Trump’s Deal Is Bid to Complete the Evil ‘Plan Dalet’
The Zionist terror conspiracy to steal the land of Palestine is nearing its bizarre climax
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | January 31, 2020
After 70 years of pissing on the Palestinians, America and Israel suddenly want to “improve” their lives. But when you look closer at Peace to Prosperity it’s all about thieving more Palestinian land, stripping these good people of what remains of their self-respect and grinding them further into the Holy Land dust.
The Trump document’s 180 pages are devoted to the self-aggrandizement of Israel and military domination of the Middle East, by proxy, by the warmongers of the US. And to achieve its aims Trump shamelessly circumvents international law, ignores existing UN resolutions and makes daft and insupportable claims.
How fitting that the unveiling ceremony was graced by an American president facing impeachment and an Israeli prime minister facing multiple corruption charges. Another party to the farce was Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s election rival, who commanded the infamous Operation Pillar of Defence (2012) and Operation Protective Edge (2014) onslaughts against Gaza and is no doubt wanted in many quarters for war crimes.
“This is clearly a serious proposal, reflecting extensive time and effort,” said Dominic Raab, UK’s foreign minister, in a statement. “We encourage them (the leaders) to give these plans genuine and fair consideration, and explore whether they might prove a first step on the road back to negotiations.”
Prime minister Boris Johnson in the House of Commons said: “No peace plan is perfect, but this has the merit of a two-state solution. It would ensure Jerusalem is both the capital of Israel and the Palestinian people.”
Can he not read? Trump’s plan says: “Jerusalem will remain the sovereign capital of the State of Israel, and it should remain an undivided city. The sovereign capital of the State of Palestine should be in the section of East Jerusalem located in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier, including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and could be named Al Quds or another name as determined by the State of Palestine.”
Does Johnson not know that the Old City is part of East Jerusalem which is officially Palestinian and the Palestinians obvious want a presence there – and why not? Doesn’t he understand that Al Quds is the Arabic name for the Holy City and it’s a grave insult to suggest calling some village miles away by that name. I can imagine the fury of ordinary Palestinians who have dreamed of self-determination in their homeland – as promised – ever since the British left in 1948.
The British government says “the best way to achieve peace is through substantive peace talks between parties”, as if negotiation between a strong party and a weak party, between one party with a gun to the other’s head, is ever going to work.
Fortunately MP Crispin Blunt put the matter in perspective: “Yesterday we welcomed the release of a proposal — which we described as serious — that ignored the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, the 1967 borders, international humanitarian law, and repeated United Nations Security Council resolutions, the last of which the United Kingdom signed up to in December 2016. I have to say to my right hon. Friend that this is an annexation plan. Annexation is going to start on 2 February — and there is the map.”
Yep, this is indeed an annexation plan and it’s flat-out contrary to international law. What’s needed is not more talks but enforcement of the law and the numerous UN resolutions applicable to this situation, and the sanctions to make it stick. But justice and law are no part of Trump’s deal, only ways of getting round it.
The document doesn’t say who is responsible for producing Peace to Prosperity, but it reads like the work of Israel’s hasbara Dirty Tricks department and edited by disinformation chief Mark Regev, currently Israel’s ambassador in London.
The Zionist terror plan to steal the land of Palestine
It’s plain to see that Trump’s ‘peace’ proposal is actually the climactic fulfillment of the long-running and thoroughly nasty Plan Dalet (otherwise known as Plan D). This was the Zionists’ blueprint, in anticipation of the British leaving, for the violent and murderous takeover of the Palestinian homeland as a prelude to declaring Israeli statehood – which they did in May 1948. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency.
Plan D’s intention was not only to gain control of the areas of the Jewish state and defend its borders but also to control the areas of Jewish settlements and concentrations located outside Jewish borders and ensure “freedom of military and economic activity” by occupying important high-ground positions on a number of transport routes.
“Outside the borders of the state” may seem a curious thing to say when nobody knew where Israel’s borders actually ran, except where marked on the 1947 UN Partition Plan map. Israel has purposely kept her borders fluid in order to accommodate the Zionists’ perpetual lust for expansion.
Success would depend on, amongst other things, “applying economic pressure on the enemy by besieging some of his cities”, on “encirclement of enemy cities” and on “blocking the main enemy transportation routes…. Roads, bridges, main passes, important crossroads, paths, etc. must be blocked by means of: acts of sabotage, explosions, series of barricades, minefields, as well as by controlling the elevations near roads and taking up positions there.”
In other words, a reign of terror.
Jewish forces would occupy the police stations, described as “fortresses”, fifty of which had been built by the British throughout Palestine after the Arab unrest of 1936-39.
Plan D discussed “operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force”. These operations included:
- “Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.
- “Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”
Villages emptied in this way were then fortified.
If they met no resistance “garrison troops will enter the village and take up positions in it or in locations which enable complete tactical control,” said the Plan. “The officer in command of the unit will confiscate all weapons, wireless devices, and motor vehicles in the village. In addition, he will detain all politically suspect individuals… In every region, a [Jewish] person will be appointed to be responsible for arranging the political and administrative affairs of all [Arab] villages and population centers which are occupied within that region.
34 massacres are said to have been committed in pursuit of Plan D’s racist and territorial objectives. The massacre at Deir Yassin by Jewish terror groups set the tone in order to ‘soften up’ the Arabs for expulsion. More atrocities followed the declaration of Israeli statehood on 14 May 1948. 750,000 Palestinians were put to flight as Israel’s forces obliterated hundreds of Arab villages and towns. The village on which Sderot now stands was one such. To this day they have been denied the right to return and received no compensation.
And here are the chilling guidelines for besieging, occupying and controlling Arab cities…
- By isolating them from transportation arteries by laying mines, blowing up bridges, and a system of fixed ambushes.
- If necessary, by occupying high points which overlook transportation arteries leading to enemy cities, and the fortification of our units in these positions.
- By disrupting vital services, such as electricity, water, and fuel, or by using economic resources available to us, or by sabotage.
- By launching a naval operation against the cities that can receive supplies by sea, in order to destroy the vessels carrying the provisions, as well as by carrying out acts of sabotage against harbor facilities.
Plan Dalet is one of the sickest documents in history and shows why so many people question Israel’s legitimacy.
