Ongoing Compilation of Israeli Zionist state terrorist regime's war crimes and crimes against humanity related histories, news and critical commentary sources
Greasing The Skids: Who’s the “Real Terrorists”???
Source: America's Fall Will Be Israel's Fall
Dimitri Lascaris on X: "America's Fall Will Be Israel's Fall Watch the full video here: https://t.co/aTVP6aiul1 #genucide #americangovernment #innocentpeople #Israel https://t.co/mkyipKo0fI" / X
Οι ΗΠΑ ενέκριναν την πώληση όπλων αξίας 7,4 δισεκ. δολαρίων στο Ισραήλ
Φωτο αρχείου
Οι ΗΠΑ ανακοίνωσαν χθες Παρασκευή ότι ενέκριναν την πώληση βομβών, συναφών ειδών και πυραύλων, συνολικής αξίας 7,4 δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων, στις ένοπλες δυνάμεις του Ισραήλ, το οποίο χρησιμοποιεί πυρομαχικά κυρίως αμερικανικής παραγωγής στον πόλεμο στη Λωρίδα της Γάζας.
Οι δυνητικές συμβάσεις περιλαμβάνουν αφενός βόμβες, κιτ κατεύθυνσής τους και πυροκροτητές, αξίας 6,75 δισεκ. δολαρίων, κι αφετέρου πυραύλους Hellfire αξίας 660 εκατομμυρίων δολαρίων, σύμφωνα με την αμερικανική υπηρεσία διεθνούς συνεργασίας ως προς την άμυνα και την ασφάλεια (DSCA).
Η σχεδιαζόμενη πώληση βομβών θα «βελτιώσει τη δυνατότητα του Ισραήλ να αντιμετωπίσει τρέχουσες και μελλοντικές απειλές, θα ενισχύσει την εθνική άμυνά του και θα προσφέρει μέσο αποτροπής μπροστά στις περιφερειακές απειλές», σημείωσε η υπηρεσία σε δελτίο Τύπου που δημοσιοποίησε.
Έχει εγκριθεί από το υπουργείο Εξωτερικών κι έχει σταλεί ειδοποίηση στο αμερικανικό Κογκρέσο, όπως προβλέπει η αμερικανική νομοθεσία.
Οι ανακοινώσεις αυτές γίνονται καθώς ο ισραηλινός πρωθυπουργός Μπενιαμίν Νετανιάχου βρίσκεται όλη την εβδομάδα στην Ουάσιγκτον, όπου συναντήθηκε με τον πρόεδρο Ντόναλντ Τραμπ κι έλαβε διαβεβαιώσεις για την ακλόνητη υποστήριξη των ΗΠΑ στο Ισραήλ.
Την Τρίτη, κατά τη διάρκεια κοινής συνέντευξης Τύπου, οι δυο ηγέτες τόνισαν την απόφαση του Ντόναλντ Τραμπ να προχωρήσει στην άρση όλων των εμποδίων για την πώληση βομβών 2.000 λιβρών (περίπου 900 κιλών) στο Ισραήλ, που είχε ανασταλεί από τον προηγούμενο πρόεδρο Τζο Μπάιντεν επειδή έκρινε πως η χρήση τους προκάλεσε «ανθρώπινη τραγωδία» στη Λωρίδα της Γάζας.
Νέα ανταλλαγή αιχμαλώτων σήμερα
Οι αρχές του Ισραήλ αποφάσισαν να αποφυλακίσουν εντός της ημέρας 183 παλαιστίνιους κρατούμενους, σε αντάλλαγμα για τους τρεις ομήρους τους οποίους ετοιμάζεται να αφήσει ελεύθερους η Χαμάς στη Λωρίδα της Γάζας, ενημέρωσε χθες Παρασκευή το Γαλλικό Πρακτορείο η Εταιρεία Παλαιστινίων Φυλακισμένων, μη κυβερνητική οργάνωση που καταπιάνεται με το ζήτημα.
Πρόκειται για «18 φυλακισμένους καταδικασμένους σε θάνατο, 54 καταδικασμένους σε βαριές ποινές και 111 που συνελήφθησαν στη Γάζα μετά την 7η Οκτωβρίου» 2023, εξήγησε η Αμάνι Σαράχνα, εκπρόσωπος της λέσχης κρατουμένων.
The US approved the sale of arms worth €7.4 billion. dollars in Israel
New prisoner exchange today
The United States said on Friday it had approved the sale of $7.4 billion worth of bombs, related items and missiles to the armed forces of Israel, which uses mostly U.S.-made munitions in the Gaza Strip.
Potential contracts include bombs, their guidance kits and detonators, worth €6.75 billion. and $660 million worth of Hellfire missiles, according to the U.S. Defense and Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA).
The planned bomb sale will "improve Israel's ability to counter current and future threats, strengthen its national defenses, and provide deterrence in the face of regional threats," the agency said in a press release.
It has been approved by the State Department and a notice has been sent to the US Congress, as required by US law.
The announcements come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in Washington all week, where he met with President Donald Trump and received assurances of unwavering U.S. support for Israel.
On Tuesday, during a joint news conference, the two leaders highlighted Donald Trump's decision to remove all obstacles to the sale of 2,000-pound (about 900-kilogram) bombs to Israel, which had been suspended by former President Joe Biden because he deemed their use a "human tragedy" in the Gaza Strip.
New prisoner exchange today
Israeli authorities have decided to release 183 Palestinian prisoners within the day in exchange for three hostages that Hamas is preparing to release in the Gaza Strip, the Society of Palestinian Prisoners, a non-governmental organization working on the issue, told AFP on Friday.
These are "18 prisoners sentenced to death, 54 sentenced to heavy sentences and 111 arrested in Gaza after October 7" 2023, explained Amani Sarahna, a spokeswoman for the prisoners' club.
"I am a Zionist." - President Biden
Joe Biden in 1986: "Were there not an Israel, the US would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region"
TRUMP INVITES NETANYAHU TO WHITE HOUSE AS FIRST FOREIGN LEADER Trump: "I would like to formally invite you to the White House next week. I look forward to discussing how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to counter our shared adversaries.
Some Thoughts re:
Results of Quadrennial Electoral American Dog ‘n Phony Show Will Trump-47th “Make America Great Again”?
by Prof. Kallas
333 million people in the US. And we ended up with these two? How did that happen?
Will Trump-47th “Make America Great Again”?
It depends on how one defines “Great”.
Democrats’ slogan was “Exceptionalism”.
Republicans’ slogan was “Greatness.”
Adding up these Duopoly slogans = “Exceptional + Greatness”?
What’s historical record reveal?
1.Exceptional in the number of wars, invasions, interventions and overthrows of other’s governments the DemoRepublican Duopoly Party elites have supported.
2.Great in superpatriotic pro-war, pro-Empire propaganda and brainwashing.
3.Exceptional in the amount of multi-trillion-dollar waste and corruption throughout US national security state regime along with periodic multi-billion-dollar government bailouts of the much vaunted “capitalist free market” economic order.
4.Great in the amount of mass murder internationally since at least 1945.
5.Exceptional in selling a fake democracy to the world while integrating an anti-democracy capitalist multinational corporate oligarchic class into the US national security state regime, aka, mass military industrial complex.
6.Great in creating an Empire of Lies and Propaganda throughout its corporate-state mainstream mass media, aka, MSM, academia, think tanks, foundations, NGO’s, etc.
7.Exceptional in its bloated national $35+ trillion-dollar public debt that has accumulated through borrowing to pay for #1, #3 above…
8. Bottomline: This is what the End of Empire looks like. So much for being “Great Again” and “Exceptional”.
Biden/Trump Zionist Love Fest, Some UN Numbers about Gaza Genocide
Childhood conditions in Gaza = 90% schools destroyed + 70% murdered children & women + 90% children starving.
Biden/Trump pro-Zionist Gaza Genocide Policies will continue.
Trump on making American Corporate Capitalists “Great Again” along with his own Wall Street Portfolio.
Trump’s first administration greatest economic policy was to give massive tax cuts to American corporate rich.
American financial capitalists and bankers will be made great again since Trump along with Republican controlled congress will push for ever more massive tax cuts for the mega-rich again; reason why he will staff his executive with fellow tax cheat Elon Musk.
Trump’s anti-China sanctions and tariffs may pose challenge to American mega-rich Multinational Corporate Capitalists who have over the past 40 years invested multi-billions in China’s rapid economic growth and they want their ROI’s, aka, Returns on Investments, that is, mega-profits to keep flowing into their coffers without tariffs blocking the way.
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
“Great empires are not maintained by timidity.” ― Tacitus
“Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.)” ― Julius Caesar
Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East
Irene L. Gendzier presents incontrovertible evidence that oil politics played a significant role in the founding of Israel, the policy then adopted by the United States toward Palestinians, and subsequent U.S. involvement in the region. Consulting declassified U.S. government sources, as well as papers in the H.S. Truman Library, she uncovers little-known features of U.S. involvement in the region, including significant exchanges in the winter and spring of 1948 between the director of the Oil and Gas Division of the Interior Department and the representative of the Jewish Agency in the United States, months before Israel's independence and recognition by President Truman.
Gendzier also shows that U.S. consuls and representatives abroad informed State Department officials, including the Secretary of State and the President, of the deleterious consequences of partition in Palestine. Yet the attempt to reconsider partition and replace it with a UN trusteeship for Palestine failed, jettisoned by Israel's declaration of independence. The results altered the regional balance of power and Washington's calculations of policy toward the new state. Prior to that, Gendzier reveals the U.S. endorsed the repatriation of Palestinian refugees in accord with UNGA Res 194 of Dec. 11, 1948, in addition to the resolution of territorial claims, the definition of boundaries, and the internationalization of Jerusalem. But U.S. interests in the Middle East, notably the protection of American oil interests, led U.S. officials to rethink Israel's military potential as a strategic ally. Washington then deferred to Israel with respect to the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, the question of boundaries, and the fate of Jerusalem—issues that U.S. officials have come to realize are central to the 1948 conflict and its aftermath.
About the Author and Scholar
Irene L. Gendzier, Ph.D. (Columbia University, 1964; M.A., Columbia; B.A., Barnard College), is Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, an Affiliate in Research at Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and a research affiliate of the MIT Center for International Studies.
You'll understand easily why the US admin is complicit or even pushing for the Genocide in Gaza.
A plan looking for a pretext.
Netanyahu presented his plan two weeks before the Hamas attack.
‘Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, showing a map of “The New Middle East” without Palestine during his recent speech at the UN.’
Money Talks, Bullshit Walks!!!
Greasing The Skids: Who’s the “Real Terrorists”???
There's huge multi-billion dollar natural gas field off Gaza.
A British company is waiting to develop it for Israel.
In Syria's Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967, subsidiary of Genie Energy (Dick Cheney, etc.) has the exclusive right to the gas!
Indeed.
Bibi's playing the "Suffering Zionist Card" on the world chessboard.
He's pushing it to the limit knowing US Israel Lobbying's influence over collective west will back him.
But to what degree? Zelensky is already being thrown under the bus. Yet, he doesn't have nuclear weapons.
Bottomline:
It's an old story: Struggle Over Real Estate and Capital Controls
Why Endless Wars for Empire?
From the Vietnam Wars to the Mideast Wars
Why is it difficult for Americans to Learn that War is a Racket?
America, Oil, and War in the Middle East
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
—Jimmy Carter, state of the union address, Jan. 23, 1980
You'll understand easily why the US admin is complicit or even pushing for the Genocide in Gaza.
As Iran continues to grab the headlines coming out of the Middle East, the Obama Administration is said to be quietly pushing Israel to soften its stance on Gaza to relax its vice-like grip on the border crossings, in order to ease the growing humanitarian crisis.
Any diplomatic initiative by Obama that lessens the suffering of the Gazan people has to be welcomed with a degree of urgency, especially in relation to the blockade of food and medicines.
Some 96 percent of Gaza’s population is dependent on humanitarian aid. According to Save the Children one in three families cannot afford a balanced diet.
Just as food and medicines shortages are deemed critical, so is the supply of energy, with much of the Gazan infrastructure said to be at breaking point, leading to routine power blackouts.
In order to help rectify this, earlier this month, an Israeli construction team finished work on a new pipeline for the transfer of fuel and natural gas from Israel to the Gaza strip. This is a crazy situation because it should be the Gazans who are exporting gas to the Israelis and not the other way around.
An estimated 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline actually belong to Palestine. Currently, British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) hold the oil and gas exploration rights to the whole of the offshore Gazan marine area, the rights to which were signed in a 25-year agreement in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet.
Back in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority”. The proposed contract was for $4 billion, of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.
However, the Israelis have been out to scupper this deal and take the gas reserves for their own.
Writing in Alternet recently Noam Chomsky noted how new attacks by Israeli naval vessels against Gazan fishermen “began shortly after the discovery by the British Gas group of what appear to be quite sizeable natural gas fields in Gaza’s territorial waters. Industry journals report that Israel is already appropriating these Gazan resources for its own use, part of its commitment to shift its economy to natural gas.”
Chomsky quotes Platt’s Commodity News, from February this year saying that “Israel’s finance ministry has given the Israel Electric Corp. approval to purchase larger quantities of natural gas from BG than originally agreed upon, according to Israeli government sources [which] said the state-owned utility would be able to negotiate for as much as 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Marine field located off the Mediterranean coast of the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip.”
Chomsky adds that “The pillage of what could become a major source of income for Palestine is surely known to US authorities” and could be one of the reasons behind the recent Israeli invasion into Gaza.
Chomsky is not the only academic who believes this. Michel Chossudovsky is a Canadian economist and professor of economics at the University of Ottawa. Writing earlier this year he argued that “the military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves. This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.”
He continues: “the issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine … however, the death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves.”
Chossudovsky argues that the decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) by the Israelis coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza initiated back in June 2008.
He argues that “the military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.”
If Obama is serious about building peace in the Middle East he has to make sure this does not happen.
Trump is a Typical Glorified Real Estate Salesman
Trump Wants US to Take Over & Ethnically Cleanse Gaza
The president stunningly said Gaza should become a U.S. territory, and be turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” minus 1.8 million Palestinians. Hamas will have something to say about that, reports Joe Lauria.
Netanyahu and Trump at the White House on Tuesday. (White House/YouTube)
U.S. President Donald Trump has said that the United States should become party to a major crime against humanity by expelling 1.8 million people from their land in the Gaza Strip as it becomes a territory of the United States.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday at a press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for the territory, Trump said, which would be turned into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump did not explain under what legal authority the Israeli occupied territory of Gaza could become the territory of the United States. It is not legally Israel’s territory to give away to anyone, but international law has rarely impeded Israel, or the United States.
