[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

Israel’s actions a recipe for regional disaster

Global forces must urge for peace deal

www.thedailystar.net

Israel's actions a recipe for regional disaster
Global forces must urge for peace deal

Visual: Star

When the world is pushing for peace in the form of a ceasefire in Gaza, the assassination of Hamas' top leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran has derailed that hope. Analysts fear this event could have far-reaching consequences in the whole Middle East, leading to a full-on regional conflict. And such fears cannot be dismissed completely at this point, given the tensions that have built up in the region.

Senior officials of Hamas have said the death of Haniyeh, who had been a top negotiator in the ceasefire talks, means their fight against Israel would intensify. While Israel has not publicly acknowledged its role in the killing, The New York Times reports that several US officials assess that the country was indeed responsible. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said the killing "doesn't help" efforts to secure a ceasefire. In almost 11 months, amid widespread destruction in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly thwarted talks of truce, clearly indicating that it has no intention of stopping the atrocities. If the reports are accurate, this is just the newest manufactured obstacle.

Israel is already facing global condemnation for its genocide, which has claimed the lives of over 39,000 people in Gaza. Besides such heinousness, it is also attacking people in foreign lands, beyond its jurisdiction, which is absolutely unacceptable and is a recipe for greater turmoil. A recent instance of this is Israel's airstrikes and artillery fire on Lebanon, leading to multiple deaths. Unsurprisingly, this has forced Hezbollah to resume rocket and artillery attacks on Israel. The group's chief Hassan Nasrallah has said that Israel "crossed red lines" after killing its top military commander earlier in Beirut. It's quite obvious: attacks lead to retaliation, and the cycle of violence continues. But this simple reality is being constantly ignored.

After Haniyeh's killing, US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are desperately trying to salvage ceasefire talks, but for them to be successful, both parties have to be on the same page. They are, however, dealing with a country that does not want peace, for why else would it strike a school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing 15, on Friday. Nevertheless, global actors must stand against this genocide, and continue to condemn and pressurise Israel, if they want to ensure peace for the Middle East. Given that the violence has kept expanding, it is high time for it to end before the entire region becomes engulfed in further turmoil.​

 

[Saif]

Israel confirms killing Al Jazeera journalist, says he was Hamas operative

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that it had killed Al-Jazeera journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul in an airstrike in Gaza, saying he was a Hamas operative who had taken part in the 7 October attack on Israel

en.prothomalo.com

Israel confirms killing Al Jazeera journalist, says he was Hamas operative
Ashish BasuJerusalem
Published: 02 Aug 2024, 09: 10

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that it had killed Al-Jazeera journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul in an airstrike in Gaza, saying he was a Hamas operative who had taken part in the 7 October attack on Israel.

Al-Jazeera dismissed what it said were "baseless allegations" which it said were an attempt to justify the deliberate killing of its journalists.

"The network condemns the accusations against its correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul, without providing any proof, documentation or video," it said in a statement, adding that it reserved the right to take legal action against those responsible.

The Qatari broadcaster said on Wednesday that Al-Ghoul and cameraman Ramy El Rify were both killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza City while on an assignment to film near the house of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas chief killed in Iran earlier on the same day.

The Israeli military said Al-Ghoul was a member of the elite Nukhba unit who took part in the 7 October attack and instructed Hamas operatives on how to record operations, and it said he was involved in recording and publicizing attacks on Israeli troops.

"His activities in the field were a vital part of Hamas' military activity," it said in a statement.

Al-Jazeera said Al-Ghoul had worked for the network since November 2023 and his only profession was as a journalist.

It said he had been arrested and detained at Al-Shifa Hospital in the northern part of the Gaza Strip when it was taken by Israeli forces in March before being released, which it said "debunks and refutes their false claim of his affiliation with any organisation."

The Israeli government has banned Al-Jazeera from operating in Israel, accusing it of posing a threat to national security.

Al Jazeera, which has been heavily critical of Israel's campaign in Gaza, has denied inciting violence.

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the deaths of the two Al-Jazeera crews raised to 165 the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire since 7 October.​

 

[Saif]

Israel returns more than 80 Palestinian bodies to Gaza

Israel returned the bodies of more than 80 Palestinians killed in its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, as Israeli airstrikes killed at least 18 more people yesterday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

www.thedailystar.net

Israel returns more than 80 Palestinian bodies to Gaza
Keeps up military pressure in the enclave

Israel returned the bodies of more than 80 Palestinians killed in its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, as Israeli airstrikes killed at least 18 more people yesterday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

Yamen Abu Suleiman, the director of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said it was unclear whether the bodies had been dug up from cemeteries by the army during the ground offensive, or whether they were "detainees who had been tortured and killed."

"The occupation provided us with no information about the names, or ages, or anything. This is a war crime, a crime against humanity," Abu Suleiman said.

The bodies will be screened and examined in an attempt to determine the causes of death and in an attempt to identify them. They will later be buried in a mass grave at a cemetery near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

The 84 bodies arrived in more than 15 bags, each containing several bodies, Abu Suleiman added. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the return of the bodies. In the past, Israel has said it returned bodies after checks they were not Israeli hostages.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Hostages Families Forum asked why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would allow the handover of Palestinian bodies without a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

"Why are bodies being returned outside the framework of a comprehensive deal? Such an agreement could bring back living hostages for rehabilitation and the deceased for proper burial," they said in a statement.

In southeast Khan Younis, residents said Israeli aerial and tank shelling continued overnight, including in areas for which Israel had issued evacuation orders, saying Hamas members had been waging attacks from there.

An Israeli air strike killed eight Palestinians in a vehicle on the road near Khan Younis yesterday. The Israeli military said it had killed Abdel-Fattah Al-Zriei, whom it said was involved in the weapons manufacturing department in Hamas.​

 

[Saif]

Is Zionism reaching its demise?

Israel can kill several million of people in the Middle East and destroy it. But what happens then?

www.thedailystar.net

Is Zionism reaching its demise?

Over the last ten months, many Jews around the world, especially young Jews, have been taking a moral stand against Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians that began in 1947, not October 7, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

It is increasingly becoming clear--even to some Western observers—that the "Zionist project" is running its course. It had an extraordinary run, but it has now reached the end of its settler-colonial track.

The creation of this exclusionary settler-colonial Jewish state was a historical anomaly, among the greatest blunders of Western civilisation in the twentieth century. Despite the deep alliance—between Western and Eastern European Jews and their Western tormentors—that established Israel in the mid-20th century, this Jewish state could not in the long run resist the deep logic of history. A few sober Israelis too can read the writing on the wall.

At the same time, no one doubts that Israel is capable of inflicting devastating harm in the Middle East. For sure, Israel could kill several million Iranians and Arabs with its arsenal of neutron bombs. But what happens then? Where would that leave the Jewish state?

Say they've destroyed the Middle East, and Netanyahu, Biden and Saudi Arabia's MBS is flying to a new Iranian capital—since they will have obliterated Tehran—to celebrate their victory over Iran, and then fly to Riyadh to seal an enduring Saudi-Israeli alliance, guaranteed for a thousand years by the US, especially if Trump wins the upcoming elections. It is likely that the inimitable Thomas Friedman will be rooting for this scenario in his next New York Times op-ed.