Atrocities occurred at Deir Yassin, Lod (Lydda) and Ramle. The Deir Yassin massacre was carried out by the two Zionist terror groups, the Irgun and the Stern Gang. On an April morning in 1948 (before the Israeli state declaration) 130 of their commandos made a dawn raid on this small Arab town with a population of 750, to the west of Jerusalem. The attack was initially beaten off, and only when a crack unit of the Haganah arrived with mortars were the Arab townsmen overwhelmed. The Irgun and the Stern Gang, smarting from the humiliation of having to summon help, embarked on a ‘clean-up’ in which they systematically murdered and executed at least 100 residents – mostly women, children and old people. The Irgun afterwards exaggerated the number, quoting 254, to frighten other Arab towns and villages.
The Haganah played down their part in the raid and afterwards said the massacre “disgraced the cause of Jewish fighters and dishonored Jewish arms and the Jewish flag”.
Deir Yassin signaled the beginning of a deliberate program by Israel to depopulate Arab towns and villages – destroying churches and mosques – in order to make room for incoming Holocaust survivors and other Jews.
In July 1948 Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population. Donald Neff reported how, as part of the ethnic cleansing, the Israelis massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way. Of all the blood-baths they say this was the biggest. The great hero Moshe Dayan was responsible. Was he ever brought to book? Of course not. Lydda airport is now Ben Gurion airport.
The Israeli state’s greedy ambition overran the generous borders gifted to the Zionists in the UN Partition Plan and by 1949 the Zionists had seized nearly 80 percent of Palestine, provoking the resistance backlash that still goes on today.
Israel’s numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, and its continual defiance of international law and the UN Charter, undermine the Jewish state’s claim to legitimacy as far as Arabs and many non-Arabs around the world are concerned.
UN Resolution 194 called on Israel to let the Palestinians back onto their land. It has been re-passed many times, but Israel still ignores it. And so does the Trump plan. The Israelis also stand accused of violating Article 42 of the Geneva Convention by moving settlers into the Palestinian territories it occupies, and of riding roughshod over international law with their occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
But as Plan D shows, “expulsion and transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) were always a key part of the Zionists’ scheme. According to historian Benny Morris no mainstream Zionist leader could conceive of future co-existence without a clear physical separation between the two peoples. Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister, is reported to have said in 1937: “New settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin…” The following year he declared: “With compulsory transfer we have a vast area [for settlement]… I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”
On another occasion, he remarked: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it is true, but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.”
Ben-Gurion reminded his military commanders that the prime aim of Plan D was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. He was well aware of his own criminality.
Today under the Trump plan, as the Guardian points out, a Palestinian state would receive territory, mostly desert, near Gaza to compensate for the further loss of about 30% of the West Bank. And we are all asked to recognize the Jordan valley, which makes up about a third of the occupied West Bank, and the Old City of Jerusalem, as part of Israel.
Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ won’t bring peace – that was the plan
The proposal deliberately includes a host of unrealisable preconditions before what remains of Palestine can be recognised
By Jonathon Cook | The National | January 2, 2020
Much of Donald Trump’s long-trailed “deal of the century” came as no surprise. Over the past 18 months, Israeli officials had leaked many of its details.
The so-called “Vision for Peace” unveiled on Tuesday simply confirmed that the US government has publicly adopted the long-running consensus in Israel: that it is entitled to keep permanently the swaths of territory it seized illegally over the past half-century that deny the Palestinians any hope of a state.
The White House has discarded the traditional US pose as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders were not invited to the ceremony, and would not have come had they been. This was a deal designed in Tel Aviv more than in Washington – and its point was to ensure there would be no Palestinian partner.
Importantly for Israel, it will get Washington’s permission to annex all of its illegal settlements, now littered across the West Bank, as well as the vast agricultural basin of the Jordan Valley. Israel will continue to have military control over the entire West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his intention to bring just such an annexation plan before his cabinet as soon as possible. It will doubtless provide the central plank in his efforts to win a hotly contested general election due on March 2.
The Trump deal also approves Israel’s existing annexation of East Jerusalem. The Palestinians will be expected to pretend that a West Bank village outside the city is their capital of “Al Quds”. There are incendiary indications that Israel will be allowed to forcibly divide the Al Aqsa mosque compound to create a prayer space for extremist Jews, as has occurred in Hebron.
Further, the Trump administration appears to be considering giving a green light to the Israeli right’s long-held hopes of redrawing the current borders in such a way as to transfer potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinians currently living in Israel as citizens into the West Bank. That would almost certainly amount to a war crime.
The plan envisages no right of return, and it seems the Arab world will be expected to foot the bill for compensating millions of Palestinian refugees.
A US map handed out on Tuesday showed Palestinian enclaves connected by a warren of bridges and tunnels, including one between the West Bank and Gaza. The only leavening accorded to the Palestinians are US pledges to strengthen their economy. Given the Palestinians’ parlous finances after decades of resource theft by Israel, that is not much of a promise.
All of this has been dressed up as a “realistic two-state solution”, offering the Palestinians nearly 70 per cent of the occupied territories – which in turn comprise 22 per cent of their original homeland. Put another way, the Palestinians are being required to accept a state on 15 per cent of historic Palestine after Israel has seized all the best agricultural land and the water sources.
Like all one-time deals, this patchwork “state” – lacking an army, and where Israel controls its security, borders, coastal waters and airspace – has an expiry date. It needs to be accepted within four years. Otherwise, Israel will have a free hand to start plundering yet more Palestinian territory. But the truth is that neither Israel nor the US expects or wants the Palestinians to play ball.
That is why the plan includes – as well as annexation of the settlements – a host of unrealisable preconditions before what remains of Palestine can be recognised: the Palestinian factions must disarm, with Hamas dismantled; the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas must strip the families of political prisoners of their stipends; and the Palestinian territories must be reinvented as the Middle East’s Switzerland, a flourishing democracy and open society, all while under Israel’s boot.
Instead, the Trump plan kills the charade that the 26-year-old Oslo process aimed for anything other than Palestinian capitulation. It fully aligns the US with Israeli efforts – pursued by all its main political parties over many decades – to lay the groundwork for permanent apartheid in the occupied territories.
Trump invited both Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, and his chief political rival, former general Benny Gantz, for the launch. Both were keen to express their unbridled support.
Between them, they represent four-fifths of Israel’s parliament. The chief battleground in the March election will be which one can claim to be better placed to implement the plan and thereby deal a death blow to Palestinian dreams of statehood.