Trump failed to mention that Hamas, which still controls Gaza, would have to be defeated first, something Israel has failed to do.
Trump said the U.S. would “level the site, get rid of the destroyed buildings, create an economic development and supply an unlimited number of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
Trump did not define who the “people of the area” are going be who get new housing in a rebuilt Gaza, but said people from all over the world would live there. In the meantime he said he expected as many as 1.8 million Palestinians to be removed permanently. “I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said in the Oval Office next to a beaming Netanyahu.
“They live like they’re living in hell,” he said. “Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.”
Hamas’ Answer
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, indeed offered an alternative: “What is needed is the end of the occupation and the aggression against our people, not expelling them from their land,” he said in a statement.
Abu Zuhri called Trump’s shocking proposal “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region. Our people in Gaza will not allow for these plans to come to pass.”
Any authority trying to force the population out of Gaza would have to contend with the still armed and trained militias of Hamas and other militant groups. The U.S. would almost certainly have to go to war with Hamas in order to make Gaza a U.S. territory.
It does not seem Trump and his people have fully thought out the implications of U.S. ground troops trying to defeat Hamas to take over Gaza, when Israel has failed to do that in 15 months of unrestrained attacks.
Asked by a reporter whether the U.S. would send troops to Gaza to “secure the security vacuum,” rather than the real task, to takeover the territory, Trump said, “We’ll do what’s necessary, if it’s necessary we’ll do that. We are going to take over that piece, and we’re going to develop it.”
Netanyahu told the press conference that he’s committed to militarily defeating Hamas, so one can be certain the ceasefire will not last.
Israel’s real aim in the war is doing exactly what Trump is proposing, removing the Palestinian population from Gaza. For Netanyahu’s and members of his radical cabinet who have expressed genocidal intent, this is the chance they have been waiting for, to fulfill Israeli Founding Father David Ben Gurion’s promise of an ethnically cleansed historic Palestine (including Gaza and the West Bank) to create Greater Israel.
“I think it is something that could change history,” Netanyahu said of Trump’s proposed takeover of Gaza, “and it is worthwhile really pursuing this avenue.”
West Bank Coming
Asked by an Israeli reporter if he supported “Israeli sovereignty” over “Samaria, which many believe is the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people,” otherwise known as the West Bank, Trump said, “Well, we are discussing that with many of your representatives … who do like that idea, but we haven’t taken a position on it yet. We will be making an announcement on that specific topic over the next four weeks.”
If the U.S. runs Gaza for Israel, the West Bank would be the final piece of controlling all of historic Palestine — from the river to the sea.
Despite their already firm rejection, Trump said in the end Jordan and Egypt will not refuse to take in the Palestinians. “They won’t say no to me,” Trump said.
Something ‘Spectacular’
Without naming them, he said other countries have come forward to take in the population. Trump also said wealthy nations in the region, an obvious reference to the Gulf monarchies, could pay for the new “location.” In reaction, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry put out a statement at 4 am local time calling for a Palestinian state.
“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return [to Gaza],” he said, trying to couch his proposal as great humanitarianism on his part. He called for something “spectacular” for the “wonderful” Palestinian people, something the “entire Middle East” would be proud of — proud of ethnic cleansing.
“If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently, with nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot at, not be killed, not be knifed to death … I would think that they would be thrilled,” he said. “I see a long-term [U.S.] ownership position.”
Trump left no doubt that this would be the permanent, forced relocation of 1.8 million people in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention “prohibits the forced transfer of protected people out of or into occupied territory” and customary international law considers involuntary population transfers to be illegal.
Dayan’s Prediction
Israeli army in Gaza in 1956. (National Library of Israel/Wikimedia Commons)
Palestinians living in Gaza are descendants of an earlier crime of ethnic cleansing at the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
In what can be seen as a prediction of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas breakout and attack on Israel, Moshe Dayan, one of Israel’s other Founding Fathers, predicted in 1956:
“What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. … We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.”
It is unlikely Dayan could have foreseen a U.S. president who wanted to finish Israel’s job for them.
Trump is a Typical Glorified Real Estate Salesman
February 5, 2025
Unknown author
US Officials Backtrack on Trump’s Illegal Gaza Gambit
A widespread international and domestic outcry to Donald Trump’s plan for the U.S. to take over and cleanse Gaza of Palestinians has led U.S. officials to say he really didn’t mean it the way it sounded, reports Joe Lauria.
A day after all hell broke loose in reaction to President Donald Trump’s plan to remove 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza, which he said the U.S. would rebuild and make a U.S territory, administration officials began backtracking as it emerged that only Trump himself knew he would make the plan public.
Asked in Guatemala about Trump’s intention to relocate the Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Palestinians would be allowed to “move back in,” which was not what Trump had said the day before.
At the White House, press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, tried to dial back the story by dampening the idea of U.S. troops in Gaza, while revising what Trump had said about permanent displacement.
Leavitt told reporters “the president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza. He has also said the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. His administration is going to work with our partners in the region to reconstruct this region.”
Leavitt showed photos in the briefing room of the destruction of Gaza, as though no one on social media has not seen far worse images of Gaza over the past 15 months.
Of course it is presented, as Caitlin Johnstone points outs, as if the destruction was the result of a natural disaster rather than from the maniacal genocidal attacks by the State of Israel fully supported by the United States. Trump, you see, is just trying to provide disaster relief.
He actually talks about the destruction as if it were the result of 15 months of war between two equally armed militaries, when Hamas has no air force with 2,000-pound bombs or tanks to cause this kind of destruction.
To emphasize that she was backtracking, Leavitt said: “Let me take a step back here, this is an out of the box idea, that’s who President Trump is, … and his goal is lasting peace in the Middle East. That doesn’t mean boots on the ground in Gaza …it doesn’t mean U.S. taxpayers will pay for it, it means that Donald Trump, who is the best dealmaker on the planet, will strike a deal with our partners.”
Asked whether she was now ruling out U.S. troops on the ground when Trump had not, Leavitt said, “He is not committed to that just yet.” Trump had said the U.S. would clear unexploded ordnance, normally a job for the military.
Leavitt also said the plan called for Palestinians to be only “temporarily” housed in other countries, while Trump clearly said Tuesday that it would be permanent.
“If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently, with nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot at, not be killed, not be knifed to death … I would think that they would be thrilled,” he said. “I see a long-term [U.S.] ownership position.”
Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, also tried to quell the story, telling Republican senators at a private lunch Wednesday essentially the same talking points as Leavitt, namely that Trump “doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. dollars at all’ on Gaza,” The New York Times quoted Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri as saying.
“Which is good,” Hawley said, according to The Washington Post. “So maybe, I might have misunderstood the president last night.”
Trump later on Wednesday declined to answer reporters’ questions about Gaza.
No One But Trump Knew
Netanyahu and Trump at the White House on Tuesday. (White House/YouTube)
According to the Times, no one in the Trump administration except Trump himself, knew that he would announce the plan.
There had been discussions but no formal planning, the paper said. He only told a beaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about it moments before they appeared together at Tuesday’s White House press conference.
The Times reported:
“Inside the U.S. government, there had been no meetings with the State Department or Pentagon, as would normally occur for any serious foreign policy proposal, let alone one of such magnitude. There had been no working groups. The Defense Department had produced no estimates of the troop numbers required, or cost estimates, or even an outline of how it might work.
There was little beyond an idea inside the president’s head.”
“But privately, Mr. Trump had been talking about U.S. ownership of the enclave for weeks,” the paper added.
Swift Rejections
Condemnation came swiftly from around the world. At 4 am Wednesday in Riyadh, the Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement soundly rejecting Trump’s proposal. Trump is counting on the Saudis to recognize Israel.
But Saudi Arabia said it “will not cease its tireless work to ensure the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Kingdom will not form diplomatic relations with Israel without this.”
The statement reiterated the kingdom’s “categorical rejection of the violation of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people by Israel’s settlement, annexation and displacement policies.”
It said,
“The international community has a duty today to ease the deep humanitarian crisis that the Palestinian people are enduring. The people will continue to cling on to their land and their determination will not be shaken.
Permanent and just peace cannot be achieved without the Palestinian people receiving their legitimate rights in line with international resolutions and this issue has been clearly stipulated to the previous and current American administration.”
Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince at the White House in 2017. (Whit House/Wikimedia Commons)
In New York, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres openly warned against “any form of ethnic cleansing.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who has taken aggressive positions on other issues, like Russia, and is a staunch defender of Israel, said in a statement that “expelling the Palestinian civilian population from Gaza would not only be unacceptable and contrary to international law. It would also lead to new suffering and new hatred.”
Trump had left no doubt on Tuesday that this would be the permanent, forced relocation of 1.8 million people in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention “prohibits the forced transfer of protected people out of or into occupied territory” and customary international law considers involuntary population transfers to be illegal.
The Times reported:
“The prohibition against forced deportations of civilians has been a part of the law of war since the Lieber Code, a set of rules on the conduct of hostilities, was promulgated by Union forces during the U.S. Civil War. It is prohibited by multiple provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II defined it as a war crime.”
Domestic Reaction
In the U.S., several lawmakers, including some Republicans, expressed concern about the plan. Israel hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted, ““I fear putting American troops on the ground now in the midst of a raging Middle East will yield the same results as it did in 1983.” That year 241 U.S. marines were killed in their barracks in Beirut.
Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said on X: “Wait what? The U.S. is going to occupy Gaza? We were promised no more endless wars.”
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on X of Trump: “He’s totally lost it. A U.S. invasion of Gaza would lead to the slaughter of thousands of U.S. troops and decades of war in the Middle East. It’s like a bad, sick joke.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who is Palestinian American, said on X: “Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. This president can only spew this fanatical bullshit because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing. It’s time for my two-state solution colleagues to speak up.”
Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas went even further, saying he would introduce articles of impeachment against Trump.
“Ethnic cleansing is not a joke, especially when it emanates from the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, when he has the ability to perfect what he says, ethnic cleansing in Gaza is no joke, and the prime minister of Israel should be ashamed knowing the history of his people,” Green said, according to The Hill.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on X @unjoe.
Smoke billows above the Jenin refugee camp skyline in the northern occupied West Bank on 24 January 2025.APA images
Israel is extending its genocidal violence into the occupied West Bank as its deadly assault on Jenin and its refugee camp enters a third week, a Palestinian human rights group has warned.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s military, police and domestic spy agency, the Shin Bet, jointly launched on 21 January a large-scale, open-ended military operation titled “Iron Wall” in the city of Jenin and its refugee camp, which has since extended to other areas in the northern West Bank, including Tulkarm last week as well as Tamun, south of Tubas, this week.
Israel imposed a total siege on Jenin refugee camp, and deployed hundreds of soldiers – including snipers – there since the military assault began.
The Israeli military carried out several aerial bombardments in densely populated civilian areas and caused widespread destruction of infrastructure and homes across the camp “on a scale not seen there for over 20 years,” Reuters reported.
Israeli troops bulldozed all the roads leading to the refugee camp and the city as well as a number of roads within them. The vast majority of camp residents have been displaced under Israeli orders, some of them even searched and arrested on the way out of the camp.
“The remaining families are living in grave danger with no access to water, electricity, and other basic services,” the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq stated.
Around 150-180 homes in Jenin have been severely damaged by the Israeli attack, according to the UN monitoring group OCHA.
Israeli assaults on West Bank cities and refugee camps have become “a primary cause” of forcible displacement of Palestinians, accounting for over 40 percent of all displacement documented by OCHA throughout 2023 and 2024. This compares to less than 2 percent in the two years prior.
Killing children and elderly
An Israeli attack decapitated a 14-year-old boy in Jenin on 1 February.
A missile that Israel fired from a drone without warning killed Ahmad Abdelhakim Saadi while he was in the courtyard outside his family home, according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International - Palestine. There was no presence of Israeli troops in the immediate area at the time.
Eyewitnesses told Defense for Children International - Palestine that a relative of the teen named Nour was wanted by Israel. Nour was, according to those witnesses, about to visit Ahmad’s family home before the Israeli drone was fired in front of the house.
Nour survived that strike, but was killed by another drone-fired missile later that day, along with a nurse working in the area.
“Israeli forces are carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in the northern occupied West Bank, killing Palestinians and forcing them out of their homes,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP.
“Israeli forces are emboldened by the impunity permitted by world leaders who took no action to stop the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and who are complicit in the campaign to forcibly displace Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Israeli forces shot and killed a 2-year-old girl while she was having dinner with her mother, grandparents and aunts inside her family’s home on 25 January in the town of Muthallath al-Shuhada, south of Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Laila Muhammad Khatib was shot in the back of the head.
Her grandfather carried her outside, where he saw Israeli snipers stationed inside a home across the house. Residents of the town were unaware of the Israeli military presence in the area.
The toddler’s mother and aunt also sustained injuries from shrapnel, according to an investigation by DCIP.
Mourners carry the body of 2-year-old Laila Muhammad Khatib, who was shot in the back of the head at home while having dinner with her family, in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on 26 January.APA images
Israeli forces also killed a 73-year-old man in the camp, Walid Muhammad Lahlouh, the Palestinian Authority health ministry has confirmed.
A 17-year-old Palestinian boy was killed when Israel used a drone to fire missiles targeting the courtyard of a home in Tamun on 29 January, killing a total of 10 people. Jihad Naser Bani Matar was with a number of individuals wanted by the Israeli military and whose homes were repeatedly raided.
There was no Israeli army presence at the time of the strike.
Saddam Hussein Rajab, a 10-year-old child, was shot in the abdomen by an Israeli soldier the day before in Tulkarm while he was standing on the sidewalk, as footage of the shooting shows.
Israeli forces attacked Saddam’s father while he attempted to carry the boy to receive aid. The forces even detained the father for nearly an hour.
While the child was getting transferred from one hospital to another, Israeli forces held up the ambulance and one soldier told Saddam’s father: “I am the one who shot your son. God willing, he will die.”
Saddam is still receiving medical care.
At least 70 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry has said, the vast majority in northern cities and refugee camps.
At least 38 were killed in Jenin, 15 killed in Tubas, six in Nablus, five in Tulkarm, three in Hebron, two in Bethlehem and one in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israeli forces have killed at least 11 Palestinian children in the West Bank since the start of the year – seven by drone strikes and four others by live ammunition.
This toll does not include three Palestinian children killed during the Palestinian Authority raid on the Jenin refugee camp which started in the first week of December and concluded in January.