In order to prevent Israel from launching its neutron bombs, the Western powers that birthed and nurtured the Zionist project must now take responsibility for their historic blunder, and manage the transition of this abnormal Jewish state to a normal one that accords equal rights to all its inhabitants—Jews and Arabs alike. Western powers have shielded Israel for seven decades and the result is a brutal genocide with catastrophic implications for the region. It is now time, for them, to make amends.

Acting resolutely and quickly, the United Nations Security Council needs to sanction Israel until it ends its long-standing violations of multiple international laws. Simultaneously, the US, Britain and Germany will need to shut off their arms pipeline to Israel. If Israel refuses to agree to a permanent ceasefire, then the UNSC may also need to impose an embargo on Israel. The suggestions presented here are often counteracted by abusing "anti-Semitism." Before this article falls into that trope, I must make it clear that I oppose Zionism not because it is led by Jews, but because of what Zionism proposed to do, what it has done, and continues to do to the Palestinians. Had this exclusionary settler-colonial project been perpetrated by Palestinians, Pakistanis or any country in the world—I would have held the same view.

Future historians of Zionism will acknowledge that Zionism was a trap set up by British anti-semites—in addition to securing control in the oil-rich Middle East—to diminish the population of Jews in Europe. The original Zionist leaders—overambitious and myopic—especially those in the British parliament, sold their Zionist vision with ease to Jews, who had just suffered from the world's most horrific, traumatising genocide, the Holocaust. The evolution of Zionism, from its often-claimed founding father—Theodor Herzl—to "Social Zionism" in the 1900s, which promoted class collaboration with the Jewish bourgeoisie and as well as support for imperialism and colonialism.

It is quite astonishing how a brilliant people who produced perhaps a fourth of the world's most extraordinary minds—from the mid-19th to mid-20th century—espoused two flawed utopian visions, Communism and Zionism, that might dazzle with their surface brilliance, but were not aligned with the heavenly forces.

The first utopian vision, because of its extreme demands on human nature, collapsed in 1990. Totalitarian socialism also blocked the transition—when the historic window was still open—from the destructive capitalism of the 19th century to humane, democratic socialist alternatives.

The second utopian vision may have run its course, but while the vast Soviet Union—a superpower with the second largest military and a vast nuclear arsenal—imploded itself, without causing any spillover wars—Israel, the embodiment of the Zionist utopia, threatens its neighbours with nuclear apocalypse.

Israeli Jews cannot save Israel from itself, but the Jewish diaspora has a chance—because of its distance from the war and from the current militarist regime of Israel—to use its influence and organising powers to try to reorient the ruling elites in the US, Canada and Uk towards rescuing Jews in Palestine from the Zionist quagmire. But is this even possible since Zionism has dominated the discourse in the Jewish diaspora too?

Nevertheless, there are signs that important sections of Jewish diaspora are beginning to see past their own propaganda. Over the last ten months, many Jews, especially young Jews, have been taking a moral stand against Israel's genocidal war against Palestinians that began in 1947, not October 7, 2023. Also, for the first time, the International Court of Justice has spoken if not clearly and loudly. The International Criminal Court too has filed applications for warrants for the arrest of two Israeli leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. While none of these have stopped Israel's atrocities, one wonders how long it can go on. Such larger-than-life projects that inflict mass sufferings have fallen in history. It is possible that the extreme form of Zionism that underlines the brutal extermination of a population while being opposed by people of the world—will come to an end.

The Jewish diaspora can and should mobilise to save Israel's Jews from the worst instincts of its right-wing Messianic government. For more than 76 years, the Jewish diaspora has mobilised in support of Israeli governments, no matter their crimes against Palestinians. It is time now to show restraint to Israel's extremist leadership. It may not be too late. There may still be time to do the right thing.

M. Shahid Alam is Emeritus Professor, Department of Economics, Northeastern University. He is the author of Israeli Exceptionalism (Springer, 2008) and Yardstick of Life (KDP, 2024), a book of poetry.​

 

[Saif]

Israel intensifying attacks on Gaza schools

Last week more than 100 people were killed after Israel hit a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced Palestinians, as the United Nations accused Israel of intensifying attacks on schools.

www.thedailystar.net

Israel intensifying attacks on Gaza schools
Says UN as data shows 564 schools have been directly hit or damaged since the offensive began

Palestinians react as they wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. An estimated 495,000 people in Gaza – or 22 percent of the population – are “experiencing an extreme lack of food,” according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report. Photo: REUTERS

Last week more than 100 people were killed after Israel hit a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced Palestinians, as the United Nations accused Israel of intensifying attacks on schools.

The targeting of al-Talbin School on Saturday during dawn prayers triggered global outrage.

Paramedics at the scene described the carnage as horrific, with "bodies ripped to pieces". Israel claimed that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters were operating from the school – a claim that was rejected by Hamas.

Israel has repeatedly attacked Gaza's schools, hospitals and universities, claiming the buildings were used for military purposes without providing any proof.

According to data compiled by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), up to July 6, 564 schools in the Gaza Strip have been directly hit or damaged by Israeli attacks.

With numerous evacuation orders since the offensive in Gaza began on October 7, schools have often been used to shelter nearly two million displaced Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, schools are considered civilian objects and should be protected from attacks. However, within a 10-day period in August, Israeli forces struck five schools in Gaza City, killing more than 179 people and injuring scores more.

At least 15 people were killed and more than 29 injured in an Israeli strike on the Dalal al-Mughrabi School on August 1, according to officials.

Two days later, strikes on Hamama and al-Huda schools killed 17 and injured more than 60 people, reports Al Jazeera online.

On August 4, at least 30 people were killed and 19 others injured after Israel struck Nassr and Hassan Salameh schools in the Nassr neighbourhood in Gaza City.

Israel bombed Abdul Fattah Hamouda and az-Zahra schools, killing 17 and injuring dozens more on August 8.

The worst attack in recent weeks was on al-Tabin School, which Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary said was hit by at least three missile attacks.

The UN's special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, condemned the attack.

"Israel is genociding the Palestinians, one neighbourhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one 'safe zone' at the time. With US and European weapons," she posted on X.

In July, a similar cluster campaign targeting school shelters across the Gaza Strip killed nearly 50 people within a week.

Almost 85 percent of school buildings in Gaza have been damaged, with nearly all schools in North Gaza either being "directly hit" or damaged. This is followed by Gaza City, where more than 90 percent of the schools have been damaged or destroyed.​

 

[Saif]

From Nakba to second intifada

SO IN 1948, Israel captured 78 per cent of Palestine (the UN Partition plan had originally given Israel 55 per cent although Jews formed only one-third of the population at the time). To...

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From Nakba to second intifada

SO IN 1948, Israel captured 78 per cent of Palestine. To accomplish this, they terrorised the Palestinians and violently drove 750,000 people from their homes. Having won this much through ethnic cleansing, they set their sights on more. In 1967, Israel attacked the surrounding states in a war, and captured the remaining 22 per cent: seizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, it seized the Golan Heights from Syria, and Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula from Egypt.