On the Israeli right, there were voices of dissent. Settler groups described the plan as “far from perfect” – a view almost certainly shared privately by Netanyahu. Israel’s extreme right objects to any talk of Palestinian statehood, however illusory.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition will happily seize the goodies offered by the Trump administration. Meanwhile the plan’s inevitable rejection by the Palestinian leadership will serve down the road as justification for Israel to grab yet more land.
There are other, more immediate bonuses from the “deal of the century”.
By allowing Israel to keep its ill-gotten gains from its 1967 conquest of Palestinian territories, Washington has officially endorsed one of the modern era’s great colonial aggressions. The US administration has thereby declared open war on the already feeble constraints imposed by international law.
Trump benefits personally, too. This will provide a distraction from his impeachment hearings as well as offering a potent bribe to his Israel-obsessed evangelical base and major funders such as US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in the run-up to a presidential election.
And the US president is coming to the aid of a useful political ally. Netanyahu hopes this boost from the White House will propel his ultra-nationalist coalition into power in March, and cow the Israeli courts as they weigh criminal charges against him.
How he plans to extract personal gains from the Trump plan were evident on Tuesday. He scolded Israel’s attorney-general over the filing of the corruption indictments, claiming a “historic moment” for the state of Israel was being endangered.
Meanwhile, Abbas greeted the plan with “a thousand nos”. Trump has left him completely exposed. Either the PA abandons its security contractor role on behalf of Israel and dissolves itself, or it carries on as before but now explicitly deprived of the illusion that statehood is being pursued.
Abbas will try to cling on, hoping that Trump is ousted in this year’s election and a new US administration reverts to the pretence of advancing the long-expired Oslo peace process. But if Trump wins, the PA’s difficulties will rapidly mount.
No one, least of all the Trump administration, believes that this plan will lead to peace. A more realistic concern is how quickly it will pave the way to greater bloodshed.
Americans Keep Putting Up Roadblocks Against Russian Troops on Key Syrian Highway
By Marko Marjanović | Anti-Empire | January 29, 2020
This is now the fourth time this has happened that we know of. US troops in northeastern Syria keep blockading the M4 highway to prevent Russian troops from moving on it.
In fall of 2019, to prevent a Turkish invasion of the Kurdish-held northeastern Syria, the Pentagon hammered out a deal with the Turks for joint US-Turkish patrols on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border.
As soon as that happened however Trump, after a talk with Erdogan, declared and ordered a US military withdrawal from Syria. At this moment Russia jumped in and took over the US role in the formerly US-Turkish agreement. To minimally appease Erdogan and limit his invasion it would now be Russians who patrolled together with the Turks, which was welcomed by the Kurdish leadership.
In separate negotiations with the Kurds the Russians also gained a number of bases in the northeast to make the patrols possible, and thousands of Syrian army troops also poured in to reinforce the Kurds against the Turkish invasion in the limited sector it was taking place in.
At this point Trump reversed himself, saying US forces would stay in Syria, but only in the oil-rich parts. But the withdrawal from the Syrian-Turkish border, where US presence had hampered US-Turkish relations, would be permanent.
Blue is the obvious path, but the Americans insist the Russians must hug the border along the red path
What is happening now is that when the Russians coming from the west want to take the direct and obvious route to their facilities in the city of Qamishli they periodically encounter US troops near the town of Tell Tamr standing in their way.
The Americans block the road with their vehicles and demand the Russians take the longer, indirect way to Qamishli along inferior roads hugging the Syrian-Turkish border.
Russia’s UN Envoy Blasts ‘Deal of the Century’ Map Which Shows Golan Heights as Part of Israel
Sputnik – 30.01.2020
Israel took over part of Syria’s Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing the area in 1981. The UN denounced Tel Aviv’s decision as “null and void and without international legal effect.” Last March, Washington formally recognised the occupied area as Israeli territory. Damascus blasted the move and vowed to regain its lands someday.
The Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vaily Nebenzya has called on the architects of the so-called ‘deal of the century’ Israeli-Palestinian peace plan to remember that the Golan Heights belong to Syria.
“Yesterday, Washington published its vision for a settlement in the Middle East. We could not help but notice that the maps included in the plan defined the Golan Heights as Israeli territory,” Nebenzya said, referring to a pair of maps tweeted out by President Trump showing the proposed Israeli and Palestinian states which clearly show the Golan Heights northeast of the Sea of Galilee as part of Israel.
“In this connection, we would like to remind the ‘geographer’ who created this map that we and Security Council Resolution 497 do not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan,” Nebenzya added.
“The Golan Heights are illegally occupied Syrian territory,” the ambassador stressed.
In 1981, after Tel Aviv moved to annex the occupied areas of the Golan Heights, the United Nations unanimously adopted a resolution saying that Israeli claims to the Golan Heights were “null and void and without international legal effect.” In 1982, 86 other countries in the General Assembly adopted a second resolution calling for a general boycott of Israel over its occupation of Syrian territory, but the US and its European allies rejected the initiative. Israel gained control of the Golan Heights in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, a brief conflict which took place in June 1967 which began when Israel launched preemptive airstrikes against an Arab coalition led by Egypt.
US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation recognising Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in March 2019 after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dozens of countries including the US’s European allies rejected Washington’s change in position, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov characterised the decision as a “conscious, deliberate demonstration of lawlessness.”
Syria warned that it would never give up its claims to the Golan Heights territories, and indicated that it has the legal right to regain the Golan Heights by any means possible, alleging that force was “the only language which Israel understands.” Skirmishes have been reported in the area in the months since, with Israel occasionally reporting the destruction of projectiles launched from the Syrian side of the border, while Syrian air defences have reported the shootdown of Israeli missiles.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited ‘Deal of the Century’ Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. The proposal envisions a two-state solution, recognises Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and grants the Palestinian Authority several neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. It also offers the Palestinian side $50 billion in investments. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the proposal outright, telling Trump Jerusalem was “not for sale,” and vowing that the deal would “not go through” under his watch.
Why Trump Can’t Save Israel
By Tim Anderson | American Herald Tribune | January 29, 2020
Despite Trump’s apparent show of strength in the cynical ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan, he is actually helping Netanyahu destroy Israel, the European colony in Palestine.
Palestinian envoy to Britain Husam Zomlot said the announcement was a “piece of political theatre” and will push the situation “over the cliff and into apartheid”. Hamas rejected the plan as “nonsense” (RT 2020). Netanyahu, who has always been focussed on the expansion of ‘Greater Israel’, said that the Zionist state owes both Kushner and Trump “an eternal debt of gratitude”.