DCIP has yet to determine the perpetrators responsible for each child’s death during the PA raid, as the subsequent Israeli military incursion has hindered such investigations.
Gaza tactics
On Sunday, the Israeli military razed nearly two dozen buildings in simultaneous bombings “that were heard across much of the northern West Bank,” The Wall Street Journalreported.
Juliette Touma from the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said the camp is going in a “catastrophic direction.”
She said the detonations happened “when children were supposed to go back to school.”
She added that 13 schools in the camp and nearby areas are shuttered, affecting 5,000 children. The UN agency’s services in the refugee camp have been interrupted for months, and had to be completely halted in early December during the assault by the Palestinian Authority.
UNRWA apparently had no warning of the detonations, as there is no longer contact between its staff and the Israeli military since Israel shuttered the agency’s operations last month.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the bombings “resembled a tactic used in Gaza, where the Israeli military created corridors to divide the enclave.”
Footage of the bombings bore similarities to how Gaza’s skyline looked in the first days and weeks of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the coastal enclave.
Israel says it is destroying infrastructure belonging to armed groups. But Israel’s objectives include widening roads to facilitate the invading troops’ movement through the area.
“They are attempting to divide the camp into several parts. It’s very similar to northern Gaza,” Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Palestinian division in the Israeli military intelligence, told The Wall Street Journal.
Israel has seen “an opportunity to change the physical structure of the camp,” Tel Aviv daily Haaretzreported, citing an unnamed senior military source.
“The policy would enable the army to more easily strike armed militants, who are often able to escape or take shelter in densely built-up areas,” the newspaper added.
One Israeli military analyst gave partial credit to Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank for Israel’s inability to respond to Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.
“The increasingly frequent attacks forced Israel to deploy much of its army in the West Bank. That partly explains why Israel failed to defend its border with Gaza when Hamas attacked,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing Eado Hecht, an Israeli military analyst who teaches at an academy that trains senior Israeli army officers.
Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing members of his government are presenting the Israeli military’s deadly assaults in the West Bank as a continuation of the war in Gaza. The most extreme Israeli ministers opposed last month’s ceasefire in Gaza, which Netanyahu was strongarmed into accepting by US President Donald Trump in the days leading up to his inauguration.
“Genocidal”
The Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq has warned that Israel is using many of the same tactics in the West Bank that it employed throughout its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
“Israel’s genocidal tactics to destroy the Palestinian group are further evident in the West Bank, including Jerusalem,” Al-Haq warned.
The tactics include attacks on hospitals, patients and staff, extensive destruction of Palestinian areas, and the wanton killing of Palestinians.
On the day Israel launched its operation in Jenin, independent UN expert Francesca Albanese issued a similar warning.
“If it is not forced to stop, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians will not be confined to Gaza. Mark my words,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, remarking that 10 Palestinians had been killed in Jenin already.
“The situation in the northern West Bank is a painful reminder of the first weeks that followed 7 October 2023,” Al-Haq stated.
Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz has indicated that the operation draws on lessons from Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli forces prevent ambulances from entering the Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank, on 22 January.ActiveStills
Last month, Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, explicitly called for the same kind of violence Israel has used in Gaza to be inflicted on Jenin.
“Funduq, Nablus and Jenin need to look like Jabaliya,” he said, referring to three Palestinian cities in the northern West Bank and an area in northern Gaza where Israel caused massive destruction over the past 15 months.
In August, Israel Katz – then foreign minister – even explicitly called for Israel to display “the same determination” as in Gaza. He advocated the “temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and any necessary measures.”
These methods are already being applied in Jenin.
Katz suggested recently that the military’s aim is to remove armed resistance from the Jenin refugee camp, so that “terrorism does not return to the camp after the operation is over – the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza.”
Late last month, President Donald Trump raised the prospect of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. Bonnie Cash UPI
It seems that neither Israel nor the US is willing to leave us, the people of Gaza, to exist in peace. Even after the announcement of a fragile ceasefire in the genocidal war perpetrated by the Israeli colonial occupation – backed by American support and brokered with Egyptian and Qatari guarantees – US President Donald Trump made yet another deeply contentious declaration. He proposed to “clean out that whole thing,” suggesting the relocation of “a million and a half” Palestinians to neighboring countries like Jordan and Egypt, framing it as a so-called humanitarian solution.
I read his words twice, trying to grasp the full weight of what he meant by “thing.” It was unmistakable – he was referring to Gaza itself, a land that is home to over two million people who have endured decades of siege, bombardment and forced displacement. To Trump, Gaza is not a place of life, history and resistance but an obstacle to be erased, its people reduced to a problem for the US’ favorite spoiled child to “solve.”
Describing a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Trump called Gaza “a real mess” and said that he urged King Abdullah to take in more Palestinians. He suggested the new arrangement could be temporary or long-term for the displaced, claiming it would allow them to “live in peace for a change.”
“I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people,” he said. However, both Egypt and Jordan rejected the proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza.
This isn’t new. Trump views Gaza not as a homeland but as a real estate problem to be solved. He recently called it a “phenomenal location,” yet at the same time likened it to a “massive demolition site.” His words echo those of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who spoke last year of Gaza’s “valuable” waterfront property as if it were prime land for redevelopment – once its people were conveniently erased.
Defiance and despair
In Gaza, Trump’s proposal was met with both defiance and deep concern. Some dismissed it outright, refusing to take his words seriously, especially after the Israeli military withdrew from most areas of the coastal territory, allowing residents to return to their devastated neighborhoods in northern Gaza. The general sentiment voiced in Gaza was that if they didn’t leave during the bombardments, when the pressure to abandon homes was at its peak, why would they leave now, after the killing has paused?
Others, however, saw his statement as a warning that Gaza’s reconstruction might be deliberately stalled, making it uninhabitable and forcing its residents to leave. Even without direct military action, another kind of war continues – one of deprivation. Severe restrictions on food, medicine, water and fuel have made daily life a battle for survival. Hospitals struggle to function, families wait in endless lines for clean water, and frequent power cuts plunge entire neighborhoods into darkness.
If these conditions persist, staying in Gaza may become an unbearable choice. Parents will face the excruciating decision of watching their children suffer from hunger and illness or leaving behind their homeland. Humanitarian aid – already a lifeline for survival – could be weaponized, conditioned in ways that push for relocation under the guise of necessity. What bombs failed to achieve, creeping desperation might.
Although Egypt and Jordan have so far resisted such proposals, diplomatic efforts could lead to pressure on them to accept Palestinian refugees as part of an international peace settlement.
A long history of forced displacement
On 11 October 2023, when US official John Kirby spoke of “safe passage” for Gazans to flee, my father, sitting in our living room, turned off the radio in disgust. His face darkened, and he waved his hand dismissively. “We will not leave,” he said firmly, as if addressing Kirby himself – or the forces behind the relentless cycles of displacement that have haunted our people for generations.
My father often spoke of his grandfather’s exile in 1948 – the lands lost, the painful separation from his father after the 1967 war. When my grandfather left to work in Egypt, he was never allowed to return. These were not isolated stories but part of a long history of displacement, of families torn apart, of promises broken.
He told me of the 1970s: the expulsion of families from Jabaliya refugee camp when the Israeli military marked the homes of freedom fighters with an X, giving them just 48 hours to leave before their houses were destroyed. Other homes were demolished under the pretext of widening roads – another tactic of forced displacement. One of those families was the Daouds, my father’s neighbors, who came to say goodbye before being forced to Al-Arish in Egypt, uncertain if they would ever return.
This strategy of expelling Palestinians from Gaza is not new. In 1953, a plan negotiated between Egypt and UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, aimed to relocate 60,000 refugees from Gaza to Sinai, backed by $30 million in UNRWA funding. By 1955, as Israeli military raids escalated, the plan gained momentum – but mass protests forced its cancellation.
In 1956-57, Israeli finance minister Levi Eshkol allocated $500,000 to finance the departure of 200 Palestinian refugee families from Gaza. By 1969, Israeli officials were considering measures to lower Gaza’s standard of living vis-à-vis the West Bank in order to encourage out-migration. Under Ariel Sharon’s military command in 1971, Israel destroyed thousands of homes and deported 12,000 civilians to Sinai, many of whom were placed in the “Canada Camp” near the Egyptian border, where they lived in limbo for years. These policies were part of a broader strategy to fragment Palestinian society, reduce the refugee population, and eliminate their political identity, continuing the long history of displacement in Gaza.
Such policies have long shaped Palestinian awareness, reinforcing a collective understanding that displacement is not incidental but deliberate. This is why so many in northern Gaza refused to move south during the recent genocidal war, recognizing the latest so-called evacuation orders as part of a familiar strategy of forced transfer. They knew this wasn’t just about escaping bombardment – it was about resisting erasure.
Similarly, in the south, despite relentless pressure and violence, many chose to remain rather than risk becoming part of another wave of forced exile. They never once considered crossing the border into Egypt. Resistance in Gaza has never been just an individual act; it is a collective stand against a history that demands repetition.
Gaza is not a “thing”
Western colonial powers have long viewed Gaza, and Palestinians more broadly, not as a people with history, culture and agency, but as a population to be controlled, discarded or managed. To them, we are human animals, marginalized and expendable, to be displaced, starved and erased without consequence. Trump’s words – reducing Gaza to a “thing” to “clean out” – are not an anomaly but a clear reflection of this dehumanizing mindset.
Yet history proves them wrong. Gaza is not an object of policy or a mere crisis zone. It is alive with flesh and blood, a land of resistance that has defied every attempt to erase it. Those labeled as refugees have dismantled even the most sophisticated colonial strategies. The people deemed powerless have continuously disrupted the occupier’s best-laid plans.
What we have endured is not just another war or humanitarian catastrophe; it is a systematic effort to break and erase us. And despite everything, they failed. Our losses are immeasurable – great people, entire families, homes, streets and histories etched into the walls of our cities. Dreams and futures have been stolen. But when we saw people return to their destroyed homes on 27 January 2025, stepping over ruins and sifting through the wreckage, it proved that our bond with this land is unbreakable.
As Gaza has thwarted previous plans of forced transfer, it will thwart the current one as well. A place home to mostly Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948 will forever haunt Israel as a curse. And just as Palestinians in Gaza have returned to their northern ruins, one day, they will return to their original hometowns.
This great return march speaks to a deeper truth that even the most powerful armies must now confront. Against advanced weaponry, AI-driven warfare, missiles and an arsenal designed to crush them, the so-called poorest and most marginalized have stood their ground.
Gaza will never return to what it once was – a truth we cannot deny. Perhaps what lies ahead will be even harder, perhaps another war is already forming. But one certainty remains: Our connection to this land is stronger than any force that seeks to sever it. Israel does not understand us. Neither does the United States. For there is a fundamental difference between belonging to a land and occupying it. They believe control comes through domination. We know that true belonging is unbreakable.
Malak Hijazi is a Gaza-based writer.
Trump is a Typical Glorified Real Estate Salesman
6 Feb, 2025 15:59
Russia Today
Israel wants European nations to take displaced Palestinians
Israel wants European nations to take displaced Palestinians
Defense Minister Israel Katz has suggested that countries critical of military action in Gaza should offer refuge to people leaving the enclave
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to prepare a plan to encourage Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza, according to a post he made on X on Thursday.
The minister also suggested that refugees should be taken in by European countries that opposed West Jerusalem’s military action in the enclave. Katz said that it would reveal their “hypocrisy” if these nations declined to accept Gazans.
It follows US President Donald Trump’s remarks on Tuesday that the US would “take over the Gaza Strip” and take charge of reconstruction. He added that Palestinians living there should leave, to be provided for by “neighboring countries of great wealth.”
Katz has praised Trump’s “bold initiative” to relocate Palestinians from Gaza.
US won’t finance Gaza reconstruction after proposed takeover – White House
Among possible destinations, he mentioned Spain, Ireland, and Norway, claiming they have “falsely accused Israel” over its war against the Gaza-based Hamas militant group and therefore are “legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory.”
Commenting on Katz’s remarks, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares has rejected the suggestion that Spain should accept displaced people from Gaza.
”Spain makes decisions sovereignly and independently. No third party should tell us what to do,” Albares told broadcaster RNE.
The minister stressed that “Gazans’ land is Gaza” and that “Gaza should be part of the future Palestinian state.” He added that the debate about whether Palestinians should leave Gaza is “closed,” and Spain “is introducing our humanitarian aid as much as possible to help the people.”
Ireland, which formally recognized Palestine as a state last year, also rejected Katz’s comments about receiving war refugees.
In an emailed statement to Reuters, the Irish Foreign Department stressed that “The objective must be a massive scale-up of aid into Gaza, return of basic services and a clear framework under which those displaced can return,” adding that “any comments to the contrary are unhelpful and a source of distraction.”
Israeli official shares PHOTO of ‘golden Hezbollah pager’ gifted to Trump
An Israeli official has confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented US President Donald Trump with a gold-plated pager during their meeting at the White House on Tuesday. Dmitry Gendelman, an adviser to Netanyahu’s office, clarified that the device was a reference to Israel’s covert operation against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon last autumn.
Sharing a picture of the gift in a Telegram post on Thursday, Gendelman said Netanyahu had given Trump a “gilded pager,” explaining that the device “symbolizes the prime minister’s decision that led to a turning point in the war, and became the starting point for undermining morale within Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
Israeli media first published reports about the unusual gift earlier this week, claiming that Trump had described the September wave of explosions in Lebanon as a “tremendous operation.” The US president also reportedly gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of their meeting, inscribed with the message: “To Bibi, a great leader.”
Israel carried out the operation on September 17, when thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon as well as in parts of neighboring Syria, followed by the mass detonations of hundreds of walkie-talkies the next day. The blasts left at least 42 people dead, with 12 civilians among them, and more than 3,500 injured, including women and children.
In the aftermath, Israel intensified its military campaign against Hezbollah, killing its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah in a September 27 airstrike on Beirut. In November, Netanyahu publicly claimed responsibility for the pager operation.
In December, CBS cited two recently retired senior Mossad agents as reporting that the Israeli intelligence agency had spent more than a decade preparing the covert operation. Mossad supposedly first shipped a number of walkie-talkies with explosive batteries to Hezbollah through an elaborate chain of shell companies. Some time later, Israeli spies devised a similar plan involving pagers, according to the media outlet.
In the wake of the attack, UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Turk characterized it as a “shocking” and “unacceptable” act that violated human rights laws.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly in late September, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “another glaring example of terrorist methods as a means of achieving political aims is the inhumane attack on Lebanon that transformed civilian technology into a lethal weapon.” The diplomat also spoke in favor of an immediate international investigation at the time.
