preserve Lebanese lives and civilian infrastructure, which would surely be seriously damaged, if not destroyed, should Israel decide to launch a war. But Israel, too, understands that this is a different Hezbollah than that of the 1980s, 2000 and even 2006.Compared to Israel’s behavior in the war of 2006, the Israeli response to Hezbollah’s military action – compelled by its solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza – is greatly tamed. For example, the 2006 war was presumably provoked by a Hezbollah attack on Israeli soldiers, which killed three. (Hezbollah says that the soldiers violated Lebanese sovereignty, as the Israeli army has indeed done numerous times before and since then.) That single event led to a major war that wreaked havoc on Lebanon, but also resulted in the retreat and defeat of the Israeli army. Imagine what Israel would have done by the standards of the 2006 war if Hezbollah had killed and wounded hundreds of Israeli soldiers, bombed scores of military bases, installations and even settlements, as it has done, on a daily basis, since early October.

A Different Hezbollah 

Despite numerous threats, Israel is yet to go to war with the main objective of pushing Hezbollah forces past the Litani River, thus supposedly securing the border Jewish settlements. But why the hesitation?

First, Hezbollah fighters are much stronger than before. For years, Hezbollah has fought in traditional warfare settings, namely in Syria, thus producing a generation of battle-hardened fighters and commanders, who are no longer bound to the rules of guerilla warfare, as was the case in the past.

Second, Hezbollah’s missile capabilities have exponentially grown since 2006, not only in terms of numbers – up to 150,000 according to some estimates – but also in terms of precision, explosive capabilities and range. Moreover, Hezbollah has excelled in the development of its own rockets and missiles, which include the powerful Burkan, a short-range rocket, which can carry a heavy warhead, between 100 to 500 kilograms. This makes Hezbollah, in some ways, self-sufficient in terms of weapons, if not munitions.

Third, Hezbollah’s sophisticated Radwan Elite Units and an elaborate tunnel system that goes deep inside northern Israel, would force Israel to contend with a whole different military reality than that of the last war, should a major military conflict break out.

Fourth, the Israeli army itself is in tatters, demoralized, greatly exhausted and weakened by ongoing daily losses on the Gaza front. It is hardly in a state of preparedness to fight a long and more difficult war against a better prepared enemy. That in mind, one must not take such comments as that of Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant too seriously when he says that his country is fighting a war on seven different fronts. In actuality, the Israeli army is still fighting a single war in Gaza, a difficult war that it is not winning.

Provoking Iran 

To distract from its Gaza losses, and its inability to launch a major war against Lebanon, Tel Aviv wants to drag Tehran into the war. 

But why would Israel escalate against the strongest of its enemies in the region, if it is not able to beat the smaller ones? The short answer is that, by engaging Iran directly, Israel would force the US into a major regional war. We all remember the seemingly odd decision by the Biden Administration to dispatch an aircraft carrier to the Israeli shores of the Mediterranean, immediately after the start of the Gaza war on October 7. (The Gerald R. Ford was ultimately withdrawn on December 31)Washington wanted to send a message to Iran that an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on the United States. But when it became clear that Iran had no interest in an actual war, Washington realized, or must have realized, that the danger of a regional war does not stem from Tehran, but from Tel Aviv itself. 

That is when official US intelligence and political estimates began telling us, and repeatedly so, that Iran had nothing to do with the Hamas military operation of October 7, and that Iran was not interested in war. The target audience for that message was Israel and its US-western allies who have been angling for a US-Iran war for years. Biden’s lack of interest in war, of course, has little to do with his propensity for peace, and everything to do with the lack of any serious geostrategic objectives in the Middle East now, his administration’s disastrous failure in Ukraine and the rapid depletion of armaments and munitions. Israel persisted, however. It continued to accuse Iran of being the orchestrator of the Hamas attack, and the main ‘existential threat’ to the ‘Jewish state’. 

In Israel’s understanding, the collective action of Hamas and other Palestinian Resistance groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansarallah in Yemen and the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, are all fragments of a larger Iranian scheme to destroy Israel. To defeat that imaginary threat, Israel carried out numerous acts of provocations against Iran, focused mostly on the bombing of Iran’s military positions in Syria, leading to the assassination of a top Iranian commander, General Sayyed Ravi Mousavi, near Damascus on December 25.

Biden the Enabler 

For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a US-Iran war would constitute a lifeline for a desperate politician who fully, and rightly, understands, that a no-victory in Gaza would equal a defeat for the Israeli army. Such a defeat would not only be a disgraceful end for Netanyahu’s political career, but also an end of a long-sustained myth that Israel, and the US, can impose their political will on the Middle East through military superiority and firepower.

The Biden Administration must be fully aware of Netanyahu’s intentions, that of dragging the region into the abyss of possibly one of the most devastating wars in recent memory. Reported disagreements and, in fact, a rift between Biden and Netanyahu are not related to a US moral objection to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but to a real American fear that another Middle Eastern war could precipitate the breaking down of US power in the energy-rich region – in fact, beyond. 

Thus, the current standstill: Washington’s inability to free itself from its blind commitment to Israel and its violent Zionist ideology, and Netanyahu’s inability to distinguish between the goal of sustaining his personal career and that of destroying the whole of the Middle East.

Unable to place US interests above those of Israel, Biden continues to feed the Israeli military machine, which is mostly used to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This is allowing Netanyahu to champion a perpetual war in Gaza, while working to expand the conflict so that it reaches Beirut, Tehran and other regional capitals.

Needless to say, Netanyahu, described by US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib as a ‘genocidal maniac’, must be restrained. If not, the Israeli genocide in Gaza will multiply into other genocides throughout the Middle East.

CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour spoke with Haaretz writer Gideon Levy about the impact of expanding the Israeli war to include the northern front against Hezbollah, and whether the ambitions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are his motive in prolonging the war, in addition to what is happening. In the West Bank.

Levy said, "Expanding this war towards the northern front as well, specifically against Hezbollah, would change the rules of the game and would create a reality that Israel and the Israelis have never faced before."

Levy stressed, "It is very good that we are talking here about expanding the war, but what could happen then, I think, goes far beyond what we saw in Israel, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and other places."

Regarding the Israeli prime minister, Levy commented on the issue by saying: "I give Netanyahu more credit than most of my friends, because I don't think his personal ambitions are the only motivation that motivates him. I can't believe that."

He also added: “I am sure that his personal motives are part of his considerations, and I am sure that expanding this war for him personally is the only way out before the elections, resignation and investigation. But to say that he is doing everything for the sake of preserving himself only and nothing else matters to him is this.” "It's too much for Netanyahu, I think. I hope I'm not wrong."

The writer pointed out that what happened in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel was “unbelievable,” stressing that “some of my best friends and even family members changed their minds on October 7th... Everything collapsed, and all the values that people believed in collapsed because of this.” "Only the barbaric attack - which was a barbaric attack - but it should not change any values."

He continued by saying: "In the end, it is the occupation that defines Israel more than anything else. Apartheid defines the Israeli regime more than any other, and we cannot continue this blindness."

Chief of Dubai Police, Dhahi Khalfan, called on Arab leaders to “reconsider” relations with Israel in light of its military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Khalfan said on his page on “X”, Twitter previously: “Everyone must reconsider dealing with Israel... Israel has proven that its intentions are satanic... The Arabs want peace and it wants war... Therefore, the goals of the two sides will not coincide,” he said. .

The Deputy Chief of Dubai Police continued: “I hope that the Arab leaders will reconsider the issue of dealing with Israel... either recognition of the Palestinian state... or an eternal boycott.”

Khalfan had written in a previous blog post: “Every person walking in Gaza...an old, child...a cripple...is considered a target for Israel... something that has not occurred throughout human history in the world of wars,” as he put it.

US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on Wednesday, to implement governance reforms, while Mahmoud Abbas stressed that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state.

Private sources confirmed to Sky News Arabia that the meeting between Blinken and Abbas in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank "was tense and marred by quarrels and arguments."

The Palestinian side asked Blinken to pressure the release of Palestinian tax funds.

The Palestinians told Blinken, “If you do not have the ability to release funds, how will you have the ability to put pressure on Israel and achieve peace and a Palestinian state?!”