Trump’s ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan (“A vision to improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people”) is a revised version of the 2019 Kushner plan (the so-called “deal of the century”), which offered an illusory promise of long term money (mostly Gulf Arab money) in exchange for political surrender. The new version speaks of a “realistic two state solution” – because “Israel has now agreed to terms for a future Palestinian State” – with a tiny Palestinian statelet cramming the majority Arab population of historic Palestine into 15% of the land. Israel would control the vast majority of the West Bank (White House 2020). With no sovereign powers for the statelet, this deliberately enhances the status quo of a single state.
Trump’s latest plan follows a series of initiatives hostile to Palestinian and Syrian interests: breaching international law to recognize Jerusalem as a Zionist possession, breaching international law to annex the Syrian Golan, trying to legitimize the multiple Israeli colonies on the West Bank, demanding (in the Kushner plan) an effective Palestinian surrender on statehood and adopting the IHRA claim that any anti-Israel criticism is ‘racist’ and so illegitimate (IHRA 2016).
At this stage in the history of the colony, the 72 year old illusion of a ‘two state solution’ remains the main obstacle to a democratic Palestine. Trump’s plan seems an ‘advance’ on the Kushner Plan, in trying to keep that illusion alive. A majority of liberal Jews in the USA, for example, still hold to the two state illusion. But Netanyahu and his colleagues have always wanted it all.
The problem for the more ambitious Zionists is two-fold: (1) Palestinians have resisted, by guerrilla warfare and by not going away, and now slightly outnumber Jewish Israelis in historic Palestine; (2) destruction of the two state myth, and widespread recognition that there is only a single apartheid state, will bring a dramatic collapse in Israeli legitimacy across the world.
The more astute Zionist leaders know this. Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert recognized that “if the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights … the State of Israel is finished” (Olmert 2007).
Historically, Israel as a sectarian European colony, has always relied on substantial ethnic cleansing. On 3 December 1947, as the campaign intensified, Zionist leader David Ben Gurion told his party faithful that the “40% non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state” was “not a solid basis for a Jewish state .. only a state with at least 80% Jews is a solid and viable state” (Pappe 2006: 76).
For that reason, Ben Gurion’s ‘Plan Dalet’ of March 1948 called for operations “destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) and especially of those population centers which are difficult to control … [the operations required are] encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state” (Pappe 2006: 68; Vidal 1997).
That plan was carried out and featured the Deir Yassin massacre of 9 April, where 107 villagers were killed, and a series of expulsions in which 531 villages and eleven urban neighborhoods were destroyed and 800,000 became refugees (Pappe 2006: xiii; Vidal 1997).
Yet despite this ethnic cleansing, military domination and annexations, Israeli agencies confirm that the current Arab population of historic Palestine (Arab Israelis plus those on the West Bank and in Gaza) is roughly equal to the population of Jewish Israelis.
A report from Jerusalem in 2011 showed that the Palestinian population of that city had risen from 25.5% in 1967 to 38% in 2009 (AIC 2011: 10, 12). The Jewish Virtual Library shows that the Jews of Israel / 1948 Palestine have declined from a peak of 88.9% in 1960 to 74.7% in 2017 (JVL 2017). In parallel, officials from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics and the military run civil administration of the Occupied Territories (COGAT) say that the Arab population of Gaza, the West Bank and Arab [second class] citizens of Israel, along with residents of the annexed East Jerusalem municipality, add up to 6.5 million, about the same number as “Jews living between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean” (Heller 2018).
For all the apparent advances of Israeli power, Palestinian resistance has enhanced both the ‘demographic threat’ to Israel and the colony’s illegitimacy, in the international sphere.
In that context, Trump and Netanyahu are building an even more extreme illegitimacy, by consolidating a more openly apartheid state. In a report commissioned for the UN several years back, legal scholars Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley (2017), made it clear that Israel had already become an ‘apartheid state’, which is a crime against humanity. The international community had a responsibility to dismantle such a regime, they said.
Richard Falk, who had been a Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine for the UN, said that Palestine was wining the legitimacy battle: “Palestine is winning what in the end is the more important war, the struggle for legitimacy, which is most likely to determine the political outcome”. In the context of anti-colonial struggles, he continues, citing Vietnam, Algeria and Iraq, “the side with the greater perseverance and resilience, not the side that controlled the battlefield, won in the end” (Falk 2014).
Ironically it is the Palestinian Authority (PA), paid and contracted by the US and the Israeli regime, that helps keeps alive the illusion of two states. The PA blocks a clear and unified Palestinian strategy to dismantle apartheid Israel in favor of a single democratic state.
But where the PA has failed, Netanyahu and Trump are succeeding. While Israeli expansion has been blocked by the Lebanese resistance in the north and the resistance of Gaza in the south, Netanyahu has persisted with a steady colonization of the West Bank, undermining any viable Palestinian state.
Now Trump has added to this drive, offering only the fig leaf of a powerless ghetto on a small part of the West Bank and in Gaza. Israel’s contempt for the people of Gaza is plain. This is reminiscent of the failed Bantustan Homelands solution offered by apartheid South Africa, just before that regime collapsed (SAHO 2020). More open apartheid in Palestine will mean the death of Israel. Thank you Trump and Netanyahu.