Trump merely completes the annihilation of Palestine and its people under his “Make America Great Again,” MAGA Palestine Policy
Trump-Zionist Gaza Genocide Ethnic Cleansing to be Completed by Trump
Trump is a Typical Glorified Real Estate Salesman
Related news:
5 Feb, 2025 00:24
Russia Today
Trump says US will ‘take over’ Gaza
US President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will assume control over the Gaza Strip, promising to rebuild the war-torn enclave and create economic opportunities for its future residents. Trump made the remarks on Tuesday following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Trump reiterated his view that Palestinians should be permanently resettled elsewhere but added that the US would “take over” Gaza and lead efforts to clear the destruction.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip. And we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,” Trump said, promising to “level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings.”
“The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative,” Trump argued. “This is just a demolition site… They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again.”
The US president claimed that his initiative would “create economic development that will provide unlimited jobs and housing for the people of the area – to do a real job, to do something different.”
Approximately 92% of homes in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or severely damaged, and around 1.9 million people – more than 90% of Gaza’s population – have been displaced since the war broke out in October 2023, according to the UN. Trump, a former real estate mogul, has repeatedly referred to Gaza as a “demolition site” in recent weeks.
Source:
Trump says US will ‘take over’ Gaza — RT World News
Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump's White House adviser and son-in-law, called the waterfront property in Gaza "very valuable" during a discussion about the Middle East at Harvard University back in February. Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin joins CNN's Kailtan Collins to talk about the implications.
04:03 - Source: CNN
Jared Kushner and the Award That’s Not Good for the Jews
Palestinians should relocate to a ‘beautiful’ place – Trump
President Donald Trump, during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, proposed the permanent resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, describing the area as a “demolition site” unfit for habitation.
The meeting took place amid a fragile six-week ceasefire in Gaza, following 15 months of conflict between Israel and Hamas. According to the UN, around 1.9 million people – more than 90% of Gaza’s population – have been displaced since the war broke out in October 2023.
“You can’t live in Gaza right now, and I think we need another location. I think it should be a location that’s going to make people happy,” Trump said at his joint press conference with Netanyahu. “If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes, where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza.”
Approximately 92% of homes in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or severely damaged, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Trump, a former real estate mogul, has repeatedly referred to Gaza as a “demolition site” in recent weeks.
“I mean, there’s hardly a building standing, and the ones that are are going to collapse,” Trump said, also warning of “a very dangerous situation in terms of explosives all over the place.”
Trump suggested that nations such as Jordan and Egypt should host displaced Palestinians, despite these countries previously explicitly rejecting such “direct expulsion or coerced migration.” These actions would “threaten the region’s stability, risk expanding the conflict, and undermine prospects for peace and coexistence among its peoples,” said a joint statement by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League on Saturday.
Netanyahu did not comment on Trump’s proposal but expressed gratitude for the US president’s involvement in the Gaza ceasefire, acknowledging his “great force and powerful leadership” in facilitating the agreement. He also outlined Israel’s objectives moving forward: securing the release of all hostages, destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.
Around 47,500 Palestinians have been killed and over 111,500 wounded during the 15 months of Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to the latest data from the enclave’s Health Ministry. Although the sides agreed to a ceasefire on January 15, Israel has since accused Hamas of violating a prisoner swap arrangement and halted the return of Gazans to their home in the northern part of the enclave. Both sides have also accused each other of ceasefire violations.
The Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, rejected Trump’s proposal, stating that Palestinians “want to rebuild Gaza because this is where we belong.”
“For those who want to send the Palestinian people to a ‘nice place,’ allow them to go back to their original homes in what is now Israel,” Mansour said.
Hamas officials also condemned Trump’s suggestion, calling it “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region” and vowing to resist any displacement efforts. “Our people in the Gaza Strip will not allow these plans to pass. What is required is an end to the occupation and aggression against our people, not their expulsion from their land,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Trump’s vision for Palestine: No Palestinians
The US president has kicked off his new term with another ‘peace initiative’ that is really just a gift for Israel
Once again, US President Donald Trump has waded into the Palestinian issue, proposing radical solutions from a staunchly pro-Israel stance. The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which came into effect on January 19, is set to last 42 days, during which both sides have committed to negotiating further steps towards a resolution. However, the US president expressed skepticism about its longevity, noting the scale of destruction in Gaza.
According to Trump, Gaza has been so thoroughly devastated that it needs to be rebuilt in an entirely different manner. He suggested that Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan should take in more Palestinian refugees to help bring order to the region. During discussions with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Trump conveyed his desire for the kingdom to accommodate more people, describing the situation in Gaza as “a complete mess.” He also intends to raise the issue with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Trump views the relocation of Gaza’s residents to Arab countries as a temporary or even long-term solution. He believes it could offer Palestinians a “fresh start” and contribute to regional stability. However, official Jordanian sources, when commenting on his statement, did not mention the refugee issue – an omission that reflects the reception of Trump’s proposals in the Arab world.
According to UN data, Jordan already hosts more than 2.39 million Palestinian refugees, while the total number worldwide is around 5.9 million. The prospect of further relocation raises serious concerns within the international community, as well as among Arab states, which have traditionally advocated for resolving the conflict through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Nevertheless, Trump, adhering to his pro-Israel stance, continues to push for his own vision of a settlement – one that could dramatically reshape the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
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Additionally, Trump criticized the approach of the administration of former US President Joe Biden, arguing that the lack of a clear strategy led to a further escalation of the conflict. He claimed that during his previous term in office, the US maintained a tougher stance against Palestinian movements, which, in his view, kept the situation under control. Trump also recalled his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the US Embassy there – an action that provoked a strong backlash from the Arab world but was warmly welcomed by the Israeli government.
Furthermore, the president noted that a potential resettlement of Palestinians could be carried out with international support, including financial backing from the US and its allies. However, this idea has already met resistance from several nations concerned about the destabilizing effects of mass migration and the economic burden on host countries.
Thus, Trump’s position on the Palestinian issue remains exceedingly rigid and overwhelmingly focused on Israel’s interests. Rather than supporting the creation of an independent Palestinian state, he envisions a drastic demographic shift in the region – an approach that has sparked intense debate within the international community and among Arab leaders.
‘The deal of the century’ – Trump’s first failed attempt
In January 2020, during his first term as president, Trump unveiled his ambitious plan to resolve one of the longest-standing and most complex conflicts of modern times – the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Dubbed the “deal of the century” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was presented as an unprecedented opportunity to achieve peace and stability in the region. Officially called ‘Peace to Prosperity’, the plan was part of Trump’s broader effort to redefine traditional Middle Eastern diplomacy. The unveiling took place in a grand ceremony at the White House and was attended by Netanyahu. The Palestinian leadership was not even invited to the discussion – an omission that immediately sparked criticism, as no peace agreement can succeed without the participation of both sides.
Under the terms of the plan, Israel was granted significant strategic and territorial advantages. Jerusalem was officially recognized as Israel’s “undivided and eternal capital,” contradicting previous international agreements and directly opposing Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. While the proposal nominally offered Palestine statehood, it came with severe restrictions on its sovereignty. The envisioned Palestinian state was to be demilitarized, with no control over its borders or airspace, and large portions of the West Bank would remain under Israeli control. In exchange, Palestinians were offered land in the Negev Desert – an arid and largely uninhabitable region with little potential for agriculture or development. The plan also promised a $50 billion investment into the Palestinian economy, intended to boost infrastructure, business, and social programs as compensation for territorial losses.
The response to the proposal was predictable. Israel welcomed it enthusiastically, with Netanyahu calling it a historic step toward security and prosperity. However, Palestinians viewed it as nothing short of an act of surrender and rejected it outright. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the plan, declaring that the ‘deal of the century’ was not a peace proposal, but an imposed capitulation that disregarded the rights of the Palestinian people. He insisted that Palestinians would never accept conditions unilaterally dictated by the US and Israel. In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, tensions in the region escalated, with mass protests erupting across Palestinian territories and several militant groups vowing retaliation.
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The international response to the plan was deeply divided. The EU questioned its viability, saying it contradicted previous peace initiatives and UN resolutions in support of a two-state solution. The UN reiterated that any peace negotiations must involve the full consent of both parties rather than being imposed from the outside. However, some Gulf nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, cautiously welcomed the initiative as an early sign of the diplomatic shifts that later led to the normalization of relations between these states and Israel.
Despite grand proclamations and Israeli support, the ‘deal of the century’ ultimately remained unrealized. The Palestinian leadership refused to engage, and mounting international pressure made implementation impossible. However, the mere existence of the plan left a lasting impact on Middle Eastern politics. It accelerated the transformation of regional alliances and helped Israel strengthen its global standing. In the end, a proposal intended to bring peace only underscored the depth of divisions and the formidable challenges in resolving a conflict that has remained one of the most intractable issues in global politics for decades.
What is the true message behind these initiatives?
Trump’s initiatives reveal that his efforts to address the Palestinian issue were never about finding a fair or balanced solution for all sides. Instead, his policies were centered on strengthening Israel’s position and forging a solid alliance between the Jewish state and key US allies in the Middle East. At the heart of this strategy were the Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration in 2020. These agreements were hailed as a historic breakthrough in Middle Eastern diplomacy, leading to the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. The US promoted these accords as a step toward peace and stability, but in reality, they served three major strategic objectives: Legitimizing Israel in the region by breaking its diplomatic isolation, building an anti-Iran bloc by aligning pro-American Arab states with Israel, and minimizing US military costs by encouraging regional allies to take on greater security responsibilities.
However, the greatest flaw of the Abraham Accords was their complete disregard for the Palestinian issue. Palestinians were left on the losing side, as Israel’s normalization with Arab states took place without fulfilling the long-standing demand for Palestinian statehood. This signaled that, for many Arab governments, the Palestinian cause was no longer a priority, though among the general public, support for Palestine remained strong. One of Trump’s key ambitions was to bring Saudi Arabia into the accords, given its status as the most influential Arab nation and a longtime US ally. While Riyadh maintained informal ties with Israel, it refused to officially sign the agreements, insisting that normalization could only happen once the Palestinian issue was resolved. In response, the Trump administration attempted to entice Saudi Arabia with security guarantees and advanced US weapons, including F-35 fighter jets.
Trump’s broader vision was to establish a Middle Eastern equivalent of NATO, a US-led regional alliance that would reduce Washington’s military spending while integrating Israeli military technology into the defense strategies of Arab states. However, despite growing ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, official recognition never materialized due to deep-rooted political and ideological barriers. At the governmental level, nations that signed the accords justified their decision with economic and strategic interests. However, public opinion proved far more complex, as the Arab street remained overwhelmingly sympathetic to Palestinians and largely opposed to open cooperation with Israel. The Palestinian issue continues to hold significant emotional and political weight in the Arab world, despite attempts by some governments to downplay its relevance.
Ukraine’s ‘independent’ institutions collapse as Trump unplugs the ATM
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Trump’s policies faced several fundamental challenges. First, ignoring the Palestinian question only fueled resentment and radicalization across the Arab world. Second, any sudden shift toward Israel risked triggering mass protests within Arab nations, threatening the stability of ruling regimes. Third, the Jerusalem issue remained an explosive topic for Muslims globally, given its status as Islam’s third holiest site. Finally, strengthening Israel and its pro-American allies risked further empowering Iran and its network of regional partners, escalating tensions and potentially leading to renewed conflicts.
Trump remains the most pro-Israel president in American history, aligning himself with the far-right Israeli agenda, particularly that of Netanyahu. He did not merely support Israel but actively enabled its expansionist ambitions, legitimizing the annexation of the Golan Heights, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and proposing a peace plan that overwhelmingly favored Israeli interests while undermining Palestinian sovereignty. The core weakness of his approach was his reliance on financial incentives rather than meaningful diplomatic reconciliation. He assumed that Arab nations could be bought into accepting Israeli dominance through economic investments and trade deals. However, while Arab elites may be pragmatic, the broader Arab-Muslim world remains unwilling to abandon the Palestinian cause in exchange for economic benefits alone.
Ultimately, Trump’s strategy for resolving the Palestinian issue amounted to removing it from the global agenda, replacing it with diplomatic deals that primarily benefited Israel and its allies. However, this did not resolve the root causes of the conflict – it merely exposed the short-sighted nature of Washington’s strategic vision. While the US hopes to create a Middle Eastern NATO that secures its interests, the long-term sustainability of this project remains uncertain. Tensions in the region remain high, and the Palestinian issue remains a ticking time bomb – one that will inevitably resurface and demand the world’s attention once again.
Trump says US will take 'take over' Gaza: 'We'll own it'
He said the U.S. would "level the site" and create "an economic development."
WASHINGTON -- In a stunning proposal, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. will "take over" the Gaza Strip, "level the site" and rebuild it, after earlier saying Palestinians living there should leave.
"They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony" in other areas or countries, he said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out," he said.
"Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area," he added. "Do a real job. Do something different."
President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
"We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly, bad luck," he said. "This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 12. It could be numerous sites, or it could be one large site," he said.
"But the people will be able to live in comfort and peace and will get sure -- we'll make sure something really spectacular is done. They're going to have peace. They're not going to be shot at and killed and destroyed like this civilization of -- of wonderful people has had to endure. The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative," he said.
"I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East. And everybody I have spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly," he continued. "Everybody I have spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know."
Asked who would live there, Trump responded, "the world's people," saying, "the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable."
"History, as you know, just can't let it keep repeating itself. We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so ... magnificent," he said.
Earlier, in the Oval Office, when he also raised the idea, a reporter asked if Palestinians relocated would have the right to return.
"Why would they want to return?" he responded.
"It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn't want to return," he said. Why would they want to return? That place has been hell. It's been one of the meanest, one of the meanest, toughest places on earth," he said.
Asked about sending U.S. troops to Gaza, Trump appeared open to the possibility.
"As far as Gaza is concerned, we'll do what is necessary. If it's necessary, we'll do that," Trump said. "We're going to take over that place and we're going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs."
Netanyahu, delivering remarks after Trump, praised the president for his "fresh ideas" to accomplish their goals, which he said included ensuring Gaza is not a threat to Israel.
"I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas will help us achieve all these goals," he said.
Asked if his view that Palestinians should be relocated from Gaza is a sign that he is against the two-state policy that has been the foreign policy approach of the United States for decades, Trump said no.
