The recognition by Israeli officials that the level of international legitimacy supporting the occupying state in its aggressive war on the Gaza Strip is declining, is a recognition caused by the war of genocide and the massacres that the occupying state committed and is committing against our people in the Gaza Strip, which affected people, trees and stones, and which were exposed by satellite channels and all other media outlets. This revealed the reality of the occupying state, whose goal is not to eliminate the resistance, led by the Hamas movement, but rather to target safe citizens whose homes were bombed over their heads.
The world's vision of these massacres and the war of extermination led to a change in the positions of a number of countries that support and support the occupying entity, whether on the official level or on the level of the masses of these countries, especially the Western ones. These masses took to the streets in their millions to condemn the Israeli crime and demand that their governments side with them and not continue their support for the entity. The hostile Israeli regime occupies the Palestinian people and practices against them practices that shame all of humanity.
Therefore, large demonstrations took place, the largest in Britain for decades, against the government and its support for the Israeli occupation. Many demonstrators expressed their shame at their government’s support for the terrorist occupying state and its heinous and terrible actions against the safe citizens of the Gaza Strip.
The same applies to the United States, which threatened President Joe Biden that it would not vote in the upcoming elections, and that his position of support and even participation in the brutal aggression against Gaza is a disgrace and disgrace to America, which claims democracy and human rights. 

The masses in France also came out against the position of their government, and called for an end to the Israeli aggression. This public pressure led to the French delegate to the United Nations voting on the draft Arab resolution calling for stopping the war, opening safe corridors, sending aid to citizens, and lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing for several years. More than 16 years.

This is the tip of the iceberg, and the continuation of aggression, war of genocide, and crimes will increase day after day due to the decline in international support for the occupying state, which will further expose its truth to the world and its racism and arrogance, and perhaps in the future it will force the governments of these countries that support and support the occupying state to change their positions. 

Because the crimes committed and massacres against our people will increase the state of hostility, and this will even push our people to continue their struggle to defeat and leave the occupation.

All hail to the peoples of the world who stood and stand by our people, especially the peoples of the colonial countries who expressed their condemnation of the crimes of the brutal occupation.

No one knows when this war will stop, including the direct parties involved in attack and defense, but the law of life says that it must stop.

During the war, the term “political horizon” and the two-state solution revived remarkably, as no one who gave their input on its developments, whether from the camp supporting the option of Israeli military action, or those who had reservations about it, did not adopt the idea of the inevitability of finding a political horizon, and most of those who spoke about it and a solution The two states are President Biden.

It is not logical, and perhaps not useful, to go too far in proposing detailed scenarios for the political path, while the results of the war have not become clear, not even in an approximate way, so talking about what comes after the war does not go beyond the possibilities.

The first possibility, which rises to the level of automatic axioms, is that the current American administration will make a serious effort to extinguish the burning and latent fires in the Middle East, with a political initiative that is supposed to be fairer and more effective than all previous initiatives from the first Camp David to the recent Oslo, because the American talk The two-state solution, without being accompanied by a tangible effort in this direction, and without seeing its positive impact on the Israeli position, must automatically lead to the second possibility, which is crisis management, which the administrations went to and worked on, after the door to Palestinian negotiations was permanently closed. The door to fighting of varying intensity was opened on the West Bank and Gaza fronts, which produced a severe weakness for the Palestinian Authority until it turned into a burden on its people and those betting on it, and brought the extremists of the right in Israel to power, according to the established rule... The further away the chances for peace are, the higher the chances of the right to rule. Israel.

America's incursion into crisis management policy produced a feeling among the Palestinians that their issue had become merely economic facilities, when Washington talked a lot about aid that should be provided for the well-being of the Palestinians, and then it descended into wishful thinking, when America sponsored many activities under the roof of security understandings between the two sides. Finally, in light of the impact of the destructive war on Gaza, coupled with the war suffocating the West Bank between the army and the settlers, the term humanitarian solutions appeared, which, despite their necessity, especially in Gaza, remain far from what the Palestinians are asking for, that is, a political solution.

What doubles the Palestinians’ anxiety about the policy of managing the crisis instead of treating it in a way that leads to its solution is that it has settled in this place over a long period of time, and several successive administrations have adhered to it, including Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, who made the last attempt at a political solution and announced its failure, blaming Israel. Then The Trump administration is the owner of the initiative that was stillborn due to Palestinian, Arab and international objection to it. Then the Biden administration, which promised during the election campaign to modify paths but failed to fulfill its promise.

The war on Gaza and the West Bank is difficult and extremely cruel to the Palestinians. However, what will be more difficult politically is when America, the godmother of Israel, the settlement, and the remnants of Oslo, returns to the policy of crisis management despite its admission, albeit in a faint voice, that it has created a dangerous vacuum not only on the Palestinian-Israeli track, but also at the regional level. Entire.

The Biden administration has become a direct partner in the war on Gaza, and has mobilized its fleets in the region for fear of expanding the scope of the war, which would ignite the entire region.

The most important outcome of this direct military effort was the strengthening of American influence over the Israeli decision, which was the main obstacle to any progress on the political track, after the far-right government in Israel expanded the scope of its rebellion against many aspects of American policy.

The course of the current war has revealed a deep and wide difference between America and those who are supposed to be its friends, if not its “allies.” They have all taken decisive positions not only by condemning the destructive war on Gaza, but also by declaring the inevitability of beginning an effective political path that will put an end to the wars that are raging or could be raging, in The absence of a lasting and just peace. Will what happened - which is large, costly and dangerous - shift the effort from crisis management to resolving them? This is what will appear before the war stops, as a preliminary premise, and after it stops, as a political path.

What happened on October 7, 2023, and what is happening through this horrific massacre; It is outside the box of the prevailing and usual style, and therefore dealing with it and reflecting on it requires a new language, and it should be thought of using tools outside the box.
There are vocabulary that rolls among this rubble; Such as the missing, those buried under the rubble, the continuous raids, the families that were completely removed from records, the Western alignment behind the state of genocide and ethnic cleansing, the hostages, systematic war crimes, double standards, and the suppression of demonstrations in the cities of Europe, in solidarity with the Palestinians and the victims of Gaza, while being guarded. Pro-Israel demonstrations, under the title “The Right to Expression”!
There are questions that arise in this poisoned mess.. For example: Why does the occupation have the right to defend itself, but the Palestinians do not have the right to do so? Is Palestinian, Arab and Islamic blood, in general, worthless? Did the conflict begin on the day of the crossing, October 7, so that the world would come to the aid of the Israelis? Or did the world itself remain silent in the face of the atrocities of the occupation, its fires, its settlements, its incursions and its violations, for bitter decades, until the victim exploded in the face of her killer? Why didn't the world do anything for us and put Israel above the law? Is this a healthy, civilized, and civilized world that seeks peace, justice, and the preservation of rights, or is it a partner in our annihilation? Why do some Arab officials volunteer and repeat Israel's positions verbatim? Rather, they describe us as barbarians and heinous people? Or are they worse, more severe in words, more cursing a principle, and more hateful to a soul?! In fact, some of them, at the height of the massacre, insisted on economic and security integration with the occupying state! I ask: Are these Arabs and Muslims? I invite them to stare in their mirrors.
The occupying state has nothing but revenge and blatant killing - 700 victims per day - and perhaps it thought that the fires of its settlers, the raids on the Holy Mosque, and its continuous crimes would push the Palestinians to submission... But it realized that the people would not accept the yoke of slavery, Israelization, and orgy, and that a handful of men could To wallow its face in the mud and prove that Israel is an entity fit for defeat. Yes, this entity, which breathes from an external lung, is completely fit to be destroyed, and this is what the shakers and normalizers must realize! Because Israel needs someone to protect it...how will it protect you, you fearful people?
These unprecedented massacres revealed the reality of the world, which is a jungle.
There is no law and they do not grieve! This overwhelming torrent of blood and devastation will put the region on the brink of a regional war, and will generate deep hatred... unless the Palestinian people obtain their rights.
No one wins in war except death, devastation and tragedies. We hate war, and we do not want to be martyrs, displaced, and left in pieces under the rubble...but the occupation has turned our lives into death and ruin, and funeral homes have been open for a century! Under the eyes of the world!
The occupation has been trying, for decades, and seeking, to turn the Palestinian into a “positive victim,” from his point of view. Meaning that he kills, slaughters, skins, confiscates, arrests, and burns...then he wants the Palestinian to remain silent and bow his head! But if he rises up, resists, fights, and responds... the occupation will make him extremely uncomfortable, and will exaggerate in killing and destruction... until he retreats and does not repeat his attempts... which makes some people cry out for help, lash out, and demand “calm down” and “withdrawal of pretexts”, so that the occupation does not continue its frenetic, bloody madness. 

Waiting for a political solution - which will not come - and thus their logic demands that we surrender, and even wants us to dig our graves with our own hands and sew our shrouds with our fingers! Perhaps I will stand with those calling for calm if the occupation listens, takes care, or stops its desecration of holy sites, burning towns and trees, and confiscating land, but it continues its criminality and arrogance, and I ask, gentlemen, what is the solution? Do we watch the occupation commit its atrocities and crimes, because we are “weak,” “we have no help,” and “we cannot fight with it”? Then he will resolve the conflict, complete his plans, and implement his projects, and he will devour the country and control Al-Aqsa! is not it! In a time of Arab and Islamic silence and Western hypocrisy!
I know that we are between two blades, but fighting and confronting the occupation is a necessary matter, because it is feasible, and it exaggerates the occupation on many levels, curbs its settlers, limits settlements, preserves the sanctities, restores the Palestinian cause to the forefront, mobilizes the international street, stirs up stagnant water, and costs the adversary. Huge losses. Every Palestinian must practice “resistance” appropriate to his circumstances and situation, from comprehensive peaceful resistance to what is guaranteed by international laws.
We will stand with any political proposal that empowers us with our rights, but we will not be complacent or respond to any formula that perpetuates and legitimizes the occupation, deepens its control, and keeps us under its yoke. We will not provide any “free” consent, under the pretext of pressure, power imbalance, or feeling small. Our issue is the issue of generations, even if the conflict is being initiated on the horizon of the guillotine!
Their speaker says: After we get rid of those in Gaza, you will have a state, O Palestinians! And we will call for a two-state solution. I remind everyone that during the 2002 invasion of the West Bank, America announced that it would establish a state for us, but it justified that the Palestinian leadership at the time - the symbol Yasser Arafat - was an obstacle that must be removed so that the state could emerge! Abu Ammar died as a martyr. Did George Bush Jr. give us anything? They repeat the same lie, and seek to deepen the cracks in our one body. Let us be careful! Because doubting each other will weaken us. Rather, we must all stand behind a comprehensive political initiative, different, serious, and subject to time and conditions, adopted by the M.T. F. the only legitimate representative, and we must prepare to restore our true unity, under the umbrella of national legitimacy. Otherwise, after the war and whatever the outcome, we will be facing each other, the disagreement and division will expand, and our land will be furnished with cracked glass that will make our feet bloody, without exception.
Those who support the killer are murderers like him, and they are the ones who incite conflict, deepen hatred, and destroy human principles and human values. They are responsible before the human conscience and before history... but, unfortunately, they believe that they are racially superior to other people, and they do not give weight to any law or Moral agreement or balance. What is strange is that they talk about values and claim the law. It is a forest, gentlemen. It is the forest of the savage white, who inherited the characteristics of the “Hundred Years” wars, the “Rose,” the “Inquisition,” the “Hiroshima bombing,” “two world wars,” and “the phenomena of fascism and Nazism.” “The extermination of one hundred million Native Americans,” “McCarthyism,” “The Crusades,” and “The colonialism that plundered the wealth of Africa and Asia..”