References
AIC (2011) ‘Jerusalem: facts and figures’, Alternative Information Center, December, Jerusalem and Beit Sahour, Palestine
Anderson, Tim (2008) The Future of Palestine, Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, 7 August, online: https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/future-palestine-1/
Falk, Richard (2014) ‘On ‘Lost Causes’ and the Future of Palestine’, The Nation, 16 December, online: https://www.thenation.com/article/lost-causes-and-future-palestine/
Falk, Richard and Virginia Tilley (2017) Palestine – Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture; East Jerusalem Vol. 22, Issue 2/3, 191-196; also available here: https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/israeli-apartheid/
Heller, Jeffrey (2018) ‘Jews, Arabs nearing population parity in Holy Land: Israeli officials’, Reuters, 27 march, online: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-population/jews-arabs-nearing-population-parity-in-holy-land-israeli-officials-idUSKBN1H222T
IHRA (2016) ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’, online: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism
JVL (2017) ‘Demographics of Israel: Jewish & Non-Jewish Population of Israel/Palestine (1517 – Present), Jewish Virtual Library, online: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present
Olmert, Ehud (2007) ‘Olmert to Haaretz: Two-state Solution, or Israel Is Done For’, Haaretz, 29 November, online: https://www.haaretz.com/1.4961269
Pappe, Ilan (2006) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, London
Pappe, Ilan (2014) ‘Israel’s incremental genocide in the Gaza ghetto’, Electronic Intifada, 13 July, online: https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562
RT (2020) ‘Trump proposes a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine in ‘win-win opportunity’ for both sides’, 28 January, online: https://www.rt.com/news/479412-trump-two-state-solution-israel/
SAHO (2020) ‘The Homelands’, South African History Online, online: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands
Vidal, Dominique (1997) ‘The expulsion of the Palestinians re-examined’, le Monde Diplomatique, December, online: https://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine
White House (2020) ‘President Donald J. Trump’s Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and a Brighter Future for Israel and the Palestinian People’, 28 January, online: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-vision-peace-prosperity-brighter-future-israel-palestinian-people/
Dr. Tim Anderson is Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. He has worked at Australian universities for more than 30 years, teaching, researching and publishing on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. In 2014 he was awarded Cuba’s medal of friendship. He is Australia and Pacific representative for the Latin America based Network in Defence of Humanity. His most recent books are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), The Dirty War on Syria (2016), now published in ten languages; Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria (2017) and Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East (2019).
Hamas calls Trump’s Mideast plan ‘aggressive,’ Jerusalem proposal ‘nonsense’
RT | January 28, 2020
Hamas has brushed off US President Donald Trump’s proposal on Jerusalem as “nonsense.” The group rejected his peace plan altogether by calling his statement “aggressive,” adding that it would only spark “anger.”
“Trump’s statement is aggressive and it will spark a lot of anger,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. The member of the Hamas movement that has a political and a militant wing particularly slammed the US leader’s proposal on the future of Jerusalem, calling it “nonsense.”
He added that the city “will always be a land for the Palestinians”, and that they would oppose Trump’s deal.
Trump’s speech contained conflicting messages, with him first declaring that Jerusalem would be Israel’s “undivided” capital, only to then say that Eastern Jerusalem will be turned into the capital of a newly formed Palestinian state if Palestinians accept his deal. He even vowed to open a US embassy there.
Thousands of Palestinians turned up on the streets in Gaza and elsewhere on Tuesday to protest Trump’s Middle East peace plan even before the US president announced it. The protesters were waving Palestinian flags as well as burned pictures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the announcement ceremony.
The US has consistently promoted its peace plan as the “Deal of the Century” that will put an end to a decades-long conflict. Netanyahu also hailed it as a “once in a lifetime opportunity for Israel.” That never sat well with Palestinians, who even branded the proposed accord “a deal of the devil.”
Trump deal: A prize for Israel at the expense of Palestine
Press TV – January 28, 2020
Just as US President Donald Trump is taking time off his controversial impeachment trial to unveil his much hyped-up peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a potentially explosive situation is unfolding in Palestinian territories where there is huge resentment among the leadership and the people towards the so-called ‘deal of the century.’
Palestinians argue that one primary flaw of Trump’s deal is that despite presumably offering a recipe for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, it totally excludes and sidelines them, as one side of any mutual agreement.
Palestinians view the deal as Washington’s seal of approval for Israel’s long-desired annexation of their territories it has been illegally occupying for decades, in total disregard for UN Security Council resolutions and the opposition by the vast majority of the international community.
The timing for the unveiling of the deal has also drawn much attention as both President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are embroiled in major national scandals. The US president is in the midst of an impeachment trial, while the Israeli premier is facing three corruption indictments.
Palestinian leaders from different factions raised their voices on Monday against the US-devised deal and stressed the need for popular resistance in the face of the American scheme which Trump prepares to unveil in the presence of Israeli leaders at 17:00 GMT on Tuesday.
Palestine has already rejected the so-called peace plan as “the slap of the century.”
The scheme is reported to be hugely biased towards the Tel Aviv regime by extending Israel’s “sovereignty” over all settlements and annexing the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.
Washington released the economic portion of its initiative during a conference last June, which was boycotted by Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause against Israel’s decades-occupation.
I won’t become a traitor: Abbas
Speaking at a meeting with members of the Fatah Party’s central committee on Monday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was cited in media reports as saying that Trump “wants to impose something on us that we do not want.”
Fatah officials also quoted Abbas as saying that he “did not pick up the phone” after calls from Washington.
“I said no and I will continue to say no… We are going for difficult days and we are beginning to bear the consequences of the refusal. Resistance must be escalated at all points of friction. All young people must be encouraged,” he said.
Abbas said he had received threats over his firm opposition to Trump’s deal, but that he will not back down from his stance.
“I was told I’ll pay a heavy price for my foolish behavior. I do not have much longer to live and I will not go down as a traitor. It’s either dying like martyrs or flying the Palestinian flag on the walls of Jerusalem [al-Quds],” he added.
Abbas also instructed Palestinian security forces not to interfere with protests against the US scheme, according to the reports.
US deal will be another Nakba: Hamas
Fawzi Barhoum, spokesman for the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement, said Trump’s deal represents another Nakba for the Palestinian nation.
The Nakba Day (the Day of Catastrophe) is commemorated every year on May 15 to mark the forcible eviction of Palestinians from their motherland by Israel in 1948.
Barhoum also stressed that confronting “the disgraceful deal of the century” requires declaring public mobilization and stepping up resistance in various forms throughout Palestine.
He further urged Abbas to take important decisions towards opposing the initiative, among them ending security cooperation with Israel.
‘Arab envoys should boycott unveiling ceremony’
Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh called on all ambassadors of Arab and Muslim countries invited to the unveiling ceremony of the US plan not to attend the event, according to the Palestinian WAFA news agency.
The Palestinians consider the deal “a conspiracy aimed at undermining the rights of the Palestinian people and thwarting the establishment of the State of Palestine.”
Reports, however, suggest that Arab Persian Gulf states — which have long had secret contacts with Israel — are likely to voice general support for the contentious US scheme, but only if it does not allow Tel Aviv to immediately annex parts of the West Bank.
So far Jordan has openly opposed the deal.
Trump attempting to boost Netanyahu: Israeli MK
Ahmad Tibi, Israeli lawmaker from the Arab-majority Joint List political alliance, said that Trump was intervening in the Palestine issue in favor of scandal-hit Netanyahu, amid an election deadlock in the occupied territories, Al Mayadeen TV channel reported.