"It doesn't mean anything about a two-state or one state or any other state. It means that we want to have, we want to give people a chance at life," he said. "They have never had a chance at life because the Gaza Strip has been a hellhole for people living there. It's been horrible."
The president argued that his proposal would benefit the Middle East as a whole and not only Israel.
"I have to stress, this is not for Israel," he said. "This is for everybody in the Middle East. Arabs, Muslims, this is for everybody. You have to learn from history. You can't keep doing the same mistake over and over again. Gaza is a hellhole right now," he said.
"I've studied it. I've studied this very closely over a lot of months, and I've seen it from every different angle," he said. "And it's a very, very dangerous place to be. And it's only going to get worse. And I think this is an idea that's gotten tremendous -- and I'm talking about from the highest level of leadership -- gotten tremendous praise."
He said he had "a feeling" that despite Jordan's king and Egypt's president opposing his idea to "clean out" Gaza and have them take in Palestinians, they "will open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done. And people can live in harmony and peace," he said, as the news conference ended.
Source:
Trump says US will take 'take over' Gaza: 'We'll own it' - ABC7 New York
Elon Musk, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Yair Netanyahu were reported to have met on February 4, 2025, in an elegant setting
Elon Musk, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Yair Netanyahu were reported to have met on February 4, 2025, in an elegant setting, as evidenced by multiple social media posts and images. The meeting has sparked various interpretations, from viewing it as a diplomatic engagement to discussions potentially involving AI and antisemitism, though exact details remain unconfirmed.
Source:
Elon Musk Meets Netanyahu and Son: Diplomatic or Tech Talk? / X
Here’s why Trump really wants to get his hands on Greenland and Canada
What if the American president’s seemingly outlandish claims on serve a higher purpose?
By Constantin von Hoffmeister, a political and cultural commentator from Germany, author of the new book ‘MULTPOLARITY!’, and editor-in-chief of Arktos Publishing
In a world caught between ecological limits and technological ambition, the revival of the long-dormant vision of the Technate suggests that America’s future may be shaped not by traditional geopolitics but by the pursuit of industrial autarky, resource control, and the promise of a self-sustaining technocratic order.
It was an unexpected move, bewildering analysts across the globe. After securing victory in the election, Donald Trump did not immediately focus on perceived strategic rivals like China, Russia, or Iran, as the geopolitical forecasters had so confidently predicted. Instead, his gaze settled on Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal – territories that, at first glance, seemed disconnected from the expected choreography of American foreign policy ambitions. This pivot raised a chorus of speculation and debate. Many theories were put forward. Yet, among the multitude of explanations, only one has managed to weave together the strands of Trump’s apparent unpredictability into a coherent narrative. This theory traces the logic of these moves back to a long-forgotten vision of a technocratic society that emerged in the early 20th century within the United States.
As Israel continues to pound Gaza into dust, MintPress compiles some of the most genocidal statements made by senior Israeli officials, proving that their intent is to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its population.
The United States has handed Israel, one of the richest countries in the world, an average of $3.5 billion a year in "Aid" for the past 70 years The Palestinians, meanwhile, have received less than $1.7 billion a year from across the entirety of all international donors.
source: (5) Chay Bowes on X: "The United States has handed Israel, one of the richest countries in the world, an average of $3.5 billion a year in "Aid" for the past 70 years The Palestinians, meanwhile, have received less than $1.7 billion a year from across the entirety of all international donors. https://t.co/KV7GOKpJve" / X (twitter.com)
Netanyahu's son hides in Florida during Gaza war Yair Netanyahu, aged 32 and the son of Benjamin Netanyahu, hides discreetly within a luxurious Florida high-rise, where the monthly rent amounts to $5,000. Yair is protected by Israeli Shin Bet bodyguards stationed at his apartment.
Source: (5) MintPress News on X: "Netanyahu's son hides in Florida during Gaza war Yair Netanyahu, aged 32 and the son of Benjamin Netanyahu, hides discreetly within a luxurious Florida high-rise, where the monthly rent amounts to $5,000. Yair is protected by Israeli Shin Bet bodyguards stationed at his… https://t.co/eS4fb1iFJo" / X (twitter.com)
Source: MintPress News on X: "Criminal accusations are being filed against Israeli President Isaac Herzog while he is in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. https://t.co/hbatjoMVwO" / X (twitter.com)
Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 on X: "It doesn't matter who you vote for. https://t.co/hufiwIpL4L" / X
Out of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, 1.7 million are now displaced…
US sent targeting officers to help Israel bomb Gaza in November 2023
The Intercept has reported that documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that Biden provided Israel with US Air Force officers who helped target Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
Mintpress News
“People are trying to flee because they’re fleeing death. They’re literally trapped in a killing field"
US-backed Zionist Gaza Genocide Operation Continues with Impunity & Immunity as World Community Watches in Horror.
US Administration Complicit in Gaza Genocid
US Legal System Turns a Blind Eye to Mass Slaugher.
The administration didn’t dispute there’s an ongoing genocide, writes Marjorie Cohn. But the three-judge appeals panel appeared unmoved by the plaintiffs’ contentions the Biden administration is complicit in Israel’s genocide.
U.S. President Joe Biden arriving at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, to deliver the commencement address on May 25. (White House /Erin Scott)
A lawsuit accusing U.S. President Joe Biden and some of his top officials of complicity in genocide had its latest hearing this month after being dismissed earlier in the year.
On June 10, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard arguments in the plaintiffs’ appeal in Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden.
The lawsuit was filed on Nov. 13, 2023, by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) and Al-Haq, as well as three Palestinian individuals who live in Gaza and five Palestinian Americans who have family in Gaza.
“It is unfathomable that we are still here today,” plaintiff Waeil Elbhassi said at a press conference following the appellate argument.
Although CCR filed this lawsuit in November, “the genocide continues with the same intensity, with the same cruelty,” he noted, adding that many more of his relatives have been murdered in the last six months. “People are trying to flee because they’re fleeing death. They’re literally trapped in a killing field,” he said.
The plaintiffs allege that Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are engaging in complicity in genocide and failure to prevent genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention and customary international law, which is part of federal common law.
“ ‘People are trying to flee because they’re fleeing death. They’re literally trapped in a killing field,’ ” plaintiff Waeil Elbhassisaid.
Plaintiffs are asking the court to issue an injunction preventing the Biden administration from sending money and weapons to Israel and from obstructing international efforts to implement a ceasefire in Gaza.
They also want the court to order the Biden administration to exert influence over Israel to end its bombing of Gaza, lift the siege of Gaza and prevent the forcible transfer and expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. And they seek a declaration from the court that defendants are violating their duty under customary international law that prohibits complicity in genocide and requires them to prevent Israel from committing genocide.
In an earlier hearing on Jan. 26, U.S. District Judge Judge Jeffrey White characterized the testimony he heard from the Palestinian and Palestinian American plaintiffs as “truly horrific, gut wrenching, no words to describe it.” He noted that the government did not dispute the uncontradicted evidence of a “genocide in progress.”
“The Palestinian people are living in fear and without food, medical care, clean water or sufficient humanitarian aid,” White said. “Defendants — the president of the United States and his secretaries of state and defense — have provided substantial military, financial and diplomatic support to Israel.”
Blinken, Biden and Austin at a press event in January 2023. (White House, Cameron Smith)
Nevertheless, on Jan. 31, White reluctantly dismissed the case based on the “political question” doctrine, which reserves foreign policy decisions to the political branches of government (executive and legislative), not the judiciary. That leaves the court with no jurisdiction to check the executive in this case.
At the same time, White wrote, “it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide” and the evidence and testimony “indicate that the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people.” White exhorted the Biden administration to “examine the results of their unflagging support” of Israel.
Not a ‘Political Question’
In the appeal, CCR argued the court could make a finding that the defendants are engaging in complicity to commit genocide and failure to prevent genocide without making a foreign policy decision.
The defendants have a legal duty to refrain from genocide, so the political question doctrine does not prevent the court from examining the Biden administration’s provision of military, financial and diplomatic assistance to Israel’s genocide.
“Plaintiffs reject Defendants’ suggestion that international embarrassment can come only from questioning conduct of an ally, Israel, and not instead from the U.S.’ open breach of its international law obligations to prevent, and not further, a genocide, an obligation reaffirmed by the [International Court of Justice],” CCR wrote in the appellant’s reply brief.
“Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice,” CCR Senior Staff Attorney Katherine Gallagher told Circuit Judges Jacqueline Nguyen, Daniel Bress and Consuelo Maria Callahan during the June 10 argument. This case is about whether the judicial branch is “powerless” when the executive branch violates international law, she said.
“ ‘Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice,’ ” CCR Senior Staff Attorney Katherine Gallagher told the judges.”
The Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,” including killing members of the group, inflicting serious bodily or mental harm on members of the group, or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part. The International Court of Justice found a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide.
The Genocide Convention also forbids complicity in genocide and imposes a duty to prevent genocide, which is erga omnes — binding on all countries. Individuals can be complicit in genocide by knowingly providing assistance for its commission even if they don’t share the perpetrator’s specific intent to commit genocide.
South Africa presenting its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice at the Hague on Jan. 12. (ICJ, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Genocide also violates customary international law and is considered a jus cogens prohibition, which means no country can ever legalize it.
But the three-judge panel appeared unmoved by the plaintiffs’ contentions.
Callahan, a George W. Bush appointee, asked Gallagher whether a federal court would be “second guessing” U.S. ally Israel if it opined in this case. Bress, a Trump appointee, worried that the court would be “running the U.S. military.” Nguyen, an Obama appointee, was concerned that the court would have to “condemn the foreign policy choices of the political branch.”
Gallagher replied that the judicial branch can review executive conduct to ensure it complies with the law. “Here, reviewing executive conduct — whether it is aiding and abetting the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part — it is the responsibility of the court to review that conduct against clearly established definition of genocide, of complicity in genocide,” she said. “The Supreme Court made clear that even in moments of crisis, the executive is still bound by law.”
She cited four cases in which the Supreme Court set limits on executive actions during the George W. Bush administration’s “war on terror,” including Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, where the court reaffirmed that “a state of war is not a blank check for the president.”
‘Blank Check’ to Slaughter Civilian Population?
Israel forces operating in the eastern neighborhood of Rafah in Gaza, on May 8. (IDF, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Plaintiff Ahmed Abu Artema participated in the post-hearing press conference by audio from Gaza. In October, the Israeli military targeted his house and killed six members of his family, including his 13-year-old son Abdallah.
“I was so consumed by agony that I could scarcely feel the pain of the second-degree burns covering my own body,” he said. Israeli forces blew up Abu Artema’s apartment in Khan Yunis. “I am now, like everyone else in Gaza, homeless…. I sleep on sidewalks or what used to be sidewalks.”
Baher Azmy, CCR’s legal director, called the plaintiffs “incredibly courageous,” noting that they “collectively have lost hundreds of family members in the ongoing genocide.” Azmy said the U.S. is sending “billions of dollars of weapons of mass slaughter, starvation and destruction” that are “intentionally and knowingly used on a civilian population for the purpose of effectuating the genocidal campaign to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
The Biden administration didn’t dispute that there’s an ongoing genocide. “After all, how could they?” Azmy asked. “It is open and notorious.” The question is whether the courts will give the government “a blank check to slaughter a civilian population.” Ultimately, he said, “this administration will no doubt be condemned for their cowardice and for their complicity.”
Plaintiff Ayman Nijim noted that since Gaza is among the most densely populated areas in the world — and children make up 52 percent of the population — “you know you will hit children” when Israel drops its bombs. Nijim’s family members were forcibly displaced in 1948 from their home in the northern village of Asdod and have been refugees in Gaza since. They are hosting more than 120 members of their extended family who have fled northern Gaza.
Last week, plaintiff Basim Elkarra lost 10 family members in one attack. More than 90 of his relatives have been killed. Many are still missing, he said.
“Today we heard the Biden administration’s lawyer say, ‘We can commit genocide without any kind of accountability, there’s no check on us, no law, when we decide the policy we want to support is genocidal,’” Gallagher stated. “That’s a terrifying proposition.”
“Last week, plaintiff Basim Elkarra lost 10 family members in one attack. More than 90 of his relatives have been killed. Many are still missing, he said.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson, a Trump appointee, agreed to recuse himself from this case after the plaintiffs learned he was one of 14 U.S. judges who participated in a March visit to Israel sponsored by the World Jewish Congress.
The delegation, which met with Israeli legal and military officials, “was explicitly designed to influence U.S. judicial opinion regarding the legality of ongoing Israeli military action against Palestinians — a core question on appeal of this case,” plaintiffs wrote in their motion to disqualify Nelson. Callahan replaced Nelson on the three-judge panel.
CCR hopes the Ninth Circuit will issue a decision in the next couple of months. If the panel rules against the plaintiffs, CCR will likely ask the entire appeals court to hear the case en banc, which requires the agreement of a majority of the 30-judge court. If that petition is denied, or if it’s granted and CCR loses after an en banc hearing, they can file a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
This article is from Truthout and reprinted with permission.
Here’s why the ICJ ruling on genocide is a crushing defeat for Israel
The Hague-based court has not called for a ceasefire and has no enforcement power, but its decision is resounding nonetheless
Source: RT.com
28 Jan, 2024 13:09
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian and expert on international politics.
The United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled on the case that South Africa has brought against Israel. Those who mistake realism for simplistic materialism – the ‘it’s only there if I can touch it’ variety – may underestimate the significance of that ruling. In reality, it is historic. Here’s why.
First, and most importantly, the court has ruled against Israel. South Africa’s well-prepared brief was over 80 pages long, closely argued, and very detailed. But its gist was simple: It had applied to the ICJ – which only handles cases between countries, not individuals – to find that Israel is committing genocide in its attack on Gaza, thereby infringing on fundamental Palestinian rights as brutally as possible.
Such a finding always takes years. For now, at this preliminary stage, South Africa’s immediate request was for the judges to decide that there is, in essence, a high enough probability of this genocide taking place to do two things: First, continue the case (instead of dismissing it) and, secondly, issue an injunction (in this context called “preliminary measures”) ordering Israel to abstain from its genocidal actions so that the rights of its Palestinian victims receive due protection.
The court has done both, with a majority of 15 to 2. One of the two judges dissenting is from Israel. Those voting, in effect, against Tel Aviv* included even the president of the court, from the US, and the judge from Germany, a country that has taken a self-damagingly pro-Israel line. As to the Israeli pseudo-argument claiming ‘self-defense,’ the court rightly ignored it. (Occupying powers simply do not have that right regarding occupied entities under international law. Period.)