Crime is a mechanism that feeds itself and justifies itself... meaning that the more crime increases, the more its appetite opens up to kill, crush, erase, and destroy, and it finds pretexts on its own to justify what it does, without hesitation! The advocacy is often ready to defend this killing, without calculation or scrutiny, and it also finds those with precedents and interests to support it...so much so that they bend the neck of the sacred and positive texts, and say what they did not say! Or they invent weak justifications that they escalate to become decisive reasons.

This white racist who is biased towards Israel is a distillation of all this fascist black history, and it is an extension of that bloodiness wrapped in silk and so-called elegance.. Israel is only one of the manifestations of this barbaric, uncontrolled history. That is why it will seem “natural” for Israel to behave with such bloody sadism and arrogance. It is clear that Israel, with all this genocide, wants to maintain the image of the victim, which is why it attaches all the terms “terrorism and ISIS” to its opponents, and this is what explains its demonization of the Palestinians, and its portrayal of them as backward, barbaric, and murderous barbarians, and this is what provides them with additional reasons to kill them, too! But this forbidden blood will accumulate, and it will become a deep, turbulent lake, pulling into its depths all those who put their fingers on the trigger of extermination, all those who burned children and orphaned them, all those who supported this pagan slaughterer, all the blue-blooded people who will drown in their abhorrent racism, and all the hypocrites who will fall into Its lowest point. We tell them that this people who never raised the white flag are the same people who broke the day and destroyed the steel towers! He returned with the songs to the homes... so demolish them, because we will restore them more perfect and more beautiful. And kill... Pregnant women in Gaza alone will give birth to ten thousand babies every month. So pay attention! The matter you are asking about has been decided.

The “Six Hour War,” which was initiated by the military field command of the Hamas movement and those with it, and launched at the dawn of October 7, under the name “Al-Aqsa Flood,” comes as a Palestinian response to the shameful June 1967 war, which Israel is keen to call the “Six-Day War.” ». Its repercussions may extend to Saïs-Picot, who cut off the Levant and Greater Syria, and to the Balfour Declaration and the overall results of the First World War.
Israelis are mistaken when they believe that America (and the West with it) protects and defends them. America defends America's role and interests, its role at the head of the global system, which is reeling and on the verge of collapse these days. Israel, in this context, is nothing more than a tool, and perhaps the most important among America’s tools in this era.
I am not a historian. But everyone who reads history knows the fact that whoever dominates “the land of Palestine” (from a distance, in most of the eras, if not in all of them) dominates the world and imposes the world order. This has been the case since the beginning of recorded history, and this is the way it is until now, and for the following eras and eras as well.
The facts of recorded history prove this fact. This was the situation since the time of the Assyrians and Babylonians, and it continued in all subsequent eras, the eras of the Pharaohs, Persians, Greeks and Romans. This was the situation in the Umayyad era and the Abbasid era, and throughout the two hundred years of the Crusades.
In order not to delve deep and far into history, we content ourselves with recording that “the land of Palestine” was under Ottoman domination when this empire controlled the largest part of Europe, from Vienna to Budapest. When the Ottoman Caliphate collapsed in World War I, Britain inherited hegemony over Palestine, and the “empire on which the sun never sets” began preparing to hand over control of Palestine to the racist Zionist movement. Britain succeeded in achieving its plot, and continued to have a very influential role in global decisions, until 1956, when it committed the folly of participating in the “tripartite aggression” with France and Israel, without prior coordination with America, and the two most important results were:
- The alignment of interests between the United States (Eisenhower) and the Soviet Union (Khrushchev) and Britain’s loss of its sole role in everything “East of Suez.”
Britain’s handing over of the “keys of hegemony” over the land of Palestine to America, and Britain’s (practical and undeclared) renunciation of any independent role in its foreign policy, and its commitment to what America decides. An example of this is: the two wars on Iraq, the story of fabricating the “lie of the era” that Iraq possesses unconventional weapons, and much more.
With the transfer of control over the “land of Palestine” to America, alone, the first impression was American admiration for the Israeli military performance, and what resulted from this admiration in starting to rely on Israel as a “strategic ally” of America, signing the relevant agreements with it, and providing it with all the equipment it could absorb. And weapons, to enable it, initially, and to encourage it, later, to initiate the “Six Day War.”
The “Six Hour War” (Al-Aqsa Flood) falls into this level and historical context, which had to be narrated and recorded, to be a guide for us on how to read it and anticipate the radical change it may bring about and result from, in the entire picture of the future status of “the land of Palestine.” ».
It is important to realize that the Hamas attacks (on October 7th) did not occur in a vacuum, and that these attacks do not justify for Israel the mass killing taking place in Gaza.
Whoever said that “the land of Palestine” is “the navel of the Earth” was right, and any event in it overshadows all other events. Who has heard any news about what has happened and is happening in terms of events, developments and fighting in Ukraine, since the outbreak of the “Six Hour War” at dawn on October 7? I only heard one piece of news: that the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, asked to arrange a visit to Israel, to show solidarity with it, and the Israeli response was that the time was not appropriate to receive him. This is because everything that is happening there is large and dangerous, but it is limited to its impact on Europe: its east and west, NATO, and the Russian Federation. As for the news of Palestine and its land, the news of “the navel of the globe,” it affects the entire body of the world in its dimensions.
We move from narrating this history to the events of our days. Due to the limited space available, we limit the treatment to two topics:
First: Israel lost its nerve when Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, said at the emergency session of the Security Council: “It is important to realize that the Hamas attacks (on October 7th) did not occur in a vacuum, and that these attacks do not justify for Israel the mass killing it is witnessing.” Gaza". The resurrection of Israel stemmed from this statement. Its Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, criticized and rejected Guterres' statement, and canceled a meeting with him, which was scheduled before that statement. Israel's representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, outbid his minister and "demanded that the Secretary-General of the United Nations resign...immediately!"

Guterres attributed the events of October 7 to accumulations since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. This is what Israel does not accept. Our problem with the Israeli occupation and colonialism is that it wants to fragment events and developments according to its whims and moods, regardless of the objective facts and the interconnection of events between cause and effect, between action and reaction. If, whoever it is, what is happening today is linked to what came before it, as stated in Guterres’s speech, Israel will lose its nerve. By the way: Guterres’s link to the developments taking place these days is not accurate at all. The roots of these events extend from the siege of the Gaza Strip, to what came before it... to the colonization of the Gaza Strip in 1967. It extends to the “Nakba” of 1948, and the transformation of more than 75% of those currently residing in the Gaza Strip into refugees who were expelled from villages, cities, and Bedouin settlements of the “Gaza Brigade” and other Palestinian brigades. It extends to the Balfour Declaration in 1917; It leads to the establishment of the racist Zionist movement in 1896.
When these matters are put into perspective, Israel flees back 2,500 years, and uses the myths of their Torah, which makes God, Glory be to Him, and more correctly, it makes the God of their myths, a land and real estate broker, giving Abraham (and not Abraham of Hebron) “the land of Palestine.” “For him and for his descendants from his wife Sarah” only! How can we discuss those who return to the legends of the ancients?
The second topic: We learned from political science books that the state builds an army and military force to protect its interests and deter those who want to violate its borders and harm its citizens and interests. Which means that if the state resorts to using its army, it means the failure of its policy. This is proven by the reality of the actions of the Israeli occupation and colonial state. It is a continuing failure of all Israeli policies.
We have mercy on all our martyrs as a result of these continuing criminal Israeli attacks, and we feel pain with all the wounded and injured, may God help them, but we remember with joy and pride the victory of the Algerian revolution, and the liberation and independence of Algeria. This revolution came from the brotherly heroic Algerian people, one and a half million martyrs. The revolution against the hateful French colonialism lasted for about eight years, specifically: 2803 days, from its launch on 11/1/1954 until the day of its declaration of independence, which means that on each day of its glorious revolution, it sacrificed from 350 to 530 martyrs. May God have mercy on all the martyrs of our Arab nation.
If I were to end these lines on a personal note, I would say: I was in Beirut the day I received the news of my father’s death in Sakhnin, in November 1973. I was very sad.. and I said to those who were with me: My greatest consolation with my father’s death is that it took place after the Sixth War. October, and he did not die as a result of the June 1967 war.
Congratulations to every Palestinian and Arab who witnessed and followed the 7th of October.
"Arab Jerusalem"

The families of Israeli prisoners and detainees in the Gaza Strip confirmed their agreement to an all-for-all exchange deal (for the release of all Palestinian prisoners).

The families of the prisoners said in a press conference: “We agree to the all-for-all exchange deal (the release of all Palestinian prisoners)... There is a national consensus on completing a deal that stipulates the release of all detainees in exchange for all Palestinian prisoners.”

The families of the Israeli prisoners added: "We demand that the deal be completed immediately and we fear for the lives of the prisoners from the military operation and bombing of Gaza."

They continued: "The Israeli government must bear responsibility for the safety of the prisoners in Gaza."

On Saturday, the leader of the Hamas movement in Gaza, Yahya Al-Sinwar, confirmed that they are “immediately ready to conclude an exchange deal that includes the release of all prisoners in enemy prisons in exchange for the release of all prisoners held by the resistance.”

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that everything in their power will be done to release the “kidnapped citizens,” indicating that this is one of the goals of the war that Israel is waging against Gaza.

Netanyahu said during a meeting with representatives of the families of prisoners held by the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip: “We are continuing to intensify efforts, and we are seizing every opportunity to return the family to their “homeland”... This is an integral part of the objectives of the operation that we previously set.. and the work continues, "I'm not sure people understand the magnitude of it."

According to the Israeli Prime Minister, the greater the pressure on Hamas, the greater the chances of returning the prisoners to their homes. He said: “We will exercise and exhaust all possibilities to return them to their homes. The key is the degree of pressure. The greater the pressure, the greater the opportunities.”

On Saturday, Hamas announced its readiness to release all captured Israeli civilians, with the exception of military personnel whose release requires special negotiations.

On Thursday, the Al-Qassam Brigades announced that it estimated that the number of Israeli prisoners “killed in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israeli bombing and massacres reached approximately 50 people.”

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Salem Abdullah Al-Sabah confirmed that the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip for the twenty-third day in a row by the Israeli army is a “war of revenge, not a defensive one,” reaffirming his country’s position of rejecting normalization with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is established.

The Kuwaiti minister said in a press conference today that today is the 23rd day of the war on the Gaza Strip, “and we are witnessing a war of revenge, not a defensive one, by the Israeli occupation forces. We are also witnessing collective punishment and war crimes.” He wondered, “How can more than three thousand children be killed and this action not be "War crime."

He stressed, "The Palestinian issue is our first issue, and there is no ambiguity. It is a constant topic over 60 years of time, and Kuwait has not deviated from this line at all," stressing his country's position of rejecting normalization with Israel, "unless an independent Palestinian state is established on the borders of June 4, 1967." In accordance with international resolutions.”

Regarding a parliamentary proposal regarding banning normalization and dealing with Israel, Sheikh Salem said that Kuwait has had a law prohibiting cooperation with Israel since 1964, and it is in effect until today, indicating that the position of the government, the council, and the Kuwaiti people, young and old, is consistent and there is no disagreement regarding the Palestinian issue.

The Kuwaiti Foreign Minister also stressed his country's categorical rejection of displacing or expelling Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
He expressed his regret at the double standards in dealing with what is happening in Gaza by some countries, hoping that influential countries with the UN Security Council would stop the war.

Sheikh Salem Al-Sabah said that Kuwait has three demands: stopping the war immediately, bringing aid into Gaza, and a final solution to the Palestinian issue based on the establishment of a Palestinian state in accordance with international treaties on the 1967 borders. Otherwise, the cycle of violence that we see currently will be seen in the future.

For the twenty-third day, the most violent confrontation between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) continues after the Palestinian movement launched an unprecedented attack under the name “Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel, to which the latter responded by declaring a state of war and launching a large-scale military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the name of "Iron swords."