Blinken again called for reforms in the Palestinian Authority and its security services, and the Palestinian side responded by saying, "You must reform yourselves and your policy toward the Palestinian issue."

Following the meeting, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that Blinken affirmed Washington's firm position on the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel "and living in peace and security."

For his part, Mahmoud Abbas warned of the seriousness of the measures taken by the Israeli occupation authorities aimed at displacing the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip, or the West Bank, including Jerusalem, which was revealed by statements issued by Israeli ministers and officials, which call for the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land.

Abbas affirmed his complete rejection of the displacement of any Palestinian citizen, whether in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, and we will not allow it to happen.

Abbas stressed the need to release Palestinian clearance funds immediately “because their detention violates agreements and international law,” according to what our correspondent reported.

He also stressed that the Gaza Strip has priority, "and our people, who fall under the responsibility of the State of Palestine and its administration, will not be abandoned."

Today, Wednesday, dozens of Israeli settlers stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, amid heavy protection from the occupation police.

Settlers made provocative tours inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and performed Talmudic rituals.

Groups of settlers storm Al-Aqsa on a daily basis except Friday and Saturday.

Israel and Hamas put forward proposals to resume negotiations on an exchange deal, but both sides rejected the other side's proposal. These negotiations were halted following Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Saleh Al-Arouri in Beirut.

The US President's Middle East Advisor, Brett McGurk, met with the Qatari Prime Minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Doha yesterday, Tuesday, and discussed the possibility of resuming attempts to reach a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, according to what was reported by the Walla website three sources, including an American source, today, Wednesday.

The White House and the Qatari government refrained from announcing McGurk's visit to Doha, and no details were published about the content of the meeting.

According to Walla, Israel and Hamas put forward proposals to resume negotiations on an exchange deal, but both sides rejected the other side’s proposal. These negotiations were halted following Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Saleh Al-Arouri in Beirut.

In the context of resuming negotiations for the exchange deal, Egyptian Intelligence Chief Abbas Kamel held contacts with the leadership of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements regarding the Maan prisoner exchange deal with Israel.

According to the information, contacts were renewed after the Israeli delegation’s visit to Cairo yesterday, Tuesday, which came with a modified proposal, according to the report, and included new provisions related to the ceasefire, the stages of humanitarian aid, and the exchange of prisoners.

According to the report reported by the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper, the Egyptian side asked the Palestinians to send representatives to Cairo urgently, and contact was also made with Qatari mediators.

It is noteworthy that on October 7, 2023, the Hamas movement carried out an attack on military sites and settlements around the Gaza Strip, during which about 240 Israelis were detained, 100 of whom were later released, pursuant to an exchange deal with Israel in which dozens of Palestinian prisoners were released from occupation prisons.

The American newspaper The Washington Post said that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived in Israel this week carrying a message to its leaders to “alleviate the misery in Gaza and plan for its future,” and that President Joe Biden, through his rhetorical and material support for Israel, wants to influence its leaders in order to see beyond their anger and desire to Eliminating "terrorists" in Gaza, and turning to vital humanitarian aid."

The measures sought by the Americans - according to the newspaper - include reducing civilian deaths, improving conditions for displaced Palestinians, and planning for a post-war system that provides dignity for both Israelis and Palestinians, by laying the foundation for a Palestinian state not dominated by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).

The newspaper described in some detail the devastation that the afflicted Gaza Strip had become, after Israel poured tens of thousands of bombs, ammunition and shells on it, as a result of which more than 23,000 of its residents were martyred and 85% of them were displaced, about 70% of its homes and half of its buildings and roads were destroyed, and its hospitals were demolished. And its schools, and the rest of its infrastructure.

Despite all this, it is still unknown how effective the Israeli military attack is in disrupting the Hamas movement - as the newspaper says - even though Israeli officials claim that they have dismantled its military capabilities in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israeli officials say that they are reducing the fighting, despite the fact that the military operations are fierce in central and southern Gaza, to which the Palestinians fled, and at the same time Hamas is still detaining more than 100 Israelis, whose release, along with an end to Hamas’ rule in Gaza, constitutes a precondition for any realistic truce. , according to the newspaper.

American pressure led Israel to allow aid to cross its borders with Gaza, in addition to crossing Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

But there is still an urgent need to prioritize the entry of more aid trucks, as well as to ensure the safety of those responsible for them inside Gaza, after the aid trucks were raided while crossing the Strip.

However, these are short-term measures - as the Washington Post believes - and in the long term Gaza needs to rebuild on the physical level, but also on the political and social level.

Therefore, Israel must now realize that there is no reasonable, long-term settlement with the Palestinians that does not include the establishment of a Palestinian state, after the failure of all alternative methods of direct occupation, siege, and various forms of limited Palestinian autonomy.

The American newspaper concluded that President Biden, Israel, the Arab countries, and all other actors must strive to give the people of Gaza hope that it is possible to make something better out of ruin, otherwise what emerges from despair will, of course, be ugly.

Source: The Washington Post + Aljazeera

From yesterday evening until Wednesday morning, the Israeli occupation forces arrested at least 26 citizens from the West Bank, including the two former prisoners Muhammad Zaghloul from the town of Dura, Ramallah District, and Yasser Rajoub from the city of Dura, Hebron District, who is suffering from cancer.

According to the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners' Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, the arrest operations occurred in the governorates of Ramallah and Bethlehem, while the rest of the arrests were distributed among the governorates of: Hebron, Jenin, Tubas, Tulkarm, and Nablus.

The occupation forces continue to carry out widespread raids and harassment during arrest campaigns, severe beatings, and threats against detainees and their families, in addition to widespread sabotage and destruction of citizens’ homes, and confiscation of vehicles and money.

Thus, the total number of arrests after October 7 of last year rose to more than (5,780), and this total includes those who were arrested from homes, through military checkpoints, those who were forced to surrender themselves under pressure, and those who were held hostage.

The ongoing and escalating arrest campaigns come in an unprecedented manner, within the framework of the comprehensive aggression against our people and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, after the seventh of last October, which targeted all groups, including former prisoners, the sick, and the elderly.

It is noteworthy that the data related to arrest cases includes those who were kept in detention by the occupation, or those who were later released.

An official of Hezbollah's resistance brigades was killed in the town of Kafr Shuba in southern Lebanon, and another member was wounded as a result of a house being targeted in a raid carried out by an Israeli drone at dawn today (Wednesday), according to a Lebanese military source.

The source told Xinhua News Agency that "an Israeli drone fired two missiles at dawn towards a house in the center of the town of Kfar Shuba in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, which led to its destruction, the killing of one person, and the wounding of another."

He added, "Members of the Civil Defense worked to remove the rubble of the house, recovered the body of the dead man, and transported the wounded man to a hospital in the area," noting that the dead man was called Nabegh al-Qadiri (50 years old), an official in charge of the Resistance Brigades affiliated with Hezbollah in the town of Kafr Shuba.

The border between Lebanon and Israel has witnessed escalating tension and intermittent military confrontations between Hezbollah and armed factions on the one hand, and the Israeli army on the other, since the outbreak of war between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel in the Gaza Strip on October 7 last.

The confrontations on the Lebanese side since last October 8 led to the killing of 213 people, including 158 members of Hezbollah, a member of the Civil Defense, a soldier from the Lebanese Army, a member of each of the Amal Movement and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, 16 members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements in Lebanon, and 35 civilians, including three journalists. According to party statements and security and medical reports.

The number of journalists who lost their lives as a result of the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since last October 7 has exceeded the total number of journalists killed in the world in 2021 and 2022.

The Israeli army, which has continued to bomb the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air for more than 3 months, has killed a large number of media workers and civilians.

As a result of the Israeli attacks, more than 23,000 people were killed in Gaza, where about 2.3 million Palestinians live, and about 59,000 others were injured, including at least 10,000 children and 7,000 women.

In addition to civilians, Israeli forces, in their attacks on Gaza, targeted journalists who enjoy immunity under international law.

According to data from international organizations, 109 journalists and media workers were killed in 2021 and 2022 around the world.

Data from the Gaza government press office indicate that the number of journalists killed as a result of Israeli attacks since last October 7 has reached 112 journalists.

