Israel signals rejection of ceasefire proposal accepted by Hamas
Press TV – May 6, 2024
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has agreed to a ceasefire proposal in Gaza, where it has fought a seven-month Israeli aggression that has left tens of thousands dead.
A short statement from Hamas on Monday said that head of the group’s politburo, Ismail Haniyeh, had informed Qatari and Egyptian mediators that it accepted their proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli regime, however, appears not to have accepted the deal.
If the ceasefire agreement takes effect, it would be the first truce since a week-long pause in the fighting in November 2023.
The statement by Hamas came hours after senior officials in the group said efforts for reaching a ceasefire would stop if Israel goes ahead with its plans to invade the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million people has been sheltering from Israel’s brutal bombardments in other regions.
Israel on Monday ordered people in some parts of Rafah to evacuate in an apparent move to prepare for an invasion of the city.
The US government said it had warned the Israeli regime against a major operation in Rafah.
Speaking to reporters after Hamas’ announcement on the ceasefire, the Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari would not confirm whether Israel would go ahead with plans to attack Rafah.
However, he said that the Israeli regime will exhaust “every possibility regarding negotiations and returning the hostages.”
A senior Hamas official told Al Jazeera that the proposal presented by Qatar and Egypt consists of a three-stage plan, and includes the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, the return of Palestinian refugees, and a prisoner exchange.
Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas politburo in Gaza, explained that the plan is interconnected in terms of the stages of its implementation.
In the first stage of the agreement, the Israeli military will withdraw to areas adjacent to Gaza, he said. In the second stage, he said, a permanent ceasefire and cessation of hostilities will be declared.
Al-Hayya insisted that the ball was now in the Israeli regime’s court whether to accept the deal and end the war.
The Hamas official also said that the mediators promised that US President Joe Biden had signaled a commitment to ensuring the implementation of the proposed deal.
Biden spoke over the phone with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to warn him that Washington is concerned about Israel’s Rafah invasion plans.
Saudi Arabia also warned of the dangers of Israel targeting Rafah as part of its “bloody” and “systematic campaign to storm all areas of the Gaza Strip and displace its residents”.
Nearly 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its aggression on the enclave on October 7 last year.
The invasion came hours after Hamas carried out a brief but extensive military operation into the Israeli-occupied territories near Gaza, killing nearly 1,200 Israeli settlers and military forces.
Hamas also took some 250 captives during its anti-Israeli operation in October. Under growing pressure from settler communities living in the occupied Palestine, the Israeli regime has been pushing for the release of the captives as part of a potential ceasefire deal with Hamas.
The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face
The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance
By Jonathan Cook | April 30, 2024
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.
Israeli settlers attack Jordanian aid convoys heading to Gaza
Israelis block trucks carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip, in the coastal city of Ashdod, February 1, 2024. (AFP photo)
Press TV – May 1, 2024
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry has said two Jordanian aid convoys carrying food and flour have been attacked by Israeli settlers on their way into the besieged Gaza Strip.
The convoys, one taking the Beit Hanoon crossing and another taking the Karem Abu Salem crossing into Gaza, were targeted by the settlers on Wednesday morning.
The assailants dumped some of their cargo and damaged the trucks.
The Jordanian ministry strongly condemned the assault and held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for the crime.
Jordan News Agency (Petra) reported that the “failure of the Israeli authorities to provide protection” for the convoys undermine the regime’s “claims and commitments to allowing aid to enter Gaza.”
Israeli settlers have been repeatedly blocking the humanitarian aid trucks heading to Gaza.
The settlers are calling on the regime to prevent the flow of aid supplies to the besieged strip, despite signs of famine across the territory.
People in Gaza are dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition.
The vast majority of humanitarian convoys have been inspected by the Israeli military in order to guarantee that there is no kind of material that can be smuggled into the besieged Palestinian territory.
A senior Hamas official has said any ceasefire in Gaza needs to be permanent. The senior official said reaching a ceasefire deal could not be at any cost.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that the invasion of the southernmost city of Rafah would go ahead as planned.
US military’s pier in Gaza to cost $320m
MEMO | April 29, 2024
The US military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a US defence official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The figure illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 US service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.
Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The cost has not just risen. It has exploded,” Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters.
“This dangerous effort with marginal benefit will now cost the American taxpayers at least $320 million to operate the pier for only 90 days.”
Democratic President Joe Biden announced the pier in March as aid officials implored Israel to ease access for relief supplies into Gaza over land routes. Biden opted for a sea route for the delivery of aid rather than press Israel to open land borders with Gaza and allow aid into the Strip which is experiencing a “man-made famine”.