For people far from Gaza, the past fortnight remains mostly beyond comprehension. The myth of the invincibility of the Israel Defense Forces has been one of the most enduring ever spun. To see the images of Israelis running for their life; of Kibbutzim taken over and bodies on street corners; to hear of Israeli soldiers and civilians taken as hostages; and to realize that the army was missing in action, these are a further nail in the coffin of the myths about colonial Israel, with multiplying reports on IDF responsibility for killing some of the Israeli victims.

The terrifying bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital and the murder of over 500 people sheltering there, is but the latest war crime in a an incredibly long list; Israel’s lies about this terrifying crime were soon disproved. Israel is out of control in its brutal attempt to exact retribution for the humiliating defeat that the IDF was dealt by Hamas on 7 October. 

A Palestinian mother hugs the dead body of her child at En-Neccar hospital after the Israeli airstrikes which continues on its 15th day in Rafah, Gaza on October 21, 2023. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]

After the atrocities committed by some of the attackers against Israeli civilians in border communities, far greater atrocities have been committed by the IDF bombing and targeting 2.3 million helpless, and half of them now homeless, Palestinian civilians in Gaza. There is a distinct feeling of a step-change, as the tanks encroach and the aircraft, artillery and drones crush Gaza into rubble. What is the game-plan, apart from mass-murder? Is there one? Many of Israel’s former military leaders are warning against this latest genocidal act, which is more than one can say for the leaders of the West queuing up to cheer Israel on in its indiscriminate, illegal murder of civilians.

The truth is, as I argue in my recent book An Army Like No Other (Verso, 2020) that the Israel Defense Forces have never won a battle clearly since 1967, and never fought against another regular army since 1973. When fighting small resistance groups, like the PLO (1982, Lebanon) Hezbollah (2006, Lebanon) or Hamas (2008/9, 2012, 2014 Gaza, and numerous other battles) the IDF’s success was rather limited, proving that a small guerrilla group numbering a few thousand fighters can delay, hamper, harm or even defeat a huge modern army equipped with the latest technology. 

Such small, highly motivated and innovative organizations know the territory, while the IDF is technology-reliant, too cumbersome to negotiate successfully small theatres of war like the Shouf Mountain range in Lebanon or Gaza City, dependent on complex supply lines, and despite the great investment in personnel, armaments, communication and logistics, clearly unprepared for fighting against armed groups; this army has been turned into a huge and brutal colonial police force, and like many before has fought unarmed men, women and children for too long. It is no longer trained to fight a war, and continuously underestimates the ability of its enemies, like it did in 1973, exactly five decades ago. The attitude of its military and political masters, combining Jewish supremacism with extreme Islamophobia, certainly does cloud judgement. Ironically, the IDF proved unable to protect Israeli Jews from attack; the so-called Jewish State is the only one in which Jewish life is in mortal danger.

Then again, Israel itself is not in great shape after almost two decades of Netanyahu’s rule. At least half the population has been opposing the government and its judicial coup, accurately describing the other half as fascists, although arguably both sides share such an identity, both being devoted to what is clearly an illegal apartheid state and to the subjugation of the Palestinians. The pilots and officers who marched against Netanyahu since January are now bombing civilians in Gaza or waiting in their armored vehicles to attack and destroy the enclave. 

So, whatever divides Israelis – the judicial coup, government corruption, the disappearance of human rights, turning Israel into a religious state – they are united in their approach to Palestine and its people: settle, subjugate, confiscate (the land) and expel; get rid of as many Palestinians as possible, whenever possible. This was clear from the first moment of the Hamas attack, when the so-called Israeli Left criticized Netanyahu for being soft on Hamas, not for the brutal occupation, settlements and cruel illegal blockade. This should not surprise anyone. After all, Israel was built on colonial violence led by a left-wing army.

Like other colonial regimes, Israel is mainly invested in separating the indigenous population from its land, and such projects are essentially militarized real estate operations, as seen in North and South America, Ireland, Nazi Germany, South Africa, Algeria and many other places. Indigenous populations have no choice; it is fight or die in most situations, clearly so in Palestine. 

Colonial projects do not define their boundaries, but, on the contrary, surpass and extend their control, avoiding clearly drawn and accepted borders. So it is with Zionism; as its population grows, Israel advances to grab more land, in the fashion and rationale described by Adolf Hitler as Lebensraum, “the territory which a group, state, or nation believes is needed for its natural development.” (OED) The national “living space” achieved by violent military means, linked to expulsion, ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Most people would assume that such violent enterprises were all abandoned after 1945 and the defeat of Nazism. The facts prove otherwise: Israel may be an untypical colonial project, which started during the early 1900s, but its ethnic cleansing stage got going in 1947, just after the UN resolved to divide Palestine, offering the Zionists 55 per cent of the country, an outrageous injustice. 

Israel, though, fought to take over 78 per cent of Palestine, expelling 750,000 Palestinians in the process, and in 1967 gained control of the whole country, expelling another 250,000 Palestinians. Since then, it has used every conceivable means to dislodge the remaining Palestinians from their land: land theft, illegal settlements, daily brutalities, mass arrests, arbitrary killings, mass expulsion of villages and towns, holding thousands of Palestinians without charge under “administrative detention”, extra-judicial executions, and a cruel apartheid state controlling the whole of Palestine and using the Palestine Authority as its indigenous police force to subjugate the Palestinians.

In Gaza, this became much worse as early as 1971, but even before 1967 Israel subdued the people of the enclave by brutal military excursions throughout the 1950s and 1960s (250 Palestinians killed by the IDF in Khan Yunis in 1956, for example). Now has come the latest phase of the Zionist project, under the most extreme right-wing, brutal and Islamophobic government Israel has ever elected.

Zionism has always been incendiary – intentionally inflaming situations and using outbursts as casus belli – and this looks to have been the case on 7 October. We have heard from various corners, especially the Egyptian security services, that urgent, numerous and specific warnings were delivered to the Israeli intelligence services about Hamas intentions, but all were ignored. Netanyahu is under fire from leftist circles for this, but it is unlikely to have been an error of judgement, like in 1973. More and more voices are sharing a more sinister but likely narrative, that Netanyahu chose to ignore the warnings because he welcomed a surprise attack which could be used as casus belli for taking over the whole Gaza Strip.

The truth may be discovered after the war, as this is a live wire for many of his political opponents in Israel, but in the meantime, the Nakba 2.0 genocidal bandwagon is in full swing, with US and UK navy strike groups sent to support Israel and its increasing number of war crimes. Of the more than half a million refugees who moved to the south of the enclave under pain of death, how many will ever see their homes in Gaza City again? It is rather likely that those who survive will never be allowed back but will be pushed further south into the Sinai desert. 

This plan has been discussed openly even before January this year, and is now referenced daily by the Israeli government; there they are, without food, water, fuel, medicines, as so many Jews were during the Holocaust, and they are likely to die from bombing, starvation, illness and epidemics in the largest ever refugee camp. If Israel succeeds in this genocidal enterprise, the West Bank is likely to follow, with the extreme neo-Nazi settlers just waiting in the wings to go on a murderous rampage. As opposed to the Holocaust, this is done in the full view of everyone on earth, with the West cheering Israel forward, as Western media aids and enables the atrocities.

Western reactions are themselves a war crime – US President Joe Biden and his western colleagues are braying for Palestinian blood by cheering on Israel’s attack and invasion of Gaza, by referring to “Israel’s right to defend itself”, as if this mighty militarized power, with total support from NATO and the West, is some tiny enclave suffering a sudden and unprovoked attack by a superior military power for no apparent reason. Such dishonest narrative inversions have been used numerous times before, but never so flagrantly.

There has been much talk in the past two decades about the non-existent “Judeo-Christian civilization” or “tradition”. 

The only such relationship which is evident historically is that of anti-Semitism, historical Christian racism and hatred towards Jews. But now we are witnessing the rise of a real Judeo-Christian alliance, that of Islamophobia, focused on Palestine and the Muslim world, long being fingered for Islamic extremism and harboring terrorists. In the UK, the leaders of such Islamophobic partnership are very evident, from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, sending the Royal Navy to protect Israel, to Labour leader Kier Starmer, who forbade his MPs to partake in pro-Palestine action: they face the sack if they participate in demonstrations, the largest of which to-date was held in London last Saturday, when more than 350,000 people marched for an end to the slaughter in Gaza.

Sunak and Starmer were joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has rejected the description of Israel as an apartheid state, despite the leading Israeli and international human rights organizations saying that the state has passed the legal threshold for such a label to be appropriate, including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Such deluded politicians and public figures are likely to legislate against any further demonstrations for Palestine and peace, as Germany and France have done already.

Thus, as these lines are typed, in the cold light of day, and covered by all world news networks, we are watching this massive operation of genocidal ethnic cleansing roll forward, with no political leader in the west calling for a ceasefire, let alone for stopping the carnage altogether. Most of my own family was murdered in the Nazi Death Camps in Poland, mainly in Auschwitz and Treblinka, without anyone doing much to stop it. But then, it was all done in great secrecy and where no one could intervene. 

This current exercise of genocide is public and includes all of us as hypnotized by-standers, unwilling and distressed witnesses to the criminality of the West and its stranglehold over international politics. I wish I could believe in future justice, and the prosecution of this line-up of war criminals, from Netanyahu to his Western partners, but how likely is that? Blair and Bush have never faced justice for their crimes in Iraq twenty years ago, have they? The heart cries in agony and despair over such cruelty and indifference of the so-called political leaders of humanity, as we can but stand by and watch helplessly.

Source: Middle East Monitor

Israeli Professor Haim Bresheeth-Zabner is a founder member of Jewish Network for Palestine (UK)

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, on Sunday accused Israel of committing a “moral and legal violation” in the war in the Gaza Strip, stressing that the court works to implement international law and investigate all crimes in Gaza or Israel.

Khan said in a press conference held in Cairo after his visit to the Rafah border crossing from the Egyptian side, "I was not able to enter the Gaza Strip, but we saw, as everyone saw on television, the tragedies that innocent civilians were exposed to."

He added, "Children in the Gaza Strip, who were supposed to play and have fun with their friends and go to their schools to learn and hope for a better future, are going through unimaginable experiences, and no one can imagine the pain and terror. Many of them were killed and injured."

He considered that "it is horrifying to see the corpses and bodies of young children filled with dirt, and we stand silent and emotionless over these dead."

He continued, saying, "We cannot turn a blind eye to the suffering that innocent people are experiencing. The law must be applied to provide protection for all people and not for a specific group."

He stressed that any violation of civilian rights or attacks on safe places such as mosques, churches and hospitals will be condemned under international law as they are legally protected places.

He believed that Israel was committing a moral and legal violation in its war in the Gaza Strip, stressing that Israel must realize that any attack that affects civilians must be responded to within the framework of the law.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court explained, “We are working to implement international law, investigate all crimes, and obtain evidence regarding the war in the Gaza Strip or those committed in Israel on October 7,” referring to the Hamas attack.

He appealed to the citizens of the world to send all information that might be useful in investigations into the war in the Gaza Strip.

Khan said that for more than two years, he and his team have been working on the Palestinian issue and trying to reach solutions as much as possible, pointing out that "the investigation into the situation in Palestine is very important to us, and the situation in the Palestinian territories cannot be overlooked."

For the twenty-third day, the most violent confrontation between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) continues after the Palestinian movement launched an unprecedented attack under the name “Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel, to which the latter responded by declaring a state of war and launching a large-scale military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the name of "Iron Swords", which has so far claimed the lives of 1,400 Israelis and more than 8,000 Palestinians.

Eight incidents of violence against Palestinians are recorded every day, including intimidation, theft, and assault, according to the British newspaper “Daily Mail” and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), while the actual volume of daily attacks on Palestinians is much higher...