This reveals that the number of journalists killed by Israel in Gaza within 3 months is more than the total number of journalists killed in the world during the years 2021 and 2022.

While Israel does not refrain from shooting journalists, their families, and their work offices, members of the press in Gaza risk their lives to inform the world of the cruelty of the Israeli attacks on the Strip.

Despite the violent Israeli attacks, journalists in Gaza carry out a mission that goes beyond what is entrusted to them and sacrifice their lives to convey the true picture in the Strip to the entire world.

In addition to the Israeli attacks, Gaza's journalists struggle to access electricity and the Internet to report the events to the world.

One of the journalists killed as a result of the Israeli attacks on Gaza was Anatolia photographer Montaser Al-Sawaf, who insisted on continuing his work despite losing his family and 45 relatives in raids in the northern Gaza Strip on November 18.

In that attack, Al-Sawaf lost 45 of his relatives, including his father, Mustafa Al-Sawaf, his mother, two brothers, and their children, and he himself was injured.

Despite his injury, Al-Sawaf, who continued to remain in northern Gaza, devoted himself to conveying what was happening in the region to the world. He was roaming northern Gaza on his bicycle because he could not find fuel, and he was able to take important pictures that showed the extent of the violence of the Israeli attacks in the region.

Al-Sawaf lost his life, along with his brother Marwan, in another Israeli air strike in front of his house early last December.

Al Jazeera Qatari correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh lost his wife, son, daughter, and granddaughter in an Israeli raid that targeted a house to which they were displaced in the middle of the Gaza Strip in October 2023.

Several weeks later, he himself was injured and his colleague, photographer Samer Abu Daqqa, was killed by an Israeli bombing while they were covering the course of the war in the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian journalist was recently shocked by the killing of his eldest son, Hamza, in an Israeli raid that targeted his car in the city of Khan Yunis.

Following the killing of his son Hamza, the Palestinian journalist mourned his son, saying: “There is nothing more difficult than the pain and pain of loss, so how about if the loss is the firstborn child then the pleasure of the liver. Hamza is not a part of me, Hamza was all of me. The soul of the soul and everything.”

Ali Jadallah, a photojournalist with Anatolia, was also not spared from the Israeli raids that targeted his home last October 11, and as a result he lost at least 8 members of his family, including his father and brothers.

Unable to find a coffin or a transport vehicle, Jadallah transported his father's body to the cemetery in the back seat of his car.

Jadallah, who dedicates himself to informing the world about the violence of Israeli attacks and the ongoing humanitarian tragedy in Gaza, continues his journalistic work valiantly in the region, defying all conditions of danger.

Hearings are expected in The Hague this week. South Africa is also seeking an emergency suspension of Israel's military campaign on Gaza. 

In a slap to the government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, hundreds of Israelis have signaled that they're backing the case at the International Court of Justice brought by South Africa accusing Israel of Genocide in Gaza. More than 600 Israelis have signed a petition calling on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule in favour of South Africa's lawsuit against the state of Israel, calling for a decision that will bring an immediate end to the war. 

Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians thus far, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health officials, and rendered much of the Gaza enclave uninhabitable for the 2.2 million Palestinians living there. 

Israel last month of breaching its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention, the treaty drafted in the wake of the Holocaust in Europe, which makes it a crime to attempt to destroy a people in whole or in part. 

Hearings are expected in The Hague this week, on the 11th and 12th of January. South Africa is also seeking an emergency suspension of Israel's military campaign on Gaza. 

Bolivia, Turkey and Malaysia have voiced their support for the case, while Jordan's foreign minister also said Amman will back South Africa. Dr Anat Matar, one of the petition initiators, told The New Arab that she is filing the petition to the ICJ in The Hague on Tuesday. "I initiated this petition first of all because I wanted to show that there is part of Israeli citizens who agree with South Africa's move". Dr Anat Matar holds a senior lecturer position at Tel Aviv University, where she teaches political philosophy. In addition, she advocates for 'draft refusers', a small segment of Israelis who refuse to serve in the Israeli army because they oppose the occupation. "What I know for sure is that this war must be stopped immediately. Every moment that passes is a crime". Israeli member of Knesset Ofer Cassif from the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality-Jabha announced that he's also supporting the initiative.  "My constitutional duty is to Israeli society and all of its residents, not to a government whose members and its coalition are calling for ethnic cleansing and even actual genocide", Cassif wrote on the social media platform X. 

Israelis adding their voice to millions of voices around the world who accuse the government of PM Netanyahu of committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza may give credence to South Africa's lawsuit. "Do we believe that general public trends could impact what judges rule? Overall, the answer is yes. I do believe this petition by Israeli citizens can help educate the public opinion", Ofer Neiman, one of the signatories to the petition and an anti-occupation activist, told TNA. Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of Israelis still support the war, with one poll showing that around 75% of Israelis reject attempts to de-escalate the military's attacks on Palestinians. 

South Africa has backed the Palestinian cause for statehood in Israeli-occupied territories for decades, likening the plight of Palestinians to those of the Black majority in South Africa during the repressive apartheid era, a comparison that Israel denies. Israel was a major ally to Apartheid South Africa, providing political and military support, as well as jointly shared nuclear technology for the development of a bomb. A different court in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC), is separately investigating alleged atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank but has not named any suspects. Israel is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction.

Israel has named its former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak as its addition to an International Court of Justice panel due this week to hear a genocide allegation filed against it. 

Under the ICJ's rules, a state that does not already have a judge of its nationality on the bench can choose an ad hoc judge to sit in their case. South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in the Gaza war, has also appointed an ad hoc judge, former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke, South African media said. Scotland's first minister, Hamza Yusuf, in the wake of remarks of senior members of the Israeli cabinet, calling to move Palestinians out of the enclave and Jewish recolonization of Gaza, accused Israel of ethnic cleansing. "If that's not tantamount to ethnic cleansing, then I don't know what is", he told Sky News. Israel and the United States have rebuked South Africa's case at the ICJ. Israel, which is under increasing international calls to end its offensive in Gaza, claims self-defense.  Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Tuesday, 9 January, that "there is nothing more atrocious and preposterous" than a lawsuit filed in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in its war on Gaza.

The American website The Intercept said, in a report published on Tuesday, January 9, 2024, that coverage of the war on Gaza by the American newspapers The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times revealed a consistent bias against the Palestinians, according to the findings of the American site’s analysis for major media coverage.

Major American newspapers focused disproportionately on Israeli deaths in the conflict, used emotional language when describing Israeli deaths rather than Palestinians, and provided unbalanced coverage of anti-Semitic activities within the United States, with a broad disregard for anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7. .

1000 articles

In addition, this open source analysis focuses on the first six weeks of the conflict, beginning with the Hamas attacks on October 7, and ending on November 24 with the beginning of the week-long “humanitarian truce.”

The Intercept collected more than 1,000 New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times articles about Israel's war in Gaza, then counted the number of times certain key terms were used and the context in which they were used. The statistics revealed a stark imbalance in the way Israelis and pro-Israel figures are covered, when compared to the way Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices are covered - with terms being used in a manner more biased towards Israeli narratives than Palestinian ones.

Coverage of the first six weeks of the war paints a bleak picture of the Palestinian side, according to the analysis, a picture that makes humanizing the Palestinians - and arousing American sympathy for them - a more difficult task.

To collect this data, all articles containing relevant words (such as “Palestinian,” “Gaza,” “Israeli,” etc.) were searched on the three news sites. Then, we analyzed each sentence that appeared in all the articles, then counted the number of times certain terms were used. All editorial articles and editor-in-chief letters were also removed for the purposes of this analysis.

In the survey process, four main results were reached.

Uneven coverage of deaths

The words "Israeli" and "Israel" appear more often than the word "Palestinian" in various forms in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, even though the numbers of Palestinian deaths far outnumber Israeli deaths. The Palestinians were mentioned once for every two Palestinians killed. While the Israelis were mentioned eight times for every Israeli killed - that is, 16 times more than the number of times a single Palestinian killed was mentioned.

The "massacre" is for Israelis only... not Palestinians

The use of highly emotional terms to describe the killing of civilians (such as “massacre,” “massacre,” and “horrific”) was limited almost exclusively to Israelis killed by Palestinians, and not the other way around. We removed from this analysis the instances in which these terms appeared in quotation marks because they were not included as part of the newspaper's editorial policy.