This is a clear victory for South Africa – and for Palestine and Palestinians – and a crushing defeat for Israel, as even Kenneth Roth, head of thoroughly pro-Western Human Rights Watch recognizes with commendable clarity.
It is true that the ICJ has no power to enforce its rulings. That would have to come through the UN Security Council, where the US is protecting Israel, whatever it does, including genocide. Yet there are good reasons why representatives of Israel have reacted with statements so arrogant and aggressive that they only further damage Tel Aviv’s badly damaged international standing:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, has displayed his legal nihilism by dismissing as “outrageous” the closely reasoned finding of the court, at which Israel had every opportunity to argue its case. Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security, convicted racist and terrorist supporter Itamar Ben-Gvir, has derided the ruling with an X post simply saying: “Hague schmague.”
And, of course, as always, everyone not toeing Israel’s line is smeared as an “antisemite”: The ICJ is now joining the UN, the World Health Organization and, by now, almost everyone and everything outside the ideological bubble of Zionism on the list of those slandered in this manner. (One side effect of this rampant abuse of the accusation of antisemitism is, of course, that soon it won’t be taken seriously anymore, even when it should. And we will have Israel to thank for that.)
Notwithstanding the ICJ’s lack of an army to compel Tel Aviv to obey the law, these outbursts of rage betray great fear. You may ask why. After all, the one thing the ICJ did not do was order a ceasefire. Some commenters have focused on that fact, to argue – gleefully on the side of Israel and its allies, with great disappointment on the side of Israel’s victims, opponents, and critics – that this vitiates the ruling.
They are wrong. As, for instance, the Palestinian legal expert Nimer Sultany (based at the London School of Oriental and Asian Studies) has explained, a direct ceasefire order was always unlikely. There are several reasons for that: The ICJ cannot issue such an order to Hamas, so issuing one to Israel alone would have been difficult in principle and, by the way, would also have provided ammunition for Israeli propaganda. Since only the UN Security Council could give teeth to the ICJ’s ruling, trying to decree such a one-sided ceasefire would have made it easier for the US to sabotage the Council by discrediting the court’s ruling as biased. Although it was consistent for South Africa to ask for a ceasefire at the ICJ, the best institution to order one is still the Security Council. And it is plausible to interpret the specific demands that the ICJ has made of Israel as practicable only under an official or de-facto ceasefire. Indeed, Arab countries are now, it seems, gearing up to take that position and use the court’s ruling to demand a ceasefire at the Security Council. This may very well fail again, but even that failure will serve to weaken the position of the US, Israel’s vital sponsor.
Beyond the issue of the ceasefire, there are other – and, from an Israeli perspective, probably more frightening – factors. For even if the US keeps shielding Israel, this is a bigger world. Western governments and politicians that have supported Tel Aviv unconditionally – with arms, diplomatic and public-relations cover, and by repressing Israel’s critics – will feel a chill: The UN Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute don’t just condemn perpetrating a genocide but also not preventing or being complicit in one.
With the ICJ now having confirmed at the very least that genocide is probable enough to merit a case and require immediate action, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Annalena Baerbock, to name only a few, should start worrying: While the ICJ does not go after individuals, the International Criminal Court (ICC) does. Despite dragging its feet as much as it could, it is now especially likely to be compelled to open a full-fledged investigation.
In addition, cases can also be brought under national jurisdictions. All of this will take years. But it could end very badly for hubris-addled Western politicians who never imagined that such charges could escape their control (where they serve as politicized tools to go after African leaders and geopolitical opponents) and become their very own, potentially life-changing problem. In sum, the cost of siding with Israel has gone up. Not all but most politicians are solid opportunists. Tel Aviv will find it harder to mobilize its friends.
It is true that some Western governments and leaders, for instance, Canada or Rishi Sunak, have hurried to show their disdain for international law by attacking the ICJ’s ruling. But there’s an element of desperate bravado, of whistling in a darkening forest. And there’s a Catch-22 as well: Because, the more representatives of the West display their arrogance, the more they alienate the world. They may think that they are relieving Israel’s isolation. In reality, they are joining it on its downward trajectory: They are showing, once again, that their touted “rules-based order” is the opposite of the equal rule of international law for all.
Non-Western powers like China and Russia that have long resisted the hypocrisy of that ‘rules-based order’ and are not complicit in Israel’s atrocities, are earning global good will and geopolitical advantage. Hence, their positions and strategy will be confirmed by the ICJ ruling. This, as well, will weaken Israel further in the international arena.
If the world is bigger than the US or the West, it also contains much more than politics in the narrow sense of the term. In the realm of narratives, this is also a harsh setback for Israel and its supporters: Those who arrogantly dismissed the South African case as baseless or “a mockery,” for instance in The Economist, are now paying with their credibility. Their value as weapons in Israel’s struggle for global public opinion is reduced.
Last but not least, the domains of politics and narratives intersect, of course, with that of war: It is inevitable that those fighting Israel with arms will feel encouraged, and rightly so. For forces such as the Palestinian Resistance, the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement de facto ruling Yemen, Hezbollah, and Iran, this ICJ ruling coincides with Israel’s military failure in Gaza: For while its troops have massacred civilians (and obsessively recorded proud evidence of their crimes that is now coming to haunt them), they are far from either “eradicating Hamas” (the putative war aim) or freeing the hostages by force. Seeing that Israel’s international isolation is getting worse, its opponents will have ever less reason to give up.
This, in short, was a great setback for Israel. Its political model, combining apartheid, militarism, and a might-makes-right outlook, is not ‘working’ any longer, not even on its own terms. The future is not predictable. That Israel will be in worsening trouble is.
*Russia recognizes West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as shown on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Consular Department website
14,854 civilians killed
6,150 children have been killed
4,000 women have been killed
7,000 people remain unaccounted for,
including more than 4,700 children 36,000 people have been injured
Genocide Joe’s Secretary of State, Blinken, states the obvious consequence of US’s support for the Zionist genocide state’s ethnic cleansing policy which the US taxpayer has been paying for annually to the tune of $3 Billion.
US-Mideast Proxy Zionist "Israel" along with its Collaborating Axis Allies, United States and NATO member States now committing and/or allowing to commit mass war crimes and crimes against humanity against the People of Palestine.
Thus, Zionist Israeli state terrorist regime has no right of self-defense as an Illegal Occupying Power.
Its Obligation as Occupying Power is the Protection of the Occupied Peoples, and their Lands and Personal Property has historically been forfeited:
As an illegal Occupying Colonizing Power the Zionist racist Apartheid state terror regime has violently and systematically violated its Obligation as Occupying Power through an historical pattern of Ethnic Cleansing Policies starting at least with the Plan Dalet in 1947 and beyond to violently, coercively mass murder, torture, steal private properties and indigenous lands among other outrages and crimes against humanity, which means that the Zionist state terror regime has until now with its ongoing Gaza Genocide operations with the full criminal support and collaboration with the United States and NATO member states allowed enduring war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian Peoples to continue with impunity. Zionist Israeli state terror regime along with its supporting US and collective western axis allies are ultimately responsible for enduring illegal repressive colonial occupation of the People of Palestine.
The question remains: Will the World Community hold them all accountable for the crimes against humanity, war crimes, racist based ethnic cleansing leading to genocide and the crime of forced violent colonization?
Zionist Israeli state terrorist regimes has no right of self-defense as an Illegal Occupying Power.
Palestinians have a Legal Right to Armed Struggle (aka, Armed Rebellion, hence, Hamas is NOT a terrorist organization but a legitimate anti-colonial national liberation movement contrary to Zionist anti-Palestinian racist hate speech and propaganda.
Its Obligation as Occupying Power is the Protection of the Occupied Peoples and their Lands and Personal Property.
Zionist regimes since 1947 as a ruthless, violent colonizer violated the rules of international humanitarian law, caused repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In this context the Palestinians whether Hamas followers or not all share the equal right of armed rebellion against a violent colonizing aggressor power.
- Professor Kallas
Related Legal Commentary
Below more extensive legal arguments for Palestinian right to resist, rebel and defend its people against illegal occupation:
Palestinians have a legal right to armed struggle
It’s time for Israel to accept that as an occupied people, Palestinians have a right to resist – in every way possible.
Stanley L Cohen
Stanley L Cohen is an attorney and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East and Africa.
Palestinians have a legal right to armed struggle | Conflict | Al Jazeera
In Palestine, international law recognises the fundamental rights to self-determination, freedom and independence for the occupied, writes Cohen [Reuters]
Long ago, it was settled that resistance and even armed struggle against a colonial occupation force is not just recognised under international law but specifically endorsed.
In accordance with international humanitarian law, wars of national liberation have been expressly embraced, through the adoption of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (pdf), as a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere.
Israeli occupation 'intensifying' 50 years after war with Arab nations
Finding evolving vitality in humanitarian law, for decades the General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) – once described as the collective conscience of the world – has noted the right of peoples to self-determination, independence and human rights.
Indeed, as early as 1974, resolution 3314 of the UNGA prohibited states from “any military occupation, however temporary”.
In relevant part, the resolution not only went on to affirm the right “to self-determination, freedom and independence […] of peoples forcibly deprived of that right,[…] particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination” but noted the right of the occupied to “struggle … and to seek and receive support” in that effort.
The term “armed struggle” was implied without precise definition in that resolution and many other early ones that upheld the right of indigenous persons to evict an occupier.
This imprecision was to change on December 3, 1982. At that time UNGA resolution 37/43 removed any doubt or debate over the lawful entitlement of occupied people to resist occupying forces by any and all lawful means. The resolution reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.
A palpable illusion
Though Israel has tried, time and time again, to recast the unambiguous intent of this precise resolution – and thus place its now half-century-long occupation in the West Bank and Gaza beyond its application – it is an effort worn thin to the point of palpable illusion by the exacting language of the declaration itself. In relevant part, section 21 of the resolution strongly condemned “the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East and the continual bombing of Palestinian civilians, which constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of the self-determination and independence of the Palestinian people”.
Never ones to hesitate in rewriting history, long before the establishment of the United Nations, European Zionists deemed themselves to be an occupied people as they emigrated to Palestine – a land to which any historical connection they had had long since passed through a largely voluntary transit.
Indeed, a full 50 years before the UN spoke of the right of armed struggle as a vehicle of indigenous liberation, European Zionists illegally co-opted the concept as the Irgun, Lehi and other terrorist groups undertook a decade’s long reign of deadly mayhem.
During this time, they slaughtered not only thousands of indigenous Palestinians but targeted British police and military personnel that had long maintained a colonial presence there.
A history of Zionist attacks
Perhaps, as Israelis sit down to mourn the loss of two of their soldiers who were shot dead this past week in Jerusalem – in what many consider to be a lawful act of resistance – a visit down memory lane might just place the events in their proper historical context.
Self-determination is a difficult, costly march for the occupied. In Palestine, no matter what the weapon of choice - whether voice, pen or gun - there is a steep price to be paid for its use.
Long ago, describing the British as an occupation force in “their homeland”, Zionists targeted British police and military units with ruthless abandon throughout Palestine and elsewhere.
On April 12, 1938, the Irgun murdered two British police officers in a train bombing in Haifa. On August 26, 1939, two British officers were killed by an Irgun landmine in Jerusalem. On February 14, 1944, two British constables were shot dead when they attempted to arrest people for pasting up wall posters in Haifa. On September 27, 1944, more than 100 members of the Irgun attacked four British police stations, injuring hundreds of officers. Two days later a senior British police officer of the Criminal Intelligence Department was assassinated in Jerusalem.
On November 1, 1945, another police officer was killed as five trains were bombed. On December 27, 1945, seven British officers lost their lives in a bombing on police headquarters in Jerusalem. Between November 9 and 13, 1946, Jewish “underground” members launched a series of landmine and suitcase bomb attacks in railway stations, trains, and streetcars, killing 11 British soldiers and policemen and eight Arab constables.
Four more officers were murdered in another attack on a police headquarters on January 12, 1947. Nine months later, four British police were murdered in an Irgun bank robbery and, but three days later, on September 26, 1947, an additional 13 officers were killed in yet another terrorist attack on a British police station.
These are but a few of many attacks directed by Zionist terrorists at British police who were seen, by mostly European Jews, as legitimate targets of a campaign they described as one of liberation against an occupation force.
Throughout this period, Jewish terrorists also undertook countless attacks that spared no part of the British and Palestinian infrastructure. They assaulted British military and police installations, government offices, and ships, often with bombs. They also sabotaged railways, bridges, and oil installations. Dozens of economic targets were attacked, including 20 trains that were damaged or derailed, and five train stations. Numerous attacks were carried out against the oil industry including one, in March 1947, on a Shell oil refinery in Haifa which destroyed some 16,000 tonnes of petroleum.
Zionist terrorists killed British soldiers throughout Palestine, using booby traps, ambushes, snipers, and vehicle blasts.
One attack, in particular, sums up the terrorism of those who, without any force of international law at the time, saw no limitation to their efforts to “liberate” a land that they had, largely, only recently emigrated to.
In 1947, the Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps non-commissioned officers and threathened to hang them if death sentences of three of their own members were carried out. When these three Irgun members were executed by hanging, the two British sergeants were hanged in retaliation and their booby-trapped bodies were left in an eucalyptus grove.
In announcing their execution, the Irgun said that the two British soldiers were hanged following their conviction for “criminal anti-Hebrew activities” which included: illegal entry into the Hebrew homeland and membership in a British criminal terrorist organisation – known as the Army of Occupation – which was “responsible for the torture, murder, deportation, and denying the Hebrew people the right to live”. The soldiers were also charged with illegal possession of arms, anti-Jewish spying in civilian clothes, and premeditated hostile designs against the underground (pdf).
Well beyond the territorial confines of Palestine, in late 1946-47 a continuing campaign of terrorism was directed at the British. Acts of sabotage were carried out on British military transportation routes in Germany. The Lehi also tried, unsuccessfully, to drop a bomb on the House of Commons from a chartered plane flown from France and, in October 1946, bombed the British Embassy in Rome. A number of other explosive devices were detonated in and around strategic targets in London. Some 21 letter bombs were addressed, at various times, to senior British political figures. Many were intercepted, while others reached their targets but were discovered before they could go off.
The steep price of self-determination
Self-determination is a difficult, costly march for the occupied. In Palestine, no matter what the weapon of choice – whether voice, pen or gun – there is a steep price to be paid for its use.
Today, “speaking truth to power” has become very much a popular mantra of resistance in neoliberal circles and societies. In Palestine, however, for the occupied and oppressed, it is an all-but-certain path to prison or death. Yet, for generations of Palestinians stripped of the very breath that resonates with the feeling of freedom, history teaches there is simply no other choice.