On October 12, 200 Bedouins in Khirbet Wadi al-Siq, east of the city of Ramallah, left their lands and took refuge in the nearby village of Taybeh after the Israeli army gave them one hour to leave.

Bedouin shepherds left their homes, walking with their livestock, after dozens of settlers, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, arrived in the village. Representatives of Khirbet say that the army did not respond to several requests to postpone the evacuation.

Abu Bashar, who took refuge with dozens of families in Taybeh in the middle of the West Bank, confirms, “We are paying the price for what is happening in their country,” in reference to the war that has been ongoing since October 7 between Israel and Hamas.

The Hamas movement launched a surprise land, air and sea attack on Israeli towns on the border with the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 people on the first day of the attack, according to the authorities, who reported that Hamas fighters also detained about 230 prisoners. Israel responded with intense bombing of Gaza, and he was martyred since At that time, more than eight thousand people were in the Gaza Strip, half of whom were children, according to the latest toll announced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The West Bank is also witnessing an escalation in violence, as more than 100 people were martyred in confrontations between Palestinian youths and the occupation army, and more than 490,000 settlers live in the West Bank in settlements considered illegal under international law.  

Eight incidents of violence against Palestinians are recorded every day, including intimidation, theft and assault, according to the British newspaper “Daily Mail” and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), while the actual volume of daily attacks on Palestinians is much higher than that.

As for Alia Mlihat, who lives in the Bedouin village of Al-Ma’rajat between Ramallah and Jericho, she confirms, “We no longer sleep. This is a nightmare.” Mlihat fears for the residents of her village of displacement. She says, “Since the beginning of the war, we have begun to see settlers carrying more weapons (...) It is very difficult.” ".

She added, “We ask ourselves what will happen (...) We are experiencing a second Nakba because of the settlers and the army.” Mlihat comes from the Negev desert, from which they were displaced or left in 1948 for the West Bank.

In the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, 7,607 people have been displaced since the start of the current war, more than half of whom are children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. About 1,100 people have also been displaced from their lands during the past year and a half.

As for Abu Bashar, who only wants to return to his home, “I have no other place to go (...) All our things are there, the mortar that we buy in large quantities, the tractors, and the solar panels.” A week after their displacement, the army allowed the residents to return to collect their belongings, but when When they arrived, they found everything destroyed.

Abu Bashar says, “They destroyed everything...bags of animal feed were thrown on the ground.”

Agence France-Presse monitored looted homes, empty wardrobes, broken cots, torn curtains, papers, shoes and toys scattered on the ground. The AFP crew noted the presence of civilian cars in and around Khirbet, with the Israeli flag raised on a number of them.

Abu Bashar asserts that all he wants is for them to let him live in peace, as he can no longer bear it. He adds, "There is a long-term plan to expel us and seize our land. They took this opportunity to do so while everyone was watching what was happening in Gaza."

Israeli human rights activist Guy Hirschfeld explained to AFP that settlers have been intensifying their efforts to expel Palestinians from their lands since the beginning of the war.

He added, "The settlers are exploiting the war to end the cleansing of Area C of non-Jews," referring to the lands classified as "C" or "C" according to the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as these lands constitute 61% of the territory of the West Bank.

Hirschfeld points out that an area of 150 square kilometers in the West Bank has already been emptied of population, and he adds, “Here they cleared 150,000 dunams of non-Jews,” considering this “ethnic cleansing of this area.”

The settlers enjoy strong support from the far-right government coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The head of the West Bank Protection Coalition, Allegra Pacheco, says that the occupation army, which is deployed in large numbers in the West Bank, “does not always interfere in settler violence.” The head of the coalition, which is a group of non-governmental organizations that coordinate humanitarian aid, adds that “the presence of settlers usually leads to an escalation of violence.” .

The occupation forces had demolished a commercial store in Jerusalem under the pretext of not having a license in the town of Sur Baher, south of Jerusalem, in addition to a house in the town of Jabal al-Mukabber. They also demolished a house in Sheikh Jarrah.

As part of these increasing violations, the occupation forces forced a Palestinian citizen to demolish his house in the town of Beit Hanina under the pretext of not having a permit, and settlers also attacked the residents of the Al-Sawwaneh neighborhood.

In Hebron, the occupation authorities were notified by a military order to seize and seize more than two dunums of land in the town of Surif. They also bulldozed lands and uprooted more than 25 trees. A settler accompanied by the occupation army fired live bullets at citizens, and a number of citizens were injured after The settlers attacked them in Masafer Yatta, in addition to dozens of other attacks in various places in the West Bank, according to the weekly settlement report issued by the National Office for Land Defense and Settlement Resistance.

Source: Arab48

American veto. A Russian "veto"... and the number of victims in Gaza rises by hundreds after hundreds of children and women. Everything goes out of service: communications and the Internet, after water, electricity, medicine and fuel. The UN Security Council is ineffective, and the UN General Assembly’s resolutions are non-binding. Why this and that “veto”: The American suggests, evasively, a ceasefire for short, intermittent periods. The Russian is manoeuvringly requesting a broader ceasefire. Both of them know in advance that Israel does not accept either formula, under the pretext that the truce benefits Hamas, and does not care if it benefits Gazan civilians. It launches air and missile attacks on them, without distinguishing between them and the fighters, and aims to get rid of them all, deploring that this be called genocide or War crimes prohibited by international law that you have never recognized.

No "humanitarian truce" then, but rather waiting for a ground attack. This is what the Western countries decided, because the Israeli-American duo ruled out a “truce,” and thus excluded “humanity.” So the Europeans started playing with words, as they wanted to “deliver aid” to please some of their communities, but they did not agree to a ceasefire in line with the policies they aligned themselves with. Between interests and condoning crime, they chose to remain silent about successive massacres. The three weeks were not a time for consciences, nor for rules and customs, but for killing, destruction, displacement, and deprivation of the necessities of life in implementation of collective punishment for those who refuse to submit to the occupation. If this is not total destruction, what is it? Diplomats at the United Nations suddenly discovered that they no longer knew their Western colleagues who had been turned upside down, as if history began for them and stopped on “October 7.” Convincing them of the simplest legal rules became impossible, and they began to end every discussion by saying, “Let us let the Israelis take revenge, and then we talk".

This is not a double standard, but a single standard, and without any rational, moral, or even political standards, as if excluding Israel from international law is the rule and not the other way around, or as if the occupation of Palestinian land and the persecution, killing, abuse, and uprooting of its people are the only evidence that there is something in this world. Its name is “international legitimacy” that exists and is achieved. When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it was keen to separate it from the West Bank and keep it besieged and exist only on the map of UNRWA and other UN organizations. It is now separating it from the world to devote itself to the great massacre under the cover of darkness and in isolation from any witnesses. 

Israel and the United States decided after that that the Arabs were not concerned with the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, or the issue they described as “central,” nor even with the feelings of their societies or the facts of history and geography, but rather with the only available “game,” which is “normalization” with Israel. 

Governments have become false witnesses in the face of atrocities, fabrication and fraud to undermine any peace settlement and perpetuate the Israeli occupation, and in the face of the madness of hatred, fanaticism and racism that has emerged from the practices of the Israeli extreme right and its settlers, as if the Arabs had rejected the agendas of political Islam and terrorism represented by its “Al-Qaeda”, “ISIS” and Iranian branches in order to welcome the agendas of Ben Gvir, Smotrich and others, or to be tools in protecting Benjamin Netanyahu from prosecution on corruption charges.

Israel acts in disregard of any regard for the Arabs, as if it took a license from them to “eliminate Hamas,” just like the American and Western support it received. But Gaza and the people of Gaza are not abbreviated as “Hamas” in the Arab world. It is true that most Arab countries do not approve of the methods of operation of this movement and are not reassured by its close connection with Iran. However, the Arab position rejects the excessive brutal violence in Israel’s response to the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation. 

In view of the Israeli violations in the West Bank, the pressure to displace Gazans to Sinai, and the escalation of talk about Jordan as an “alternative homeland” for the Palestinians of the West Bank, the Arab position may change radically towards Israel, because it has begun to display hostility and intentions to destabilize neighboring countries, including those that signed Peace agreements with it.

Israel did not respond to calls from major Arab countries for a ceasefire and to bring the necessary aid into Gaza, and even Washington did not have the courage or wisdom to give the humanitarian side any chance. This reveals the extent to which the historical distance has returned between the Americans and the Israelis, on the one hand, and the Arabs, on the other hand, over the “central issue,” in the interest of advancing Arab rapprochement with China and Russia. Most importantly, it reveals how Arab visions of “peace” as a future option were met with ingratitude and deception. Because the Arabs will not, and cannot, return to the option of war, the Americans and Israelis do not consider themselves obliged to do justice to the Palestinians, neither with the “two-state solution” nor with anything else. Although the US President and members of his administration reiterate their adherence to this “solution,” the policy they are implementing has shown that they are feeding an “illusion” while leaving Netanyahu and the group of extremists in his government in charge of the Palestinian fate. This cannot create a stable future in the region.

In the face of the strategic dilemma that Hamas poses for them in Gaza, America and Israel will have no choice but to try concluding a deal/settlement with Iran, the party that recently demonstrated that it was able not only to seize control of the Palestinian issue and bring it back to the forefront through Hamas, but also to form a threat to Israel and returning the regional conflict to the cycle of wars, with its willingness to reach an understanding if its interests are met. 

The American President had warned Israel of “emotional” mistakes committed by America - militarily - in its wars on terrorism after the events of September 11, 2001, and it would have been more appropriate for him to consider what finally happened on October 7, 2023, as a result of Israeli policy errors and political mistakes. A catastrophe committed by successive American administrations, and it was even more dangerous during the era of Barack Obama, who lent Iran regional gains and did not receive any return from them, neither for America nor for its allies and friends in the region.

Unlike the United States, which became a direct partner in the Gaza war, including its condonement of crimes against defenseless civilians, Iran distanced itself from any responsibility, and Western countries helped it in this to maintain a negotiating line that seems necessary now, whether for the release of foreign detainees held by Hamas. Or later to settle the war in light of the situation that Hamas will be in after its fighting and the blows it will be exposed to. 

Therefore, Washington was forced to amend a draft resolution that it submitted to the Security Council, deleting the demand that Iran stop arming its militias and even the clause requesting recognition of “Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism.”

Source: Annahar

Sullivan: “We do not support the killing of innocent people, whether they are Palestinians or Israelis”

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the US administration and the Israeli government are holding a “frank dialogue” regarding the war on Gaza, and added, “We do not support the killing of innocent people, whether they are Palestinians or Israelis,” according to what Reuters reported on Sunday. .

Sullivan noted that the United States and Israel are discussing "difficult questions" and about humanitarian aid. He said that the United States believes that Israel should take all possible means to distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas militants in its military operation in Gaza.

In an interview with CNN, Sullivan called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "rein in" the violence of extremist settlers against innocent Palestinians in the West Bank.

This evening, a meeting of the Israeli mini-ministerial council for political and security affairs (cabinet) will be held. Israeli media reported that ministers are expected to criticize Israel's decision to "expand humanitarian aid" to the Gaza Strip and open a water pipeline to the south of the Strip.

US President Joe Biden is expected to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later today, against the backdrop of the American demand to expand humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip, and in light of American concern about expanding the Israeli ground military operation in the Strip, according to media reports. Israeli.

Meanwhile, international demands have increased for the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, and the British government stated that the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the French President, Emmanuel Macron, expressed in a phone call between them, today, their concerns regarding the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.

A spokesman for Sunak said in a statement, “The two leaders stressed the importance of delivering urgent humanitarian support to Gaza. They agreed to work together in efforts to deliver essential food, fuel, water and medicine to those who need them and to remove foreign nationals.”