Palestinians resisted in many ways. What took the headlines was the audacious militant tactics of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, a self-styled guerilla movement led by Yassir Arafat that became notorious for a series of plane hijackings. There were other groups like the one that carried out an attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics of 1972, killing several of them. Most of these attacks were carried out by Palestinians in exile in the diaspora and were spectacular but ineffective in realizing Palestinian demands. It wasn’t until 1987 that there was a mass popular uprising in the Occupied Territories. Known as the first intifada, this uprising erupted out of frustration with the PLO’s strategy. Nevertheless, the PLO ended up claiming the mantle of representative of the Palestinians in the negotiations to resolve the crisis precipitated by the intifada. But when the negotiations happened in Oslo in 1993, Arafat negotiated away everything except for the bare minimum. In return, what did he get? Arafat and the PLO were able to return to the Occupied Territories from exile and establish the Palestinian Authority, with its own security and police force. As Edward Said and Noam Chomsky argued back then, Israel subcontracted the task of policing the area to the PA while giving the Palestinians little to no civil and political control.

The Oslo agreements were vague. They called for Israel to carry out troop withdrawals from the Occupied Territories in three phases, but they left open the question of the extent of the withdrawal. And only the land that Israel seized in 1967 was up for negotiation anyway, which meant that 78 per cent of what was historically Palestinian land was negotiated away by the PLO when it surrendered in 1993. In either case, these phased withdrawals never took place, and by 1998 the so-called ‘liberal Zionist’ Ehud Barak made his ‘generous offer’ of skipping the troop withdrawals and moving straight away to final status negotiations regarding the future of Jerusalem.

This was the pattern throughout the so-called peace process of the 1990s — Israeli offers, usually termed ‘generous’ by a compliant Western media, that were designed to be rejected by the Palestinians, so that no real progress would be made towards a viable Palestinian state, while Israeli settlements would continue to expand.

In the year 2000 the Second Intifada was sparked by former Israeli general Ariel Sharon ‘visiting’ the Al Aqsa Mosque compound with a thousand soldiers.

Ariel Sharon was at the time an opposition member of the Israeli parliament, and a member of the right-wing Likud Party. He was known as the butcher of Beirut for greenlighting the 1982 massacre of around 3000 Palestinians and Lebanese inhabitants of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Phalangist militias.

In retrospect, it’s clear that Ariel Sharon’s provocative action of entering the Al Aqsa compound with a thousand armed soldiers signalled the end of the so-called ‘peace process’ that had played out through the 1990s.

In the fighting that followed, Israel used its now-familiar tactic of relentless artillery and air bombardment of refugee camps. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed and the resistance responded with a spate of suicide bombings that took the lives of Israeli settlers.

BDS breaks with status quo

FOR those of us involved in Palestine solidarity efforts in the US those were difficult years. At the time, I was on the International Committee of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition. Al Awda was the only Palestine-solidarity group that stood for the principle of self-determination for Palestinians in all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea. By emphasising the right of return, Al Awda held to the solution of a single democratic state with freedom for all — the vision that had united Palestinians until Oslo. But Al Awda and its tiny cohort of allies on the left were very much on the margins of the discussion, to the extent that there was one at all. On one side, the establishment consensus was for a two-state solution, the framework for which was apparently codified in the Oslo Accords. Every escalation in violence had been successfully blamed on the Palestinians. On the other side, with the PLO co-opted by the occupation, the only ones left fighting were Hamas and its militant wing, the Al-Qassem Brigades. Secular left organisations like the DFLP and PFLP had been more or less neutralised by Israeli repression and, it must be said, by Fatah and Hamas.

So those of us who stood for Palestinian liberation including the right-of-return for refugees were a small minority within the Palestine solidarity movement. To the extent that there was a solidarity movement at all we spent most of our time debunking the various ‘generous offers’ made by the Israelis but there was little to point to as a focal point for our solidarity. The mainstream consensus was for a two-state solution, while the one-staters, so to speak, had a politics and used tactics — such as suicide bombings — that we could defend but not advocate. There was no Palestinian leadership or campaign that we could identify with or point to as a viable alternative.

It was in this context, in 2005, that the BDS Movement was launched. I remember well the anticipation and excitement with which we greeted its announcement. The initial call explicitly drew parallels with the boycott of apartheid South Africa a decade or two earlier, and ended with these words:

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organisations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

— Ending its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

— Recognising the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

— Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolutions

Some activists at the time dismissed it as too gradualist. Boycotting, after all, isn’t as glamorous as protesting, striking, or occupying a college campus. But these activists failed to appreciate that in fact the BDS call was a strategic breakthrough in that it ruptured the consensus around two-states by insisting on the right of return. This was and is a radical demand; for the right of return to be successfully implemented would require a transformation of the Jewish-supremacist state into a truly democratic and inclusive one.

The following year, in 2006, Hamas won the elections in Gaza and engaged in a brief tussle with Fatah over leadership over the Palestinian movement. In the end, Hamas retained control in the Gaza Strip, while Fatah remained in power in the West Bank, and with the Palestinian movement clearly divided, Ariel Sharon announced the so-called ‘unilateral withdrawal’ from Gaza, whereby the Occupation forces withdrew and subsequently encircled and enforced the tightest siege on a people in modern history. Various efforts to break the siege were met with violence by the occupation forces, such as in 2010, when the Freedom Flotilla, led by the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship laden with humanitarian aid, was raided and captured, and several aid workers were killed by the Israelis.

BDS in present context

IT WAS out of this open-air prison that Palestinian fighters broke through on October 7 to launch the attacks that triggered the current phase of Israel’s genocide.

From the Palestinian perspective, the current crisis must appear as a confirmation of the BDS campaign’s central premise: that the two-state solution is a dead end, and a just peace can only come about with self-determination for the Palestinians in the context of a single, secular and democratic state with equal rights for all, including the right of return for refugees.

For the last few months, millions of people around the world have taken to the streets to protest the genocidal war, horrified by the images flooding their social media feeds. One might well ask: What can a boycott movement achieve in the face of the Zionists’ settler-colonial aim to annex all of Gaza and the West Bank and to create, as the right-wing Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu would have it, Israeli dominance over all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea? And what can a boycott movement achieve in the face of the unflinching support given to the Zionist state by virtually every Western government, especially the United States?

The BDS campaign is one part of a multi-pronged struggle that Palestinians have waged for their freedom and self-determination. It was launched in 2005 through a call for boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions on, Israel, issued by a large coalition of Palestinian civil society. Some 170 organisations, representing virtually all of Palestinian civil society, endorsed the initial call. It’s worth noting that a call for an academic boycott of Israel had already gone out a year earlier; the BDS campaign took this up and expanded it into a comprehensive strategy of boycott, divestment, and sanctions, modelled on a similar campaign that had helped coalesce international solidarity with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The Palestinian BDS National Committee was formed to coordinate this campaign.

The BDS campaign has called for targeted and focused consumer boycotts of companies profiting from Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and of companies directly tied to Israel. In particular, the BDS campaign has called for a global boycott of HP, Soda Stream, Puma, and other consumer brands.

Interestingly enough, from our perspective here in Dhaka, the BDS Movement website does NOT list Coke as one of its targets for boycott. Nor for that matter does it mention McDonalds or Starbucks. But recently it’s these companies that have emerged as targets of global boycotts, fuelled largely by social media campaigns. This is a reflection of the global ripples of dissent that the genocide in Gaza has set off.