Anyone who supports Trump’s initiative is actually against Palestine, he added.
Islamic Jihad calls for new Intifada
Mohammed al-Hindi, a member of Gaza-based Islamic Jihad’s politburo, called on people to launch a new Intifada (uprising) in the occupied territories.
He further underlined the need for an emergency meeting between all Palestinian groups on how to counter the US plan.
Gazans to protest; Palestinian leaders to convene
Meanwhile, groups based in the Gaza Strip have called on Palestinians in the blockaded coastal enclave to protest against Trump’s deal in central Gaza on Tuesday.
Separately, Abbas has called for an emergency meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee and the Fatah central committee at 17:00 GMT on Tuesday, which coincides with the plan’s release.
Hamas, which governs Gaza, is also set take part in the meeting.
“We invited the Hamas movement to attend the emergency meeting of the leadership and they will take part in the meeting,” senior Palestinian official Azzam al-Ahmed said.
A Million Iraqis Asked Us to Leave. We Should Listen.
By Ron Paul | January 27, 2020
You wouldn’t know it from US mainstream media reporting, but on Friday an estimated million Iraqis took to the streets to protest the continued US military presence in their country. What little mainstream media coverage the protest received all reported the number of protesters as far less than actually turned out. The Beltway elites are determined that Americans not know or understand just how much our presence in Iraq is not wanted.
The protesters were largely supporters of nationalist Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who opposes both US and Iranian presence in Iraq. Protesters held signs demanding that the US military leave Iraq and protest leaders warned of consequences unless the US listen to the Iraqi people.
After President Trump’s illegal and foolish assassination of Iranian general Soleimani on Iraqi soil early this month, the Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to cancel the agreement under which the US military remains in Iraq. But when the Iraqi prime minister called up Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to request a timetable for a US withdrawal, Pompeo laughed in his face.
The US government answered the Iraqi parliament’s vote with a statement that the US military is a “force for good” in the Middle East and that because of the continuing fight against ISIS US troops will remain, even where they are not wanted.
How many billions of dollars have we sent to Iraq to help them build their democracy? Yet as soon as a decision of Iraq’s elected parliament goes against Washington’s wishes, the US government is no longer so interested in democracy. Do they think the Iraqis don’t notice this double-dealing?
The pressure for the US to leave Iraq has been building within the country, but the US government and mainstream media is completely – and dangerously – ignoring this sentiment. It’s one thing to push the neocon propaganda that Iraqis and Iranians would be celebrating in the streets after last month’s US assassination of Iranian general Soleimani, who was the chief strategist for the anti-ISIS operation over the past five years. It’s a completely different thing to believe the propaganda, especially as more than a million Iranians mourned the popular military leader.
The Friday protesters demanded that all US bases in Iraq be closed, all security agreements with the US and with US security companies be ended, and a schedule for the exit of all US forces be announced. Sadr announced that the resistance to the US troop presence in Iraq will halt temporarily if an orderly departure is announced and implemented. Otherwise, he said, the resistance to US troops would be activated.
A million Iraqi protesters chanted “no, no to occupation.” The Iraqi parliament voted for us to leave. The Iraqi prime minister asked us to leave. Maj. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, the US deputy commander in Iraq and Syria, said last week that US troops in Iraq are more threatened by Shi’ite militias than ISIS.
So, before more US troops die for nothing in Iraq, why don’t we listen to the Iraqi people and just come home? Let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems and let’s solve our problems at home.
Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute
Trump’s Katyusha Conundrum: Unguided Artillery Deployed by Iraqi Insurgents against US Occupation Forces
Katyusha launcher (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
By William Walter Kay | Global Research | January 23, 2020
Katyushas are short-range, unguided artillery rockets typically fired in salvos from truck-mounted launch-tubes. Iraq’s insurgents deploy three types.
The smallest is 107 millimetres in diameter and 1 metre long. Its 19 kilogram weight includes an 8 kg high-explosive, shrapnel-bearing warhead. The 107mm is often fired from a 12-tube launcher, however, infantry-portable single-tube tripods are common. An experienced crew with a standardised weapon can hit a 400 X 400 metre target from 8 kilometres away. During the Vietnam War the US Army considered the 107mm to be their adversaries’ most formidable weapon.
The 122mm ‘Grad’ Katyusha is 3 metres long and weighs 75 kg. Its warhead spans a third of its length and weighs 18 kg. It has a 20-kilometre range and a 30-metre lethal radius.
220mm Katyushas hurl 100 kg warheads 30 kilometres.
Katyushas have advantages over mortars. They deliver the same payload twice the distance and they fire multiple ordnance more rapidly. The globally ubiquitous BM-21 Grad fires forty 122mm rockets in three minutes. Reloading takes 10 minutes. Thus, Katyushas excel at “shoot-and-scoot” operations. As well, Katyushas’ flat trajectories permit line-of-sight attacks and their 700 metre-per-second velocities provide unique anti-building potential.
*
After [allegedly] helping suppress the ISIS-led insurgency (2014-17) US forces defaulted to their previous occupation plan. Central to this program are segregated compounds situated inside Iraqi Armed Forces bases. These installations, always near airstrips, contain mere hundreds (not thousands) of US and Coalition troops who ride herd over the Iraqi Army whilst grooming and directing Iraq’s 15,000-strong Special Forces.
Embassies and consulates are integral to the occupation. The sprawling US Embassy compound dominates Baghdad’s fortified “Green Zone” which also houses Coalition partners’ embassies, and the headquarters of the many NGOs insinuated throughout Iraqi society.
The occupation facilitates local activities of American and European businesses. These require office blocks, oil-field infrastructure; and, gated communities for imported talent.
Pre-2011 Americans relied on bases containing thousands of troops. These were remotely located and allocated substantial resources to thwart indirect (mortar and rocket) attacks through: counter-artillery, drone surveillance, and fighting patrols. Despite this, indirect fire inflicted 3,000 casualties (including 211 fatalities) on American forces; many occurring inside ‘secure’ bases.
The US-led Coalition’s current archipelago of military, diplomatic, intelligence, business and NGO installations are ill-equipped to defend themselves against indirect fire. Proximity to cities makes them sitting ducks.
*
In September 2018 persons unknown began targeting US installations with Katyushas. This list chronicles these attacks.* (A dozen mortar attacks are not listed; Katyushas being the weapon of choice.)
- September 8, 2018 – four rockets (three 107mms and one 122mm) fall near the Green Zone.