The spokesman added that Richy and Macron "expressed their common concern about the risk of escalation in the broader region, especially in the West Bank."

Source: Arab 48 

Al-Sisi stressed the need to reach an immediate humanitarian truce, to strengthen Egyptian efforts with the United Nations and the active parties, led by the United States, to deliver humanitarian, medical and relief aid to the people of the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi confirmed that Cairo did not and will not allow the displacement of Palestinians from their lands to its lands, during a call he received from his American counterpart, Joe Biden, on Sunday evening, according to a statement by the Egyptian presidency.

The Egyptian presidency statement said that the two presidents discussed the overall security situation in the Middle East, the latest developments in the military escalation in the Gaza Strip, and the importance of preventing the expansion of the circle of conflict into the regional environment.

Al-Sisi stressed the need to reach an immediate humanitarian truce, to strengthen Egyptian efforts with the United Nations and the active parties, led by the United States, to deliver humanitarian, medical and relief aid to the people of the Gaza Strip.

Since the beginning of the events in Gaza, the Egyptian authorities have repeatedly rejected the plan to displace the residents of Gaza to Egyptian territory, specifically Sinai adjacent to the Strip, in conjunction with official Israeli calls for them to displace.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that nearly 600,000 Palestinians were displaced inside Gaza and reside in 150 of its facilities.

For the 24th day in a row, the Israeli army is waging a war on Gaza in which 8,005 Palestinians were martyred, including 3,324 children, 2,062 women, and 460 elderly people, according to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, Hamas killed more than 1,400 Israelis and wounded 5,132, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health.

In this atmosphere of mistrust and tension between Netanyahu and the leaders of the military and security establishment, Netanyahu no longer automatically accepts, as was previously the case, the military plans presented by the Chief of Staff and the military establishment...

introduction

Following the surprise attack they carried out against Israeli military sites and settlements in the vicinity of Gaza on October 7, 2023, the Palestinian resistance factions were able to capture a large number of soldiers and settlement residents, in addition to a number of foreign nationals. The fate of these prisoners represents one of the major challenges that enter into the calculations of the Israeli government in its ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip. Because of the pressures on it from the families of the prisoners, or the countries whose nationalities some of the prisoners hold, especially the United States of America; Which fuels the already existing disagreements between military and political decision-makers about the timing and objectives of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

First: Calculations of ground aggression

A number of factors influenced the postponement of the comprehensive Israeli army attack on the Gaza Strip, which the political and military leadership announced its intention to launch with the aim of eliminating the Hamas movement and its rule. The most important of these factors were: 

First, the great pressure exerted by the families of the Israeli prisoners on decision-makers in Israel and on Israeli public opinion, in order to release their prisoners, in an exchange with Hamas before the start of the ground war. 

Secondly, completing the necessary military preparations to launch the ground attack. Third, the American administration asked Israel to postpone the ground attack in order to enable the United States to complete its military preparations to protect its forces in the Middle East region from any possible attacks due to the Israeli aggression on Gaza, and to attempt to release prisoners, especially those who hold American citizenship. 

Fourth, some Israeli leaders in the military and security establishment put pressure to postpone the ground attack as long as possible, and to bomb the Gaza Strip from the air, land and sea to inflict the greatest losses on the Palestinian people and the resistance and exhaust them before starting the ground attack.

Second: The issue of prisoners and ground attacks

In recent days, the families of Israeli prisoners have intensified their activities to pressure decision-makers to give the prisoners the highest priority, and to work to release them immediately before the start of the ground attack, which may eliminate the opportunity to negotiate with Hamas to conclude a prisoner exchange deal on the one hand, and expose the prisoners to the risk of death on the other hand. . It has become clear in recent days that the issue of prisoners has begun to occupy a more important position than before at the level of public opinion. There have been increased statements by a number of former military commanders and analysts calling for a comprehensive prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. On October 26, Shaul Mofaz, the former Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff, called for a deal between Hamas and Israel in which all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons would be released in exchange for the release of all Israeli prisoners. Opposition leader and head of the Yesh Atid Party, Yair Lapid, also announced his support for the prisoner exchange. Both of them, and other supporters, stress the continuation of the plan to "eliminate Hamas" militarily after the deal is completed.

It is noted that the escalation of the activities of the prisoners' families, on the eve of the start of the ground attack on the Gaza Strip, affected the position of Israeli public opinion regarding launching a comprehensive ground attack. An Israeli public opinion poll published by Maariv newspaper, on October 27, showed that 49 percent of Israelis support postponing the ground attack, while only 29 percent supported carrying it out immediately, while a week ago, 65 percent of Israelis supported Immediately launch a ground attack.

In light of the increasing public pressure demanding that priority be given to working to release the Israeli prisoners before the start of the ground attack, the war cabinet decided in the past few days to give an opportunity to try to release them. However, it seems that this opportunity will not last long; Multiple sources in the military establishment confirmed that the period of negotiations to release prisoners should be limited in time, during which efforts are exhausted to achieve this.

Third: The exacerbation of the dispute between Israeli decision-makers

Since the start of the war on Gaza, disagreement and intense conflict have prevailed among Israeli decision-makers regarding this war. These disputes are almost unprecedented in the history of Israeli wars. These conflicts are not limited to the crisis of personal confidence between the political and military levels, nor to public opinion’s opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the conflict between him and Defense Minister Yoav Galant, but rather extend to fundamental issues. The most prominent of which is the disagreement over the goals and course of the war, especially with regard to the ground war, and who bears responsibility for the failure (Hamhadal) that occurred on October 7. 

What increases the impact of these disputes and conflicts on Israeli society is that they come in the context of the Israelis’ loss of confidence in the political and military leadership, as a result of this negligence and failure, as well as the Israeli army’s loss of self-confidence, in addition to the fact that this negligence and failure came during a period in which Israeli society was suffering. 

A severe political and social conflict and polarization that had never been seen before, and it came against the backdrop of the Netanyahu government’s intention to carry out a judicial coup, despite the opposition of the majority of Israeli society and its elites, especially the leadership of the military and security establishment. The attempted judicial coup led to a significant decline in the popularity of Netanyahu and his government, and increased tension between Netanyahu and the leadership of the military and security establishment.

The expansion of the government after the first day of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, the National Bloc’s accession to it, the establishment of the emergency government, and the joining of Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot (former chiefs of staff of the Israeli army) to the government and to the war “cabinet” did not reduce the crisis of confidence, nor did it lead to... Reducing conflicts between decision makers regarding war.

In light of the decline in the popularity of Netanyahu and his Likud party to the bottom, and his fear of holding him responsible for failure and negligence, and in light of the increase in calls demanding that he take responsibility and resign before the end of the war, Netanyahu and his close supporters launched a systematic and organized campaign against the leaders of the military and security establishment, and held them responsible for what happened. . Netanyahu appointed a new spokesman in his office responsible for contacting journalists and military correspondents to defend him and direct responsibility for the failure to the leaders of the military and security establishment.

While the leaders of the military and security establishment, including the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, the Chief of Military Intelligence (Aman), the Chief of General Intelligence (Shin Bet), the Chief of Mossad, and the Commander of the Air Force, claimed responsibility for the failure, Netanyahu refused to bear responsibility, and contented himself with making the statement 18 days after The beginning of the war, saying: “Everyone must answer questions, and so do I, but this happens after the war”.

In this atmosphere of mistrust and tension between Netanyahu and the leaders of the military and security establishment, Netanyahu no longer automatically accepts, as was previously the case, the military plans presented by the Chief of Staff and the military establishment. His meetings with senior military leaders and retirees increased to consult with them on military plans, including General Yitzhak Brik and former Army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. 

In the context of preparations for the ground attack on Gaza, Netanyahu met twice in the last two weeks with General Brick, indicating his lack of confidence in the Israeli Army Chief of Staff and the military establishment. Brick warned Netanyahu of the dangers of the Israeli army launching a ground attack and advised him to be patient, due to his belief that the infantry and ground forces in general were not ready for war. He called on him to bomb the Gaza Strip from the air, land and sea for as long as possible. He added that the ground attack on Gaza may lead to Hezbollah launching a comprehensive war against Israel. Which will incur huge losses; Because, according to Brik, Hezbollah can bomb Israel with about 5,000 missiles a day; This causes severe damage to it, approaching the size of the damage inflicted by the Israeli army on Lebanon.

In addition to the dispute between Netanyahu and the military establishment led by Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy, the dispute between Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant has escalated since October 7 regarding responsibility for the failure and war priorities, and Netanyahu rejected Gallant’s request to attack Hezbollah. The background to the conflict between them dates back to March 2023, when Netanyahu dismissed Gallant from his position due to the latter’s request to freeze the judicial coup due to its negative influence on the army. Netanyahu was forced to rescind his dismissal under pressure from the protest movement and Israeli public opinion.

In light of the escalation of the dispute between the two parties, Netanyahu’s office refused to allow Gallant to enter the office to meet with Netanyahu to discuss military issues; Which indicates his lack of confidence in him, while the latter met with Gabi Ashkenazi, who has hostile relations with Gallant, and consulted with him about the war and military operations against Gaza, and tried to attract him to participate in managing the war.

The lack of trust between decision-makers at the political and military levels affects deliberations and discussions in the war “cabinet,” and in the political and security “cabinet,” at a time when they fear the investigation committee that will be established after the end of the war[9]. This increases the complexity of the discussion, deliberations, and decision-making process, which should take place freely and transparently, and without fear of investigation committees. This also affects the determination of the military strategy to achieve the agreed upon goals. In light of the mistrust and conflicts existing between decision-makers, there was no agreement on how to achieve the goals set by the Israeli leadership, which are eliminating Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip, eliminating Hamas’ military power, and restoring Israeli prisoners. Questions such as: Does achieving this require the need to occupy the Gaza Strip? How long will this take? Does achieving the war’s goals require remaining in the Gaza Strip for a period of time? What is the cost to the Israeli army and society for the level of resistance they will face? What scale of massacres against Palestinian civilians can the region and the world tolerate? How much would the loss of life and property be if an all-out war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel with or after the start of the ground attack? When will the Israeli army know that it has achieved its goals? Is there no contradiction between launching a comprehensive ground attack on the Gaza Strip and the goal of recovering Israeli prisoners safely?

Despite open questions and disagreements, there remains consensus on the goal of “eliminating Hamas”; Meaning its military power and its rule of the Gaza Strip, and also a consensus to carry out a ground operation or operations in the Strip to achieve this. This may be done without answering all these questions.

Conclusion

With the start of limited incursions by Israeli army ground forces in the past two days, the Netanyahu government faces a number of challenges that may affect the conduct of any ground operation. The most important of which is calculating the degree of resistance that the resistance factions will offer, the price they will pay, and the issue of the prisoners, who number at least 229. The families of the prisoners are now publicly demanding that the deal include all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of all Israeli prisoners. Public opinion leaders in the Israeli media and the majority of Israeli society now accept this deal. But this is a matter of timing, and does not necessarily affect the ground attack decision based on not accepting a return to what was before October 7, and the necessity of exploiting the green light and American approval of Israeli targets in Gaza.

According to Israeli officials: “The story of the kidnapped people still helps, but internal considerations and the desire to pay compensation to Muslims and Arabs intervene. The longer the war continues and we move to a ground military operation, the decline in support for Israel will increase, especially in Europe.”

Israeli political officials: The level of international legitimacy of the war on Gaza is declining

Hundreds of thousands in London in solidarity with Gaza and denouncing Israel's war, yesterday (Getty Images)

Israeli political officials said today, Sunday, that Western countries’ support for Israel in the war on Gaza, which they describe as “international legitimacy” for Israeli military strikes, has begun to decline in recent days, and demonstrations of solidarity with the Gaza Strip and against Israel in Western capitals are expanding.