Wicker and some other lawmakers have questioned whether the pier is a worthwhile endeavour, particularly given the risk that US military personnel could face if they were targeted during the war.
“For every day this mission continues, the price tag goes up and so does the level of risk for the 1,000 deployed troops within range of Hamas’ rockets,” Wicker said.
Biden has ordered US forces to not step foot on the Gaza shore.
The pier will initially handle 90 trucks a day, but that number could go up to 150 trucks daily when it is fully operational. The United Nations said last week that the daily average number of trucks entering Gaza during April was 200. They have also repeatedly warned that there can be no alternative to a land route for the delivery of aid, adding that though aid being delivered by sea may help Palestinians in Gaza, the amount arriving will be insufficient to stop the spread of famine.
A senior Biden administration official said last week that humanitarian aid coming off the pier will need to pass through Israeli checkpoints on land.
That is despite the aid having already been inspected by Israel in Cyprus before being shipped to Gaza.
The prospect of checkpoints raises questions about possible delays even after aid reaches shore. The United Nations has long complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the Internatinal Court of Justice (ICJ), which in an interim ruling in January, called on the occupation state to ensure no genocidal acts are carried out by its officials or army and to allow for the unhindered delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza.
Palestinians fear the US pier will be used to forcibly displaced civilians from Gaza or to commandeer the occupied territory’s offshore natural resources.
Malala slammed for collaboration with Clinton, cheerleader of Gaza genocide
By Humaira Ahad | Press TV | April 29, 2024
Dressed in traditional Shalwar Kameez, with her hair loosely covered, the youngest Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai recently shared the stage with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the release of a musical about women’s suffrage in the US.
Born in the Swat district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Malala rose to international fame after she was shot in the head by masked militants while she boarded her school bus in October 2012.
She then left her home country and settled in the UK, where she has been living in Birmingham.
Malala is known for lending her voice to campaigns related to children and education. However, her silence over the killing of children in Gaza and the bombing of schools has enraged her followers.
Her decision to collaborate with Clinton, the self-proclaimed votary of the Israeli regime whose country and party have been deeply complicit in the genocide unfolding in Gaza, came under fire.
The duo made their Broadway production debut this month with the “Suffs”, a Broadway musical about the early 20th-century suffragette movement in the US, which sparked outrage as people accused Malala of blatant double standards.
Many questioned her silence over the killing of more than 34,400 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, including more than 15,000 children, while sharing the stage with cheerleaders of the genocide.
Branded as a ‘sell-out’ on social media, netizens described Malala as a factotum for partnering with the former US Secretary of State on the music project.
Importantly, the United States has been supplying lethal weapons worth billions of dollars to the Israeli regime, which are used to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza.
President Joe Biden, who, like Malala, is a member of the Democratic Party, has gone out of his way to defend the Benjamin Netanyahu regime’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza, including the murder of civilians and the bombing of hospitals and schools.
After coming under blistering fire for sharing the stage with the former US presidential candidate while maintaining silence over the Israeli-American war on Gaza, Malala swung into damage control mode.
The 26-year-old took to social media to condemn Israel’s aggression on Palestine.
“I wanted to speak today because I want there to be no confusion about my support for the people of Gaza. We have all watched the relentless atrocities against Palestinian people for more than six months now with anger and despair. This week’s news of mass graves discovered at Gaza’s Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals is yet another reminder of the horrors Palestinians are facing,” she wrote on X.
“It is hard enough to watch from afar – l don’t know how Palestinians bear it in their bones. We do not need to see more dead bodies, bombed schools and starving children to understand that a ceasefire is urgent and necessary. I have and will continue to condemn the Israeli government for its violations of international law and war crimes, and I applaud efforts by those determined to hold them to account. Publicly and privately, I will keep calling on world leaders to push for a ceasefire and to ensure the delivery of urgent humanitarian aid,” she added.
The statement, according to critics, was an attempt to appease her legions of supporters scattered across the world who have in recent days and weeks been critical of her silence over Gaza.
Malala’s public appearance with Clinton only added fuel to the already raging fire of anger and outrage as people around the world, including her supporters, lashed out at her.
Clinton, who is co-producing the musical with the Pakistan-born education activist, has been quite outspoken about her support for the occupying regime in Tel Aviv.
Last November, she wrote an op-ed for The Atlantic arguing against a complete ceasefire in Gaza. She said that a ceasefire would “perpetuate the cycle of violence” in the war-torn region.
“A full cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power would be a mistake,” she wrote at the time.
The former first lady of the US also labeled criticism against the Zionist regime as “antisemitic”
In a 2005 speech to “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee” (AIPAC), Clinton defended Israel’s move to build a barrier wall inside the occupied West Bank.