Silence is surrender. To be silent is to betray all those who have come before and all those yet to follow.
For those who have never felt the constant yoke of oppression, or seen it up close, it is a vision beyond comprehension. Occupation sits heavy on the occupied, every day in every way, limiting who you are and what you may dare to become.
The constant rub of barricades, guns, orders, prison and death are fellow travellers for the occupied, whether infants, teens in the spring of life, the elderly, or those trapped by the artificial confines of borders over which they have no control.
The three young men, cousins, who willingly sacrificed their lives in the attack on the two Israeli officers in Jerusalem, did so not as an empty gesture born of desperation, but rather a personal statement of national pride that follows a long line of others who well understood that the price of freedom can, at times, mean all.
To the families of the two Israeli Druze policemen who lost their lives while trying to control a place that was not theirs to command, I extend my condolences. These young men were, however, not lost to the ring of resistance, but willingly sacrificed by an evil occupation that bears no legitimacy whatsoever.
Ultimately, if there is grieving to be done, it must be for the 11 million occupied, whether in Palestine or outside, as so much stateless refugees, stripped of a meaningful voice and opportunity, as the world makes excuses built largely of a political and economic gift box that bears the Star of David.
Not a day goes by now without the chilling wail of a nation watching over a Palestinian infant wrapped in a burial shroud, stripped of life because electricity or transit have become a perverse privilege which holds millions hostage to the political whims of the few. Be they Israeli, Egyptian or those who claim to carry the mantle of Palestinian political leadership, the responsibility of infanticide in Gaza is theirs and theirs alone.
‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress’
The three young men, cousins, who willingly sacrificed their lives in the attack on the two Israeli officers in Jerusalem, did so not as an empty gesture born of desperation, but rather a personal statement of national pride that follows a long line of others who well understood that the price of freedom can, at times, mean all.
For 70 years, not a day has passed without the loss of young Palestinian women and men who, tragically, found greater dignity and freedom in martyrdom than they did in obedient, passive living controlled by those who dared to dictate the parameters of their lives.
Millions of us worldwide dream of a better time and place for Palestinians … free to spread their wings, to soar, to discover who they are and what they wish to become. Until then, I mourn not for the loss of those who stop their flight. Instead, I applaud those who dare to struggle, dare to win – by any means necessary.
There is no magic to resistance and struggle. They transcend time and place and derive their very meaning and ardour in the natural inclination, indeed, drive, of us all to be free – to be free to determine the role of our own lives.
In Palestine, no such freedom exists. In Palestine, international law recognises the fundamental rights to self-determination, freedom and independence for the occupied. In Palestine, that includes the right to armed struggle, if necessary.
Long ago, the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, wrote of struggle. These words resonate no less so today, in Palestine, than they did some one 150 years ago in the heart of the Antebellum South in the United States:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Stanley L Cohen is a US-based attorney and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East and Africa. He has handled prominent international cases including that of Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. He has served as a consultant to Middle East governments and movements including Hamas and Hezbollah and NGOs and foundations in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
1. The illegal occupation represents an unlawful use of force (i.e., aggression). As long as the illegal occupation persists, it constitutes, according to international responsibility rules, a continuous wrongful act, thus preserving the continuous right to self-defense for the occupied state/people.
2. Is the Israeli occupation legal now? Recent positions by several reputable entities, including UN Commissions of Inquiry on Palestine/Israel, the current and former UN Special Rapporteurs on Palestine, a study released by CEIRPP, alongside numerous relevant academic studies, deem it unlawful (i.e., aggression). This matter is also currently under consideration by the ICJ.
3. Self-defense by Palestinians can only be exercised after assessing the principles of necessity, proportionality, and imminency. Meeting these criteria is evident in the context of a prolonged occupation, the exhaustion of all peaceful means to end it, and violations of jus cogens norms, IHL rules, and good faith.
4. Dozens of resolutions by the UNGA support national liberation movements in their struggle for independence and self-determination, including armed struggle. Just for instance, Res. 2105 of 1965 condemned Portuguese colonialism in Guinea-Bissau. At the time of this resolution’s adoption, PAIGC had officially engaged in armed liberation struggle. The General Assembly, in the same resolution, requested all states “to provide material and morale assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial Territories.”
5. The Declaration on Friendly Relations (Res. 2625 of 1970), which reflects customary law, recognizes the right to resist against foreign forcible actions that deprive people of their right to self-determination (the UN recognized the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people). It states that every state must refrain from any forcible action that deprives the people of their right to self-determination, freedom, and independence.
6. Therefore, it is Israel that is required not to suppress resistance, rather than the opposite. The ICJ, in its advisory opinion/Wall (2004) countered Israeli claims of constructing the wall in self-defense by stating that this right is irrelevant based on the fact that Israel exercises effective control over the occupied Palestinian territories.
7. Clearer: In 1982, UNGA Resolution 37/43 affirmed the legitimacy of the struggle for independence, territorial integrity, national unity, and liberation from foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle. This resolution openly recognized the right to use force against foreign illegal occupation, which it considers a serious threat to international peace and security, recalling the cases of Namibia and Palestine.
8. Furthermore, the Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions (1977), to which Palestine acceded in 2014 (joining over 160 countries), in its Article 1(4), classifies conflicts in which peoples are fighting against alien occupation and racist regimes as armed conflicts. Individuals engaging in such “fighting,” if captured, should be afforded the status of prisoners of war, meaning their fighting is legitimate.
9. Historical evidence overwhelmingly supports that self-determination is rarely achieved without the use of force and armed struggle. Failing to acknowledge resistance movements would lead to an illogical situation: alien occupations would go unchallenged, rendering any resistance against their illegal status illegal itself.
10. Finally, it is worth emphasizing that the right to resist and self-defense is subject to the rules of international humanitarian law, including the respect of the principle of distinction between civilians and combatants.
So, in short: Right to resist, including armed resistance: Yes. Right to indiscriminately kill or target civilians: No.
It’s as simple as that.
The historical question remains: Do the Zionists have a 'right to colonize' Palestine?
From Ukraine to Palestine: US national security state terrorist regime’s Forever Wars
US national security state terrorist regime has consistently blocked potential peace agreements that would have ended bloody conflicts in Ukraine and now in Palestine.
US Ukraine Proxy War
US and NATO elites’ cheating and lying about the Minks I and II Peace Accords in order for US CIA, State Department’s Victoria Nuland to instigate the overthrow of the pro-Russian Ukrainian government through USAID/CIA backed Euromaidan Coup.
Boris Johnson derailed Ukraine peace deal – key Zelensky ally - Early on in the conflict, he told the country to “just continue fighting,” top Ukrainian MP David Arakhamia claims
The fake “Israel - Palestine Peace Processes” have historically proven to be nothing more than a smokescreen for the US-backed racist Apartheid Zionist state terrorist regime to complete mass ethnic cleansing started in 1947 with Israel’s Plan Dalet and continuing until today’s ongoing Gaza Genocide against the People of Palestine under the rightfully named US President “Genocide Joe Biden” who continues the long tradition of US Presidential pathological liars, along with their Israel Lobby/Hasbara Propagandist-fed MSM, who claim to only “want peace” but profit from their wars.
Genocide Joe’s latest lie: Hamas offered a similar deal at least one month ago. Israel, with US backing, thwarted it multiple times before finally agreeing to it this week. Again, a repeat of similar behavior with respect to subverting peaceful resolution in Ukraine.
Why?
For the US national security state terrorist regime (USNSS), it’s simply that instigating mass chaos and mayhem keeps USNSS military industrial war profiteers rich.
The Speaker of the Russian Parliament Vyacheslav Volodin, calls out Joe Biden as a war criminal, for supporting Israels brutal assault on Gaza
The Israeli Army blows the Parliament in Gaza to pieces. This is the willful erasure of an entire people, their symbols, monuments, and existence. Hatred personified in the "Only Democracy in the Middle East"
At least two people were killed during the incident, according to the news agency
Israeli soldiers have opened fire at Palestinian civilians who attempted to return to their homes in northern Gaza shortly after the start of the four-day truce between Israel and Hamas, an AP journalist has reported from the scene. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had earlier warned the displaced residents of Gaza against attempting to move to the north of the enclave.
At least two people were killed and 11 others were injured during the incident, the news agency claimed on Friday.
An Israeli military spokesman told Haaretz that reports of the use of live fire by IDF troops against Palestinians were being investigated.
According to the paper, the number of civilians wounded by “Israeli fire” during their attempts to reach the north of Gaza stood at 15. They’ve been transferred to a hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for treatment, Haaretz added.
The Times of Israel also reported that some people were trying to get out of the southern part of the enclave. However, it said that the IDF had used riot dispersal means to make them turn back.
Shortly after the truce kicked in at 7am local time, the Israeli military began dropping leaflets on Gaza warning locals against returning to their homes in the northern part of the enclave.
The IDF’s Arabic media spokesman Avichay Adraee also addressed Palestinians on X (formerly Twitter), reminding them that, despite the ceasefire, “the war is not over yet. The humanitarian pause is temporary. The northern Gaza Strip is a dangerous war zone and it is forbidden to move north.” Those who are still in northern Gaza should instead use the truce to evacuate to the south via the Salah al-Din Road, Adraee stressed.
The ceasefire deal calls for Hamas to free at least 50 out of around 240 hostages it captured during the October 7 attack and Israel to release some 150 of its Palestinians prisoners. The first exchange, reportedly featuring 13 Israeli women and children and 39 Palestinian females and teenagers, is expected to take place on Friday.
The IDF also pledged to halt its airstrikes on southern Gaza, introduce daily six-hour pauses in its attacks on the northern part of the enclave and allow for aid to enter Gaza, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, which helped to broker the agreement, said. The first trucks with humanitarian cargo have already begun entering Gaza from Egypt, according to reports.
Israel has long insisted that the Palestinian militant group operates out of hospitals and other protected infrastructure
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raided Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital complex, insisting Hamas was using the healthcare facility as its “terror headquarters,” despite having uncovered the militant group’s actual headquarters just days earlier, Consortium News reported on Thursday.
The outlet’s report cited a Jerusalem Post story published ahead of the controversial raid detailing how the IDF had discovered Hamas’ underground high command center – five miles (8.5km) away from the hospital. The IDF nevertheless went ahead with the assault on Al-Shifa, continuing to insist that the complex hid Hamas’ central base of operations without mentioning the discovery it had made days before.
The actual Hamas “pit” headquarters was reportedly accessible via an unusually deep (30 meters, or 98 feet) elevator shaft opening into an underground cavern outfitted with oxygen, air conditioning, and advanced communications technology, which bore signs of recent use by the group’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and military chief Mohammed Deif, the IDF told the Post.
While the IDF pointed to an underground dormitory-style room and a handful of guns and grenades supposedly found during the raid on Al-Shifa as proof of a Hamas “bunker” inside the complex, reporters given tours of the findings pointed out that the weapons could have been brought in by anyone. The BBC also found the IDF’s supposedly unedited clip of the discovery had at least one edit.
The IDF subsequently unpublished the video of a lengthy presentation spokesman Daniel Hagari had delivered on October 27 that had laid out a 3D rendering of Hamas’ alleged command-and-control center inside the Al-Shifa complex from its website. The supposed sprawling operations center was said to encompass five separate buildings and tunnels connecting them all with various other assets.
Failure to uncover such a structure has led news outlets like the Associated Press and The Guardian to question the claims that served as the basis for the raid on the hospital, a protected site under international humanitarian law. Israel has been accused of misrepresenting water reservoirs and elevator shafts inside Al-Shifa and other hospitals as “Hamas tunnels” in what critics say is an effort to justify what would otherwise be illegal airstrikes. A video purporting to show a Palestinian nurse complaining Hamas was “taking over” Al-Shifa was also exposed as fake, with the “nurse” identified as an Israeli actress.
While Washington initially backed the IDF’s claims that Hamas was using Al-Shifa as a command center, US officials began referring to the hospital as a “command node” instead even before the raid, suggesting an awareness that the militant group’s nerve center was elsewhere. Hamas and the doctors employed at Al-Shifa have always denied the hospital was used for military purposes.
Berlin’s own history with genocide suggests it should know better than to shut down any protest against the mass deaths in Gaza
On 6 August, a court in Berlin sentenced a young woman called Ava Moayeri to a fine of €600 for shouting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” One of Moayeri’s lawyers, Alexander Gorski, deplored this as “a rather dark day for freedom of expression in Germany.”
He’s right, even if his comment is an all too understated response to a scandalous miscarriage of justice. Indeed, it is hard to answer the question of what is wrong with this sentence, because, quite literally, everything is. Judge Birgit Balzer’s reasoning, for one thing, was embarrassingly shoddy, irresponsibly misinformed, and ethically and legally misguided, about which more below.
Beyond Balzer’s failure to do justice to the important issue she had to adjudicate, the case and sentence also represent a larger problem, in Germany and beyond: the West’s perverse pampering of Israel. One form taken by this pampering is to allow the Israeli regime to abuse the memory of the Holocaust, a genocide targeting Jews, to claim impunity for its own crimes against humanity, including genocide targeting Palestinians.
Balzer, too, explicitly invoked the Holocaust to justify her sentence. Yet Moayeri, the daughter of Communists from Iran, made clear that she has nothing to do with either glorifying violence or antisemitism. On the contrary, her concern is with showing solidarity to the Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and standing up for their rights. Balzer felt entitled to disregard this perfectly plausible position, attribute entirely unproven motives to Moayeri, and, on that fundamentally flawed basis, punish her. In effect, it is clear that Moayeri’s right to peaceful protest and a perfectly legitimate political position was suppressed to protect Israeli narratives from any challenge. And these narratives, in turn, are used to shield Israel from accountability for its crimes, and thus they also withhold help from Israel’s victims.
The facts of Moayeri’s case are not complicated. On 11 October 2023, she participated in a small protest outside a Berlin school, where she used the slogan“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” There was no violence – indeed, the demonstration explicitly criticized violence that had occurred at the school – and she was not charged with anything else. The prosecution argued that merely by shouting these words, Moayeri committed the crime of condoning another crime. By that, the prosecutor was referring to the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.
Yet, in reality, Palestinians have an incontestable right to armed resistance under international law. While the attack also involved crimes – though far fewer than claimed by Israel (see below) – Palestinians do not commit a crime when fighting Israeli soldiers, which is what Hamas did to a large extent on 7 October. In Berlin, neither the prosecution nor the judge, however, seemed to care about this legal fact.