These officials said, "The level of international legitimacy for Israel is declining. If the support rate at the beginning of the war was 70-80 percent, then the political hourglass is declining and we currently enjoy support at 60-70 percent," according to what the Ynet website quoted them as saying.

They considered that, "Unfortunately, the world is forgetting the atrocities and considerations are increasing among countries, especially internal considerations regarding Muslim demonstrations. In general, there is widespread support for Israel in the world, but it has begun to decline."

They pointed out that "the story of the kidnapped people still helps, but internal considerations and the desire to pay compensation to Muslims and Arabs intervene. The longer the war continues and we move to a ground military operation, the decline in support for Israel will increase, especially in Europe."

A massive demonstration in solidarity with Gaza and denouncing Israel in New York, yesterday (Getty Images)

According to the same Israeli officials, “Support for Israel is still broad, but this is work that must be maintained at all times. This is not easy. The most important political hour is the United States and it is with us. However, this is a different war and not similar to previous rounds of combat. It should be taken into account that the pressure The policy on Israel will increase.”

The United Nations General Assembly adopts a draft Arab resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza

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The United Nations General Assembly adopts a draft Arab resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza

The day before yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly called, by a large majority, for an “immediate humanitarian truce,” shortly after the Israeli army announced the “expansion” of its ground operations in the Gaza Strip. The non-binding resolution, which was criticized by Israel and the United States for not referring to the Hamas movement, was supported by 120 members, 14 opposed it, while 45 abstained from voting, out of 193 members of the General Assembly.

This result showed a division among Western countries, especially European countries, as France supported the resolution, while Germany, Italy, and Britain abstained from voting, and Austria and the United States voted against the resolution.

Source: arab 48

Israeli officer: “There are tanks here whose engines have been changed twice. The level of maintenance of the tanks is very far from the level of morale of the reserve soldiers who seek to improve the situation. We have obtained tanks that pose a danger to our lives.”

A report stated that reserve soldiers in the Israeli Armored Forces were surprised by the low level of maintenance of Merkava 3 tanks over the past years, even though the Israeli army had been informed that these tanks would be used in a future war.

Today, Sunday, the Walla website quoted an army officer as saying that the reserve soldiers who participated in the battles that took place in the “Gaza envelope” were astonished by the level of maintenance, and that they were ashamed of the level of maintenance. He added, "I do not want to talk about the level of maintenance of the iron chains, springs, brackets, and the iron chains that break apart, but it is enough to realize the level of maintenance of the engines to realize that something bad happened here all the time."

Another officer said: “There are tanks here whose engines have been changed twice. This does not seem serious. I will not talk about numbers. But the level of maintenance of tanks is very far from the level of morale of reservists who are trying to improve the situation. Someone here should be ashamed and the time will come to give Explanations: We have obtained tanks that pose a threat to our lives.”

Source: Arab 48

“There is doubt whether the Israeli government will succeed in achieving the goals of the war... and the battle for victory over Hamas will not be decided on the ground alone... and there is dissonance between the two declared goals of the war - destroying Hamas’ rule and liberating the kidnapped.”

Today, Sunday, Israeli analysts questioned the statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Galant, and “War Cabinet” member Benny Gantz, during a press conference yesterday evening, about the nature of the war on Gaza and the pledge to liberate prisoners and hostages in Gaza, as well as what... Related to the incursion of Israeli forces into the Gaza Strip, since the day before yesterday.

Nahum Barnea, a political analyst in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, said, “The ground incursion is larger than what was described on Saturday night and smaller than the impression that Netanyahu, Gallant, and Gantz created during the press conference yesterday. It is broader, without comparison, than the incursions into the Gaza Strip in recent days.” previous".

He added that the war launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip “is very far from being a second war of independence, as Netanyahu and his colleagues in the cabinet claimed. In the war of independence, Israel fought for its existence. It is not fighting for its existence now. It is fighting to recover the kidnapped people, to remove the threat from Defending a terrorist organization and restoring its deterrence against enemies in the region. These are three heavy tasks, and there is doubt whether the government will succeed in accomplishing them.”

According to Barnea, the ground incursion “does not aim to advance the deal (liberating) the kidnapped... From an operational standpoint, the ground military operation is a separate step, and has nothing to do, at least at this stage, with the liberation of the kidnapped. When the Cabinet decided to approve this operation The military approved a list of priorities: targeting Hamas first, and the kidnapped ones later. The families were told that the order of priorities was the opposite: the kidnapped ones first and the ground entry later.

He added that the decision to enter the Gaza Strip with large force may be justified. The negotiations, mediated by Qatar and sponsored by the Americans, did not bear fruit. What is unfair is sowing illusions in the eyes of the families of the kidnapped and the public. The kidnapped, whose number is currently estimated at 240 and perhaps more, arrived in Gaza due to a crime committed by the state. Their families met with Netanyahu to demand that he bear responsibility. I do not understand why Netanyahu’s wife and Minister Miri Regev attended the meeting, while Netanyahu’s military secretary was absent. "I fear that Netanyahu is still unaware of the event."

For his part, the military analyst in the Maariv newspaper, Tal Lev Ram, pointed out that “although the Israeli army entered the fighting in the Gaza Strip yesterday with large forces, their size is not greater than in previous ground military operations in the Gaza Strip. And belief in Israel "Is that exerting military pressure would also serve the negotiations to liberate the kidnapped people."

Lev Ram predicted that the greater the density of construction in the area into which Israeli forces penetrate, the more Hamas will seek to fight more intense battles, and by exploiting the nature of the area in order to set up ambushes and plant explosive devices.

Lev Ram pointed out that "the battle for victory over Hamas will not be decided on the ground alone. This is while Israel has very complex goals, each goal separately and especially when combined together, which is to overcome Hamas militarily, overthrow its rule, and return the kidnapped."

He stated that estimates in the Israeli army are that "the more it deepens its ground operation in the Gaza Strip, the more Hezbollah will gradually raise its response force through operations from Lebanese territory."

Military analyst in the newspaper "Haaretz", Amos Harel, pointed out that "there is a dissonance between the two declared goals of the war - the destruction of Hamas' rule and resources, and the liberation of kidnapped Israelis. Since Israel launched ground forces in the Strip, military friction in Gaza has been increasing. In conditions like these, "If there is not a quick breakthrough in the negotiations, it will be more difficult to reach a deal."

Source: Israeli press

The Israeli Foreign Ministry told Moscow: “Hosting the leaders of Hamas, who are directly responsible for the deadly terrorist attack that occurred on October 7, the kidnapping of hostages, and the shedding of the blood of more than 1,400 Israelis at their hands, conveys a message of legitimacy for terrorism against Israelis.”

Israel summoned its Russian ambassador, in protest against the visit of a Hamas delegation to the Russian capital, Moscow, according to what the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in a statement issued on Sunday evening.

The Foreign Ministry stated in its statement that “Russian Ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, was summoned this morning to protest at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in (occupied) Jerusalem following the Hamas delegation’s visit to Moscow.”

The statement added, "Deputy Director of the Department (Europe and Asia) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Simona Halperin, made it clear to the Russian ambassador that Israel considers it dangerous the lack of a clear and unequivocal condemnation by Moscow of the Hamas terrorist organization and Russia's behavior in international organizations."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry added, "Hosting the leaders of Hamas, who are directly responsible for the deadly terrorist attack that occurred on October 7, the kidnapping of hostages, and the shedding of the blood of more than 1,400 Israelis at their hands, conveys a message of legitimacy for terrorism against Israelis."

Last Thursday, the Hamas delegation that visited Moscow held meetings with Russian officials. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that representatives of Iran and Hamas are in Moscow to hold discussions, for the first time since the outbreak of the war on Gaza.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed that “there are representatives of this Palestinian movement in Moscow,” and that Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri is also in the Russian capital, without providing details about the agenda or content of the talks.

On the other hand, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “The hands of senior Hamas officials are stained with the blood of more than 1,400 Israelis who were slaughtered, killed, executed, and burned, and they are responsible for the kidnapping of more than 220 Israelis, including children, women, and the elderly,” as it claimed.

For its part, Hamas stated at the time that its delegation, “led by the head of the movement’s International Relations Office, Dr. Musa Abu Marzouk, met with the Russian President’s Special Envoy to the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr. Mikhail Bogdanov, at the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Ministry in the capital, Moscow, on noon. today is Thursday".

According to the statement, “the movement’s delegation included a member of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Bassem Naim, and the movement’s representative to Moscow.”

The statement indicated that "the movement's delegation reviewed the Zionist aggression against the Gaza Strip, and ways to stop the Zionist crimes supported by the United States and the West."

Source: Israeli press

From pushing towards a comprehensive and broad ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, to limited ground operations coinciding with the cutting off of communications and the Internet from the northern Strip; What does the occupation aim by not following the expected pattern of invasion and replacing it with limited incursions in its war on the Gaza Strip?

On the twenty-third day of the war it is waging against the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation army expanded its military operations, announcing an increase in the number of its forces fighting inside the Strip and the intensification of ground operations there. While the calls and expectations indicated a ground invasion through a wide and intensive operation, the ground operations of the occupation come Under a canopy of fog and through sporadic attacks north of the besieged sector.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (“Kan 11”) stated that the Israeli army aims, through these night ground operations, which coincide with cutting off the Internet and communications network in large areas in the northern Gaza Strip, to kill the largest number of resistance faction fighters, and to benefit from these operations in efforts to restore Prisoners and hostages of the Hamas movement, and “confusing” and misleading the resistance factions.

According to the official Israeli channel, the Israeli army aims, through these operations, which represent a limited invasion of the areas of the northern Gaza Strip, which include advancing, then withdrawing, advancing again, then retreating, in conjunction and coordination with air force operations and intense air strikes, to lure Hamas fighters and reveal their locations.

Since the start of ground operations last Friday, the occupation army has confirmed that an officer was seriously injured and a soldier was moderately injured in two separate clashes with resistance members in northern Gaza, with Hamas confirming that its fighters are engaged in “violent clashes” with the Israeli army in Gaza in light of the expansion of ground operations inside the besieged Strip. .

The military and political leaders in Israel are seeking to put pressure on Hamas through these operations, with the aim of pushing for a deal to release prisoners and hostages.

The channel pointed out that “Israeli estimates that the expansion of operations and the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip will increase pressure on the Hamas movement and push it to complete a prisoner exchange deal, have been transformed into practical steps,” which was confirmed by the Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant, during a meeting held earlier, on Sunday. With the families of Israeli prisoners held by the resistance factions in the Gaza Strip.

"Kan 11" said that the ground operations and limited invasion of the northern Gaza Strip also aimed to "create confusion" among the Hamas movement and mislead Hezbollah about the continuation of the war and the development of military operations, and added, "It is not clear whether this step may be followed by a comprehensive invasion of Gaza City." Or whether the army will continue its limited ground operations.”

The channel stated, “The army is keeping this card to itself (a complete invasion or intensive and limited ground operations), and the pictures will not become clear except with the continuation of combat operations.” Meanwhile, a senior Israeli official told the Ynet website that “the ground invasion in the Gaza Strip is proceeding according to what we deem appropriate.”

While Israeli reports questioned Hamas’ intention to reach a deal through which to release Israeli prisoners and hostages held by the resistance factions in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli official said, regarding the prisoners’ file, “We are continuing to hold talks and try to achieve a breakthrough in conjunction with the ground entry.”

He continued, "We decided that we could advance the ground incursion at the same time as dealing with the issue of the kidnappers and hostages, and that the same incursion could also serve the kidnappings and missing persons and could put pressure on Hamas. In other words: negotiations regarding the kidnapped and missing persons are under fire."