Editors and reporters used the term "massacre" to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians at a ratio of 60 to one, and they used the term "massacre" to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians at a ratio of 125 to one. They used the term "horrific" to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians at a ratio of 36 to 4.

Children and journalists

Only two headlines out of 1,100 news articles used the word “children” when referring to the children of Gaza. In a notable exception, the New York Times published a front-page story in late November reporting on the historic rate of killing of Palestinian women and children, but the headline did not mention either group.

Israel's war in Gaza is arguably the bloodiest war in modern history for children - almost all of whom are Palestinian -, but mention of the word "children" and other related terms was rare in the titles of articles reviewed by The Intercept.

The war on Gaza is also considered one of the bloodiest wars in modern history for journalists - the majority of whom are Palestinians - but the word “journalists” and its various forms such as “correspondents” and “photographers” appeared in only nine news headlines, out of 1,100. At least one article in this study. While Arab correspondents were mentioned in only 4 out of 9 articles containing the word journalist or correspondent.

Coverage of hate in the United States

Likewise, when it comes to translating the Gaza conflict into hate incidents within the United States, major newspapers have focused more on anti-Semitic attacks than on those targeting Muslims. There was a disproportionate focus on racism against Jews in general, compared to racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, or those who look like them. During the period of The Intercept's study, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times mentioned the term anti-Semitism more often than Islamophobia (by a ratio of 549 to 79).

When major newspapers fail

In general, it can be said that Israel's killings in Gaza do not receive coverage equivalent to the Israeli deaths on October 7, either in scope or emotional weight. The reported killings are often presented as abstract, high numbers without cause.

These killings are not described in emotional terms such as “massacre,” “slaughter,” or “horrific.” Hamas' killings of Israeli civilians are always described as part of the movement's strategy, while killings of Palestinian civilians are covered up as if they were a series of individual mistakes committed thousands of times, despite multiple evidence indicating Israel's intent to harm civilians and damage infrastructure. Civil infrastructure.

The result is that the three major newspapers rarely give Palestinians humanitarian coverage. Despite this disparity, opinion polls show Democratic sympathies toward the Palestinians and away from Israel, with huge gaps between generations resulting in part from the apparent difference in news sources.

Young people generally get their information about the conflict from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. While older Americans learn news from print media or cable news.

Biased coverage in major newspapers and popular channels affects public impressions of the war, directing viewers towards a distorted view of the conflict. This has resulted in “misinformation” on social networks being blamed for the spread of pro-Palestinian views, by pro-Israel pundits and politicians.

But an analysis of print newspapers and news channels shows that the media consumers who receive a distorted image are those who watch news through popular media in the United States.

Source: Arabic Post

Dozens of Jewish rabbis staged a sit-in, Tuesday, January 9, 2024, inside the UN Security Council hall in New York, demanding an “immediate and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. 

The organization "Rabbis for a Ceasefire" stated, in a post on the "X" platform, that a group of rabbis protested inside the UN Security Council hall in New York, carrying banners and chanting slogans demanding an "immediate and permanent" ceasefire in Gaza.

In a live broadcast by the organization on the YouTube platform, dozens of rabbis were seen chanting inside the hall of the United Nations Security Council in support of the ceasefire, raising banners that read, “Biden... stop the veto against peace” and “Biden... the world says: stop the fire.” 

Rabbis support Gaza from within the Security Council

In her words to the sit-in participants, one of the rabbis said: “We are here to support the United Nations to move for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and to demand that the United States step down and let the United Nations take urgent action to protect lives.”

She added: "We are here because the United Nations is the appropriate place to take real steps to achieve a ceasefire and to hold Israel accountable for war crimes."

This protest in the Council Hall coincided with the United Nations General Assembly holding a plenary session to discuss the issue of the use of the veto by the United States in the Security Council on December 22, 2023 against an amendment proposed by Russia to a draft resolution submitted by the UAE regarding the situation in Gaza and Israel. .

Palestinian, Arab and Islamic institutions in the United States of America have invited members of communities and activists from all states to participate extensively in the million-man march scheduled for next Saturday in Washington, DC, to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

The organizers of the march demand that unconditional American funding for the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians be halted, and that the occupying state be held accountable for the war crimes it commits against the Palestinian people and its continued violations of international law.

These approximately 240 organizations called on the American government to end its participation and complicity in Israel’s crimes against humanity, and to demand full and prompt accountability for the American and Israeli officials involved in this genocide.

These institutions seek to ensure the arrival of the largest possible number of participants by providing transportation from all American states to facilitate their arrival to (Freedom Square) next Saturday.

In the same context, activists continue their marches and demonstrations denouncing the continuation of the war and demanding its immediate cessation, as they recently adopted a plan based on “closing vital streets and bridges” in many American cities to raise the issue of the devastating war in the Gaza Strip through local communities to influence their representatives in Washington.

Jenin

At dawn on Wednesday, Israeli occupation forces stormed the city of Jenin and the outskirts of its camp.

Local sources reported that a number of occupation military vehicles stormed the city from all its entrances, especially the western entrance of the camp and Al-Sikka Street in Jenin, and the occupation bulldozers began the process of destroying the infrastructure at the entrance to the city and the outskirts of the camp and Al-Sikka Street, which led to the outbreak of violent confrontations with young men in several neighborhoods. The occupation also fired light bombs into Jenin camp.

The sources indicated that the outskirts of the city are witnessing large military build-ups of Israeli occupation forces from all sides, adding that occupation drones and reconnaissance aircraft are flying in the skies of the city and the camp.

Later, the occupation forces positioned themselves on the outskirts of the camp and Al-Zahraa neighborhood, and deployed their snipers on the roofs of several buildings.

The occupation sent new reinforcements from Nazareth Street, and its bulldozers began destroying the streets, infrastructure, and a number of vehicles, and also destroyed the structures in the new camp.

The occupation bulldozers also destroyed fruit and vegetable stands in the vicinity of the industrial area roundabout, next to Al-Hathnawi Restaurant and the Grand Mosque, and stands in the main roundabout area in the city.

Nablus

At dawn on Wednesday, Israeli special forces stormed the city of Nablus, besieged the Old City, and arrested a young man.

Local sources reported that occupying special forces stormed the Al-Haddadin Market inside the Old City, surrounded a house, and the occupation forces arrested citizen Nasr Mabrouka, from inside the town.

Large numbers of military jeeps and vehicles also stormed the city from several directions, besieging all entrances to the Old City, and a number of snipers mounted the rooftops of houses in its vicinity.

It added that the occupation forces are currently present in the streets of Granada, Ras Al-Ain, Faisal, and Palestine.

Other forces, including infantry, are also besieging the Qaryon neighborhoods and the blacksmiths market inside the Old City, and sounds of explosions are heard.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced today, Wednesday, that the death toll from the Israeli war on the Strip since October 7 has risen to 23,357 Palestinians.

Dozens of citizens were killed, and others were injured, in missile and artillery shelling and gunfire by the Israeli occupation forces in various areas of the Gaza Strip, on the ninety-sixth day of the aggression against Gaza.

Medical sources reported that 6 citizens were killed and others were wounded by bullets from Israeli occupation forces stationed on the coastal road in the Sheikh Ajlin area, southwest of Gaza City. They were taken to Al-Shifa Hospital, west of the city.

15 citizens were killed and dozens were injured as a result of Israeli warplanes bombing with a missile an inhabited house belonging to the Nofal family, west of the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The majority of them were transferred to Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in the city.

Israeli warplanes bombed a house in Deir al-Balah camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip, causing dead and wounded who were transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

The Israeli occupation artillery shelled violently and intensively the eastern and southern areas of the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, and dozens of people killed and wounded, the majority of whom were displaced from Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.

The occupation artillery also bombed the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi camps in the middle of the Gaza Strip, killing at least twenty citizens, the majority of whom were children, women, and the elderly.

A number of citizens were killed and others were injured as a result of the occupation targeting a house belonging to the Asalia family in the town of Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli gunboats fired dozens of rocket shells towards citizens' homes in the Al-Waha and Sudaniya areas and the outskirts of the Beach Camp, west of Gaza City and off the central sea and south of the Strip, resulting in dozens of injuries.