In a country where we haven’t seen mass protests against the genocide we have nevertheless seen a mass response to the call to boycott Coke, and all thanks to a single commercial. This is interesting. In the commercial, a man refuses to drink Coca Cola because it comes from Israel. Now the ad doesn’t actually mention Israel by name, and it’s worth thinking about why the territory remains unnamed—is Israel already a pariah state? In either case, the ad mocks the man’s objection, presenting it as mere hearsay or rumour, and the shopkeeper schools the man on Coca Cola’s global presence. What finally convinces the man to accept the bottle of coke is the shopkeeper’s declaration that Coca Cola even has a factory in Palestine.

The backlash all over social media was immediate and unrelenting, as people pointed out that Coca Cola does indeed have a factory in Palestine, and it is in the settlement of Atarot in East Jerusalem. Bangladeshis responded en masse, and Coca Cola’s sales in Bangladesh have reportedly fallen dramatically in the few weeks since the commercial aired. In a sense, this is a vindication of the boycott strategy, at least in so far as it can be seen to have an impact on the company’s profits.

Consumer boycotts are notoriously difficult to coordinate or sustain, which is why, although the BDS campaign calls for a boycott of all Israeli products, it strategically focuses on those companies and products that have a direct hand in the Occupied Territories and are thus more likely to trigger mass boycotts. In addition to consumer boycotts that one can do privately and individually, the BDS campaign calls for collective campaigns to get companies to pull out of the Occupied Territories. Thanks to years of organising, companies like Veolia, Orange, G4S, General Mills, and others have exited the Israeli market because of BDS campaigns. It’s these collective efforts that are the most successful both in terms of their impact on the Israeli economy and in terms of their capacity to mobilise and strengthen solidarity movements and organisations. The campaign also calls for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel. A recent book on this subject, Towers of Ivory and Steel, by Maya Wind, does a great job of casting a spotlight on Israeli universities, which have been deeply complicit in the settler-colonial project in diverse ways.

In addition to these targeted boycotts, the BDS movement calls for divestment campaigns to get local universities, municipalities, banks, and investment funds to divest from Israeli companies, especially those involved in the OT. Divestment has emerged as the key demand of the student protesters at campuses across the US, UK, and Canada this past year, thanks in large part to the brave students at Columbia University who launched a campus sit-in and faced massive police repression.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

400 Hezbollah men dead in 10 months of Israel clashes

Ten months of cross-border violence between Hezbollah and Israeli forces has killed senior commanders and several hundred fighters from the Iran-backed group, causing destruction and...

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400 Hezbollah men dead in 10 months of Israel clashes
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 15 August, 2024, 22:26

Ten months of cross-border violence between Hezbollah and Israeli forces has killed senior commanders and several hundred fighters from the Iran-backed group, causing destruction and displacing tens of thousands on both sides.

Hezbollah has seen more fighters killed since October than when it last went to war with Israel in the summer of 2006.

AFP looks at the mounting toll for the Shia Muslim movement, which has been trading near-daily fire with the Israeli army in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.

Israeli strikes have killed key Hezbollah commanders in recent months, the most senior of them top operations chief in south Lebanon Fuad Shukr, who died in a raid on Beirut’s southern suburbs on July 30. Hezbollah has vowed to respond to his killing.

In January, a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Wissam Tawil, was killed in an Israeli strike on his vehicle in south Lebanon.

Two out of its three area commanders in south Lebanon have also been killed — Mohammed Nasser and Taleb Abdallah.

Hezbollah divided its operations in south Lebanon into three areas following the 2006 war, each with its own ‘military formation, commander, personnel, weapons and capacities’, the group’s chief Hassan Nasrallah said last month.

He said south of the Litani river comprised two areas: a western sector, covered by Hezbollah’s Aziz unit, and an eastern sector running to the contested Shebaa Farms manned by the group’s Nasr unit, which opened Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks in October.

The third sector, north of the Litani river up to the coastal city of Sidon, is covered by the group’s Badr unit.

Aziz unit commander Nasser was killed in an Israeli strike last month, while Nasr unit commander Abdallah was killed in a raid the month before.

Israel has repeatedly said it has killed other Hezbollah fighters whom it has called ‘commanders’.

The violence has killed some 570 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters from Hezbollah but also including dozens from allied armed groups including Hamas, according to an AFP tally, with at least 118 civilians among the dead.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to military figures.

Hezbollah has issued statements announcing the deaths of more than 370 members who have been killed in Lebanon, according to the AFP tally.

The Lebanese group has mostly described them as ‘martyred on the road to Jerusalem’, the phrase it uses to refer to those killed in Israeli strikes.

Another 25 have been killed in neighbouring Syria, where Israel has for years carried out strikes on army positions and pro-Iran fighters, also seeking to cut off Hezbollah supply lines to Lebanon from Tehran.

According to the statements, around 320 of the slain Hezbollah fighters were from south Lebanon, with some 60 from the eastern Bekaa Valley, which borders Syria.

Several south Lebanon villages close to the Israeli border each count around a dozen slain fighters, the statements have indicated.

Around 70 per cent of the more than 230 fighters killed since late January, when Hezbollah began to provide the year of birth on its death statements, were aged 40 or under.

At least six were aged 20 or under, with three born the same year as the 2006 war or after it.

A source close to Hezbollah, requesting anonymity, told AFP that fewer than 300 fighters from the group were killed in the 2006 conflict.

Hezbollah has said it is seeking to tie up Israeli military resources in the country’s north in support of ally Hamas.

The escalating attacks have raised fears of a broader conflict, and Lebanon has been on edge since Shukr’s death.

Earlier this month, the heavily armed group said it had carried out 2,500 ‘military operations’ against Israel since October.

It claimed to have targeted ‘border positions’ 1,328 times and ‘military barracks’ 391 times, using a variety of weapons including artillery, rockets, ‘guided missiles’ and ‘air defence weapons’.

The group has also released three videos purportedly showing surveillance drone footage taken by the group across the border, widely viewed as a potential bank of targets in case of all-out war.

The footage includes aerial images of military positions in northern Israel and the annexed Golan Heights, as well as sensitive areas in and around the port city of Haifa.​

 

[Saif]

Pressure mounts on Israel as Gaza truce talks to resume in Qatar

Diplomatic pressure mounted on Israel Friday to secure a truce that could avert a wider war after more than 10 months of fighting in Gaza, as mediators prepared to meet for...

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Pressure mounts on Israel as Gaza truce talks to resume in Qatar
Agence France-Presse . Doha, Qatar 17 August, 2024, 00:49

Palestinians flee with their belongings Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Friday, amid the on-going conflict between Israel and the Hamas group. | AFP photo

Diplomatic pressure mounted on Israel Friday to secure a truce that could avert a wider war after more than 10 months of fighting in Gaza, as mediators prepared to meet for a second day of talks in Qatar.

Months of effort by international negotiators have yet to secure a truce or hostage release deal but regional tensions have since soared, underscoring the urgency of a ceasefire agreement.

Hamas Palestinian militants were absent, saying they had agreed to terms and urging the United States to pressure Israel.

The risk of a broader Middle East war has surged since the July 31 killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran and its allied groups in the region blamed Israel and vowed revenge.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the talks had ‘a promising start’ but ‘there remains a lot of work to do’.

The United States, Israel’s main ally and military supplier, has been mediating with Qatar and Egypt, alongside intensive efforts by other nations pushing for a truce.

‘This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East. The risk of the situation spiralling out of control is rising,’ British foreign secretary David Lammy said ahead of his visit to Israel with French foreign minister Stephane Sejourne.