On the other hand, the Israeli army spokesman said that his calls for the Palestinians to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip and head to the south have now become an urgent matter. Daniel Hagari said, "For the past two weeks, we have been calling on residents of the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City to move south temporarily." He added, "We confirm today that this is an urgent appeal." He reported that the number of people confirmed to have been held hostage in Gaza since the Hamas attack on October 7 had risen to 239.

On the other hand, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, confirmed that its fighters continue to “confront the Zionist forces penetrating into the Al-Amriyya area northwest of Beit Lahia.” It added that its fighters "engaged with them (the forces) in armed clashes and targeted enemy vehicles with Al-Yassin 510 tandem shells and mortar shells, and carried out several sniper operations."

Al-Qassam added, "The enemy admitted that a number of its soldiers were injured in the clashes with our fighters, who are still targeting the enemy forces." In a second statement, Al-Qassam said: “We targeted, with Al-Zawari’s suicide plane, a gathering of enemy vehicles in the Al-Amiriya area, northwest of Beit Lahia.”

Meanwhile, local sources in the Gaza Strip reported that occupation aircraft and warships fired heavy fire towards the area where Al-Qassam fighters confronted the invading Israeli forces. Meanwhile, Israeli reports indicated ground operations on more than one axis in the northern Gaza Strip, and clashes with resistance elements.

According to the institutions concerned with Al-Aqsa affairs, the occupation army has arrested more than 1,590 Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem since October 7.

At dawn and Monday morning, the Israeli occupation forces launched a massive arrest campaign in various areas of the occupied West Bank, arresting dozens of freed prisoners, leading figures, academics, and journalists, while confrontations broke out in various areas and armed clashes took place in other areas.

Institutions concerned with prisoners' affairs reported that the occupation forces arrested dozens of Palestinians from the West Bank, where they were transferred for investigation by the occupation security services under the pretext of involvement in armed resistance.

The occupation forces arrested former Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Nasser Al-Din Al-Shaer from his home in the Al-Maajin neighborhood in Nablus. They also arrested Nablus Municipal Council member Omar Al-Hanbali, the freed prisoner Iyad Abu Zahra, and the freed prisoner Khaled Al-Sousa.

From the town of Kafr Qalil, south of Nablus, the occupation forces arrested journalist Nawaf Al-Amer from his home, Dr. Zaher Musa from the town of Zawata, and the freed prisoner Qutaiba Hamadna from the northern town of Asira.

The occupation forces carried out widespread arrest operations in Ramallah, concentrated in the Jalazoun camp and the town of Silwad.

The arrests in the Jalazoun camp included Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Alyan, Muhammad Ghawanmeh, the freed prisoner Fadi Nayef Alyan, and the freed prisoner Fadi Jamal Darwish.

In Silwad, the arrests included Awni Fares, Saif Khalil Ezzat, Musa Ahmed Mashhour, Aseed Hassanein Khazna, Baraa Ahmed Khaled, Baraa Muhammad Al-Saifi, Suhaib Imad Al-Shawareb, Jumah Hassan Hammad, and the two brothers Muhammad and Abdul Rahman Raed Hamed.

From the village of Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah, the occupation forces arrested young men Abd al-Hafiz Awni Zabin, editor Ashraf Wadih Saad, Youssef Abd Wadi, and editor Bakr Atallah Saad.

The occupation forces arrested Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Thawabta from his home in the town of Beit Fajjar, Bethlehem district.

In Hebron Governorate, the occupation forces stormed the town of Shuyoukh, and arrested the young men Ahmed Majed and Rasneh, Mahmoud Ayman and Rasneh, Majed Ayman and Rasneh, and Majd Zaki Halayqa.

An arrest campaign was carried out in the city of Yatta, during which Sheikh Yahya Abu Sobha, journalist Zakaria Abu Fanar, Muhammad al-Nawaja’a, editor Qutaiba al-Nawaja’a, Raed Hassan Abu Aram, Musa Gabriel Amar, Muhannad Tayseer Rabi’i, and Muhammad Ismail al-Nawaja’a were arrested.

Since the “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7th, the occupation forces have been carrying out daily and widespread arrest campaigns in the West Bank, coinciding with the ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip.

According to the institutions concerned with Al-Aqsa affairs, the occupation army has arrested more than 1,590 Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem since October 7.

What will he say when age betrays him? When he is summoned to a distant hotel. To trial in a strict hall. He knows who is waiting there. David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and others. Does he remind them that he holds the record for residency in the Prime Minister's Office? What if they rushed him by saying that he was the man under whom the fragility of deterrence was exposed? He wouldn't dare answer. How does he justify the negligence of the intelligence services? How does he justify the generals' negligence and the negligence of the medals on their chests?

He wasn't expecting an ending like this. This time the charge is not accepting gifts or taking advantage of a position. It's much more dangerous. It is an accusation of compromising the prestige of the castle, which is armed to the teeth. Since October 7, he wakes up and finds the cup of poison waiting for him. All choices are difficult. And painful and suicidal. He feels ashamed in front of the hostages' families. He feels a kind of shame in front of the ridicule of the soldiers he summoned to avert the disaster. He can hardly believe what happened. The attackers shook the settlements and uprooted the settlers. They took them hostage into the tunnels. They rained missiles on cities and towns. They will not accept anything less than the release of all Palestinian prisoners. They are demanding a huge reward for their fatal stabbing.

His story with poison is old. Remember the first cup. It was June 1976. The body of his brother, Officer Jonathan Netanyahu, returned home. The men of Palestinian leader Dr. Wadih Haddad hijacked an Air France plane with 77 Israelis on board to Entebbe, Uganda. At that time, the Prime Minister's name was General Yitzhak Rabin. He refused to give in to the demands of Haddad and the Popular Front. He sent special units to a point 4,000 kilometers away, killed the kidnappers and freed the hostages, but they returned with only one body, the body of his brother. From that day on, he decided to take revenge big and long.

After going through diplomacy in Washington and New York, he returned to Israel as a boxer in the ranks of the Likud bloc. He will defeat Peres and compete with Sharon. A cunning player and an articulate orator. In 1996, the presidency of the government will fall into his hands. The first prime minister elected by direct vote. And the first prime minister born on the territory of the entity after its birth.

In 1997, Netanyahu was dreaming of a major prize. The Mossad put on its desk an exciting proposal. The assassination of the head of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, who holds Jordanian citizenship. The Mossad chose to avoid explosives and bullets because of diplomatic relations between Jordan and Israel. Assassination by poison and a substance from which there is no escape. On September 25, Netanyahu waited in his office for the results of the exciting operation. Mishal was poisoned, but the two perpetrators, who came with Canadian passports, were arrested. The operation turned into a disaster. King Hussein was angry and called President Bill Clinton and threatened to close the Israeli embassy. Netanyahu had no choice but to swallow the poison. Delivering to the Jordanian side the antidote that saves Meshaal from fatal poisoning, and releasing the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and a number of prisoners. After 26 years, Meshaal appears after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, demanding that Netanyahu release all Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of hostages held in Gaza. Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, Yahya Ayyash, Salah Shehadeh, and others were killed, but Hamas was not killed.

Before the assassination attempt on Mashal, specifically in October 1995, the Mossad discovered that the man passing through Malta carrying a Libyan passport in the name of Ibrahim Al-Shawish was none other than Fathi Al-Shaqaqi, the founder of the “Islamic Jihad in Palestine” movement.  Assassinate him. 28 years after the assassination, “Jihad” from Gaza launches its missiles at Tel Aviv without denying its organic relationship with Iran.

What will Netanyahu say to those gathered in the hall in the distant hotel? Does Yitzhak blame Rabin for shaking hands with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn and sliding into the Oslo peace? Does he know that Arafat returned the Palestinian flag and returned with it, and that this land is narrow and cannot accommodate two flags, two peoples, and two states?

Netanyahu remembers his first meeting with Yasser Arafat. The meeting was from a cloth that swallowed poison. He tried to dictate to Arafat the agenda of the meeting, only to later suggest to the media that he had besieged him. The Palestinian leader began shuffling the cards, changing the subject, and suggesting that he had cards of power. Will he tell Rabin and Peres that they brought Arafat back to earth, whom the army went to Beirut in 1982 to expel him from and to perish with his cause in exile? Is he saying that Arafat's flexibility was part of his plan to reconnect the Palestinian and Israeli destinies, so that Israel would not enjoy security unless the Palestinians lived in their independent state?

Netanyahu opens his hands in the form of a question. The current days are days of poison. The coming days will be similar and worse. Hamas cannot be erased without eliminating Gaza. The embers of Gaza are terrible and threaten to fly to other maps. The region cannot bear a long war, nor will the world accept it. It was as if the attack emerging from the tunnels had put Israel into a tunnel from which it was difficult to exit. It is as if the story, from the beginning, is a story of spending due to betting on eliminating others and denying facts and rights. He knows that tomorrow they will raise their voices and say that what he did with the Oslo Accords and the widespread launch of settlements put Israel into a dark tunnel from which it will not emerge except by drinking the poison of an independent Palestinian state.

How difficult it is for an addicted player to feel that the journey is over. Its conclusion is difficult, painful and terrifying. When the guns and planes fall silent, committees will be formed. Investigations, inquiries, and exchange of accusations. More killing will not solve the problem. We kill them and they do not die. You erase a generation and a more ferocious generation succeeds it. You write off a man and later drink poison at the hands of those who are crueler than him. How difficult it is for your enemies to push you into the tunnel.

Source: Al- Sharq Al-awsat

The Public Prosecutor (Prosecutor General) at the Court of Appeal in Laayoune announced: The largest city in the Moroccan Sahara, in a statement, assigned the competent judicial police to conduct a judicial investigation, following the recording of the death of one person and the injury of 3 others as a result of the firing of explosive projectiles that targeted residential neighborhoods in the city of Smara. He stressed keenness to “arrange the necessary legal effects in light of the research results.”

The local authorities in the Smara Province in the Moroccan Sahara had previously announced that 4 explosions occurred on the night of Saturday - Sunday in the city of Smara, killing one person and wounding 3 others. Two of them are in serious condition, according to the Moroccan News Agency.

Local media reported attacks by the separatist Polisario Front. The Moroccan "Youm 24" website said that the explosions that occurred in Smara were due to attacks launched by the "Polisario" Front from the Tafariti region, in a dangerous precedent that targeted residential neighborhoods. Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that “the Polisario Front is playing with fire, and directing its fire towards civilians is a cowardly terrorist act.”

For its part, the "Sahrawi News Agency" affiliated with the "Polisario Front" said that units of its forces targeted the positions of the Moroccan forces, "causing heavy losses in lives and equipment," according to what was stated in "Military Communication No. 900" issued by its forces.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday, Wednesday, that Cyclone Tej, which struck a number of governorates in southern and eastern Yemen recently, caused two deaths and injured 40 people, forcing more than 13,000 to flee, most of them children, and damaging hundreds of homes.

According to a brief statement by UNICEF on the X platform, Al-Mahra Governorate in the east of the country, located on the border with the Sultanate of Oman, was the most affected by the hurricane, with two dead and 40 others injured, in addition to the displacement of more than 11,900, including 6,188 children. She pointed out that the hurricane caused the displacement of 1,400 people, including 728 children, in Hadramaut Governorate, while damaging up to 500 homes in the Socotra Archipelago on the Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, local authorities and residents said that Al-Raydah and Qusayr District in Hadramaut Governorate suffered major damage yesterday, Wednesday, from Cyclone Tej. The people were stranded as a result of the heavy rains and torrential floods, and homes were destroyed. The governor of Hadhramaut, Mabkhout bin Madi, said that there were no deaths as a result of the hurricane so far.

The death toll from Hurricane Otis rose to 48 on Sunday, days after it struck Mexico's Pacific coast, according to the Mexican government.

Most of the victims are believed to have died by drowning. Authorities said on Sunday that six people were still missing.