The toll of killed and wounded as a result of the Israeli bombing in the central Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours reached 58 persons and dozens of wounded.

The Israeli air, land and sea aggression against the Gaza Strip continues, leaving more killed and wounded among citizens and major destruction of homes, buildings, apartments, property and infrastructure.

At least 15 citizens were killed and others were injured in the Israeli occupation aircraft’s bombing of an apartment in a residential building west of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.

Medical sources reported that 15 killed arrived at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah as a result of the occupation bombing of an apartment in a residential building for the Nofal family in the Tal Al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah.

Local sources reported that a number of citizens were killed and others were injured in an Israeli bombing that targeted citizens in the town of Al-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip.

The occupation aircraft also bombed a house near the girls’ middle school in the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in dead and wounded.

Earlier, at least 4 citizens were killed in Al-Maghazi camp, without ambulance and rescue crews being able to reach them, due to the positioning of occupation vehicles at the entrance to the camp.

A number of killed and wounded arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital as a result of the occupation aircraft bombing a house in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

The occupation drones opened fire on displaced people and citizens in UNRWA schools, west of Khan Yunis, and in the vicinity of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, and east of Nuseirat, in the center of the Gaza Strip, resulting in injuries.

The occupation aircraft bombed a mosque and citizens’ homes in the southern region of Qaizan al-Najjar, south of Khan Yunis.

The occupation artillery continued to bomb the Al-Manara neighborhood, the Al-Fokhari area, and various neighborhoods and areas of Khan Yunis, which led to the martyrdom of two female citizens in the Al-Fokhari area in the east. A child also died in the Gaza European Hospital as a result of her injuries in an artillery shelling on eastern Khan Yunis yesterday, bringing the number of killed in Khan Yunis to 13 within the last 24 hours.

Ambulance and rescue crews recovered two killed bodies and a number of wounded from under the rubble of a house targeted by the occupation aircraft in Jabalia al-Balad, north of the Gaza Strip. A number of citizens were also killed and others were injured in an Israeli raid west of Gaza City, and the occupation aircraft bombed the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza.

In an infinite toll, the toll of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has risen to 23,210 dead, more than 70% of whom are women and children, and 59,167 wounded, in addition to more than 7,000 people missing.

The Israeli Ministry of Health instructed hospitals to prepare to receive thousands of injured people, against the backdrop of escalating tensions with the Lebanese Hezbollah.

This came according to what was reported by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (“Kan 11”), which indicated that the Ministry had instructed hospitals “to prepare to receive thousands of victims.” It also instructed the hospitals in the north of the country, especially the Ziv Hospital in Safed and the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya; to prepare for a situation in which the hospital will be without supplies of equipment, medicines and food for several days.

This also comes as the Israeli army claimed responsibility for the assassination of the commander of Hezbollah’s air unit in southern Lebanon, Ali Hussein Burji. He was attributed responsibility for carrying out dozens of operations using explosive drones, including targeting the Northern Command headquarters.

The Ministry of Health raised the state of “readiness” in the systems for treating and receiving patients in hospitals and patient funds throughout the country, especially in the north.

The hospitals in Safed and Nahariya received instructions to prepare to receive many injured people and transfer them to other hospitals as well.

The Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Health, Moshe Bar Siman Tov, issued instructions to all hospitals in Israel, “to be able to switch to emergency mode within 24 hours of being asked to do so,” according to “Kan 11.”

The broadcaster noted, “This means that when necessary, hospitals will move to ‘protected complexes,’” which means they can release patients who can be discharged, and prepare to receive many other infected people.

Hospitals in the north of the country were asked to "be able to deal with an emergency within hours, and if necessary, to maintain a 50 percent occupancy rate, to allow the injured to be received in protected complexes only."

The Ministry of Health is also preparing for the possibility of medical personnel being injured as a result of the war, or joining the reserve forces, and “therefore a reserve of doctors is being prepared from abroad, and there are about seven thousand Jewish doctors who have expressed their desire to do so, and if necessary, they will be asked to come to Israel to help.” ".

Today, Wednesday, a tripartite summit will be held including President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and Jordanian King Abdullah II in the city of Aqaba, Jordan.

The summit will discuss ways to stop the aggression against the Gaza Strip, provide relief to the residents of the Strip and the required political horizon, and come up with collective recommendations to the world regarding the necessity of stopping the aggression.

President Abbas is scheduled to receive US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tomorrow afternoon in Ramallah, before heading to Aqaba to participate in the tripartite summit.

An Israeli report stated that Tel Aviv would allow a United Nations delegation to visit the northern Gaza Strip, which was almost completely destroyed, as the Israeli army deliberately leveled entire neighborhoods, institutions and hospitals in the land.

According to what the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on its website (Ynet), the “War Cabinet” “responded to the request of US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, to allow a United Nations delegation to visit the northern Gaza Strip.”

It added that the potential step comes “so that the delegation can closely examine the state of the infrastructure and draw a map of the needs in the region.”

Earlier today, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “importance” of avoiding harm to civilians in Gaza.

Blinken said during his presence in Doha, the day before yesterday, Sunday, as part of his Middle Eastern tour, that “90% of the population of the Gaza Strip is facing a severe food shortage,” noting that “the immediate increase of aid in Gaza, especially in the north, is essential.”

He added, "The United Nations can play a decisive role regarding the return of Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza."

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said today that the Gaza Strip is turning into an “unfit place to live,” after more than 3 months of the Israeli war on the Strip.

Israel announced the transition of its army from a large-scale ground and air campaign on Gaza to a “more targeted” phase in its war on the Gaza Strip, involving “more precise operations, a smaller number of forces, and a reduction in the intensity of operations in the northern Strip.”

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hajari said in statements to the New York Times that the new phase “includes a smaller number of forces and raids.”

He added: "The war has moved to a new phase, but the transition will take place without celebrations. It is not about exciting announcements," explaining that Israel will continue to reduce the number of its forces in Gaza, and that the intensity of operations in the north has already begun to decline, with the army shifting towards launching separate attacks there instead of continuing large-scale maneuvers."

Hajari explained that Israel "will focus for the time being on Hamas strongholds in the south and center of the Strip, especially in Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah," saying that he expects to allow more aid and tents to enter Gaza.

American officials expected that the new phase would rely more on “highly precise operations carried out by smaller groups of Israeli special forces, who will move inside and outside population centers in the Gaza Strip, to find Hamas leaders, kill them, rescue hostages, and destroy tunnels,” according to the statement. American officials.

The officials, who spoke to the newspaper anonymously, believe that the number of Israeli forces in the northern part of Gaza will decrease to less than half the number of soldiers who were there during the height of the campaign last month, numbering 50,000.

End of January

According to the New York Times, Israeli officials secretly informed their American counterparts that they hope to complete this process by the end of this January.

However, Israeli officials explained to their American counterparts that the time frame for the transition to the new phase has not been determined, but they hope to complete it by the end of this month.

The scale and pace of the Israeli troop withdrawal may slow, and intense air strikes could continue, if the forces encounter stronger than expected resistance from Hamas, according to Israeli officials.

The Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, announced earlier that his country's army was heading into a "new phase of the war," which a Hamas leader considered evidence of confusion within the Israeli army, stressing that Israel had not achieved any of its goals. In the previous stages of the war on Gaza, his movement is “prepared for a long phase” of fighting.

Galant explained that Israeli forces will shift to what he called "the intensive maneuver phase of the war," toward "different types of special operations."

But Gallant warned that the next chapter of the conflict “will last longer,” stressing that Israel will not abandon its goals of destroying Hamas “as a fighting force, ending its control over the Gaza Strip, and liberating the remaining hostages.”

A Palestinian human rights organization said that last year was a year of genocide against Palestinian children, after Israel killed at least 8,000 children in Gaza and 81 children in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, since October 7, 2023.

Defense for Children International explained that this rate is likely to increase as thousands are still missing in Gaza, in addition to the occupation cutting off food, water, electricity, medical supplies and fuel to the residents of the Strip, and continuing to launch indiscriminate and direct attacks against residential buildings and civilian infrastructure. And the health system.

The organization added, in a statement, that the rate of “killing of Palestinian children during the past year is unprecedented,” noting that they constituted “major targets of the occupation,” stressing that the evidence it collected indicates the regular use of lethal force by the occupation forces against Palestinian children in circumstances that rise to the level of extrajudicial killing. Scope of justice or premeditated murder.

It stated that Israel is waging a deliberate and systematic campaign throughout the West Bank and Gaza to destroy Palestinian life, noting that last year witnessed the martyrdom of 121 children in the West Bank at the hands of the occupation forces and settlers.

It explained that the occupation forces and settlers shot and killed 102 Palestinian children with live ammunition, while 19 Palestinian children were martyred in air attacks in the northern West Bank. Among them were 14 children who were killed in drone attacks, 4 others by missiles fired by an attack helicopter, and one child in an air strike by an Israeli warplane.

In this context, the human rights organization said that it documented that the Israeli army prevented paramedics and ambulances from providing assistance to wounded Palestinians, including children.

Arrest and torture of children

The human rights organization also confirmed that the Israeli army continued to arbitrarily arrest, torture, and try Palestinian children in military detention centers during 2023.

It estimated that the average number of children arrested per month during the past year reached 165 children. It also stated that Israel annually arrests between 500 and 700 Palestinian children and tries them in military courts.

It said that children are subjected to difficult interrogation conditions, including handcuffing, blindfolding, and sleep deprivation. They also give their confessions after being exposed to verbal abuse, threats, physical and psychological violence, and torture.

It added that during the year 2023, 38 cases were documented in which the occupation forces prevented ambulances and paramedics from reaching the injured, including children.

poll

According to a questionnaire conducted by the organization on a sample of the testimonies of 75 children arrested by the army in the West Bank and Jerusalem, it showed that 61% of them were subjected to physical violence after arrest, and 96% of them were handcuffed and 88% were blindfolded.

The organization stated, according to the questionnaire, that 47% of the children were arrested from their homes at night, while 69% of them faced verbal abuse and intimidation, and 65% were subjected to a strip search at least once. The organization reported that 72% of the detained children were subjected to deprivation of food and water and 97% of them were interrogated without the presence of any of their family members, while 95% of the children were not informed of the reason for their arrest. The organization indicated that Israel isolated 24% of the children it conducted the study for two days or more.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Three Egyptian security sources reported that Egypt rejected an Israeli proposal to strengthen Israeli supervision of the buffer zone on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, and that Cairo gives priority to mediation efforts in a ceasefire before working on post-war arrangements.

Egypt shares a 13-kilometre border with Gaza, which is the only border of the Gaza Strip, which is not directly controlled by Israel. Egypt, along with Qatar, also played a prominent role in the talks to mediate a new ceasefire in Gaza and reach an agreement to release the Israelis hostages  detained by Hamas, according to Reuters.

The Egyptian sources said that during these talks, Israel contacted Egypt to secure the narrow buffer zone of the Philadelphia Axis along the border, as part of Israeli plans to prevent future attacks. The current conflict began on October 7, when the Hamas movement launched an attack that Israel said resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people and the capture of about 240 hostages.

Israel responded with an attack that killed more than 23,000 people, according to Gaza officials, and displaced most of the Strip's 2.3 million residents from their homes. An Israeli official, on condition of anonymity, said that joint monitoring of the Philadelphia axis with Egypt was among the issues. Which the two countries discussed.

In response to a question about whether Egypt refused, the Israeli official said: “I am not aware of that.” Cairo News Channel quoted an unidentified source on Monday as saying that recent reports about planned cooperation between Egypt and Israel regarding the axis are not true.

Egyptian sources said that Israeli officials did not discuss control of the axis during the current ceasefire talks, but instead asked to participate in monitoring the area, including by sharing the use of new surveillance technology that Israel will purchase.

The sources said that Egyptian negotiators rejected the idea, but Egypt reinforced barriers on its side of the border.

The sources added that Egypt gives priority to reaching a new ceasefire agreement as a necessary basis for discussions on post-war Gaza, including securing the corridor.

Tunnels

For his part, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Tuesday that the priorities for Gaza are a ceasefire, the delivery of aid, and preventing the exodus of Gazans to Egypt.

Israel controlled the Philadelphia axis until 2005, when it ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. Late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was seeking to reassert its control over the axis under which Palestinians have long run underground tunnels.

The number of tunnels began to increase in 2008, and Palestinian smugglers and militants used them to avoid an Israeli economic blockade and to bring weapons to the Gaza Strip, but an Egyptian military campaign that began in 2013 was able to destroy most of them, according to Palestinian sources.

The newspaper "Le Parisien" said that the Israeli occupation army announced on Saturday that it had removed all threats and controlled the northern third of the Gaza Strip, and the war is now expected to enter its "third phase", with targeted operations focused on the rest of the Gaza Strip, as demands to reduce the intensity of combat is more urgent.

The newspaper explained - in a report written by Leo Agesi - that a major chapter of the Israeli attack had ended with the war entering its fourth month on Sunday, and the Israeli army announcing that it had “finished dismantling the military structure of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip,” after it destroyed entire neighborhoods and displaced 85% of the population, causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

Units remaining

Some areas in the northern Gaza Strip, representing about 15%, are still outside the control of the Israeli army, according to the American Institute for the Study of War, but they are “within firing range,” and Hamas “should not risk them,” as former officer Guillaume Ancel assumes.

Middle East affairs expert Sebastien Bossois says, "Even if fighters were able to appear there, the Israeli army issued a decree that the remaining structures were no longer able to harm it, and the army withdrew several military units from this part of the territory."

Ancel adds, “To maintain control over this war-torn area, of which only ruins remain, the Israeli army must make it a buffer zone by creating a small force responsible for ensuring that no one enters it, and making it a no-go zone, as it appears that "The return of the displaced population is out of the question at this stage."

It is assumed that the clashes will now be concentrated in the center and south of the region in the city of Khan Yunis, as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant confirmed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the Israeli army “will begin the third phase of the war in the Gaza Strip,” and will abandon extensive and extensive operations. Range to take advantage of more targeted attacks.

Reduced combat intensity

The aforementioned third phase of the war, for which Israel's allies who fear the outbreak of a regional conflagration are pressing, is represented by "less lethal" operations, called for by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who is visiting Israel, urging "the protection of Palestinian civilians" and the implementation of targeted operations to combat terrorism."

Guillaume Ancel explains that the characteristics of this “third phase” are supposed to reduce the number of casualties on both sides, “demobilize part of the Israeli army, reduce bombing, and provide massive humanitarian aid.”

But “the transition to the third stage will take at least a few more weeks,” said David Khalfa, co-director of the North Africa and Middle East Observatory of the French Jean Jaurès Foundation.

Source: Le Parisien + Aljazeera

An article on the American website "Mondoweiss" warned against exaggerating the state of instability in the Middle East at a time when the region stands on the brink of abyss, criticizing what it called American "blind support" for the genocidal campaign carried out by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The author of the article, Mitchell Pletnick, who is president of the Rethinking Foreign Policy Foundation, confirmed that the destabilization resulted from the ongoing Israeli massacre in the Gaza Strip, and from the “reckless” support provided by the administration of US President Joe Biden to Tel Aviv.

The writer said that Biden and his administration put themselves in a difficult position with their “blind” support for Israel and their incitement to war in Gaza and Lebanon.

Make their intentions known

The writer - who previously worked as co-director of the "Jewish Voice for Peace" organization and director of the office of the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem in the United States - added that Israeli leaders, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have regularly announced their intentions to carry out operations. Ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.

In response to these intentions, Washington tried to portray them as marginal statements that do not represent the orientations of the Israeli government.

The writer confirms that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many members of the ruling Likud Party are making similar statements. Fortunately for Biden and his supporters of genocide, the "naive" American media remained silent regarding these statements, while highlighting the statements of Smotrich and Ben Gvir.

Don't give value to their lives

According to the article, one of the actual policy points - which prompted the United States to participate in the ongoing genocide in Gaza - lies in its desire to contain the fighting in an effort to limit the massacre to the Palestinians “whose lives the administration does not attach any value to,” but at the same time it does not want the war to extend. To the rest of the region.

According to the writer, the United States is doing itself no favors by allowing Israel to impose its will on the course of events without almost any opposition, except for “empty rebuke and sometimes conciliation.”

He claimed that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Ansar Allah group (Houthis) in Yemen announced their solidarity with the Palestinian people, hoping that their position would push the United States to put pressure on Israel to force it to retreat from its attacks, which are characterized by genocide.

Reckless actions

The Mondoweiss article stated that the Israeli government has set some goals that go beyond Gaza, and has taken some reckless measures that threaten escalation.

He cited Israel's assassination of the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Radhi Mousavi, the leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Saleh Al-Arouri, then the military commander of Hezbollah, Hussein Yazbek, and Mushtaq Talib Al-Saeediyya, deputy commander of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces operations in Baghdad.

The head of the Foundation for Rethinking Foreign Policy continued by saying that Israel wants Hezbollah to move away about 29 kilometers into Lebanon's southern borders, under the pretext that it is the only way to allow the residents of northern Israel, which was evacuated after October 7, to return to their homes. But Hezbollah does not want to submit to Israel’s demands as long as Gaza continues to be subjected to aggression, according to the writer’s opinion.

According to the article, Israel is likely to continue its gradual escalation in order to be able to transfer more of its forces from Gaza to the northern border region, just as the United States escalated its operations against the Houthis in the Red Sea.

The escalation will inevitably increase

The writer said that these escalation processes will inevitably increase, warning that any uncalculated step or deliberate behavior by some parties would cause the outbreak of a regional war that most of these parties would like to avoid.

He believes that all these dangers can be avoided by stopping the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, which is what most countries in the world want, with the exception of the United States and Israel, according to him.

According to the article, Israel may finally be forced to acknowledge that the world will not allow it to empty Gaza of its population. On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant announced a plan that would put Israel in full control of Gaza, but would “allow” some Palestinian civilian control.

The writer considered that Gallant's plan does not express an official Israeli position, as much as it is an announcement aimed at calming the Biden administration, which is concerned about Israel's explicit support for ethnic cleansing, while not committing to stopping any of its crimes in Gaza.

He concludes his article by warning that the risk of an explosion in the region is still high and will continue to escalate, and if the United States does not abandon its current path of supporting Israeli violence, and with the violence it itself practices and its lawlessness, the explosion will eventually occur, as happened on October 7. the first.

Source: American press +Aljazeera

US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, stressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “importance” of avoiding harm to civilians in Gaza, and the efforts made to release hostages held in the Strip, according to what the US State Department said.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that Blinken "renewed our support for Israel's right to prevent a recurrence of the terrorist attacks that occurred on October 7, and stressed the importance of avoiding further harm to civilians and protecting civilian infrastructure in Gaza."

He added that he "discussed ongoing efforts to ensure the release of all hostages."

He said, "Blinken reaffirmed the need to ensure lasting peace, ensuring the establishment of a Palestinian state."

He noted that Blinken "discussed the importance of increasing the level of humanitarian aid reaching civilians in Gaza."

The Washington Post quoted unnamed American officials as saying that “Israel informed Washington of its intention to reduce operations in the next phase of its campaign in Gaza.”

It added that Tel Aviv informed Washington "that it will rely on a smaller number of forces and reduce aerial bombardment, and that it will deploy special forces to eliminate Hamas leaders and capabilities."

The American officials themselves said, "Previous Israeli guarantees were not fulfilled, and we hope that this will be the actual beginning of a reduction in forces."

Earlier today, Israeli President Isaac Herzog attacked South Africa, against the backdrop of the lawsuit filed before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing acts of genocide against the Palestinians during its war on the besieged Gaza Strip.

This came during his conversation with the US Secretary of State, where Herzog criticized South Africa for filing the lawsuit, the hearings of which are scheduled to begin next Thursday, while he thanked Washington for its support for Israel.

Herzog said that "there is nothing more brutal and ridiculous" than the lawsuit filed by South Africa, accusing Israel of committing genocide in its war on the Gaza Strip and demanding an urgent halt to its military campaign.

In light of the pressure demanded by Washington to “reduce the harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip,” and against the backdrop of the lawsuit against Israel in The Hague, Herzog said: “We are doing our best in light of the complex circumstances not to harm civilians.”

He claimed that the Israeli occupation warns civilians before targeting their homes in the Gaza Strip, and said: “We contact them, distribute warning leaflets, and use all means permitted by international law to transfer residents,” referring to their forcible displacement from their homes.

By JONATHAN COOK

Israel’s allies aren’t just turning a blind eye to Gaza’s killing fields. They have cheered on the bloodshed, provided diplomatic cover and supplied the arms

Israel is urging western states to rally to its side as the International Court of Justice prepares to hear this week South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The court is being asked by Pretoria to issue an immediate injunction ordering Israel to halt its military assault on the tiny enclave, to avoid further casualties.

Some 23,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed by Israel so far, a majority of them women and children, and many thousands more are believed to be lying under the rubble. Tens of thousands are seriously wounded. A majority of the population have lost their homes to the three-month bombing campaign. Israel has intensively and repeatedly targeted the supposedly “safe zones” to which it has ordered Palestinian civilians to flee. It has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure and is blocking most aid from reaching the enclave. Famine and disease are likely to rapidly increase the death toll.

South Africa’s 84-page brief argues that Israel’s bombing campaign and siege breaches the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defense of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead.

The Biden administration led the way late last week in dismissing South Africa’s detailed legal brief as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”. That would sound patently ridiculous to western audiences had they been provided with serious coverage of Gaza. But Israel has been heavily restricting access to the enclave, while killing Palestinian journalists there at an unprecedented rate to stop their reporting. In addition, western media are willingly - and secretly - submitting to an onerous Israeli censorship regime.

Incitement to genocide

Israel’s “strategic goal” at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack. Israeli officials will argue, Axios reports, that its sustained assault on Gaza fails to reach the threshold of genocide, which requires “creating conditions that don't allow the survival of the population, together with the intent to annihilate it”. Israel will try to convince the judges that it has been seeking to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and minimize the toll on civilians. Its argument flies in the face of the evidence South Africa has amassed. Its brief contains nine pages of declarations by Israeli leaders showing clear genocidal intent, including statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior figures in the cabinet, President Isaac Herzog and many serving and former Israeli military commanders. Giora Eiland, an adviser to war council minister, Benny Gantz, has called Israel’s goal the creation of “conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable”. An Israeli military spokesman stated from the outset that the aim was to inflict “maximum damage” on Gaza.

Herzog suggests the entire civilian population is a legitimate military target, while Netanyahu refers to the Palestinians as “Amalek”, a biblical enemy. In the Old Testament, God commands the Israelites to annihilate the Amalekites, putting “to death men and women, children and infants”. One of the provisions of the Genocide Convention is an absolute prohibition on incitement to genocide. Israel’s most senior politicians and military commanders have indisputably breached that section of the convention. A letter to Israel’s attorney general last week from a group of Israeli academics, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists underscored that point. They warned that incitement to genocide had become “an everyday matter in Israel”. The letter added: “Normalized discourse which calls for annihilation, erasure, devastation and the like is liable to impact the manner by which soldiers [in Gaza] conduct themselves.”

Taking the gloves off

But dehumanization - the precursor to genocide - is not the only problem. Israel’s prosecution of what it terms a “war to eradicate Hamas” has fully met its own definition of genocide. “Conditions that don't allow the survival of the population” were already being created long before the onslaught Israel unleashed immediately after Hamas broke out from Gaza on 7 October. Some 1,140 Israelis and other nationals were killed in the ensuing carnage. Mostly forgotten in the back and forth about what is unfolding in the enclave is the context: United Nations officials warned nearly a decade ago that Israel’s siege of Gaza - now 17 years in duration - was designed to make the enclave “uninhabitable”. In other words, Israel was precisely “creating conditions that don't allow the survival of the population”. Even before its current, extended assault, Israel had placed severe restrictions on access to water for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants. As a direct result, overstretched aquifers under Gaza were allowing in seawater, making the enclave’s drinking water unfit for human consumption. Food was similarly in short supply. Back in 2012, Israeli human rights groups managed to make public a secret document showing that the army had been tightly controlling food going into Gaza from 2008 onwards. As a result, two-thirds of the population was food insecure, and every 10th child was stunted by malnutrition. The aim was to induce long-term food poverty, effectively putting the population on a starvation diet. Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza over the past 15 years - what Israel calls “mowing the grass” - destroyed many of its homes and much of the infrastructure, creating ever greater overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. 

Israel's repeated bombing of Gaza’s only power station, and its chokehold on supplying additional energy, limited electricity to a few hours a day. The Israeli siege blocked medicines and medical equipment from entering the enclave, often making serious health conditions difficult or impossible to treat. And given the Israeli-imposed restrictions of goods in and out of Gaza, the economy was already in ruins, with nearly half the population unemployed. 

Long ago, back in 2016, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Herzi Halevi, warned that the catastrophe Israel was engineering in Gaza could blow up in its face - as indeed it did on 7 October. Israel’s three-month rampage has simply accelerated and intensified all the genocidal policies that had long been established. Hamas’s break-out simply gave Israel license to take the gloves off. 

Gaza ‘uninhabitable’

This is why the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, declared last week that Gaza had reached the point where it was indeed “uninhabitable”. He added: “People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.” With the vast majority of the population homeless and most hospitals no longer functioning, infectious disease was spreading. Israel’s “complete siege” policy meant aid could not get in. According to Griffiths, Israel had destroyed roads, blocked communication systems, and was shooting at UN trucks and killing aid workers. 

Returning from a visit to the border crossing with Egypt, two US senators observed at the weekend that Israel had imposed unreasonable conditions creating endless delays that prevented aid from reaching the people of Gaza. In other words, Israel has now successfully “created conditions that don't allow the survival of the population”. 

Upgrade to paid

The aim of the 1948 Genocide Convention, drafted in the immediate wake of the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, was not simply to punish those who carry out genocides. It was designed to help identify a genocide in its early stages, and create a mechanism - through the rulings of the International Court of Justice - by which it could be halted. In other words, the purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late.

Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee. Israeli leaders have encouraged this assumption. In an interview on Sunday, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, noted of Gaza’s population that - after being bombed, made homeless, starved and left vulnerable to disease - "hundreds of thousands will leave now".

Duplicitously, he termed this a “voluntary” mass emigration. But such an outcome - itself a crime against humanity - entirely depends on Egypt opening its borders to allow Palestinians to flee the killing fields. If Cairo refuses to submit to Israel’s violent blackmail, it will be Israel’s bombs, the famine it inflicted, and the lethal diseases it unleashed that decimate Gaza’s population.

The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or “only” ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.

Line in the sand

If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties. A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.

An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide. That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it. Leaders in the UK such as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer have steadfastly opposed a ceasefire and thrown their weight behind a central pillar of Israel’s genocidal policy: the “complete siege” of Gaza that has left the population starving and facing lethal epidemics.

The British and US governments have rejected all calls to stop the flow of arms. The Biden administration has even bypassed Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including indiscriminate “dumb” bombs that are laying waste to civilian areas.

Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, has regularly been featured by British media making genocidal statements. Just last week, when an interviewer noted that she appeared to be calling for the destruction of the whole of Gaza - every school, mosque and home - she answered: “Do you have another solution?”

British and US media have given airtime to Israeli officials who openly incite genocide. All that would have to stop immediately after a ruling. The police in western nations would be expected to investigate and the courts prosecute those inciting genocide or providing a platform for incitement. States would be expected to deny Israel weapons and impose economic sanctions on Israel - as well as on any states that collude in the genocide. Israeli officials would risk arrest for travelling to western countries. 

Double standards

In practice, of course, none of that is likely to happen. Israel is far too important to the West - as a projection of its power into the oil-rich Middle East - to be sacrificed. Any effort to enforce a genocide ruling through the UN Security Council will be blocked by the Biden administration. Meanwhile, the UK, along with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, have already demonstrated how unabashed they are about their own double standards. Weeks ago they submitted formal arguments to the International Court of Justice that Myanmar was committing genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group. Their central argument was that the Rohingya were being subjected “to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes, and the induction of essential medical services below minimum requirement”.

But none of these western states is backing South Africa’s genocide submission to the same court - even though conditions in Gaza engineered by Israel are even worse. The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too.

Israel has been at the forefront of efforts to unravel international law in Gaza for more than a decade. Now it is ostentatiously flaunting its perpetration of the crime of genocide, as if daring the world to stop it. Perversely, it is reversing the very international safeguards put in place to stop a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust. Will the West defy Israel or the court? The post-war consensus that serves as the foundation for international law - already shaken by the failure to address the West’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan - is on the verge of complete collapse.

And no one will be happier with that outcome than the state of Israel.

More than 3 years after the signing of the Abraham Accords, within the framework of which relations between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco were normalized. Despite the ongoing war in Gaza, these agreements have survived, as have the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. While Saudi Arabia, whose turn was supposed to come on the path to normalization, froze this process in the wake of the war on the Gaza Strip.

During the war, countries that signed agreements with Israel issued several statements of condemnation. The UAE condemned the ground operations in the Gaza Strip, and the King of Morocco rejected the Israeli policy in the Strip and “the Israeli attempt to impose a new reality.” He also said that the recent escalation is the result of the lack of a political horizon for the Palestinian issue. During the war, the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued several condemnations against Israel.

Countries that have signed peace and normalization agreements with Israel are suffering under great pressure from other Arab countries, and are also being attacked by the Iranian axis, which considers them traitors and collaborators with the Israelis and Americans. Bahrain has gone far by recently joining the international coalition against the Houthis in the Red Sea. There were reports in early November that Bahrain had reduced its economic relations with Israel, but it later turned out that these reports were incorrect.

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Morocco has witnessed large demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in the Strip, and sources in the country spoke at the beginning of the protests that the intention was to “reduce tension,” and that the king and the authorities were allowing the population to do this, nothing more, and that there was no danger to normalization with Israel.

It can be said that the war in Gaza, or Israel’s victory against “Hamas” and the situation in the region, may hinder or curb relations with countries that have normalized relations with Israel during this period, but in the long run, the war in Gaza must not hinder the development of relations with these countries. .

There are those who claim that in the long term, specifically when there is no Hamas presence in the region, these countries will be able to strengthen their relations with Israel in various fields, without anyone disturbing them. According to estimates, relations with Israel are important to these countries, for economic and security reasons, and these interests are likely to outweigh calls to sever relations. These countries' condemnations against Israel also play a role in alleviating the criticism directed at it.

A young man was killed this afternoon, Tuesday, after he was shot with live bullets by Israeli occupation forces near the Ein Sinya checkpoint, north of Ramallah.

The Ministry of Health said that the young man, Amid Ibrahim Samih Jayousi (31 years old), was killed by bullets from the occupation forces near the Ein Siniya checkpoint, north of Ramallah.

Local sources said that the occupation forces fired bullets at a young man near the Ain Sina checkpoint, allegedly trying to carry out a stabbing attack.

The occupation forces closed the Ain Sina checkpoint and prevented citizens from passing through it, as it is considered one of the few crossing points that citizens now go to, to exit or enter the city of Ramallah.

Dozens of people demonstrated on Tuesday in front of the hotel where US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Israeli President Isaac Herzog met in Tel Aviv.

According to identical reports reported by Hebrew media, dozens of Israeli and American women, and family members of Israeli prisoners detained in the Gaza Strip by Palestinian factions following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, 2023, participated in the demonstration.

The demonstrators carried banners calling for the return of detainees from Gaza, including a banner reading, “(Hey) Biden, only you can save them,” and another calling for the conclusion of an immediate ceasefire agreement in Gaza and the exchange of prisoners.

Blinken began his meetings in Israel with a meeting with Herzog, and is scheduled to hold a series of meetings throughout the day in Tel Aviv with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Galant, Foreign Minister Israel Katz, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, in addition to a meeting with the Israeli War Council.

Blinken is also expected to meet with the families of Israeli prisoners, while he will meet with opposition leader Yair Lapid tomorrow morning, Wednesday.

This is Blinken's fifth visit to Israel, since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip on October 7.