In meetings with Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, Britain’s foreign ministry said they would ‘stress there is no time for delays or excuses from all parties on a ceasefire deal’ in Gaza.

Katz told his visiting counterparts he expects foreign support ‘in attacking’ Iran if it strikes Israel.

Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war that resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead. Some were freed during a one-week truce in November.

On Thursday the toll from Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza topped 40,000, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant casualties.

While the Qatar talks take place with a team sent by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, bombs have continued to fall in the Palestinian territory.

‘Why did Netanyahu send a delegation to the talks while we are being killed here?’ in Jabalia, Mohammed al-Balwi asked among the concrete debris left from an air strike Thursday in north Gaza.

They had found ‘limbs on the ground’, he said.

On Friday Gaza’s civil defence agency said its crews recovered five bodies from a bombed apartment building in Gaza City, near Jabalia.

Witnesses reported air raids in central Gaza and near the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Israel’s military said rockets had been fired on Thursday from Khan Yunis toward Kissufim, just outside Gaza.

On Friday the military cited rocket and other fire in announcing new evacuation orders for the Khan Yunis region, from which troops had withdrawn four months ago.

Netanyahu says Israel must have ‘total victory’ but troops have found themselves returning to fight again in Khan Yunis and northern Gaza where, in January, the military declared the Hamas command structure dismantled.

Israeli aircraft struck more than 30 militant targets in Gaza over the previous day, the military said on Friday.

The death of Hamas leader Haniyeh came hours after an Israeli strike killed Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which has exchanged near-daily cross border fire with Israeli forces.

The Gaza war has also drawn in Tehran-aligned groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

On Thursday the US military said its forces destroyed a ‘ground control station’ operated by Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels, who have for months fired missiles and drones at shipping in waterways vital to world trade off Yemen.

The Huthis, like Hezbollah, say they are acting in support of the Palestinians.

Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian foreign ministry on Friday described as ‘organised state terrorism’ a Jewish settler attack on a Palestinian West Bank village the previous day.

Israeli officials condemned the incident, the latest of its kind, and the White House called it ‘unacceptable’.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said ‘settlers’ bullets’ killed one man and critically wounded another during the attack in Jit, near Nablus.

The Israeli military said dozens of Israeli civilians, some masked, entered Jit and ‘set fire to vehicles and structures in the area, hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails’.

The Qatari foreign ministry said Gaza truce negotiations would continue on Friday.

Mediators are seeking to finalise details of a framework initially outlined by US president Joe Biden in May, and which he said Israel had proposed.

While Hamas is not directly taking part in the Qatar talks, an official of the Islamist movement, Osama Hamdan, said the group would join if the meeting set a timetable for implementing what Hamas had already agreed to.

Hamas officials, some analysts and protesters in Israel have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war.

Relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages again took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Thursday. ‘Make deals not war!’ one of their signs said.

Far-right members crucial to Israel’s ruling coalition oppose any truce, and Netanyahu has called Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar ‘the only obstacle to a hostage deal’.​

 

[Saif]

Israel slaughters Palestinians with western arms

WHILE many are earnestly pointing at the devastation of war, the rampant human rights violations and the deliberate relegation of international and humanitarian law, there are those who see war from an entirely different perspective: profits...

www.newagebd.net

Israel slaughters Palestinians with western arms
Ramzy Baroud 20 August, 2024, 00:00

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee a makeshift camp for displaced people in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip after Israeli tanks took position on a hill overlooking the area on August 18, amidst the conflict between Israel and the Hamas group. | Agence France-Presse/Bashar Taleb

WHILE many are earnestly pointing at the devastation of war, the rampant human rights violations and the deliberate relegation of international and humanitarian law, there are those who see war from an entirely different perspective: profits.

For the merchants of war, the collective pain and misery of whole nations is dwarfed by the lucrative deals of billions of dollars generated from weapons sales.

The great irony is that some of the loudest advocates of human rights are, in fact, the ones who are facilitating the global arms trade. Without it, human rights would not be violated with such impunity.

The Geneva Academy, a legal research organisation, says that it currently monitors about 110 active armed conflicts worldwide. Most of these conflicts are taking place in the global south, though many of these cases are either exacerbated, funded or managed by western powers or western multinational corporations.

Of the 110, 45 armed conflicts are taking place in the Middle East and North Africa region, 35 in the rest of Africa, 21 in Asia and six in Latin America, according to the Academy.

The worst and bloodiest of these armed conflicts is currently taking place in Gaza, one of the poorest and most isolated regions in the world.

To estimate the future death toll resulting from the war in Gaza, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, the Lancet, undertook a thorough research entitled ‘Counting the dead in Gaza: Difficult but essential’.

The approximation was based on the death toll figure produced as of June 19, when Israel had then reportedly killed 37,396 Palestinians.

Lancet’s new number was horrifying, even though the medical journal said that its conclusions were based on conservative estimates of indirect deaths vs direct deaths that often result from such wars.

Should the war end today, meaning June 19, 7.9 per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip will die because of the war and its aftermath. That’s ‘up to 186,000 or even more deaths’, according to the Lancet.

Palestinians in Gaza are not dying because of an untraceable virus or a natural disaster, but in a merciless war that can only be sustained through massive shipments of arms, which continue to flow to Israel despite the international outcry.

On January 26, the International Court of Justice resolved that it had enough evidence to suggest that genocide was being committed in Gaza. On May 20, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, added his voice, this time speaking of deliberate acts of ‘extermination’ of Palestinians.

Yet, weapons continued to flow, mostly coming from western government. The main source of weapons is, unsurprisingly, the United States, followed by Germany, Italy and Britain.

Despite announcements by some European countries that they are curtailing or even freezing their weapons supplies to Israel, these governments continue to find legal caveats to delay the outright ban. Italy, for example, insists on respecting ‘previously signed orders’ and the UK has suspended the processing of arms export licenses ‘pending a wider review’.

Washington, however, remains the main supplier of arms to Tel Aviv. In 2016, both countries signed another memorandum of understanding that would allow Israel to receive $38 billion of US military aid. That was the third MoU signed between the two countries, and it was intended to cover the period between 2018 to 2028.

The war, however, prompted US policymakers to go even beyond their original commitment, by assigning yet another $26 billion ($17 billion in military aid), knowing full well that the majority of Gaza victims, per United Nations estimates, are civilians, mostly women and children.

Therefore, when the US urges an end to the war in Gaza while continuing to flood Israel with more weapons, the logic seems utterly flawed and entirely hypocritical.

The same hypocrisy applies to other, mostly western countries, which brazenly pose as defenders of human rights and international peace.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the world’s top ten exporters of major arms between 2019 and 2023 include six western countries. The US alone has a 42 per cent share of global arms exports, followed by France at 11 per cent.

The total arms export of the top six western states amounts to nearly 70 per cent of the global share.

If we consider that the vast majority of armed conflicts are all taking place in the Global South, the obvious conclusion is that the very west that purportedly champions global peace, democracy and international law is the very entity that also fuels wars, armed conflicts and genocide.

For the Global South to take charge of its future, it must fight against this obvious injustice. They cannot allow their continents to continue to serve as mere markets for western arms. The blood of Arabs, Africans, Asians and South Americans should not be spilled to sustain the economies of western countries.

True, it will take much more than limiting the arms trade to end global conflicts, but the free flow of weapons to conflict zones will continue to feed the war machine, from Gaza to Sudan and from Congo to Burma and beyond.