Hurricane Otis struck the coast last Tuesday evening, as a very dangerous Category 5 hurricane, with sustained wind speeds reaching about 270 kilometers per hour, and the speed of the cyclone accompanying it reached 330 kilometers per hour. Then it lost its power on Earth and eventually faded away.

Within just 12 hours, it developed from a tropical storm into a dangerous hurricane, then lost strength and dissipated after reaching land. More than 270,000 apartments and homes were damaged due to the hurricane. In addition, 80% of all hotels in the region that depend on tourism were damaged.

Meanwhile, the armed forces distributed relief supplies in the coastal resort of Acapulco. The Ministry of Defense stated that soldiers brought quantities of food and drinking water to the most affected neighborhoods. The army transported 40 tons of aid by air to the stricken area, and the Red Cross delivered another 75 tons.

Acapulco is famous for its luxury hotels and diving trips, and is also very popular with tourists on a limited budget. Initial estimates showed that the storm may have caused damage

Its value is estimated at $15 billion

The Israeli occupation forces bombed a house at the entrance to the Jenin refugee camp, wounding two Palestinians, while the occupation forces destroyed the infrastructure in the vicinity of the camp.

At dawn and Monday morning, 4 young men were martyred and a number of other Palestinians were injured during a massive and violent incursion carried out by the Israeli occupation forces into the city of Jenin and its camp in the occupied West Bank.

Medical sources in Jenin reported that the martyrs were Wiam Al-Hanoun, one of the founders of the “Jenin Battalion,” and the leader of the battalion, Nawras Al-Bajawi, Amir Al-Sharbaji, and Musa Jabareen.

The occupation forces stormed the city of Jenin, before the occupation army sent reinforcements estimated at about 30 military vehicles, including two bulldozers, and surrounded the Jenin camp, and deployed snipers in a number of buildings surrounding the camp, coinciding with the flight of reconnaissance planes.

The Israeli occupation forces bombed a house at the entrance to the Jenin camp, wounding two Palestinians, while the occupation forces destroyed the infrastructure in the vicinity of the camp.

Local sources reported that the occupation forces stormed the city of Jenin with more than 100 military vehicles from several directions, accompanied by two military bulldozers.

The occupation forces surrounded the vicinity of Ibn Sina Hospital, coinciding with the flight of a reconnaissance drone over the city.

These forces occupied a number of buildings overlooking the camp, deployed sniper teams, and bulldozed the street leading to the entrance to the main Jenin camp amid clashes with the resistance fighters.

The occupation bulldozers began bulldozing the streets and infrastructure in the streets of the city of Jenin. They also bulldozed the streets leading to the camp and placed dirt barriers, in an attempt to isolate the camp from the city.

The occupation military bulldozers also deliberately destroyed a number of Palestinian vehicles, and the occupation forces seized two civilian vehicles.

The Palestinian News Agency reported that dozens of people were killed, most of them children, with renewed Israeli air strikes in various areas of the Gaza Strip, especially the northern and central parts, on Monday. The agency reported that 23 people were killed in an Israeli raid that targeted two homes in the northern Gaza Strip. In the center of the Gaza Strip, it was reported that Israeli aircraft bombed a house in the Al-Zawaida area, killing and wounding dozens. It reported the bombing of the Engineers Tower in Tal al-Hawa, southwest of Gaza City. For its part, Palestinian television said that Internet and communications services were cut off in areas north of the Gaza Strip.

Telephone and Internet services gradually returned to various areas of the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Sunday morning, after stopping almost completely since Friday.

An American official told the Washington Post that Israel restored internet and communications services in the Gaza Strip under American pressure. The American official said, "After communications were cut off on Friday, the United States put pressure on the Israeli government to restart them."

The number of Israelis who consider Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “unfit to rule and conduct a war” is increasing. Even his comrades in the right-wing camp have begun to feel that he is no longer that experienced leader. They look at his actions since the Hamas attack three weeks ago and are surprised by his erratic decisions and statements. Paradoxical. They believe that Netanyahu is trying to create signs of strength that turn into weakness, and that his performance strengthens his opponents at home and his enemies abroad, and that the public that gave him the majority of seats in power quickly disavows him and demands that he resign, and all of this is in the midst of the war that has been going on since October 7. Even when he apologized in writing and wrote: “I apologize, I made a mistake,” they did not believe him.

Confronting journalists

That was when he held a joint press conference with the two members of the War Command; Defense Minister Yoav Galant and State Minister Benny Gantz, late at night. For the first time since the beginning of the war, journalists were informed that they would be allowed to ask questions. The questions were directed to him alone. One of them was raised by an Israeli Army Radio correspondent about “reports indicating that, before the war, he had received documents from the head of the Military Intelligence Division (Aman), Aharon Haliwa, and the head of the General Intelligence Agency (Shin Bet), Ronen Bar, warning of the increasing possibility of war breaking out.” Confusion appeared on his face and tone of voice, and he said: “All matters raised will be examined.” Everyone is being interrogated, and so am I. Now we are all recruited to thwart the missions of the enemy who wants to wipe us all off the map.”

This answer did not please those close to him, and they considered him weak and evasive, and he had close associates who used orgy and bragging rhetoric. They said that he had to respond immediately and say what he believed because no one had warned him. And he couldn't sleep. At one o'clock and ten minutes after midnight, a post appeared on his page on social networks in which he said: “Prime Minister Netanyahu was not warned, under any circumstances and at any stage, of Hamas’ intentions to wage war. On the contrary, all security officials appreciated “Including the head of Aman and the head of the Shin Bet, Hamas is deterred and will resort to a settlement.” He added, "These are the estimates that all security and intelligence agencies presented to the prime minister and the cabinet, time after time, until the moment the war broke out."

A thundering storm

When Netanyahu woke up, he found the echoes of this tweet a thundering storm. The opposition and some people close to the coalition attacked him. The press unanimously agreed that he behaved irresponsibly and unbecoming of a prime minister, and they wondered which prime minister was the one attacking the army and intelligence leaders while leading with them a war that he considered fateful.

It became clear that this attack on him exceeded imagination, and was characterized by much exaggeration and exaggeration, and that it was “a mistake that is being openly exploited against him.” He was prominent in his attack on the opposition leader, Yair Lapid, and the leaders of the protest movement against his plan to “reform the judiciary.” Lapid said, “Netanyahu crossed a red line.” While Israeli soldiers and army commanders are fighting against Hamas and Hezbollah, he is busy trying to blame them, instead of giving them support. Attempts to evade responsibility and blame the security apparatus weaken the Israeli army at a time when it is fighting Israel's enemies. Netanyahu should apologize for his statements.”

A statement issued by the “Brothers in Arms” protest movement said, “At a time when the people are mobilizing behind the army and working around the clock to defeat Hamas, Netanyahu is choosing to be preoccupied with partisan politics and with the investigation committee (which is expected to be formed after the war on Gaza.”) ), and he is not able to say I am responsible. If he were a real leader, he would support the security forces and bear responsibility.”

Advice to back off and apologize

Those loyal to him rushed to him, advising him to withdraw and apologise. He deleted the tweet that caused the uproar. Faced with the horror of the attack on him, he published a partial apology in which he said: “I made a mistake, I apologize. These words should not have been said,” but he added here that he had not received warnings. Rather, they assured him that Hamas was deterred and afraid of going to war. Therefore, the uproar against him was not reduced, and they began opening other files related to the war for him. They reminded him that the army and intelligence leaders had also published warnings in the newspapers, a week before the war, saying that the policy of the government and settlers against the Palestinians, such as the incursions into Al-Aqsa, the settlers’ attacks on Palestinian towns and property, and the plan to abuse the living conditions of prisoners in prisons, will spark a dangerous security escalation. However, Netanyahu did not change this policy and did not even discuss it in the government.

It is noteworthy that Netanyahu is running a policy of contradictions that attracts the attention of many. There are those who accuse him of continuing to strengthen Hamas until today, when he talks about that he is fighting an existential war more dangerous than the War of Independence (1948). They ask: “Doesn’t he understand that with these words he is raising the status of Hamas and portraying it as something strong, huge, and great, an organization whose number of fighters does not exceed 30,000?!”

Nahum Barnea wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Sunday, saying: “This is very far from being the second war of independence, as Netanyahu and his colleagues in the cabinet claimed. In the War of Independence, Israel fought for its existence, but now it is not fighting for its existence. It is fighting to return the kidnapped people, to remove the threat from a criminal terrorist organization and to restore its deterrent power against enemies in the region. These are three heavy tasks that it is doubtful that the government will succeed in achieving.” In this spirit, a number of experts spoke out against Netanyahu, saying that he is no longer fit to rule or manage a war.

On Sunday evening, fires broke out in the vicinity of citizens’ homes in the Abu Tayeh neighborhood in the town of Silwan, south of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, due to the occupation forces’ heavy firing of poison gas bombs.

Eyewitnesses said that the Israeli occupation forces stormed the Abu Tayeh neighborhood and fired heavy toxic gas bombs at citizens’ homes, which led to fires igniting around a number of homes.

This Sunday evening, settlers attacked the village of Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, and threatened its people with death or departure.

Eyewitnesses said that a group of armed settlers, dressed in occupation forces uniforms, detained 20 young men in the village, threatening to kill them or leave the village “if they did not show their loyalty to Israel.”

They added that the settlers forced a citizen to speak Hebrew and condemn the "killing of innocents" and photographed him, at gunpoint.

Jordan denied on Sunday - for the second time - that it was using its military bases to transfer supplies from the US army to Israel, which is waging an aggression against Gaza that has led to the death of more than 8,000 Palestinians.

This came in a statement provided by the Jordanian army through a military source who described him as responsible.

The source said, "There is no truth to what is being published on some social media sites about the use of Royal Jordanian Air Force bases by American aircraft that supply the Israeli army with equipment and ammunition for use in bombing operations on the Gaza Strip."

He added that spreading and circulating such rumors aims to influence the firm Jordanian position towards the Palestinian issue and the reputation of the armed forces.

Destabilizing security

The Jordanian statement demanded that these rumors not be circulated "given their goals aimed at destabilizing national security and stability, and affecting the efforts made by the state to achieve a ceasefire and deliver humanitarian aid."

He pointed out that the Armed Forces Hospital is still receiving the wounded and injured in the Gaza Strip, despite all the challenges and difficulties, in addition to the operation of Royal Air Force planes to deliver humanitarian and relief aid to the Strip.

It is noteworthy that Jordan previously denied the same rumors in a military statement on October 10.

Source: Anadolu Agency

An Al Jazeera correspondent said that demonstrators stormed an airport in Dagestan, which is affiliated with the Russian Federation, after a plane coming from Israel landed.

In turn, Agence France-Presse reported that the authorities in Makhachkala, the capital of the republic - with a Muslim majority - closed the airport to air traffic, after dozens stormed the airport following reports of a plane coming from Israel landing. The demonstrators - denouncing the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian Gaza Strip - entered. The passenger building, they arrived at the airport runway and crossed the barriers with the aim of searching departing cars in search of Israeli passengers, according to video clips broadcast by the Russian Izvestia agency and the RT channel and circulated on social media.

The Russian Aviation Agency announced that “following the storming of unidentified individuals into the navigation area at Makhachkala Airport, the decision was taken to temporarily close it to arrival and take-off flights,” confirming that security forces had arrived at the location. Reuters news agency quoted the aviation agency as saying that all planes heading to Makhachkala had been grounded. Transferred to other airports.

In response to Tel Aviv, the Prime Minister's Office said that it is following up with the Foreign Ministry and the Presidency of National Security the developments of events in Dagestan, adding that Israel expects Russian law enforcement authorities to preserve the safety of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they are. The Israeli statement added that "it must act decisively." Against the rioters and against the rampant incitement directed against Jews and Israelis.”

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies