Israel killed 10 Palestinians in violent confrontations in Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm, bringing to about 16 the number of people it killed during the past 12 hours in the West Bank.

Nour Shams camp witnessed very violent confrontations between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army, which used drones to attack Palestinian fighters, and was exposed to explosive devices that left wounded among its ranks.

Israel turned the camp into a war zone, after cutting it into parts, and opened fire on Palestinians throughout the day, to the point where residents dragged the bodies of young men and children to the camp mosque to await the arrival of ambulances.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced, late on Thursday, “The arrival of a sixth martyr shot by the Israeli occupation to Tulkarm Governmental Hospital, as a result of the aggression against Nour Shams camp, which raises the death toll in the camp to 7 martyrs, while we received an indication of the presence of other martyrs whose ambulances could not.” Take them to the hospital.” Palestinian sources confirmed that there were at least 4 bodies in the mosque.

On Thursday morning, Israel stormed the camp, imposed a siege on it, and entered into confrontations during which it targeted armed men with drones, and broadcast pictures of the bombing in one of the camp’s streets.

Palestinian factions announced that their fighters were engaged in clashes in the Nour Shams camp, causing casualties among the ranks of the Israeli army.

The Israeli police said in a statement that during an operational operation in the refugee camp in Nur al-Shams, border guard soldiers were injured. The army and police confirmed that their operation, which lasted for more than 10 hours, aimed to thwart the infrastructure of the fighters in the sunlight. 

The operation witnessed an exchange of fire and the throwing of explosive devices, one of which injured 10 soldiers, one of whom was in serious condition.

This brings the number of those killed by Israel to 16 in the West Bank, including 4 children, within 12 hours, which brings the number of those killed in the West Bank since the start of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7 of this year to 78.

At a time when the battles were raging on the Gaza front, and tension was rising on the border with Lebanon, Israel launched the “Awareness Front” via virtual space, launching what is known as the “Israel Electronic Army” a battle across various social media networks, to fight what the occupation called “the narrative.” "Palestinian" and promoting his story with the aim of influencing world public opinion.

According to the newspaper "Yedioth Ahronoth", the "Awareness Front" is no less important than the battlefields, and described it as the "battle over awareness" for its role in penetrating the virtual space and conveying its echo to the whole world.

Analysts and journalists admitted that in light of the war on Gaza, Israel and civil initiatives for Jews in Israel and around the world - behind the scenes - are waging a war on the narrative, on propaganda and shaping awareness through hundreds of members of the electronic army.

Yedioth Ahronoth: The awareness front is no less important than the battlefields (Al Jazeera)

Yedioth Ahronoth: The awareness front is no less important than the battlefields (Al Jazeera)

Mobilization and recruitment

According to analysts, Israel has been prepared for years by mobilizing and recruiting hundreds of cadres who were trained in Israeli centers and universities, and they fought many hypothetical maneuvers and hidden wars to spread the Israeli narrative, even through fabrication and falsification of content and implications.

Reichmann University, at the Center for National Security Research - Herzliya, specializes in qualifying these cadres through study courses in the subjects of international media, content production, electronic media, law and governance, political science, and sociology.

Hundreds of students participate in these courses annually, who are provided with the mechanisms to join the Israeli Electronic Army or any Israeli security and military institution, and in various government ministries, including the diplomatic corps and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Herzliya Center also provides training courses for hundreds of employees from various Israeli government ministries and officers and workers in security, military and intelligence institutions, including the Mossad and Shin Bet.

forgery

The training courses aim to provide those concerned with the skills that will help them address local and international public opinion, promote the Israeli narrative, or confront the Palestinian, Arab, or any anti-Israel narrative. It also aims to enable them to specialize in falsifying facts and creating new narratives that have no connection to reality.

In the first week of the war on Gaza, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ diplomatic staff conducted briefings for 250 foreign correspondents and more than 640 interviews with international media in various languages to distort and combat the Palestinian narrative.

About a thousand posts and tweets were also published in English, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, and Russian, which received more than 320 million views, through the activity of the digital department of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. More than 80 official statements were issued condemning Hamas and supporting Israel from various countries, according to the Israeli newspaper "Globes".

Israeli Foreign Ministry teams conducted more than 640 interviews with international media in various languages to distort the Palestinian narrative.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs conducted more than 640 media interviews in various languages to distort the Palestinian narrative (Getty)

Virtual battle

Israeli citizens and Jewish volunteers around the world are active in creating dozens of groups and projects to help with international outreach, one of which is known as the “Civil Propaganda Headquarters,” which was established by former journalist Eliav Patito, which recruits volunteers to distribute content.

Commenting on the “Awareness Front,” journalist Navo Tribelsi, technology and Internet affairs correspondent for the “Globes” newspaper, said, “This is the second war of independence, and this is how the battle for world public opinion is conducted.”

He added that Israel has been waging a war for several days on several fronts, the most important of which is the battle to influence global public opinion, as it is considered an essential arena for broadcasting messages, content, and content in line with the Israeli narrative.

Tribelsi stressed the importance of controlling and controlling the “Awareness Front” because “awareness and understanding of the difficult situation that Israel has been experiencing since Black Saturday has a clear impact in providing cover and international legitimacy for Israeli military operations, in addition to being important for exerting pressure on various parties in the world and ensuring their alignment with Israel builds its narrative on war.”

He believes that public opinion today is influenced by "the serious work undertaken by various state institutions, frameworks and civil authorities," noting that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is active in transmitting information and content and recruiting all its diplomatic staff around the world to interact within the arenas of the "Awareness Front."

fill

According to the Globes newspaper, Eliav Patito has so far managed to recruit more than 400 active volunteers to translate, visually edit, and plan the content, with hundreds of other volunteers to publish the content on social media networks.

According to messages sent within the “Civil Propaganda Headquarters” communication groups, the content produced by the headquarters reaches millions of people around the world.

One of the contents that Patito distributed in cooperation with the Civil Propaganda Headquarters at the beginning of the war on the Gaza front, and which helped set the tone in favor of the Israeli narrative, was a video that the newspaper described as “successful,” which was produced in the advertising office in Uman Bar Rivnai.

The newspaper adds that everyone in the civilian propaganda headquarters felt the need to mobilize in favor of the propaganda information war that Israel is waging, as the video recorded millions of views thanks to its participation by famous and familiar scientific figures, such as the singer Madonna.

In Ruvini Friedan's office, they collected information materials for stories and correspondence of what they described as the "hell" that the residents of the "Gaza envelope" experienced during the "Al-Aqsa Flood" battle, which were translated into many languages by dozens of volunteer translators.

In addition, the "Israelite" Association focuses on providing tools and knowledge to young Jews, so that they can help and positively influence the "image of Israel" globally and regionally by establishing a virtual emergency room that is active around the clock.

marketing

The association holds webinars in which it provides guidance, practical tools, and sources of information that can be relied upon when providing information to users of digital media and social networks.

According to Professor Moran Yerahai, head of the Department of Digital Awareness and Influence at the College of Communications and head of the Public Diplomacy Program at Reichmann University, “In previous combat rounds, it was difficult for Israel to present itself as a natural victim, because we are the strong side.”

In the war on images, Yerhai says, “Whoever has the strongest and most famous story has the upper hand. In the current situation, it was easy for the world to sympathize with the events and armed operations to which children, youth, the elderly, and women were exposed in the Gaza Strip, as well as the armed operations that targeted Music festival too.

Yerahai considered that the narrative of empathy has a very strong resonance, “Even the comparisons made with ISIS or the September 11 attacks are something that the public can understand. In this war, our ability to present the victims at the most shocking level makes people understand the political and security context of the conflict.” .

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for a ceasefire in Gaza, while Egypt affirmed its refusal to displace the population of the Strip to neighboring countries, against the backdrop of the ongoing Israeli occupation bombing.

Guterres stressed - during a press conference in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry - that Gaza needs aid on a large scale and on a sustainable basis, noting that a ceasefire is essential for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Guterres called for the protection of civilians and the provision of humanitarian relief to the Gaza Strip, stressing that the attack on hospitals and schools violates international law.

On Tuesday evening, the Israeli occupation bombed Al-Baptisti Hospital, killing about 500 civilians, in addition to hundreds of wounded, while its sides are still groaning from the effects of the Israeli raid, as a number of families of the wounded and martyrs visit it in search of the remaining traces of their families.

Hundreds of families had taken refuge in the hospital after some of their homes were bombed, and others believed that it was safer than their homes, but the Israeli bombing caught up with them, and they were surprised by a missile in the crowded hospital yard.

Guterres pointed out that a solution cannot be reached without creating a free Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

He called on the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to "release the hostages" it took on October 7, and also called on Israel to allow aid to arrive without restrictions.

For his part, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said that there is no alternative but for the parties to return to the negotiating table to activate the two-state solution.

Shukri stressed that liquidating the Palestinian issue by displacing the population of Gaza to neighboring countries is out of the question and that there is no alternative but for the parties to return to the negotiating table and establish a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.

On the 13th day of its war on Gaza, the Israeli army continues to bomb residential areas, resulting in the death of 3,785 Palestinians and the wounding of more than 12,000, the majority of whom are children and women.

Today, Thursday, the Israeli occupation forces closed the main northern entrance to the city of Salfit with an iron gate.

According to local sources, the occupation army moved the iron gate that it had recently installed at the entrance to the side of the city and closed it, so that the colonists passing through the “Al-Ras” outpost, northwest of the city, could enter and exit more freely, while it continues to restrict citizens throughout the governorate, through... Iron gates and dirt barriers that he places at the entrances to towns and villages.

Three Palestinians and five left-wing Israeli activists detained, tied up, beaten and sexually humiliated by Israeli forces, according to Haaretz report

Palestinians and left-wing Israeli activists in the West Bank village of Wadi al-Siq were physically assaulted, sexually humiliated and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers, according to a new report in Haaretz. 

Three Palestinians and three activists spoke to the Israeli newspaper about their arrest on 12 October by the Israeli army’s Desert Frontier unit, which has recruited members from the far-right Hilltop Youth settler group.

The Palestinians, who were part of the evacuation of the village after repeated settler attacks, said they were held for hours by between 20 and 25 armed settlers and soldiers, who arrived in two vans and detained them. 

The three Palestinians were stripped of their clothes and photographed naked and in their underwear. Israeli forces urinated on two of the captives and put out burning cigarettes on them, according to the report.

A photograph of the three Palestinians in their underwear, blindfolded, tied up and with bruises on their bodies was published on Facebook before being deleted. 

One of the men, 46-year-old Mohammed Matar, known as Abu Hassan, told Haaretz that what they had experienced was like the torture and prisoner abuse perpetrated by US forces at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

The Palestinians were released in the evening by officials from the Civil Administration, Israel’s governing body in the occupied West Bank. They were taken to hospital in Ramallah, seriously wounded and having had most of their property – including a car and cash – stolen from them. 

An Israeli army spokesman told Haaretz that it had opened an investigation into the incident and that one commander had been dismissed as a result.

On the same day, a group of left-wing Israeli activists who arrived on the scene, and who had a child with them, was attacked and held for several hours. 

The soldiers and settlers threatened to kill them and went on to beat some of the activists. The activists, who were released after three hours in captivity, said that at one point a young settler in civilian clothes was put in charge of guarding them. 

Settler violence

Abu Hassan and Mohammed Khaled, 27, both employees of the Palestinian Authority (PA) who had spent seven weeks in Wadi al-Siq helping its residents, told Haaretz reporter Hagar Shezaf they had already got in their car to leave the village when the settlers and soldiers arrived “in military uniforms, all armed and most of them masked”.

When the settlers caught Abu Hassan and Khaled, they chained them to the floor and started beating them with weapons, pinning their heads to the floor and stepping on them, according to the two men, who then had their hands tied with ropes.

Some knives were produced, which the settlers and soldiers said belonged to the Palestinians, but which they insist were planted in their baggage. 

'They had an iron pipe and knives with which they also beat us. They beat me everywhere, on my hands, chest and head. Everywhere.'- Mohammed Khaled, detained Palestinian

At one point during their period of detention, the Palestinian captives told Haaretz that personnel they were told were from the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, arrived and interrogated and abused them. Shin Bet denied the charges.

The three Palestinians who were detained and tortured said it was hard to tell who was a settler and who was a soldier. 

After their initial detention, the captives said they were led to an empty building, where their eyes were covered and their hands bound with steel wire. 

“They laid us on our stomachs and one of them brought a knife and tore our clothes,” Abu Hassan told Haaretz. “We stayed only in our underwear.”

“They continued to beat us,” Khaled said. “They had an iron pipe and knives with which they also beat us. They beat me everywhere, on my hands, chest and head. Everywhere. They put out cigarettes on us, they tried to pull out my nails.”

Abu Hassan said his face was pushed into the dirt and excrement that covered the floor of the empty building. They were interrogated and asked repeatedly where they intended to “carry out the stabbing attack” with the knives they purportedly had. They also said they were asked personal questions about their families.

“The violence continued all the time,” Abu Hassan told Haaretz. “They poured water on us, they urinated on us.

 After that someone holding a stick tried to stick it in my behind. I resisted with all my might until he simply gave up.”

According to the two Palestinian men, after about six hours they were taken out of the excrement-covered building, barefoot and in their underwear. They were unaware of the presence of a third Palestinian, Majed, who was tied up with a rope and had his phone taken and later spent two nights in hospital.

The three Palestinians were released in the evening.

'All Arabs are shit'

At the same time, according to the report, five left-wing Israeli activists were held for hours by the settlers.

“When they saw us, they started chasing us,” one of the activists told Haaretz. “Some of them were in uniform, or half in uniform and half in civilian clothes, but the vehicles were civilian.”

Abu Hassan told Haaretz he thought he was targeted for such severe abuse because he is known among the settlers as an activist who helps the shepherd communities in the area.

“They wanted to convey two messages: one, that the Jews went crazy after the Gaza Strip, and two, that we, the Arabs, dare not mess with them,“ he said. 

“I told them that I was against Hamas and against Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but it didn't interest them. They said that all Arabs are shit and that we should be sent to Jordan. What happened has nothing to do with law, order, or the conduct of a reformed country. It's simply an integrated gang.”

The events take place against the backdrop of rising violence and tension in the West Bank because of the ongoing Israel-Palestine war.

Israeli forces have imposed a strict lockdown across the West Bank, closing cities, placing barriers and cement blocks at the entrances to villages and towns, and shooting at protesters.

They have killed dozens and detained at least 870 Palestinian civilians since the war broke out on 7 October, following a surprise Hamas-led attack on Israel. In the same time, settler attacks have surged by 40 percent.

At least 72 people have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the war broke out, while at least 3,785 people have died in Gaza and 1,400 in Israel.

Last Tuesday, two days before the attack on the Palestinians and left-wing activists, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, announced that his ministry was purchasing 10,000 rifles to arm civilian security teams, including in West Bank settlements.

Source: Middle East Eye

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah II affirmed their rejection of the forced displacement of Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan, warning of the danger of these calls to regional security.

During the Egyptian-Jordanian summit held in Cairo today, Thursday, the two leaders stressed the need for continued access of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing in a sustainable manner.

The two leaders reviewed the tireless efforts made by Egypt and Jordan to push for calm and reduce escalation, and affirmed the firm position of the two countries that achieving real and sustainable stability in the region is based on the Palestinian people obtaining their legitimate rights in their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in accordance with the relevant international legitimacy resolutions, and in accordance with It provides peace, security and prosperity to all the peoples of the region.

On Thursday, Lebanese Hezbollah and the Israeli army exchanged missile and artillery shelling, in a new wave of tension in parallel with the war that the occupation has been waging in the Gaza Strip for 13 days.

Al Jazeera's correspondent said that an Israeli artillery shelling targeted the vicinity of the towns of Aita al-Shaab and Beit Lev in the central sector of southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army said that it carried out an artillery attack on a site inside Lebanon, from which two rockets were fired towards the Al-Manara military site west of Kiryat Shmona.

For his part, the Israeli army spokesman explained that the bombing targeted a reconnaissance site towards the sea, from which an anti-tank missile was launched yesterday, Wednesday, towards Ras Naqoura. He added that the raids were launched in response to shooting operations towards Israel over the past 24 hours, he said.

Israel continues to strengthen its forces on its northern border with Lebanon. In recent hours, more heavy military equipment was brought to the border, including tanks and armored vehicles.

The Israeli military spokesman called on residents of the areas adjacent to the border with Lebanon, as well as in the southern areas close to Gaza, to fully adhere to the emergency instructions issued by the army’s home front.

On the other hand, Hezbollah's Al-Manar channel reported that on Thursday, it fired a number of Kornet missiles towards the Al-Manara colony, opposite the towns of Mays Al-Jabal and around the two borders in southern Lebanon.

Al Jazeera's correspondent confirmed that a number of Israeli sites were bombed with missiles in the western sector of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah was quoted as saying that the Jal al-Alam site in the central sector of southern Lebanon was bombed with guided missiles.

Al Jazeera's correspondent said that sirens sounded a short while ago in the towns of Shomrah and Evin Menachem near the Lebanese border, and in Shlomi, Al-Bassa and Hanita in the Western Galilee.

Hezbollah's military media had broadcast pictures that it said were of the operation carried out by the party on Wednesday afternoon against the Israeli Al-Malikiyah position in the eastern sector of the border.

The pictures showed Hezbollah members targeting the Al-Malikiyah site and its technical equipment with guided missiles, directly hitting them.

Over the past few days, the two sides exchanged intermittent rounds of bombardment, causing deaths on both sides of the dividing Blue Line.

Leaving Lebanon

On the other hand, the embassies of the United States of America and Britain urged their citizens - on Thursday - to leave Lebanon “as long as commercial options are available,” in two new warnings in light of the tension witnessed on the southern border with Israel.

The US Embassy said in a new warning sent to its citizens in Lebanon, “The State Department urges American citizens in Lebanon to make plans to leave as soon as possible while commercial options are still available.”

She recommended that those wishing to stay "prepare plans in preparation for emergency situations."

On Wednesday, Washington raised the level of travel warning from the third level to the fourth level, which is the highest, and advised all Americans not to travel to Lebanon. It also allowed the departure of non-essential employees and their families from its embassy in Beirut.

In the same context, the British Embassy in Beirut updated travel advice for Lebanon. She said - in a statement on Thursday - “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Development now advises against traveling to Lebanon and encourages British citizens who intend to leave to do so now, as long as commercial options are available.”

She urged her citizens to “remain vigilant,” avoid “any gatherings, marches, or processions and follow the instructions of local authorities,” reiterating the warning that “the situation is unpredictable and could deteriorate without warning.”

The Israeli Ministry of Defense said on Thursday that it had received a cargo plane from the United States carrying the first shipment of armored vehicles.

The ministry added, via the “X” platform, that these vehicles are being transferred to the Israeli army to replace vehicles damaged during the war on the Gaza Strip, according to the Arab World News Agency.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense had previously announced the arrival of more than one shipment of aid, military equipment, and ammunition to Israel.

Although the expected ground attack on the Gaza Strip had not begun, Palestinian factions published video clips on Saturday, October 7, of their destruction of a number of Israeli vehicles on the borders of the Strip with anti-armor shells and bombs from drones, in addition to other scenes of their control of military camps.

Malaysian veteran politician and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday called out US President Joe Biden for his comments about the bombing of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, dubbing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Pentagon liars.

Biden said on Wednesday that the hospital blast, which killed hundreds of people, including women and children, was not caused by Israeli airstrikes.

"Based on what I've seen, it appears that it was done by the other team, not you," Biden said during a news conference with Netanyahu, evidently pointing a finger at Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group with similar goals to Hamas.

"There’s a lot of people out there that are not sure, so we have got to overcome a lot of things,” added the president, who arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a hastily arranged visit amid the armed conflict with the Palestinian group Hamas.

Mahathir, Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister, stated in a post on the social media platform X that Biden's narrative is based on feedback from Nethanyahu and the Pentagon.

"Obviously Netanyahu lies about everything. And if Biden wants to use Pentagon to give credence to his narrative, we have not forgotten how Pentagon and other American institutions lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq," he said.

A more recent lie involves Biden claiming to have seen images of Hamas beheading babies, referring to allegations that Hamas "beheaded babies" in Israel, which later proved false.

"Indeed, the White House had withdrawn the statement, admitting that there was no proof of such a deed. The question is how Biden could blatantly lie in the first place and with a straight face," Mahathir said.

Eekad, a global platform for publishing facts and monitoring fake news, in its latest investigation, discovered evidence pointing to Israel's involvement in the Baptist hospital bombing.

"By conducting a comprehensive analysis of the events and scrutinizing live broadcast footage, surveillance camera recordings, and pictures, Eekad’s team has uncovered evidence pointing to Israel's culpability in this tragedy, supported by concrete proof, " it said in a post on X on Thursday.

Eekad added that Tel Aviv quickly disavowed its involvement, attempting to distort the narrative by linking the incident to Hamas.

'Murderous regime is after Palestinians'

Mahathir said there should not be any doubt that the hospital bombing was caused by an Israeli airstrike, as the "murderous" regime has been attempting to wipe Palestinians and Gaza out of existence since last week.

He said "all these" atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians stem from the American support for Tel Aviv.

If Washington, he observed, withdraws its support for Tel Aviv and stops all military aid to the regime, Israel will no longer be able to carry out "genocide and mass murders of Palestinians with impunity."

"The US government needs to come clean and tell the truth. Israel and its IDF are the terrorists. The United States is blatantly supporting terrorists. So what is the United States?" he asked.

The conflict in Gaza, under Israeli bombardment and blockade since Oct. 7, began when Hamas initiated Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a multi-pronged surprise attack that included a barrage of rocket launches and infiltrations into Israel by land, sea, and air. It said the incursion was in retaliation for the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and growing violence by Israeli settlers.

Source: Anadolu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received “special support” from US President Joe Biden for a ground invasion of the besieged Gaza Strip during talks in Israel on Wednesday, the Times of London reported.

The report said that Biden told Netanyahu that he still “fully supports” Israel’s plans to launch a ground incursion to “eliminate Hamas” despite anger over the bombing of the Arab National Hospital in Gaza City, which Israel blames on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, with a missile that went astray. The United States supports the Israeli side of the story, while Palestinian officials insist that the Israeli airstrike hit the hospital.

According to a report issued by the American website Axios about Wednesday’s talks between Biden and Netanyahu, the basic message expressed by Israeli officials to President Biden was that the war in Gaza will take time and will test American support for Israel, which will double the number of Palestinian civilian deaths, especially since until this moment More than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians, since the beginning of the Israeli attack on Gaza on October 7th.

An Israeli ground invasion of Gaza appeared imminent near the end of last week when Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza, an area where 1.1 million people live.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the incursion was delayed due to fears that Hezbollah would open a second front in the north.

The United States has deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups and other military assets to “deter” other actors from joining the war, and the White House has discussed the possibility of using military force against Hezbollah if it launches a major attack on Israel.

The Axios report said that Biden expressed to Netanyahu his concern that Hezbollah might join the war beyond the cross-border missile strikes it exchanges with Israel in the north.

Today, Thursday, armed settlers desecrated a mosque and damaged loudspeakers in the village of Manizil, east of Yatta, south of Hebron.

According to local sources, a group of armed colonists, wearing the uniform of the Israeli occupation forces, stormed the mosque of the village of Manizil, desecrated it, destroyed the unified call to prayer devices and speakers, and smashed the glass of one of the windows, chanting that they did not want to hear the call to prayer and that it bothered them, before the sheikh of the mosque was able to... Confront them and prevent them from continuing acts of desecration and vandalism.

These sources added that the Israeli occupation forces raided the village of Al-Tuwanah in Masafer Yatta, and searched the house of citizen Musa Rabi.

In the same context, the occupation forces stormed and searched a number of shops and workshops in the Kharsa Triangle area, south of Dura.

Author: Maher Al-Sharif

On Friday, October 13, the United Nations indicated that the Israeli army, which is waging its widespread aggression against the Gaza Strip, informed it on Thursday evening that approximately 1.1 million Palestinians residing in the northern Gaza Strip will have to go to the south. sector within 24 hours. In a tweet published in Arabic a few minutes later, Avichay Adraee, a lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army, called on the residents of the Gaza Strip “to head south to the Gaza Valley, and urged them to stay away from Hamas terrorists who are using them as human shields,” adding that “they will not be allowed to return to Gaza City.” Unless a permit is issued to do so, it is prohibited to approach the fence area with the State of Israel”. 

This statement raised fears that the Israeli goal was to force a large portion of Gaza’s population to head towards the Egyptian border and revive their resettlement projects in the Sinai Desert, especially in light of the statements made by the former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, to Al Jazeera, in which he stated: “There are almost endless spaces in the Sinai desert on the other side of Gaza and they (the Palestinians) can leave (the Gaza Strip) to those open spaces where we and the international community will prepare infrastructure and tent cities and provide them with water and food.”

Settlement projects in Sinai

Since the Nakba of Palestine, the Zionist movement, which wanted the land without its people, saw in the Sinai desert a wide area to which Palestinians could be displaced and resettled.

The Egyptian government, which emerged from the revolution of July 22, 1952, was still searching for its way in terms of foreign policy and was attached to its local issues, when in 1953, after months of negotiations it conducted with UNRWA, it agreed to a project to settle about 12,000 refugee families from the Gaza Strip settled on lands in the northwestern Sinai desert after making them suitable for agriculture, by delivering a percentage of the Nile River’s water to them annually. $30 million was allocated for the implementation of this project, which received the support of the US administration at the time. Popular movements in the Gaza Strip began against this project since Egyptian newspapers hinted at it in May 1953. 

Then these movements took on new dimensions following the massive Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip on February 28, 1955, as they were launched on March 1. March: A massive demonstration from the “Palestine Public” School in Gaza City, with the participation of the school’s teachers, students, car and bus drivers, and shop owners, who chanted: “No resettlement, no housing/Oh American agents,” “They wrote the Sinai Project in ink/and we will erase the Sinai Project in blood.” The Egyptian police forces confronted them with live bullets, and the first martyr was Hosni Bilal, a textile worker in the city of Majdal and a refugee to Gaza City.

The demonstration was not limited to Gaza City. Rather, the demonstrations spread to the rest of the Gaza Strip’s cities, villages, and camps, extending from Beit Hanoun in the north to Rafah in the south. The “Supreme National Committee” was formed from representatives of the communists, Islamists, nationalists, and independents to supervise and regulate the popular movement, and its representatives were chosen in Each camp in the Gaza Strip, and committees were formed to guard the demonstrations, which forced the Egyptian authorities to authorize the director of investigations in the Gaza Strip, Saad Hamza, to negotiate with two representatives of the “Supreme National Committee.” 

They were the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Communist Party in the Gaza Strip, the poet Moin Bseiso, and a member of the group’s leadership. Muslim Brotherhood Fathi al-Balaawi; Following those negotiations, the Egyptian authorities decided to cancel the project to resettle Palestinians in Sinai, and took a decision to train and arm Palestinians in the camps.

After Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, during the aggression of June 5, 1967, Minister Yigal Allon proposed a project to transfer numbers of refugees from the Gaza Strip to three areas in the Egyptian Al-Arish region, with Israeli funding, with the first phase starting with 50,000 of them. However, that project was completely rejected by Egypt.

The commander of the southern region in the Israeli army, Ariel Sharon, who, in 1971, was waging a bloody campaign to liquidate the armed Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip, returned and proposed a project to uproot 12,000 refugees from the Strip’s camps and place them in other asylum stations in the Sinai desert. But Egypt strongly rejected this project as well, and “the rejection of settlement in Sinai has become an established part of the security and political doctrine of the Egyptian state”. 

On the eve of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, in the fall of 2012, fears emerged that Israel would implement a plan “aiming to transfer the Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai as an alternative homeland,” and “shifting the Palestinian crisis towards the Egyptian neighbor, in the face of the worsening security failure in Sinai. Reports stated that the Israeli plan stipulates "the transfer of about 1.5 million Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai and Al-Arish."

Commenting on this plan, the head of the Sinai Development Foundation, Muhammad Shawqi Rashwan, told reporters, “The Sinai project as an alternative homeland for the Palestinians could be achieved if we do not move forward with the development of the region.” While Adel Soliman, Director of the International Center for Foresight and Strategic Studies, stated, “The Alternative Homeland Project encourages us to review the long-term development plan for Sinai and choose an urgent plan aimed at developing the roads leading to Sinai and facilitating the movement of its residents to other regions of Egypt”.

The Egyptian leadership firmly rejects the idea of resettlement in Sinai

The positions of Western analysts varied regarding the project to resettle a portion of the population of the Gaza Strip in Sinai, following its re-presentation these days, as some of them saw that there are reasons that encourage Egypt to accept this project, which may mean “an increase in American military aid and Western support to it, and funding from agencies.” United Nations,” while others estimated that the price that Egypt would pay, in exchange for accepting this project, would be: “Egypt’s reputation in the Arab and Islamic world,” in addition to “the challenge from the Egyptian street,” not to mention that Egypt is “a densely populated country with a fragile economy, and it It does not, in fact, want to see a new mass of poor people entering its territory.” 

While the residents of the Gaza Strip, despite their severe suffering as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression, expressed their fear that a new catastrophe would befall them if their deportation to Sinai was successful, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was firm when he called on them to remain on their lands, and announced, on Thursday On October 12, he stated that the residents of Gaza must remain “present in their lands,” expressing Egypt’s fears that Israel seeks to “empty Gaza” of its residents. 

During his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Schulz in Cairo, yesterday, the 18th of this month, the Egyptian President delivered his “most comprehensive and violent” speech on this issue, as he estimated that pushing the Palestinians to leave their lands is “a way to end the Palestinian issue at the expense of neighboring countries.” He said: “The idea of forcing the residents of Gaza to move to Egypt will lead to a similar displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank, the territories occupied by Israel, and this will make the establishment of the State of Palestine impossible... and would drag Egypt into a war with Israel,” in addition to that “ By transferring the Palestinians to Sinai, we are transferring resistance and fighting to Egypt, and if attacks are launched from its territory, then Israel will have the right to defend itself (...) and will strike Egyptian territory,” concluding that the peace signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979 “will... It melts in our hands,” and that “if the idea is forced displacement, then there is the Negev...and Israel can then return them (to Gaza) if it wants to.”. 

For his part, Jordanian King Abdullah II warned on Friday in 13 of this month, against “any attempt to displace Palestinians from all Palestinian territories or incite their displacement,” adding that “the crisis must not extend to neighboring countries and lead to aggravation of the refugee issue.” He returned and announced that the evacuation of the residents of Gaza: “is unacceptable and will push the region towards another disaster and a new cycle of violence and destruction,” stressing that “there will be no refugees in Jordan and no refugees in Egypt,” and that it is necessary to address “the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the West Bank.” ". Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also warned the US Secretary of State, who met with him in Amman, that the displacement and expulsion of more Palestinians from Gaza “would amount to a second Nakba”.

Source: Institute of Palestinian Studies

Israel is vowing to wipe out Hamas in a relentless onslaught on the Gaza Strip but has no obvious endgame in sight, with no clear plan for how to govern the ravaged Palestinian enclave even if it triumphs on the battlefield.

Codenamed "Operation Swords of Iron", the military campaign will be unmatched in its ferocity and unlike anything Israel has carried out in Gaza in the past, according to eight regional and Western officials with knowledge of the conflict who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Israel has called up a record 360,000 reservists and has been bombarding the tiny enclave non-stop following Hamas's assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

The immediate Israeli strategy, said three regional officials familiar with discussions between the U.S. and Middle Eastern leaders, is to destroy Gaza's infrastructure, even at the cost of high civilian casualties, push the enclave's people towards the Egyptian border and go after Hamas by blowing up the labyrinth of underground tunnels the group has built to conduct its operations.

Israeli officials have said that they don't have a clear idea for what a post-war future might look like, though.

Some of U.S. President Joe Biden's aides are concerned that while Israel may craft an effective plan to inflict lasting damage to Hamas, it has yet to formulate an exit strategy, a source in Washington familiar with the matter said.

Trips to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this past week had stressed the need to focus on the post-war plan for Gaza, the source added.

Arab officials are also alarmed that Israel hasn't set out a clear plan for the future of the enclave, ruled by Hamas since 2006 and home to 2.3 million people.

"Israel doesn't have an endgame for Gaza. Their strategy is to drop thousands of bombs, destroy everything and go in, but then what? They have no exit strategy for the day after," said one regional security source.

An Israeli invasion has yet to start, but Gaza authorities say 3,500 Palestinians have already been killed by the aerial bombardment, around a third of them children - a larger death toll than in any previous conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Biden, on a visit to Israel on Wednesday, told Israelis that justice needed to be served to Hamas, though he cautioned that after the 9/11 attacks on New York, the U.S. had made mistakes.

The "vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas", he said. "Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people."

Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Biden's visit would have given him a chance to press Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to think through issues such as the proportional use of force and the longer-term plans for Gaza before any invasion.

'CITY OF TUNNELS'

Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, have said they will wipe out Hamas in retribution for the Oct. 7 killings, the deadliest militant attack in Israel's 75-year-old history.

What will follow is less defined.

"We are of course thinking and dealing with this, and this involves assessments and includes the National Security Council, the military and others about the end situation," Israeli National Security Council director Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters on Tuesday. "We don't know what this will be with certainty."

"But what we do know is what there will not be," he said, referring to Israel's stated aim to eradicate Hamas.

This might be easier said than done.

"It's an underground city of tunnels that make the Vietcong tunnels look like child's play," said the first regional source, referring to the Communist guerrilla force that defied U.S. troops in Vietnam. "They're not going to end Hamas with tanks and firepower."

Two regional military experts told Reuters that Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, has mobilized for an invasion, setting up anti-tank mines and booby-trapped explosive devices to ambush troops.

Israel's coming offensive is set to be much bigger than past Gaza operations that Israeli officials had previously referred to as "mowing the grass", degrading Hamas's military capabilities but not eliminating it.

Israel has fought three previous conflicts with Hamas, in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014, and launched limited land invasions during two of those campaigns, but unlike today, Israel's leaders never vowed to destroy Hamas once and for all. In those three confrontations, just under 4,000 Palestinians and fewer than 100 Israelis died.

There is less optimism in Washington, though, that Israel will be able to completely destroy Hamas and U.S. officials see little chance that Israel will want to hold on to any Gaza territory or re-occupy it, the U.S. source said.

A more likely scenario, the person said, would be for Israeli forces to kill or capture as many Hamas members as they can, blow up tunnels and rocket workshops, then after Israeli casualties mount, look for a way to declare victory and exit.

CLOUDS OF WAR

The fear across the region is that the war will blow up beyond the confines of Gaza, with Lebanon's Hezbollah and its backer Iran opening major new fronts in support of Hamas.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned of a possible "preemptive" action against Israel if it carried out its invasion of Gaza. He said last weekend that Iran would not watch from the sidelines if the U.S. failed to restrain Israel.

Arab leaders have told Blinken, who has been crisscrossing the region this past week, that while they condemn Hamas's attack on Israel, they oppose collective punishment against ordinary Palestinians, which they fear will trigger regional unrest. Popular anger will ratchet up across the region when the body count rises, they said.

Washington has sent an aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean and is concerned that Hezbollah might join the battle from Israel's northern border. There has been no sign, however, that the U.S. military would then move from a deterrent posture to direct involvement.

The regional sources said Washington was proposing to reenergize the Palestinian Authority (PA), which lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, although there is huge doubt whether the PA or any other authority would be able to govern the coastal enclave should Hamas be driven out.

Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator, expressed deep skepticism about the potential for establishing a post-Hamas government to rule Gaza. "I could paint you a picture more appropriate to a galaxy far, far away and not on planet Earth on how you could combine the U.N., the Palestinian Authority, the Saudis, the Egyptians, led by the U.S. marshalling the Europeans, to basically convert Gaza from an open-air prison to something much better," he said.

In the meantime, calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors within Gaza and escape routes for Palestinian civilians have drawn a strong reaction from Arab neighbors.

They fear an Israeli invasion will spark a new permanent mass wave of displacement, a replay of the 1948 Israeli war of independence and 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Millions of Palestinians who were forced to flee then have remained stranded as refugees in the countries that hosted them.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land into the Sinai peninsula bordering Gaza, adding that any such move would turn the area into a base for attacks against Israel. He said Egyptians in their millions would protest against any such move.

East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 war and then annexed, and Israeli settlement expansion across occupied territory are at the core of the conflict with Palestinians. Netanyahu has openly embraced the religious and radical far-right, promising to annex more land to be settled by Jews.

Hundreds of Palestinians have died in the West Bank since the start of the year in repeated clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers, and there is widespread concern that the violence might engulf the territory as nearby Gaza burns.

"Whatever worst-case scenario you have, it will be worse," a second regional source said about the potential for the conflict to spread beyond Gaza.

Source: Reuters

On Thursday, October 19, 2023, the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth published what it described as “the broad outlines of the war plan” in order to change the situation in the Gaza Strip, hours after US President Joe Biden left Tel Aviv, on a solidarity visit, 13 days after... The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

According to the newspaper, this plan will be implemented in several stages, the first stage: which is the ongoing fighting of intense bombing operations targeting the Gaza Strip since the seventh day of October, which Israel says is in its infancy, leading to the final stage: which is the army’s withdrawal from Gaza and its return to His rules.

Below are the broad outlines of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip:

1- An operation similar to “Defensive Shield”: This operation will be in the form of an attack, concentrated in the northern Gaza Strip, in order to control it, which will enable the occupation forces to collect individual intelligence information.

The goal of this step, according to the Israeli newspaper, is to stop rocket launches and destroy the military and governmental capabilities of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements.

The newspaper adds: "This is the goal of the air strikes taking place now. Actual control over the entire northern sector is necessary to harm the fighters and military infrastructure, and this is also where the Hamas regime's center of government is located."

2- In the southern Gaza Strip, Israel will work to achieve exactly the same goals, but using other means, relying on accurate intelligence information that Israeli intelligence already has, or intelligence that will be collected during the fighting.

3- As for the ongoing confrontations with southern Lebanon, the newspaper says that the Israeli army will continue its skirmishes with Hezbollah, with the Palestinians operating from Lebanon, and perhaps also with armed groups from Syria and Iraq, in an effort to keep the conflicts below the threshold of war and confine them to the border areas.

The newspaper adds: “The Israeli army will essentially continue to maintain a state of alert for strong and large-scale military action in Lebanon, including ground maneuvers, if Hezbollah launches an all-out war at the request of the Iranians.”

It is natural that Israel would prefer to focus and harness the best forces and resources in the fighting in Gaza in order to achieve rapid achievements there. But if Hezbollah and the Iranians decide to escalate into a major war, the IDF has the ability to conduct active combat on a large scale on two fronts, and this will cause the fighting to continue for longer than desired.

4 - In conjunction with the fighting in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, Israel will work with the United States and the United Nations at the humanitarian level to maintain the legitimacy and political and logistical support that the United States and its allies provide for military action.

This includes humanitarian corridors and safe haven areas used by Palestinians who fled their homes in Gaza in accordance with Israel's invitation. Their flow will increase as the attack begins.

According to the newspaper, international entities and Arab countries will supply these areas - under the supervision and control of the Israeli army and the United Nations - with basic supplies including water, food, medicine, and basic services such as electricity and temporary housing.

5- According to the results that will be achieved on the ground in the first weeks of the fighting, Israel will have to reach decisions with the United States about the desired “exit plan,” and initiate the necessary political action to achieve and implement it.

The plan to exit the Gaza Strip and the arrangements on the ground after the exit must ensure the achievement of the desired strategic goals of Israel and the United States in the medium term (5-10 years).

The Israeli newspaper also published what it said were the five strategic goals that Tel Aviv seeks to achieve in the medium term after the end of the fighting in the Gaza Strip, which are as follows:

1. The entire sector must be demilitarized, and arrangements and mechanisms must be made to ensure this.

2. The administration in Gaza must be civil - professional - and not ideological - religious - and not political, and its only interest and directives should be to focus on the well-being of the Palestinian population. It will derive its authority from the basis of broad international legitimacy, and should be based on local civilian administration and officials, provided that their members are not former activists in the military wing of Hamas or other armed organizations.

The civilian government mechanism, in addition to local police, will rely on an international law enforcement force and cessation of hostilities arrangements. Gaza will receive a deep-water port that will operate under security supervision and the movement of passengers and tourists to and from Cyprus will also be allowed.

3. Israel must establish an integrated warning and defense system on the border that provides security for its citizens in the event that the conditions required in the Gaza Strip are not met or violated. The security arrangements will include a security perimeter ranging from one to three kilometers wide, and residents of the Gaza Strip will not be allowed to enter it without special permission. Whoever enters without permission risks his life.

4. The IDF will not remain in Gaza for longer than is necessary to achieve immediate combat objectives and enable the establishment of an alternative administration in the Gaza Strip. However, the IDF and the Shin Bet will reserve the right to engage in what is known as “hot pursuit” to thwart terrorist attacks and war intentions even after it returns to Israeli territory.

5. Israel will take into account the global strategic interests and considerations of the United States, domestic political considerations, and the religious and strategic interests of Islamic countries in the region with which we have peace agreements, normalization, and diplomatic relations.

Israeli official circles have already said that Israel is determined to bring about a radical change in the status quo, and the security establishment realizes the need for a radical change in patterns of thinking and action at the political and military levels.

The newspaper adds: “The measures this time will be different from how things were in previous rounds of battles with Gaza, as political and military estimates in Israel assumed from the beginning of the round that Hamas would remain sovereign over the Gaza Strip at the end of the battle.”

According to the newspaper: “The change in operational patterns depends on prolonging the phases of combat in order to reach the best result. This explains, for example, the phase of prolonging air, sea, and artillery strikes in preparation for ground entry.”

As the Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip continues, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday, where he held discussions with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu told Sunak, during a press conference following a discussion session that brought them together, that the Gaza war will be long and Israel needs continued support from the United Kingdom.

He said, "The war against Hamas is not the battle of Israel alone, but of the entire world... and the world must unite to eliminate Hamas." He stressed, "We will not back down. We will defeat Hamas and release the hostages. Our people are united and ready to do whatever is necessary in the face of terrorism."

For his part, Sunak said: “We regret the horrific scenes and difficult moments that Israel is going through... and we support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to his Israeli counterpart that Britain would stand by Israel in its "darkest hour" and welcomed the decision to allow aid into Gaza, saying that Israel was doing its best to reduce civilian deaths. Sunak stressed that "Britain will continue to cooperate with Israel to release the hostages."

During his meeting with the Israeli President, Sunak said: “It is important to provide water, food and medicine to civilians in Gaza,” stressing: “The Palestinian people are a victim of the practices of the Hamas movement.” While the Israeli President expressed his country’s desire to return the hostages, “We demand greater international pressure on Hamas,” he said.

Soon after his arrival in Tel Aviv, Sunak said: “We stand with Israel.” He addressed the Israelis by saying: “I share your grief and stand with you in the face of terrorism.”

The Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip continues after 12 days of attacks, incursions, the demolition of institutions, and the deaths of hundreds of innocent children, the elderly, and many who have no ability to participate in the war. In this war, Israel committed many massacres, the most notable of which happened in the Baptist Hospital, where hundreds gathered either to request medical service or because they believed that the hospital was far from being bombed. But what happened was exactly the opposite, and Israel bombed the hospital and hundreds of citizens fell inside or in the courtyard. Israel also bombed one of the mosques in the Gaza Strip, causing severe damage to those present there, as well as to the building itself.

These attacks led thousands of citizens to leave the northern area of the Gaza Strip, which is completely adjacent to Israel, and head to the south, perhaps where the dangers are less than in the north.

The head of the Yisrael Our Home party, Avigdor Lieberman, came out with broad criticism of the United Nations and claimed that this international organization was making mistakes and misleading, especially in its positions regarding Palestinian refugees. This reckless extremist proposed establishing a city for refugees in Sinai, considering that this solution was appropriate and at the right time. He also called for pressure on Egypt to accept this solution.

This continued aggression against the Gaza Strip sparked widespread reactions, and President Abu Mazen withdrew from the meeting that was proposed in Amman for a number of Arab leaders. He said that he would return to Ramallah to study the major developments and Israeli attacks, which called for the cancellation of the quadripartite summit that was scheduled, and after his return. Abu Mazen declared general mourning for the souls of the martyrs of Gaza.

The situation in the Gaza Strip does not seem to be on its way to calm, but what is happening is the opposite. Developments have begun to take shape in the West Bank as well, which has begun to move in condemnation of the occupation and all its practices.
These conditions that we are living in in light of the occupation’s arrogance and attacks, and its disregard for all international and humanitarian laws, may lead to the explosion of the region, and we have begun to notice this with the tension between Lebanon and Israel and the mutual attacks between the two sides and the possibility of this tension expanding, which makes Israel face two battles in the far north, with Lebanon and in the introduction. Hezbollah, in the far south, with the Gaza Strip, led by Hamas.

What is required in these situations: First, for all Arab countries to take a serious and influential stance so that Israel feels what it may face from the Arab nation, and second, what is required internationally is for there to be a strong, realistic and influential voice so that Israel feels the danger... and respects laws and rights.

In any case, our people are steadfast and cling to their land and rights, regardless of the developments, and if Israel feels strong and arrogant today, it must know that the future is ours and that what strength it has is destined to disappear.

As usual, it is difficult to imagine the extent to which Zionist and American impudence goes to justify their racist, fascist crimes against our people and the peoples of the world. But their barbaric massacre (is this description sufficient?) against the National Baptist Hospital in Gaza brings back to the surface what sometimes seemed to be defeated: that fascist, racist, anti-human policy that characterizes the colonialists, and which does not hesitate to exterminate tens of thousands, based on a racial ideology that does not see the other. Except outside the classification of humans.

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, barbaric massacre, racist holocaust? Which of these descriptions is appropriate to describe the Zionists and Americans after they bombed the Baptist Hospital? All of them, yes all of them and more if the vocabulary of the language can capture this level of barbarism to describe it.

However, the American and Zionist media machine found some space to deny responsibility from the American and Zionist parties, even if that attempt seemed extremely acrobatic and provocative. Sometimes responsibility for the explosion is placed on Hamas, sometimes on Jihad, and sometimes the source of the explosion must be investigated! Once again: Does the language find the vocabulary to describe this level of media decadence?

The official website of the Israeli army wrote without frills, explaining the retaliatory goal of bombing the hospital: “You are crying today... gloating yesterday. On October 7, you shed tears of joy and gloating, and today you are shedding them in grief and oppression. You killed Israeli women and children, and today you know that the Israeli does not sleep on injustice.” As for the American Wall Street Journal, it exposed them by publishing that the bomb that was dropped from the plane on the hospital was American-made, and that its type was MK-84. It enumerated its advantages, the aircraft that could carry it, its weight, and its enormous explosive power. Meanwhile, the Second Hebrew Channel went further than that, and quoted a military expert. His confirmation that the person who threw the bomb was an American Air Force officer. Many Zionist officials have previously said: We warned them to leave, in a clear admission of their crime. Biden and Blake are not in the entity and meeting with the war council to discuss and consult, but rather to participate in the war with their weapons, experts, technologies, and soldiers as well.

Yet they continue with blatant lies. Sometimes they deny and sometimes they admit. The function of the article is not, of course, to (prove) the truth of the Zionist and American responsibility for the massacre, and even the responsibility of all the imperialist Western countries that support Zionist terrorism, but rather to show the extent of the media’s impudence in promoting lies, and the extent of drowning in the racism of Zionist and Western discourse. Even the imperialist countries that rushed (to express their rejection and condemnation) such as Canada and France, while suppressing any manifestation of solidarity with our people, and declaring their support for Zionist barbarism, it would be better for our people to say to them: Shut up, for Zionist unrest will only continue with your support and shuttle visits to bless their fascism, and their right (to defend). On my own, and your suppression of those in solidarity with our people. The colonizer does not have the right to self-defense. This right, in addition to the right to resist, is exclusively for the colonized.

The rush of the leaders of the imperialist West to visit the entity, from Biden through Schulz to Macron, has only one goal: to take their share of our blood based on their fascism and imperialist racism. Therefore, the imperialist West is a partner in the aggression, not based on an alliance of countries only, but rather from the truth of the same ideological root. And the racist seed of the white man who sees different races as nothing but races outside of human classification. Is Nazism reinventing itself? Indeed, we are facing a new Nazism that will destroy them all.

As for the official Arab regimes, their condition goes beyond the historically known state of helpless, weak, and submissive, reaching the point of actually participating in the aggression against our people. Otherwise, how do we explain until the moment of writing this article, the remaining of the Zionist ambassadors in their countries, the remaining of the treaties and agreements as they are, and the normalization relations remaining as they are? The embassies of the imperialist countries participating in the aggression remained as they were, and some of them did not even have the minimum level of human morality to stand with the oppressed, so they condemned Hamas and its attacks on civilians! All of this means no-frills engagement.

As for relying on the formula (we condemn in the strongest terms) contained in the statements of the Arab regimes, even though no one knows what these particular phrases are! Peoples and their movement in the street.
The utmost insolence in their Zionist, European and American media, the utmost barbarism in their joint aggression and massacres, but as is also shown in the media: the resistance is steadfast and our people are behind it.

A US State Department official, who was working on arms transfer deals to key US allies, announced his resignation from his position, on Wednesday, in protest against the way the administration of President Joe Biden dealt with the Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip.

Josh Paul, director of public and congressional affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which handles arms transfers, said he "cannot support further military aid to Israel."

In his resignation, he described the Biden administration's response, and much of Congress' response, as "a knee-jerk reaction based on confirmation bias, political expediency, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia. That is to say, it is deeply disappointing, and completely unsurprising."

Paul described the Hamas attack on Israel, which resulted in the killing of more than 1,400 people, as “atrocious atrocities,” but added, “But I believe deep down that the response that Israel is taking, along with American support for this response and the current state of the occupation, will only lead to... Greater and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.”

Regarding his motives for making the decision to resign, Paul told Al-Sharq that he did not make this decision except after many discussions and arguments with American officials about the “controversial” arms transfers to Israel, indicating that “he cannot change anything about the matter.” Nor can he “do something effective to improve the results.”

Killing Palestinian civilians

The resignation of the American official is a rare measure to express “internal discomfort” regarding the administration’s strong support for Israel, the United States’ closest ally in the Middle East. More broadly, it represents an unusual public display of opposition within President Biden's foreign policy apparatus, which has worked to prevent such expressions of discontent from emerging, according to the Washington Post.

Paul spent more than 11 years in his position, coordinating relations with Congress and public messaging for an office that deals with military aid.

He wrote in his resignation that he “could not accept continuing” in a job, which he said contributed to “the killing of Palestinian civilians.”

Paul said in an interview with the American website "Huffington Post": "We must certainly point out the horror of what Hamas did and the extent of what happened. Therefore, I fear the size of the potential Israeli response or the ongoing Israeli response."

He added: "I acknowledge the right of the Israeli government to respond and defend itself. But I wonder how many Palestinian children must die in this process."

Absolute support for Israel

Paul considered that the strong American military aid to Israel gives Tel Aviv the green light to do whatever it pleases against Gaza, regardless of civilian losses.

The Israeli government announced that it was planning to destroy Hamas, and asked the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to move south, a request that United Nations observers declared would constitute a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spent the past week traveling the Middle East, trying to create regional support for “Israel’s right to defend itself” and avoid a regional war, but also to push Israel to respect humanitarian concerns in Gaza.

Biden, who arrived in Israel on Wednesday, announced that the United States “will stand by your side,” but he urged the Israelis to distinguish between the Palestinians and Hamas, and reduce civilian casualties.

He said, "The vast majority of Palestinians are not from Hamas. The Palestinian people are also suffering greatly."

Source: Al Sharq Channel

Today, Thursday, the Israeli occupation forces turned a citizen’s house in the village of Jalboun, east of Jenin, into a military observation point.

The head of the Jalboun Village Council, Ibrahim Abu Al-Rub, stated that the occupation forces stormed the village at dawn today, raided commercial stores, and the two-story house of citizen Maher Naji Abu Al-Rub, seized the second floor, which houses 10 people, and turned its roof into an observation point.

It is noteworthy that a month ago, the occupation forces seized the rooftops of four homes of the Abu Al-Rub family, and turned them into military observation points.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced, on Thursday, October 19, 2023, that 3 hospitals were completely out of service in the Gaza Strip, noting that 25 hospitals were partially damaged in the Strip, at a time when the director of the “Martyrs of Al-Aqsa” Hospital in the city of Deir Al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Iyad Al-Jaabari, the hospital's strategic stock of medicines and medical supplies ran out.

Al-Jabari said, “The health situation in the hospital is very dangerous, and the lives of thousands of patients and wounded are threatened,” and added: “The strategic stock of medicines and medical supplies has run out” due to the tight closure imposed by the occupation authorities on the Gaza Strip, since October 7 of this year.

Al-Jaabari also pointed out that the hospital "provides medical service to thousands of Palestinians in the middle of the Gaza Strip," and appealed to international and human rights bodies "to intervene to force Israel to allow the entry of medical supplies and medicines into Gaza."

Earlier, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the health sector situation in Gaza is “out of control,” and Ghebreyesus added: “Losses (of lives) are recorded for every second delay in delivering medical aid to Gaza.”

He also pointed out that the medical supplies sent by the World Health Organization to Gaza have been waiting at the border (on the Egyptian side) for days, and Ghebreyesus pointed out the urgent need to begin delivering medical supplies to Gaza, calling for an end to the violence between the two sides.

Six Palestinian citizens were killed today, Thursday, after they were targeted by drones launched by the Israeli occupation army in Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm.

According to local sources, the occupation forces launched a drone towards a group of young men inside the camp, killing four of them and wounding dozens of people with various injuries. They were transferred to Thabet Thabet Hospital.

She added that the occupation forces stormed the camp and fired live bullets and poisonous gas at the citizens, leading to the outbreak of confrontations that are still continuing to this day.

The occupation forces also arrested a young man after sustaining a head injury, prevented ambulances from reaching him, and cut off electricity and water supply to the camp.

The Israeli occupation forces imposed a tight military cordon on Nour Shams camp, prohibited movement around it, and deployed their vehicles and bulldozers at its entrances and surroundings.

Local sources reported that large forces of the occupation army, accompanied by military bulldozers, stormed the camp from various sides, and deployed in its streets and neighborhoods, especially in the Al-Mahjar and Jabal Al-Nasr areas, while they raided dozens of citizens’ homes, wreaking destruction and vandalism, and taking them as places for their snipers.

The sources added that the occupation bulldozers destroyed sections of the main street of the camp known as Nablus Street, Cemetery Street, the monument of the martyr Saif Abu Libdeh at the entrance to the camp, and many streets branching between the houses.

The occupation forces destroyed citizens' vehicles parked in front of their owners' homes, wreaked havoc on public and private property in the camp's streets, blew up the walls of many of them, and occupied bulldozers closed the entrance to the camp with earth mounds.

The occupation forces arrested a number of citizens, known as: the two freed prisoners, the brothers Baraa and Abd al-Rahman Fathi Qaraawi, Izz al-Din Abu Dayyeh, Samer Jaber, Ali Jaber, Mahmoud Jaber, and Imad Jaber, after raiding their homes.

Violent confrontations broke out between young men and the occupation soldiers, who fired heavy bullets, hitting the facades and windows of houses and shops. The teenager Taha Mahameed (16 years old) was dead, and three other citizens were injured in the lower extremities and were transferred to the Martyr Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital.

The occupation forces set up military checkpoints at the main intersections of the city, and prevented the movement of citizens and their vehicles, especially on Shweika Street north of Tulkarm, the Western Neighborhood, and Pharaoh Street to the south.

By Aaron David Miller

Caught off guard like most of the world, U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration are scrambling to find ways to reassure and restrain Israel, ameliorate a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, deter the involvement of Hezbollah and Iran, and find opportunities to free approximately 200 hostages held by Hamas, including many Americans.

Unfortunately, Washington lacks real on-the-ground leverage and is more an observer to events than a shaper of them. This is especially true for the looming, unprecedented Israeli ground campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas as a military organization and to create a so-called post-Hamas reality there. If there is a central role for the United States to play, it may well come in trying to shape the scenario certain to emerge in the wake of Israel’s military operations.

The tone of the administration’s reaction to the horrific Hamas attack was set by Biden’s October 10 address. The clear impression he left was that his administration would give the Israelis the time, space, and support to deal with Hamas in the way they saw fit. The administration has also proposed a $2 billion assistance package, including interceptors for Iron Dome, precision-guided munitions, and ammunition, with a possible supplemental to follow.

But as Palestinian deaths have mounted due to Israeli airstrikes and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened, the administration’s tone toughened somewhat, with an emphasis on the need for the Israelis to avoid civilian casualties and adhere to international laws of war. It has also cautioned Israel on occupying Gaza and pressured it to allow humanitarian aid into the strip. Still, Biden—whose love for Israel and high sensitivity to its security is deeply imprinted on his emotional and political DNA—remains determined to stand by the country.

The logic of the administration’s policy seems to be to bind the United States closely to Israel now to maximize trust and confidence so that it would have currency in the bank for tougher conversations and even pressure later. Biden’s visit to Israel on Wednesday will likely further support this logic.

Biden has three objectives on his trip. First, he’ll want to press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to open up a reliable, stable humanitarian corridor to allow assistance to surge into southern Gaza.* Second, he’ll aim to reassure an Israeli public that has lost faith in its own leadership with a message of support and hope from America. Third, he’ll want to have a tough, frank conversation with Israeli leaders about their looming ground campaign—the objectives and complexities, with an eye toward getting them to think even harder about the depth, scope, and dangers of disproportionality, along with reoccupation of Gaza and civilian deaths.

As for the challenge of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the administration’s efforts are being hampered by time, space, and politics. Israel has been extending a twenty-four-hour deadline for the evacuation of Gaza City, which has an estimated population of 1.1 million, to move to southern Gaza, where there are not enough social services or basic necessities to care for them. Meanwhile, Hamas is discouraging Palestinians from leaving, Egypt is refusing to accept them, and Israeli airstrikes and blockades have made movement difficult and dangerous.

Gaza, which has a population density of approximately 21,000 human per square mile, was already stressed to provide services to its more than 2 million residents—half of whom are under the age of fifteen—during normal times. And the Israeli ground campaign hasn’t yet begun. It seems hard to imagine that anything more than ameliorating the current humanitarian crisis will be possible.

The administration’s other major challenge is trying to deter and contain the conflict from escalating. The West Bank front has already heated up, with more than fifty Palestinians killed in confrontations with Israeli settlers and the Israel Defense Forces. Jerusalem has remained relatively calm. But the real concern is the Israeli-Lebanese border, where confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah have occurred almost daily.

The administration has deployed two carrier strike groups to the Eastern Mediterranean, clearly signaling to Hezbollah and Iran that there will be consequences should they push for a major escalation. It’s unclear what Iran’s and Hezbollah’s calculations are. Iran clearly does not want to get involved in a major clash with Israel, let alone the United States. And one can wonder, with Hamas doing its work for Hezbollah in striking Israel, why the Shia group would want to risk its fortunes and military assets on behalf of the Palestinians. Much may come to turn on the breadth and depth of Israel’s ground war in Gaza and on any miscalculations by Israel or Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

It’s impossible to predict how the Gaza crisis will play out. Depending on how it does, there may well be a role for the U.S. administration—among others, including the Arab states, the UN, and the EU—in picking up the pieces and stabilizing Gaza. Alone among modern American presidents, Biden views himself as part of Israel’s story and is in a unique position to help moderate this crisis and pick up the pieces. 

At the risk of finding any silver linings in this otherwise dark tragedy, it could help to build a better future for Palestinians and more peaceful relations with Israel. The whole situation underscores how badly a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace is needed—but anyone, including Biden, would be hard-pressed now, in the middle of this crisis, to divine how, if, and when that might play out

Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy.

Source: Carnegie Endowment

Today, Thursday, settlers stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, under heavy protection from the Israeli occupation police.

Local sources reported that dozens of settlers stormed Al-Aqsa from the direction of the Mughariba Gate, and carried out provocative rounds in its courtyards.

Settlers carry out provocative daily raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, except for Friday and Saturday, in an attempt to control it and impose temporal and spatial division.

By Jonathan Cook

It is not only improbable that a Palestinian rocket destroyed the Gaza hospital. It's simply impossible. The media knows this, but they are terrified to say it.

Let’s say it again: the biggest fake news comes from establishment media. When the stakes are high, they care little about hiding their role as mouthpieces for Western propaganda.

This is a repeat of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction affair. We're getting smoked. Believe your eyes, your ears and the laws of physics, not the lies peddled by our leaders and media about last night's missile strike on the Baptist Hospital in Gaza:

No Palestinian group has a rocket capable of crushing a hospital. What they have are often paltry glorified devices that can cause minor damage and occasionally result in a death or two. If Hamas or Islamic Jihad could blow up a building, killing hundreds of people, as happened last night, we would hear about it in Tel Aviv or Ashkelon too. You don't hear about it because it's not within their scope of possibility.

Israel apologists (and there are many of them) share all sorts of videos that have nothing to do with the hospital bombing. But video of the strike itself shows that an incredibly large and powerful weapon was used. Listen to the noise the missile makes just before hitting: this noise is due to its phenomenal speed as it cuts through the air. It is not the sound of a Palestinian rocket falling.

If you watch videos of Palestinian rocket fire, you will notice how slowly they move. Almost at a snail's pace. If they fail, they fall at the speed of free fall, not the near-supersonic speed of the missile that hit the hospital.

To think otherwise is simply to ignore the laws of physics.

Israel apologists are attempting to further muddy the waters by suggesting that a Palestinian rocket fell or was intercepted, and that the rocket or fragments of it hit a very large munitions depot in the hospital.

Let us accept the racist premise that hundreds of families were happy to take shelter next to a huge stockpile of explosives in the midst of a relentless Israeli bombing campaign.

Let's also accept the fanciful idea that a falling homemade rocket or homemade rocket fragment could penetrate the solid walls of the hospital and trigger such an explosion... If all this were true, we would still see a series of secondary explosions when the weapons were detonated by the initial explosion. This is not the case, because there is only one explosion, that of a huge missile!

Israel therefore released a recording of two Hamas militants discussing after the missile strike whether it was they or Islamic Jihad who did it. This is the same Israel that failed to detect the months of Hamas planning necessary to organize its sudden exit from Gaza ten days ago. But Israel got lucky this time, it seems, and happened to be listening when Huey and Louie decided to go on their own. -incriminate.

Remember, Israel has an entire unit of “mistaravim,” Israeli Jewish secret agents trained to pose as Palestinians and operate covertly among Palestinians.

Israel produced a very popular television series about these people in Gaza, called Fauda. You have to be extremely gullible to think that Israel could not, and would not, make a call of this type to deceive us, just as it regularly deceives the Palestinians in Gaza.

Most of the people who spread these lies know that they are lies, including the media, especially Middle East and defense correspondents.

At least a few, like the BBC's Jeremy Bowen and Jon Donnison, are cautiously trying to suggest that it is unlikely that a Hamas rocket could cause such widespread damage to the Gaza hospital.

But it's not improbable. It's impossible ! and they know it… But they don’t dare say it.

October 17, 2023 - Palestinians rush to help the injured after an Israeli airstrike on the Az Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Many dig through the rubble of destroyed homes to try to save survivors. Israeli settler forces continue to bombard the besieged enclave, killing at least 3,000 Palestinians and injuring more than 10,000 over the past 11 days. Later in the day, another airstrike in the same area hit Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital, which was crowded with wounded from previous Israeli strikes and families seeking shelter from the relentless bombardment. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the attack killed at least 500 people, mainly women and children. Hospitals and health centers lack water, fuel, medicine and beds and are on the brink of collapse since the Israeli colonial regime imposed a total siege on Gaza.

Source: chronique de palestine

“It is difficult to maintain one's sense of morality when the society to which one belongs - both its leaders and its media - is in charge and is expected to share the same legitimate anger with which it reacted to the events of last Saturday, October 7.

There is only one way to resist the temptation to join them: if one has, at some point in one's life - even as a Jewish citizen of Israel - understood the colonial nature of Zionism, and if one has been horrified by its policies against the indigenous people of Palestine.

If he was aware of this, he would not hesitate, even if the poisonous messages described the Palestinians as animals or “human animals,” and the authors themselves insisted on describing what happened last Saturday as the “Holocaust,” exploiting the memory of a great tragedy.

These feelings are expressed, day and night, by the Israeli media and politicians.

It is this moral sense that prompted me and other members of our community to support the Palestinian people in every possible way, which allows us, at the same time, to express admiration for the courage of the Palestinian fighters who seized dozens of military bases, defeating the strongest army in the Middle East.

On the other hand, people like me cannot help but ask themselves questions about the moral or strategic value of some of the actions that accompanied this process. Because we had always supported the end of colonialism in Palestine, we knew that the longer Israeli oppression lasted, the less the chances of making the liberation struggle “purifying,” as happened with all the just liberation struggles the world had witnessed in the past.

However, this does not mean that we do not have to look at the bigger picture, even for a minute; This picture is that of a colonized people struggling to survive, at a time when their oppressors have elected a government determined to accelerate the destruction of the Palestinian people, or even their elimination, or their demand to be recognized as a people. Therefore, Hamas had to act quickly. 

These counterarguments are difficult to express, because the Western media and politicians have rallied behind Israeli rhetoric and its narrative, regardless of their problematic nature. I wonder how many of those who decided to dress the façade of the Parliament in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris in the colors of the Israeli flag really understand How is this, ostensibly symbolic, gesture being received in Israel? 

The liberal Zionists themselves, with little tact, interpreted this act as a complete absolution for all the crimes committed by the Israelis against the Palestinian people since 1948, and thus as a carte blanche to continue the genocide that committed by Israel against the residents of Gaza. Fortunately, the events of recent days have provoked different reactions. As was the case in the past, large sectors of Western civil society cannot be easily fooled by this hypocrisy, which has already been demonstrated in the case of Ukraine. Many people know that Since June 1967, one million Palestinians have been imprisoned, at least once in their lives; With imprisonment comes violations, torture, and permanent detention without trial. 

These same people also know the horrific reality that Israel created in the Gaza Strip when it closed the area and imposed a tight siege, starting in 2007, accompanied by the continuous killing of children in the occupied West Bank. This violence is not a phenomenon. New, because it has been the permanent face of Zionism since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Thanks to this same civil society, dear Israeli friends, your government and your media will ultimately be wrong, because they will not be able to claim the role of victim, or receive unconditional support and escape from... Its crimes. 

The bigger picture will eventually emerge, despite the bias inherent in the Western media. But the big question is: Dear Israeli friends, will you be able to see this big picture clearly, despite years of widespread indoctrination and manipulation? And just as important, will you be able to learn the other important lesson: What can be concluded from recent events, which is that force alone is unable to find a balance between a just system on the one hand and an immoral political project on the other hand? However, there is an alternative in reality, and this alternative has always existed: it is represented by a de-Zionized, liberated and democratic Palestine. 

From the river to the sea; Palestine receives refugees and builds a society that does not discriminate between its members on the basis of culture, religion, or race. This new state will seek, as much as possible, to correct the evils of the past, in terms of economic inequality, theft of property, and the denial of rights. This could herald a new era for the entire Middle East. It is not always easy for one to hold on to one's moral compass, but if that compass points north—toward decolonization and liberation—it is likely to show one the way through the fog of toxic propaganda, hypocritical politics, and inhumanity. , often committed in the name of “our shared Western values.”

Author: Ilan Pappe is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was previously a lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel.

Source: chroniquepalestine.com

Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital massacre is horrific and words cannot describe the horror of the scenes in which Israel hastened to wash its hands of that blood and the claim that the Palestinian factions hit the hospital through a rocket that failed to reach the target.

The Israeli media in various media promote the statement of IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari, who claimed that "the analysis of the damage in the hospital through our aerial photographs shows that there was no direct hit to the hospital itself and the only damage is outside the hospital in the parking garage". Hagari claimed that the damage at the place of the explosion "is the opposite of the damage caused by any aerial ammunition, which would have been of a different nature". He added: "after a thorough investigation and study of all operational and intelligence systems (..) It was clearly confirmed that the IDF did not attack the Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip".

A security source excludes the Israeli theory, considering that this type of rocket with a large destructive capacity is not available to Hamas, which has "ordinary weapons", mostly Katyusha - type and mortars with a destructive capacity not exceeding twenty meters.

The source also points out that the type of rockets that hit the hospital are fired from the air through aviation, or through very large ground platforms, which in turn are not available to Hamas.

Pointing out that all Palestinian, Israeli and international reports talk about one missile and not a group of missiles, the source stresses the need to know its quality, which is done by studying the shrapnel and the remains at the crime site, the destructive area, and the amount of TNT, in addition to aerial photos that are supposed to come from a neutral party and not from Israel.

In addition, a source following up considered that the heavy shelling on Gazans will motivate them to fierce fighting against Israeli ground forces in the event of resorting to a ground operation, meaning that from now on there will be no safe zones for Israeli forces in Gaza, and therefore the Israeli army will have to use assault teams as the main force without an absolute advantage in artillery, armored technologies and aviation.

As for Hamas, it will fight on its territory with the support of the population, and the Palestinians will be able to maneuver and attack in unexpected places, especially through the use of underground tunnels.

Authoer: Rania Chakhtoura 

Source: Akhbar Al Yawm

Jordan will not become complicit in another expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Wednesday.

The Hashemite kingdom is doing all it can to stop the conflict but will treat any attempt to displace Palestinians as “a declaration of war,” Safadi vowed, as quoted by the Roya News outlet.

Amman will not allow “a new catastrophe” nor will it let Israel “shift the crisis created and exacerbated by the occupation to neighboring countries,” he added.

Catastrophe, or ‘Nakba’, is how the Palestinians refer to their 1948 exodus from territories claimed by Israel. Jordan ended up annexing the West Bank while Egypt took control of Gaza, but Israel seized both territories in 1967. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, establishing an “administrative boundary” between the kingdom and the West Bank, without prejudicing the territory’s future status.

Displacing the Palestinians from Gaza to another country would be a war crime, Safadi said, accusing Israel of already engaging in war crimes against the Palestinians there.

“There is no justification for what Israel is doing in Gaza,” the Jordanian foreign minister said. “We demand for the war to be stopped, to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza Strip and to protect civilians.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government declared war on Gaza after October 7, when Hamas launched hundreds of rockets at Israel and sent militants into nearby Jewish villages. Over 1,300 Israelis were killed in the incursion, according to the government in West Jerusalem.

Israel has since demanded that all civilians leave Gaza City and the northern part of the territory, in order to allow the Israel Defense Force to target Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza have said they have nowhere to go, as Israel blockades them from the sea and Egypt has refused to open the border.

The government in Cairo has argued that admitting Palestinians would amount to helping Israel engage in “ethnic cleansing,” in which they want no part. Egypt has offered to send humanitarian aid to Gaza, but Israel has opposed that on grounds that some of it might end up in the hands of Hamas.

“All indications suggest that the worst is yet to come and that Tel Aviv is heading towards a ground invasion,” Safad said on Wednesday.

Source: globalvillagespace

Egyptian journalist Bassem Youssef returned to the spotlight again, through a television interview with the famous British broadcaster Piers Morgan, during which he supported the Palestinians, on Tuesday evening.

The intervention of Youssef, who has lived in America for years, achieved widespread interaction in Egypt and the Arab world, and because of it, it topped the most searched list on Google, in addition to the X website trend on Wednesday.

During the intervention, Youssef impersonated an Israeli citizen, addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and asked him questions that observers considered “embarrassing,” including “When will you stop killing?”

Bassem mentioned during the interview that he “watched an interview with a former Israeli ambassador to the United States in which he said (the solution for these Palestinians is to go to the vast land of Sinai and live there temporarily), and here Bassem winked, as he used to do in his satirical program (The Program) after the January revolution ( January 2011, then Bassem continued with the ambassador’s words sarcastically... until we build Gaza and then we call on you again to return to it, before he followed with a popular Egyptian term (inappropriate).”

Youssef continued his intervention: “We have seen this movie before.” He referred to “the number of deaths that fall daily in the Gaza Strip, and compared them to those falling in Israel,” stressing that “he was unable to check on his wife’s family members in Gaza.”

Youssef's interview was admired by millions within a few hours, because he adopted the Egyptian and Arab point of view rejecting “the aggression against the Palestinians or their displacement from Gaza,” as many considered him to have “succeeded in conveying the voice of the Arabs to foreign media outlets biased toward Israel in a professional manner.”

Dr. Mohamed Shoman, Dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication at the British University in Egypt, described Bassem Youssef’s appearance as “positive,” and told Asharq Al-Awsat: “I consider Youssef a sane and professional voice, among the sane voices that have begun to appear in the Western media (biased toward Israel).”

But Schuman does not count on such voices to change established trends in Europe and America regarding support for Israel, although he is betting on the appearance of Youssef or some of the writings that have also begun to appear in the Western press to achieve more international sympathy with the Palestinian people and with civilians in the Gaza Strip.

According to Dr. Gamal Abdel Gawad, advisor to the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Bassem Youssef’s sarcastic method in his interviews has proven “effective in exposing the contradictions of Western positions that carry double standards.”

Abdel Jawad added in statements to Asharq Al-Awsat that “Youssef’s intervention revealed that there is underestimation of Arab and Palestinian rights in the West, and showed that Arab societies must develop tools for communicating with Western public opinion and follow unconventional methods.”

Dr. Sami Abdel Aziz, former dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication at Cairo University, commented on these praises, saying in statements to Asharq Al-Awsat: “Bassem Youssef came close to drawing a picture of the painful reality that the Palestinians live in in this intervention.”

Adding that “current events have made many masks fall,” which Bassem Youssef mentioned in his intervention: “There are heads of state whose language has become racist. They do not see the suffering of Palestinian children, but only look at what is happening to the Jews.”

Abdel Aziz downplayed the impact of the criticism directed at Bassem for using a word that was described as “inappropriate” in opposition to the displacement of Palestinians: “It constitutes nothing compared to the lack of humanity practiced by the other party,” explaining that the Arab world “needs intelligent arguments to expose the lies of the West, and these "Introductions and others like them can perform this function."

This is what Abdel-Jawad agrees with, saying: “We must invest in understanding the Western mind and Western media, and test different methods of communicating with them.”

Bassem Youssef is considered one of the most influential Arab media figures, according to media experts, despite the discontinuation of his famous satirical program “The Program” in 2014.

Shoman believes that “our problem in the Arab world lies in the lack of influential or powerful media outlets that address Western public opinion,” explaining that “sovereignty and control in most Western media outlets are biased toward the Jewish lobby,” as he put it.

Source: Al Sharq Al Awsat

We are living through double events... the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the intense bombing of Gaza, the mass displacement, the targeting of hospitals, the cessation of electricity and water from Israel to Gaza, and the skirmishes with Hezbollah.

We expected that the kidnapped Westerners and Israelis would be a major card in the war, but instead of them, about a million Palestinians became an Israeli card.

Israel, which has threatened a major invasion, has so far chosen aerial bombardment, which causes major disasters for civilians and reduces casualties among the ranks of its forces. If the bombing continues, disasters and civilian casualties will increase. The bombing of the hospital was most likely the work of Israel, which had previously threatened to target it under the pretext that Hamas leaders were hiding there. Hamas' losses are relatively few, as relying on air attacks is less effective in wars against militias, unlike armies, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as happened in the confrontations in Lebanon and Iraq before.

The most dangerous issue resulting from the crisis is the displacement of about a million people from the north of the Gaza Strip to its south, and perhaps their displacement from the south to the Egyptian Sinai. This will be the largest Palestinian migration since the 1967 war! Is expelling about a third of the Gaza Strip’s population to Egypt possible?

The first exodus from northern Gaza to its south is part of the battle with Hamas, and later it will be a large, wide buffer zone protecting its borders. While the displacement of one million Palestinians to Egypt is an issue that concerns all countries of the region. Is it a realistic proposition? It is unlikely to happen in the current circumstances for many reasons. Most notably, Egypt completely rejects it for political and security considerations. Egypt is an ally of the United States, and Israel itself will not sacrifice its diplomatic relationship with Egypt. Therefore, the displacement of the Palestinians will not take place without the approval of Egypt, which is sure to oppose. The situation is different, if the situation of clashes with Syria or Lebanon, Israel might push the residents of the adjacent areas, if any, towards the border.

As for “How did millions of Syrians end up?” They fled the battles in Turkey, which is a different topic and different circumstances. Damascus considered Turkey responsible for supporting the opposition, and Turkey was unable to intervene directly militarily, so it opened its borders to Syrian refugees in numbers considered unprecedented since World War II. Today, Turkey is suffering from the large number of refugees and the economic, social and political repercussions.

When Israel talks about displacing the population of Gaza to Egypt, it is as if it wants to punish Egypt for what it considers negligence at the crossings, tunnels, and borders. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, whether internally or externally, will be a reward for both Israel and Iran. Israel gets rid of a large number of Palestinians on its borders, and Iran has weakened and threatened Egypt's security, and strengthened Iran's negotiating position, along with Hezbollah and Syria.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, confirmed on Wednesday that the Kingdom considers targeting civilians in Gaza a heinous crime and a brutal attack, stressing the necessity of working to provide protection for them. 

During two phone calls he received from the Prime Ministers of Japan, Fumio Kishida, and the Prime Ministers of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Saudi Crown Prince discussed the military escalation currently taking place in Gaza, stressing the importance of making all possible efforts to reduce the pace of the escalation to avoid its dangerous repercussions on security, peace, and stability in the region and the world. 

He pointed out the importance of creating conditions for the return of stability and restoring the path of peace to ensure that the Palestinian people obtain their legitimate rights.