One can continue to argue that Israel must respect international law, and that Burma must respect human rights. But what use are mere words when the wWest continues to provide the murder weapon, with no moral or legal accountability?

CounterPunch.org, August 19. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’ (Clarity Press, Atlanta).​

 

[Saif]

Blinken says Gaza talks 'maybe the last' chance for truce

US secretary of state Antony Blinken, in Israel to push for a Gaza truce, said on Monday ongoing negotiations were "maybe the last" chance to reach an agreement to end the war.

en.prothomalo.com

Blinken says Gaza talks 'maybe the last' chance for truce
AFP
Updated: 19 Aug 2024, 15: 16

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Centre-R) looks on after his arrival in Tel Aviv on August 18, 2024 AFP

US secretary of state Antony Blinken, in Israel to push for a Gaza truce, said on Monday ongoing negotiations were "maybe the last" chance to reach an agreement to end the war.

"This is a decisive moment -- probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security," Blinken said as he met Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The top US diplomat said President Joe Biden had sent him "to get this agreement to the line and ultimately over the line".

"It is time for it to get done. It's also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process," Blinken said.

"We're working to make sure that there is no escalation, that there are no provocations, that there are no actions that in any way could move us away from getting this deal over the line, or, for that matter, escalating the conflict to other places, and to greater intensity."

Blinken, on his ninth visit to the Middle East since Hamas's 7 October attack on Israel, is scheduled to meet later on Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The visiting secretary of state said it was a "fraught moment" in Israel and warned against any moves that could heighten regional tensions, following threats from Iran and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah to avenge the recent killings of two militant leaders.

Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, said Israelis wanted to see the return "as soon as possible" of hostages still held in Gaza since the 7 October attack that triggered the war.

"There is no greater humanitarian objective, and there's no greater humanitarian cause, than bringing back our hostages," Herzog told Blinken.​

 

[Saif]

But not for you, Palestinian

I HAVE a very intense relationship with water. As a result of a long-term health condition, I am often feeling very thirsty and drained. I cannot go more than perhaps 15 minutes without having a sup of water until I start to feel uncomfortable. On average people in the UK use 149 litres of...

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But not for you, Palestinian
Jonathan Woodrow Martin 21 August, 2024, 00:00

| Counter Punch/Nasser Nawaj’ah, B’Tselem

I HAVE a very intense relationship with water. As a result of a long-term health condition, I am often feeling very thirsty and drained. I cannot go more than perhaps 15 minutes without having a sup of water until I start to feel uncomfortable. On average people in the UK use 149 litres of water per-day, and although there is poverty in this country, and the water system is privatised, access to water is seen as a fundamental human right and cannot, by law, be cut off to domestic residences, even if bills are not paid.

In comparison, in Gaza right now, there is a war on the people, and their access to water. The occupying state has systematically destroyed and dismantled access to water. An Oxfam report has laid out the catastrophic drop in the level of water access and quality since the genocide began:

‘Since the Israeli offensive began following October 7, 2023, people in Gaza have had only 4.74 litres of water per person per day for all uses including drinking, cooking, and washing, which is a dramatic 94 per cent reduction in the amount of water available before. This is significantly below the internationally accepted minimum standard of 15 litres of water per person per day for basic survival in emergencies.’

The Palestinians in Gaza were already forced to rely on the occupation for much of their water supplies due to the illegal siege placed on them since 2006. The apartheid state are now using this construct to weaponise water to such an extreme level that people are being dehydrated to death and preventable and deadly diseases are spreading throughout the population. The occupation announced their intentions to the world, very early and very clearly on, in the genocide. On October 9, 2023, defence minister Yoav Gallant said: ‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.’ This included the cutting off of the water supplies and has expanded to the bombing and destruction of every attempt by Palestinians to alleviate this. In July alone, the genocidal forces blew up over 30 water wells in Khan Younis and Rafah in the south of Gaza and have almost completely destroyed the sanitation and sewage system throughout Gaza.

This is all meticulously detailed in the Oxfam report:

‘External supply from Israel’s national water company Mekorot fell by 78 per cent. Israel has destroyed 70 per cent of all sewage pumps and 100 per cent of all wastewater treatment plants, as well as the main water quality testing laboratories in Gaza.’

These are clear and defined wanton acts of genocide, being funded and supported to the hilt by the US, UK and other western countries who so dearly want us all to believe that they respect and value ‘human rights’.

We, the people of the UK, are supporting the building and operation of a water well in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza. Please donate and share to support the Palestinian people to have access to this fundamental and basic necessity to survival and life. The well may be targeted and attacked, but we must support Palestinians to stay in place, on their land. The occupying and genocidal state will not destroy the Palestinians or create an inch of space between us in our steadfast support for them.

We as allies must listen to Palestinians and stand with them. We must continue to support Palestinians to support themselves and stand with them in lockstep until they win their full liberation, and we must believe that day is coming, because it is coming.

CounterPunch.org, August 20. Jonathan Woodrow Martin is a graduate of HCRI institute at The University of Manchester.​

 

[Saif]

Why Israel-Hamas ceasefire keeps failing

Netanyahu has handcuffed every mediator of ceasefire deals, especially the US, by imposing conditions that Hamas will not accept.

www.thedailystar.net

Why Israel-Hamas ceasefire keeps failing

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu draws a red line on the graphic of a bomb during his address at the 67th United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 27, 2012. FILE PHOTO: REUTERS

Yet again, another ceasefire deal for Gaza in Doha has been rejected to pardon a sliver of misery for the Palestinians suffering through the most devastating genocide in Gaza. US President Joe Biden had touted that the latest ceasefire deal was "closer than ever" to being achieved as risks of a wider war in the region sparked fear. But if one knows Benjamin Netanyahu, and the simple fact that he faces political death if the war ends, then hopeful words regarding any ceasefire deals should always be taken with a grain of salt. It was absolutely no coincidence that Netanyahu put five new conditions on the deal and thwarted the possibility of de-escalation in the region.

Hamas has opposed a continuing presence of Israelis in Gaza, and maintained that it will not accept a deal that is not permanent. And it is well-known that Netanyahu's extremist government does not want a permanent ceasefire. Hamas has rejected the latest deal, blaming it mainly on Netanyahu, stating that he is fully "responsible for the lives of his prisoners, who are exposed to the same danger that our [Palestinian] people are exposed to due to his continued aggression and systemic targeting of all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip."

Netanyahu's efforts to smash any efforts for a truce is so blatant that Israeli citizens have been regularly protesting against him, calling for his resignation and a ceasefire deal, which seem to now be synonyms. The families of hostages, as well as the opposition, members of the army and so on, have protested, and even Defence Minister Yoav Gallant bashed Netanyahu's lack of a "post-war" Gaza plan, admitting that it is Israel who has been the disrupter of the deals so far.

For the ninth time in 10 months, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting the Middle East as talks will resume again in Cairo. All these visits have mainly been to meet Israeli ministers, and all the energy spent has led to nothing tangible except the continuation of hellish extermination of Palestinians. Former US President Barack Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry also made a record number of visits to the region, but after his realisations, he delivered a blistering speech attacking Israel's settlement policy and Netanyahu's extremist government in 2016, stating, "The policies of this government—which the prime minister himself just described as 'more committed to settlements than any in Israel's history'—are leading… towards one state." His remarks were met with criticism, as Netanyahu and the apartheid regime of Israel prevailed in the US establishment.