Judge Balzer instead agreed with the prosecution and added several arguments of her own: According to Balzer, the slogan “From the River to the Sea” denies “Israel’s right to exist.” Balzer also believes that the context of Moayeri’s use of the slogan – a few days after the Hamas attack – allows for only one interpretation, namely that Moayeri meant to condone the attack and “downplay its monstrous quality.” Balzer’s argument about context is not only absurd but astoundingly complacent, betraying an almost pitiable lack of self-awareness, but we will get back to that.
First, let’s look more closely at her other points: One issue that should surely have complicated Balzer’s simplistic approach is the fact that we by now know – including from Israeli media – that, on 7 October, many Israelis were deliberately killed not by Hamas but by Israeli forces, in an application of the so-called “Hannibal Directive”. A typically perverse and cynical policy, originally designed to allow Israeli soldiers to kill other Israeli soldiers so that they cannot be captured by Palestinian resistance fighters, on 7 October the Directive was used indiscriminately – in effect, against Israeli civilians, too. Therefore, much of Balzer’s “monstrous quality” of the events on 7 October actually came from the Israeli military. That is a well-established fact, not an opinion. So, basing her sentence on a biased, uninformed, and one-sided attribution of all the violence to Hamas alone already undermined its plausibility.
Regarding Israel’s “right to exist,” it is astounding to hear a judge dare advance this argument. Every jurist knows – or should know – that it is an incontrovertible fact of international law that states do not have such a right. Diplomatic recognition by other states is a matter of maintaining international relations, but it confers no “right to exist” to the recognized state. For instance, while one may regret their disappearance, absolutely no such “right” was infringed when, for instance, the former East Germany, the Soviet Union, or Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. In reality, peoples or nations – not states – have a right to self-determination. And it is Israel that has violently deprived the Palestinian people of that – actually existing – right as well as, of course, their land, and often lives.
Israel has, it is true, blanketed the global public sphere with such a barrage of disinformation about this basic fact (as about so many others) that ordinary mainstream media consumers are likely to be confused. Yet anyone with a claim to keeping informed and certainly a trained judge must know that this is merely an Israeli talking point, not a right.
Generally, Balzer, it seems, has a severe problem keeping political categories out of what should be her legal reasoning. She also brought that notorious German “Staatsräson” (reason of state) into play. In particular, she invoked the idea, formulated in public speeches in 2007 and 2008 by former Chancellor Angela Merkel, that, for Germany, what it misunderstands as Israel’s “security” and protecting Jews in Germany are part of that “Staatsräson.”
Yet while that notion has influenced several German laws, it has still no place in a court of law. For speeches, even by a state’s leader, do not establish law. Even the German parliament recognizes that “the concept of ‘Staatsräson’ is not employed either in the Basic Law [that is, the German constitution] nor in elementary legal precepts of German law. Therefore, it cannot be construed as a legal term. Rather, in German state practice today, it is understood as a political key principle.”
Finally, Balzer claimed that demanding a free Palestine on all its territory is necessarily the same as calling for the end to Israel. Frankly, and so what? Interestingly enough, the incoming head of EU foreign policy, Kaja Kallas from Estonia, has, in effect publicly and recklessly called for the end of Russia as a state, which seems not to provoke any objections in the West. And while Kallas is a catastrophe of incompetence and Russophobia, it is, actually, not a criminal offense to call for the end of a state because states do not have any right to exist (see above).
Moreover, in reality, the call for a free Palestine can also be understood as demanding not an end to Israel but a very different Israel, one that has abandoned its horrific racist and murderous regime and been absorbed into a successor state Palestine in which all inhabitants will have equal rights. Among well-informed and dispassionate contemporaries, we call this the one-state solution, and it has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing or antisemitism. It is also, in reality, the only way forward, because Israel’s endless bad faith and horrendous crimes have discredited all other models.
In sum, the sentence against Moayeri is a narrow-minded, politically motivated absurdity, and a disgrace for a country that prides itself on being a “Rechtsstaat,” a state of the rule of law. The law requires reason and abstention from bias. Both have been sorely lacking here. Fortunately, this sentence can be appealed, and it is as good as certain that it will be. Let’s hope that higher German courts won’t let this shameful gagging order pass.
Yet there is a larger point, an absurdity overshadowing all the other absurdities: Balzer, recall, based much of her unjust speculation about Moayeri’s motives on context. For the judge, the fact that Moayeri shouted “From the River to the Sea” several days after the Hamas attack of 7 October was proof that Moayeri must have meant it as supporting atrocious violence. Of course, that is nonsense. But, for a moment, let’s accept the judge’s flawed premise and apply it to Balzer herself: What is the context of her sentence, then? She has punished a young woman for daring to show solidarity with victims of Israel’s settler-colonial land stealing, its apartheid, and many other atrocities. But not just at any moment, but in the context of the ongoing crimes against humanity, transmitted from Gaza in real time into every home with a TV set and an internet connection.
Punishing those siding with victims of ongoing mass killings? Quite some context there for judge Balzer herself. One that a German should have recognized, precisely because, historically, Germany is also, historically, a country of genocide perpetrators. Because of that guilt, Germany’s “Staatsräson”should be to always side with the victims and never with the killers, not even indirectly. A pity Germany’s elites still can’t grasp even that much.
Israel should not think that the suffering of Jews during World War II gives it free rein in foreign policy, particularly when it comes to the hostilities in Gaza, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Speaking at a press conference on the results of Moscow’s diplomacy in 2023 on Thursday, Lavrov reiterated his support for the creation of a Palestinian state. The decades-long failure to do this is one of the key reasons for the current instability in the Middle East and tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, he added.
The foreign minister noted that Russia had immediately condemned the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7. However, after the hostilities began, some Israeli officials went so far as to call the residents of Gaza “animals” without facing any backlash from the West, he added.
Lavrov added that the Soviet people had suffered no less as they were exterminated in the same Nazi concentration camps as the Jews, with both people dying from starvation side-by-side in besieged Leningrad.
“According to this logic, we can do whatever we want. That won’t work if we want to systematically uphold international law,” he added.
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, with the ensuing fighting killing more than 1,200 Israelis and 24,000 Palestinians. Since then, Israel started a ground operation in the Palestinian enclave, which has caused unprecedented destruction. It has vowed not to stop until Hamas is completely defeated and Palestinian society “deradicalized.”
Russia has repeatedly called on the two sides to agree to a ceasefire while urging Israel not to forget the laws of war.
The Holocaust claimed the lives of around six million Jews in Europe. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union lost some 27 million people during the war, including many Jews, with two-thirds of those losses among the civilian population.
Holocaust doesn’t give Israel impunity – Lavrov — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union
http://RT.com
Being Palestine after Gaza:
or… maybe… “Being” ….
Why does Palestine have to suffer for Western-centric “Jewish Identity Politics”?
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to Miko Peled, Founder of the Palestine House of Freedom and grandson of a signatory to Israel’s creation in 1948. He discusses the full resumption of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, why Israel must be dismantled to end the killing of Palestinians, the Trump Administration’s move towards war with Iran, the Israel lobby’s grip on US foreign policy, and much more.
Αιματηρή ισραηλινή κλιμάκωση σε Γάζα και Δυτική Όχθη - Δεκάδες νεκροί και ανθρωπιστική καταστροφή
Οι ισραηλινές στρατιωτικές επιχειρήσεις στη Γάζα και τη Δυτική Όχθη κλιμακώθηκαν δραματικά από τα ξημερώματα της Παρασκευής 18 Απριλίου 2025, αφήνοντας πίσω τους τουλάχιστον 64 νεκρούς στη Γάζα και περισσότερους από 60 συλληφθέντες σε προσφυγικό καταυλισμό της Δυτικής Όχθης. Εν μέσω μιας πρωτοφανούς ανθρωπιστικής κρίσης, το Παγκόσμιο Επισιτιστικό Πρόγραμμα του ΟΗΕ εξέδωσε επείγουσα προειδοποίηση ότι η Γάζα «χρειάζεται φαγητό τώρα», καθώς εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες άνθρωποι αντιμετωπίζουν τον κίνδυνο της πείνας.
Φονικές επιθέσεις στη Γάζα και ανθρωπιστικός εφιάλτης
Οι ισραηλινές αεροπορικές επιδρομές στη Γάζα, που συνεχίστηκαν καθ’ όλη τη διάρκεια της νύχτας, στοίχισαν τη ζωή σε τουλάχιστον 64 ανθρώπους, μεταξύ των οποίων γυναίκες και παιδιά. Χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα της βιαιότητας ήταν η επίθεση με ελικόπτερο σε σκηνή εκτοπισμένων Παλαιστινίων, που άφησε πέντε νεκρούς, και ο βομβαρδισμός στην περιοχή al-Musaddar βόρεια της Deir el-Balah, που σκότωσε τουλάχιστον έναν άνθρωπο και τραυμάτισε άλλους. Οι νυχτερινοί βομβαρδισμοί, συνοδευόμενοι από πυρά πυροβολικού, έχουν μετατρέψει τη Γάζα σε πεδίο «φρίκης και αδυσώπητου πόνου», όπως περιγράφουν οι κάτοικοι, με τους αμάχους να ζουν υπό τον συνεχή φόβο του επόμενου χτυπήματος.
Η ανθρωπιστική κατάσταση επιδεινώνεται ραγδαία, με το Παγκόσμιο Επισιτιστικό Πρόγραμμα να κρούει τον κώδωνα του κινδύνου για μαζική πείνα. Οι μηχανισμοί επιβίωσης των κατοίκων καταρρέουν, καθώς τα σπίτια, οι σκηνές και οι καταυλισμοί εκτοπισμένων δεν προσφέρουν πλέον καμία ασφάλεια. Η απουσία προόδου στις διαπραγματεύσεις για κατάπαυση πυρός, σε συνδυασμό με την ένταση των επιθέσεων, ενισχύει την αίσθηση απόγνωσης, με τους Παλαιστίνιους να βιώνουν μια «άνευ προηγουμένου κλιμάκωση» της κρίσης.
Μαζικές συλλήψεις στη Δυτική Όχθη
Παράλληλα, στη Δυτική Όχθη, οι ισραηλινές δυνάμεις εξαπέλυσαν μεγάλης κλίμακας επιχείρηση στον προσφυγικό καταυλισμό Fawwar, νότια της Χεβρώνας, συλλαμβάνοντας περισσότερους από 60 Παλαιστίνιους, κυρίως νεαρούς άνδρες, οι οποίοι υποβλήθηκαν σε επιτόπιες ανακρίσεις. Βίντεο που κυκλοφόρησαν στο διαδίκτυο δείχνουν ένοπλους Ισραηλινούς στρατιώτες να οδηγούν δεμένους Παλαιστίνιους υπό την απειλή όπλων, ενώ ορισμένοι κρατούμενοι αφέθηκαν ελεύθεροι. Η επιχείρηση, που συνεχίζεται, χαρακτηρίζεται από τοπικά μέσα ως «μαζική εκστρατεία καταστολής».
Η βία στη Δυτική Όχθη κλιμακώθηκε περαιτέρω με τη δολοφονία ενός 16χρονου Παλαιστίνιου την Πέμπτη, του 22ου παιδιού που σκοτώνεται από ισραηλινές δυνάμεις στην περιοχή φέτος. Το σώμα του αγοριού κατασχέθηκε από τον ισραηλινό στρατό, πυροδοτώντας νέες διαμαρτυρίες και οργή στους Παλαιστίνιους.
Bloody Israeli escalation in Gaza and West Bank - Dozens dead and humanitarian catastrophe
Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank have escalated dramatically since the dawn of Friday, April 18, 2025, leaving behind at least 64 dead in Gaza and more than 60 detained in a West Bank refugee camp. Amid an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, the UN World Food Programme issued an urgent warning that Gaza "needs food now" as hundreds of thousands of people face the risk of starvation.
Deadly attacks in Gaza and a humanitarian nightmare
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, which continued throughout the night, killed at least 64 people, including women and children. A typical example of the violence was the helicopter attack on a tent of displaced Palestinians, which left five dead, and the shelling in the al-Musaddar area north of Deir el-Balah, which killed at least one person and injured others. Nighttime shelling, accompanied by artillery fire, has turned Gaza into a field of "horror and relentless pain," as residents describe, with civilians living in constant fear of the next strike.
The humanitarian situation is deteriorating rapidly, with the World Food Programme sounding the alarm about mass starvation. The survival mechanisms of the inhabitants are collapsing, as homes, tents and camps for displaced people no longer offer any security. The lack of progress in ceasefire negotiations, combined with the intensity of the attacks, reinforces the sense of desperation, with the Palestinians experiencing an "unprecedented escalation" of the crisis.
Mass arrests in the West Bank
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces launched a large-scale operation in the Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron, arresting more than 60 Palestinians, mostly young men, who were subjected to on-the-spot interrogations. Videos circulated online showed armed Israeli soldiers driving tied up Palestinians at gunpoint, while some detainees were released. The operation, which is ongoing, has been described by local media as a "massive campaign of repression."
Violence in the West Bank escalated further with the killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian on Thursday, the 22nd child killed by Israeli forces in the region this year. The boy's body was confiscated by the Israeli military, sparking new protests and anger among Palestinians.
RT.com posting notice:
I am reposting many very good RT.com news herein simply because in many places in the world, especially, online, RT.com has been unjustly and unfairly censored, shadow banned, or blocked, especially in the European Union, corporate social media like YouTube, etc.
This author believes that based on the basic principles of Free Speech and Free Journalism to educationally inform World Community of important issues, I am posting RT.com along with many other journalists who critically challenge the US National Security State and allied collective west’s mass corporate Mainstream Media, MSM, censorship in order to present opposing views on critical problems facing humanity on a very lonely planet.
The blog will be updated periodically. So, stay tuned.
This blog will be updated to include future information as the Palestine Crisis unfolds.
Thank you for the many arguments and links given. In one of your posts, you refered to apartheid in SA. The nationalist party won the election in 1948 about the same time Israel was constituted. In later years the apartheid government had close ties with Israel, mainly around the weapons industry. "Apartheid, guns and money" by Hennie van Vuuren details the hidden work of the apartheid state.
Thank you for the many arguments and links given. In one of your posts, you refered to apartheid in SA. The nationalist party won the election in 1948 about the same time Israel was constituted. In later years the apartheid government had close ties with Israel, mainly around the weapons industry. "Apartheid, guns and money" by Hennie van Vuuren details the hidden work of the apartheid state.