- September 8, 2018 – two salvos of 107mms land near the US Consulate beside Basra Airport.
- September 28, 2018 – three 107mms are fired at the Basra Consulate; two land on site.
- December 27, 2018 – two 107mms are fired at Al-Asad Airbase (160 kilometres west of Baghdad) during Trump’s visit.
- February 2, 2019 – an attack on Al-Asad Airbase is aborted. Three ready-to-launch 122mms are captured.
- February 12, 2019 – three 107mms hit Q-West Airfield (an off-the-books base south of Mosul).
- May 1, 2019 – two 107mms hit Camp Al-Taji: a ‘training’ institute, 40 kilometres north of Baghdad.
- May 19, 2019 – two rockets land near the US Embassy.
- June 10, 2019 – rocket attack on Camp Al-Taji.
- June 12, 2019 – rocket attack on a “northern air base” starts a fire.
- June 13, 2019 – rocket attack on Nineveh Command Headquarters (Mosul Presidential Palace).
- June 14, 2019 – a rocket lands near the US Embassy.
- June 17, 2019 – three rockets hit Camp Al-Taji.
- June 18, 2019 – Nineveh HQ is attacked by two 122mms; one hits, one misses.
- June 19, 2019 – rockets strike a gated community outside Basra (home to Exxon staff).
- September 23, 2019 – two rockets hit the Green Zone; one lands near the US Embassy.
- October 30, 2019 – two rockets hit the Green Zone, killing an Iraqi soldier.
- November 8, 2019 – seventeen rockets target Q-West Airfield.
- November 17, 2019 – rockets hit the Green Zone.
- November 29, 2019 – a rocket hits the Green Zone.
- December 3, 2019 – Al-Asad Airbase is “rocked” by five 122mms.
- December 5, 2019 – five 107mms hit Balad Airbase (80 kilometres north of Baghdad).
- December 6, 2019 – a 240mm rocket lands near Baghdad Airport (then housing a US base).
- December 9, 2019 – four 240mms strike Baghdad Airport killing 2, and wounding 5, Iraqi soldiers.
- December 11, 2019 – two 240mms land outside Baghdad Airport.
- December 27, 2019 – thirty-six 107mms hammer K1 Base (15 kilometres northwest of Kirkuk); killing an American translator and wounding several US troops.
- December 29, 2019 – four rockets hit Camp Al-Taji.
- December 29, 2019 – five rockets hit Al-Asad Airbase.
- January 4, 2020 – two rockets hit Balad Airbase.
- January 4, 2020 – several rockets hit the Green Zone. One lands near the US Embassy; another closes a major street.
- January 5, 2020 – six rockets are fired at the Green Zone; three hit the target.
- January 8, 2020 – two rockets hit the Green Zone.
- January 12, 2020 – eight rockets hit Balad Airbase, wounding several Iraqi soldiers.
- January 14, 2020 – a five-rocket attack on Camp Al-Taji.
- January 20, 2020 – three rockets hit Green Zone. They were fired from Al Zafraniya (15 kilometres away).
Attacks are becoming more frequent and are trending toward bigger rockets and higher volume salvos.
The insurgents’ strategy is working. Katyusha attacks shuttered the US Basra Consulate in September 2018. Attacks in May and June 2019 forced Exxon to evacuate much of its foreign staff. Throughout 2019 the US State Department extracted personnel and the Defense Department consolidated bases into more secure facilities. By late 2019 US authorities were begging Iraqis for help whilst threatening retaliation.
The last straw came December 27 when the barrage onto K1 Base killed an American translator. The US responded with airstrikes on five Kata’ib Hezbollah bases (90 casualties) and with the January 3 assassination of Iranian General Soleimani. (The decision to assassinate Soleimani – in the event of an American fatality – was made June 24, 2019 following a week of near daily Katyusha attacks.)
*
While Iran and Iran’s Iraqi allies are blamed for these attacks; this is dubious. Reportage following attacks invariably drops the phrase “no one claimed responsibility” – which is notable because perpetrators often boast of such achievements. Ten years ago, when Kata’ib Hezbollah targeted US facilities with “lob bombs” (improvised rockets), they posted videos of their handiwork. They deny involvement in these recent attacks as do other Iranian-linked militias.
The reportage often describes the attacks as “mysterious” or as a “whodunit.” Authors relay US intelligence theories of Iranian involvement … without evidence.
On several occasions insurgents abandoned launchers and/or launch vehicles after the attack, often with fail-to-launch rockets inside. Investigators also possess fragments of successfully fired rockets. Tellingly, US officials, renowned for straining at gnats for evidence of Iranian complicity, do not utilise this material to incriminate Tehran.
The launchers themselves are obviously manufactured by local artisans. Moreover, an article from Kurdistan–24 describes the rockets as “locally made.” Even globalist-militarist instrumentalities like the Washington Institute, Long War Journal, and Center for Strategic and International Studies concede some Katyushas are manufactured in Iraq.
Iraq has a burgeoning steel industry and, due to the calamities of the past 20 years, an enormous scrap metal industry. Katyushas’ cardinal virtue is their simplicity.
*
Circa 2014 twelve countries hosted non-state armed groups that deployed Katyushas. (Post-2014 Yemen’s Houthis joined this list, then outdid the pack in innovation and output.)
During the 2003-11 era Iraqi insurgents looted Katyushas from local arsenals. Other Katyushas came from Iran (officially or via the black market) and possibly from any of 32 other countries manufacturing them. Experts bemoan the difficulty of determining a rocket’s origin.
Circa 2008 Iraqi artisans manufactured a variety of launchers. A 2009 raid in Maysan Governorate discovered 107mm, 122mm and 220mm rail launchers; and 1,700 carjacks. (Jacks were affixed to the bottoms of stationary tripods to permit changes in launch angle.) Insurgents developed creative mobile launch platforms i.e. inside ice cream trucks or towed behind motorcycles etc. They debuted remote control triggers and GPS reconnaissance.
Circa 2011 poor quality of locally acquired rockets compelled insurgents to continue to rely on imports. The insurgents were, however, manufacturing “lob bomb” rockets and anti-armour mines; although Iran stood accused of being their sole supplier.
Post-2011 insurgents honed their craft. Remember: Hamas, operating inside Gaza with a tiny fraction of the resources of Iraq’s insurgents, manufactures crude Katyushas.
*
Prime suspects in the Katyusha campaign are not pro-Iranian militias; but rather the milieu around Mahdi Army successor, the Promise Day Brigades (PDB). This political tendency, nominally led by Moqtada al-Sadr, is concentrated in Iraq’s densely populated central and southern regions, but boasts a militant contingent in Mosul. This milieu overlaps the Saairun Alliance which includes Iraq’s far left; who carry their own legacy of armed struggle.
The insurgency’s Von Braun might be Jawad al-Tulaybani. An Iran-Iraq War veteran, al-Tulaybani possesses 40 years of combat rocketry experience. A war wound left him partially disabled. He appeared on US radar in 2008 after masterminding a barrage that wounded 15 US soldiers.
The org-chart of the Saairun/PDB/al-Sadr movement remains obscured. Notably, on January 8, 2020 al-Sadr counselled refrain from military actions. Four Katyusha attacks happened since.
What is clear is that this general political tendency is not particularly beholden to Iran. They appear non-sectarian, if not secularist, and they advance a left-nationalist agenda. Prior to the 2018 election (wherein Saairun emerged as the most popular bloc) Iran’s Foreign Minister warned Iran would never tolerate an Iraq run by “liberals and communists” – meaning Saairun.
Then again, Trump’s thrill kill of Soleimani (and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units’ Deputy Commander) completely reshuffled the deck, creating unprecedented unity amongst hitherto rivals.
*
As Katyushas veto pacification efforts, US forces return to square one. They must retreat to sprawling, remotely situated camps equipped to suppress indirect fire. This, however, means surrendering Iraq’s political theatre to adversaries who will marshal Iraqi Government resources against them.
Katyushas are driving the Trump Administration’s Iraq policy. Prisoners of groupthink they react by doubling-down on the Big Lie that Iraq’s national liberation movement consists only of “Iranian terrorists.” In reality, their most effective opponents are as indigenous and legitimate as the French Resistance.
Note on Sources
Data came from scanning 1,000 articles then parsing several dozen of them. Preference went to state media: i.e. Voice of America, Al Jazeera, Xinhua et al; although Military Times and Kurdistan-24 proved germane. Rogue Rocketeers: Artillery Rockets and Armed Groups (Small Arms Survey, Geneva Switzerland, 2014) is a must-read. Data on the first 7 Katyusha attacks was lifted without corroboration from Michael Knights’ Responding to Iranian Harassment of U.S. Facilities in Iraq (Washington Institute, May 21, 2019). As Knights is the only analyst to grasp the seriousness of the Katyusha attacks. His reports are a trove. Being intimately connected to US and Israeli intelligence, he slavishly relays the anti-Iran party line.
Major attacks generate scores of reports. Lesser attacks are mentioned only in passing. Some articles tally the attacks but the numbers do not jibe. Certain attacks go unreported. Probably, 50+ mortar and Katyusha attacks hit US facilities between September 8, 2018 and January 14, 2020.
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/F-Working-papers/SAS-WP19-Rogue-Rocketeers.pdf
Copyright © William Walter Kay, Global Research, 2020
Iraqis march in ‘millions’ to call for expulsion of US troops
Press TV – January 24, 2020
Iraqis have rallied in Baghdad in massive numbers to call for an end to US military presence in the country following high-profile assassinations and airstrikes targeting anti-terror forces.
Sayed Sadiq al-Hashemi, the director of the Iraqi Center for Studies, said more than 2.5 million took part in the demonstrations on Friday.
Since the early hours on Friday, huge crowds of men, women and children of all ages converged on the Jadriyah neighborhood near Baghdad University.
The protesters were seen carrying banners and chanting slogans calling for the expulsion of US forces.
“Get out, get out, occupier!” some shouted, while others chanted, “Yes to sovereignty!”
Iraq’s al-Ahd news network reported that Iraqis from all of the country’s provinces had gathered in the city.
On January 5, the Iraqi parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for the expulsion of all foreign forces after the US assassination of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
The massive rally came after influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis to stage “a million-strong, peaceful, unified demonstration to condemn the American presence and its violations”.
Sadr issued a statement on Friday calling for US bases to be shut down and Iraqi airspace closed to US warplanes and surveillance aircraft.
He warned that US presence in the country will be dealt with as an occupying force if Washington does not agree with Iraqi demands to withdraw for the country.
In a message delivered through a representative at Friday prayer in the holy city of Karbala, top cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also urged Iraqi political groups to do what is needed to the safeguard the country’s sovereignty.
He called on Iraqi groups to stand united, far from any foreign influence in countering the dangers which threaten the country.
On Thursday ahead of the planned rallies, Sadr called on Iraqis to mobilize and defend the country’s independence and sovereignty.
“Oh women, men and youth of the country, the time is now upon us to defend the country, its sovereignty and dependence,” Sadr said in a tweet.
“Spread the word of an independent future Iraq that will be ruled by the righteous; an Iraq which will not know of corruption nor aggression” he added, calling on Iraqis to expel the “tyrants”.
Various Iraqi resistance groups affiliated with the country’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have also backed the anti-American rally.
‘Zero hour in face-off with US’
Speaking to the Lebanese al-Mayadeen television channel, Jaafar al-Husseini, a spokesman for the PMU-affiliated Kata’ib Hezbollah resistance group, said “other means” will be used against the Americans if they do not leave Iraq.
The American presence, he said, has led to corruption and instability in the country.
In an interview with Iran’s Tasnim news agency, Firas al-Yasser, a member of the political bureau of Iraq’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, said Friday’s rallies marked “a new chapter” in the Arab country’s relations with the US.
He said Iraqi resistance groups support the stance of the country’s clerical leadership, which does not tolerate Washington’s “theory of dependence and humiliation” of Iraq.
“We believe we have reached the zero hour in facing off with the US,” he said.
Yasser added that Iran’s missile attack on the Ain al-Assad base in the western Iraqi province of Anbar earlier this month was a “prelude” to the expulsion of US forces from the country.
Qais al-Khazali, leader of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, which is part of the PMU, described Friday’s rallies as a “second revolution” a century after the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 against British forces.
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From the Archives
15 Saudi ‘hijackers’ were CIA agents working for US: Scholar
Press TV – April 13, 2016
Fifteen of the 9/11 “hijackers” from Saudi Arabia were CIA agents working for the United States government, which was seeking to destroy the Middle East for Israel and to double the American military budget, says Dr. Kevin Barrett, an American academic who has been studying the events of 9/11 since late 2003…. continue
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