Netanyahu has handcuffed every mediator of ceasefire deals, especially the US, by imposing conditions that Hamas will not accept, and conditions that he knows Hamas will not accept. The US has failed time and again to exert any real pressure—under a weak president—to make Israel agree to a ceasefire deal; Joe Biden remarked in the Time magazine, as recent as in early June, that there is "every reason" to draw the conclusion that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation. Everything that has happened in the past few years has proven a fact that the US cannot deny, which is that the main weapon in Netanyahu's hand is the laxity in US diplomacy towards Israel, which has now morphed into a culture of deference.

The war, however, in many ways, is considered an "American war" with the US's involvement, backing and major backtracking from any solution proposed beforehand. But political calculations regarding the dynamics with Netanyahu suggest that it is now increasingly unobtainable for the US, under this administration, to end the war. One could argue that Blinken's efforts at so-called "peace" would have been more successful had he carried bags of rice and flour in his giant jet and given it to starving Palestinians in Gaza, instead of flying thousands of kilometres to talk and have expensive yet futile conversations.

Netanyahu and his cabinet were very clear in their aims to deliver a multi-dimensional blow, when they decided to assassinate Haniyeh, the head of Hamas' political bureau in Tehran, right after Netanyahu's controversial visit to Washington, where he garnered shameless applause from members of Congress. Iran has maintained that it will retaliate, leaving the US in another precarious situation to deal with a wider eruption in the Middle East. Once again, the US is flexing muscle power with its fleet, sending stealthy fighters, dozens of F-22 Raptors, even a guided missile submarine along with a squadron of Marine Corps, not to mention bolstering US forces in its bases in the region—only to show its support for Israel. As the Democrats face a high-stake elections against Donald Trump where their support for Israel's genocide can play a "make or break" role for Vice-President Kamala Harris's election bid, Biden recently approved a further $3.5 billion of military aid to Israel, as Israel bombed a religious school, Al-Tabieen, and a mosque in Gaza, and parents and family members mourned hundreds of their lost ones, many of whose bodies were dismembered and collected in plastic bags—highlighting unspeakable brutality.

Anyone who has followed the biography of Benjamin Netanyahu knows that he has always held a dream of starting a war with Iran and dragging the US into it. US presidents, including Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden, have largely never shared Netanyahu's enthusiasm. Netanyahu has long considered Iran as Israel's primary threat to security; even in his address in Congress, he called protesters calling for a ceasefire "Iran's useful idiots," and said, "When we fight Iran, we are fighting the most radical and murderous enemy of the United States." Similarly, in 2012, Netanyahu took a paper showing a graphic bomb to the United Nations General Assembly, and ridiculously made drawings on it on the podium, to demonstrate the grave threats of Iran's nuclear capabilities.

He had waged a public campaign and failed to convince former President Obama to withdraw the US from the Iran nuclear deal, which he achieved later in 2018 with Donald Trump, convincing him to also adopt a policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran, placing it under severe sanctions.

By eschewing reaching ceasefire deals in Gaza now, Netanyahu continues to feed his disturbing obsession with Iran; Netanyahu's "Iranian file is the file of life" is an age-old title by journalists in the region that he achieved for his scorched-earth policy towards Iran since becoming the prime minister of Israel. Even when Netanyahu faced trials and charges of corruption in 2021, he escalated half-covert attacks on Iran's facilities and attacks on Iranian shipping in the Persian Gulf. The political timing of the security crisis of immense "Iranian threats" came not-so-subtly with the goal of making it easier for Netanyahu to form another government under his leadership.

Netanyahu knows that a ceasefire deal would grant safety to Israeli citizens as well, but it conflicts with his aim to provoke a wider war with Iran. He has been touting messianic beliefs since October 7, 2023, because he has one aim: to use this unprecedented opportunity to rebuild the Israel that Ben-Gurion created, which can only and delusionally be done through the destruction of Iran and its axis. This warped logic is the only way to understand Netanyahu's politics.

By taking ceasefire deals off the table, manipulating the US and the West, Netanyahu may just be poised to engineer his dreams professionally. Iran is aware of the depth of the impasse and that the US carriers have been sent with the aim of messaging, not with the aim of igniting a war. But Netanyahu's actions have left Iran with very little options: to respond or not to respond. The wolf has managed to trap everyone in his sadistic quest to become a historical wartime figure. As invincible as he might think he is with a crown on his arrogant head, Iran and Hezbollah are significant powers, and no one knows the scale of Russia's involvement if Israel were to use "unconventional" weapons. Netanyahu is venturing into dangerous territories, putting Israel, the US, and the world on the brink of catastrophe.

Yousef SY Ramadan is the Palestinian ambassador to Bangladesh.​

 

[Saif]

Death ‘the only certainty’ for Palestinians in Gaza

In Gaza, death appears to be the “only certainty” for 2.4 million Palestinians with no way to escape Israel’s relentless bombardment, a UN official said Tuesday, recounting the growing desperation across the territory.

www.thedailystar.net

Death ‘the only certainty’ for Palestinians in Gaza
Says UN official as Israeli strikes continue in enclave

In Gaza, death appears to be the "only certainty" for 2.4 million Palestinians with no way to escape Israel's relentless bombardment, a UN official said Tuesday, recounting the growing desperation across the territory.

"It does feel like people are waiting for death. Death seems to be the only certainty in this situation," Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA, told AFP from Gaza.

For the past two weeks, Wateridge has been in the Gaza Strip, witnessing the humanitarian crisis, fear of death and spread of disease as the offensive rages on.

"Nowhere in the Gaza Strip is safe, absolutely nowhere is safe. It's absolutely devastating," Wateridge said from the Nuseirat area of central Gaza -- a regular target of Israel's aerial assaults.

Since fighting broke out in October, Israeli forces have pounded the besieged territory from the air, land and sea, reducing much of it to rubble.

Now in its eleventh month, the offensive has created an acute humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom have been displaced several times, running out of basic food and clean drinking water.

"We are facing unprecedented challenges when it comes to the spread of disease, when it comes to hygiene. Part of this is because of the Israeli imposed siege on the Gaza Strip," Wateridge said.

Israel's military campaign has killed at least 40,223 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. Most of the dead in Gaza are women and children, according to the UN human rights office.

Tens of thousands of people have taken refuge in schools across the Gaza Strip, an increasingly regular target of Israeli missiles. Israel's military says these schools have been used as command and control centres by Hamas, a charge the group denies.

"Even a school is not anymore a safe place," said Wateridge. "It feels like you're never more than a few blocks away from the front line now." Tired of reacting to the Israeli military's "continuous" evacuation orders, more and more Gazans are reluctant to keep moving from place to place, Wateridge said.​

 

[Saif]

Israel kills top Fatah commander

Israel killed a senior commander from Fatah’s armed wing on Wednesday in a strike on Lebanon, leading to accusations from the Palestinian movement that Israel is trying to ‘ignite a regional war’...

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Israel kills top Fatah commander
Agence France-Presse . Sidon, Lebanon 22 August, 2024, 00:17

Israel killed a senior commander from Fatah’s armed wing on Wednesday in a strike on Lebanon, leading to accusations from the Palestinian movement that Israel is trying to ‘ignite a regional war’.

Fatah, the Palestinian movement based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said Khalil Maqdah was killed in a strike near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.

The Israeli military said it targeted the brother of Mounir Maqdah, who heads the Lebanese branch of Fatah’s armed wing. It accused them both of ‘directing attacks and smuggling weapons’ to the West Bank and collaborating with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

In response, the slain commander’s Fatah movement, which is headed by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and rivals the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers Hamas, accused Israel of bidding to trigger a wider regional war.

Maqdah’s killing marks the first such attack on a senior Fatah member in more than 10 months of cross-border clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement following the Gaza war.

The ‘assassination of a Fatah official is further proof that Israel wants to ignite a full-scale war in the region,’ Tawfiq Tirawy, a member of Fatah’s central committee, said in Ramallah.

It came only hours after US secretary of state Antony Blinken left empty-handed after a tour of the Middle East aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Blinken appealed to Hamas to urgently accept a US-backed truce proposal, while also entering into a public spat with Israel over its future presence in the besieged Palestinian territory.

‘Time is of the essence,’ Blinken said before flying out of Doha after stops in Qatar, Egypt and Israel on his ninth regional tour seeking to halt the Gaza war.

‘This needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line,’ he said of the truce proposal.

The United States has presented ideas to bridge gaps and, through Qatar and Egypt, pressed Hamas to return to talks this week in Cairo.

But a day after Blinken said US ally Israel was on board, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by Israeli media as disagreeing on a key sticking point.

Netanyahu insisted Israel maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between Gaza and Egypt that Israeli forces seized from Hamas, whom Israel says relies on secret tunnels to bring in weapons.

Blinken said Israel had already agreed on the ‘schedule and location’ of troop withdrawals from Gaza.

Since the conflict began, it was made ‘very clear that the United States does not accept any long-term occupation of Gaza by Israel’, Blinken said when asked about Netanyahu’s remarks.

A senior US official called Netanyahu’s ‘maximalist statements’ unhelpful for reaching a truce.

Blinken acknowledged differences and called for ‘maximum flexibility’ from both Israel and Hamas.

Egypt, the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel, has been infuriated by the border takeover.

Hamas said it was ‘keen to reach a ceasefire’ but protested ‘new conditions’ from Israel in the latest US proposal.

On the ground, Gaza was again rocked by air strikes, AFP reporters, first responders and witnesses said.

The Israeli military said it struck about 30 targets throughout Gaza and that troops ‘eliminated dozens’ of militants.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said death appeared to be the ‘only certainty’ for Gaza’s 2.4 million people, with no way to escape Israel’s bombardment.

‘Absolutely nowhere is safe,’ said UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge. ‘People... feel like they’re being chased around in circles.

‘Death seems to be the only certainty,’ she told AFPTV.

As tensions escalated, Lebanon’s health ministry said earlier Israeli strikes in the country’s east killed one person and wounded 20, hours after four were killed in the south.

Cross-border skirmishes have taken place almost daily between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, but fears of a greater crisis soared when Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed on a visit to Tehran on July 31.

Iran has vowed retaliation, blaming Israel for the assassination, but has held off so far, with the United States sending additional forces and warning a wider war could destroy prospects for a Gaza ceasefire.

Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for delays in agreeing a deal to end fighting, free Israeli hostages and allow vital humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Netanyahu has faced public protests in Israel urging him to accept a truce, which would bring back hostages whose plight has plagued Israelis.

The Israeli military said Tuesday it had retrieved the bodies of six hostages from tunnels in Gaza, some of whom were killed in its operations.

The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 105 are still being held hostage inside the Gaza Strip, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,223 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

In a stark reminder of what’s at stake for Netanyahu, a young Israeli woman symbolising the 251 hostages called for their swift return.

‘Avinatan, my boyfriend, is still there, and we need to bring them back before it’s going to be too late. We don’t want to lose more people than we already lost,’ Noa Argamani said while visiting Japan.​

 

[Saif]

Ceasefire hopes fade as Gaza fighting rages

Hopes were dwindling on Thursday for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where fighting raged despite pressure from the United States on Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas to reach an agreement...

www.newagebd.net

Ceasefire hopes fade as Gaza fighting rages
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 22 August, 2024, 23:51

Hopes were dwindling on Thursday for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where fighting raged despite pressure from the United States on Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas to reach an agreement.

After more than 10 months of war, officials from the United States and Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar had been set to meet in Cairo for a new round of talks this week, but confirmation was still pending.

The war triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel has devastated Gaza, displaced nearly all its population at least once and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

Diplomatic efforts have intensified amid the risk of a wider war following killings, widely blamed on Israel, that sparked threats of reprisals from Iran and its allies.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Wednesday ended his latest tour of the Middle East, aimed at finalising a ceasefire, without a breakthrough.

In a phone call later, president Joe Biden pushed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a deal, amid pressure from pro-Palestinian protesters at the US Democratic party’s convention ahead of a November presidential election.

‘The president stressed the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles,’ the White House said.

Biden also reassured him of the efforts of the United States — Israel’s main ally and weapons supplier — to support it against threats from Iran and its proxies.

Vice president Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s candidate in the US presidential election, also took part in the call.

Netanyahu, a hawkish political veteran leading a fragile right-wing coalition, has reportedly disagreed on a key sticking point — the removal of Israeli troops from the border between Gaza and Egypt.

His office confirmed the phone conversation, without elaborating on its content.

Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted ‘officials knowledgeable about the negotiations’ as saying ‘the chances for a deal are slim’ but attempts were being made to hold talks in Cairo on Friday and Saturday.

It said, quoting the same source, that Netanyahu insisted on an Israeli army ‘presence along the Philadelphi Corridor’ and that the United States ‘demanded a significant withdrawal of troops’ in two stages.

The daily said ‘the Americans understood the mistake’ made by Blinken when he announced during his visit to Israel that Netanyahu had accepted a US proposal to bring the two sides closer together and that ‘the ball was now in Hamas’s court’.

It said US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk had been sent to Cairo to prepare for the meeting and to seek to resolve the Philadelphi Corridor issue.

Hamas on Sunday said the US proposal ‘responds to Netanyahu’s conditions’ and accused him of ‘obstructing an agreement.’

In its statement, Hamas cited Netanyahu’s ‘insistence on continuing to occupy’ the Philadelphi corridor and two other areas, which Israel sees as important for preventing the flow of weapons into Gaza.

The Islamist group said it was keen to reach a ceasefire but protested ‘new conditions’ from Israel in the latest US proposal.

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,265 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most dead are women and children.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, of whom 105 remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.

On the ground, Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least three people were killed and 10 children wounded in an Israeli strike Wednesday on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said Thursday that it ‘conducted a precise strike on a weapons storage facility’ near a Hamas command-and-control centre inside a compound that previously served as a school.

The United Nations says Israel has struck at least 23 schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza since July 4

Troops ‘eliminated’ more than 50 militants in the past 24 hours and intensified operations in the Khan Yunis area and the outskirts of Deir el-Balah, the military said.

A civil defence spokesperson reported bombings in the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps, and east of Khan Yunis.

Witnesses reported seeing heavy Israeli shelling in Khan Yunis as well as clashes between Palestinian militants and the army in the Netzarim junction further north.

Violence has also escalated in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian territory’s health ministry said three people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in Tulkarem refugee camp on Thursday.​