The move was deemed illegal even by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2004. The ICJ had said that Israel should dismantle the wall and should pay reparation to those individuals who had suffered as a consequence of the construction of the wall.
In 2006, when the regime was bombing Lebanon and Gaza, Clinton praised the bombardment at a pro-Israel rally in New York.
During her presidential campaign in 2008, Clinton’s staunch support for Israel was clearly evident.
In a letter in July 2015, she vowed to combat the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement, urging the need to “make countering BDS a priority” and“fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.”
“I am very concerned by attempts to compare Israel to South African apartheid. Israel is a vibrant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy, and it faces existential threats to its survival,” she wrote in that letter.
In August 2015, Clinton again bragged about her staunch support for the illegitimate regime in an op-ed published in a Jewish newspaper. I “stood with Israel my entire career,” she said.
Besides her unwavering support for Israel, the top diplomat in the Obama administration oversaw a campaign of deadly American drone strikes targeting tribal areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
These drone strikes killed hundreds of civilians in Malala’s home region of Swat, propelling online criticism against the youngest Nobel Laureate’s partnership with Clinton.
Since its inception, the Nobel Prize has been a farce as the award was born out of a blunder.
A French daily in 1888 carried a story of Alfred Nobel’s death, after whom the award is named.
The newspaper wrote, “Dr Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Petrified by the thought that he would be remembered as a “death trader”, Nobel set up the foundation for the Nobel Prize, an activity to rebrand himself.
On his TV show ‘Have it Out With Galloway’, George Galloway, a British parliamentarian while responding to a panelist on whether Iran or Houthis should get Nobel Peace Prize this year, said: “Neither will get the prize as you have to be a warmonger for the empire to get that prize.”
The selection process for the Nobel Peace prize has been shady, reducing the whole process to a farce. The people who get the prize are either war criminals or stooges of the imperialist empire.
In 1973, one of history’s most vicious war criminals Henry Kissinger, was a co-recipient of the prize with Vietnamese Le DucTho for the “peace agreement” that did not achieve peace and the Vietnam war continued.
Tho, however, turned down the controversial award. While negotiating the “peace agreement”, Kissinger was also carpet-bombing Cambodia.
Former US President Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. In Obama’s tenure as the president of the US, there were at least ten times more air strikes in the so-called “war on terror” than under his predecessor, George Bush.
A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Hundreds of people were killed in these strikes.
Another farcical Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Shimon Peres in 1994, who shared that with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Peres, one of the founding fathers of the apartheid regime, systematically helped the regime to bolster its nuclear capabilities.
Peres launched two full-scale wars against the Gaza Strip, killing more than 3,700 Palestinians.
Under him, Israel shelled a United Nations compound near Qana, a village in southern Lebanon. The raid killed 106 people and injured around 116 others.
Bushra Shaikh, a London-based political commentator and analyst, in a post on X, said Malala’s case as someone with brown skin used as an operative is an old practice employed by the West:
“Malala Yousafzai working as an agent for the West isn’t new. Her selective activism for women and girls fails to extend to ALL. A personal struggle soon engineered into a Brown face actor for dollar bills. We’ve seen this happen time and time again.”
Zaman from India questioned the Nobel Laureates’ meeting with Clinton, a staunch supporter of Israel’s genocide in Gaza:
“It’s disheartening to see Malala Yousafzai cozying up to war criminals. Meeting with Hillary raises serious questions about her commitment to justice & human rights. She should be using her platform to hold accountable those responsible for violence and oppression, not rubbing shoulders with them.”
Based in California, US, Maryam regarded Malala as a performer activist whose activities bring forth her reality:
“Never forget I was bullied on every platform for weeks for calling Malala Yousafzai a performative activist 3 years ago. And she keeps proving me right without me doing ANYTHING… truth will always come out.”
Daughter of martyr Al-Areer martyred along with husband, newborn baby in Israeli airstrike
Palestinian Information Center – April 26, 2024
GAZA – The daughter of martyr Refaat Al-Areer, Shaima, was martyred on Friday along with her husband, engineer Muhammad Siam, and their newborn baby in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their apartment near Al-Rimal Clinic in Gaza City.
Media sources said Israeli aircraft launched several attacks this morning targeting the headquarters of the International Red Cross, which houses displaced people, and a residential apartment near Al-Rimal Clinic, resulting in a number of martyrs and wounded.
The sources revealed that among the martyrs was Shaima, the eldest daughter of martyr Dr. Refaat Al-Areer, who was previously assassinated last December in a deliberate Israeli airstrike targeting his sister’s home in Gaza City.
Dr. Refaat Al-Areer was one of the pillars of the English Section at the PIC, and the supervisor of its Social Media Department. He was martyred along with his brother, sister, and her four children.
The martyr Al-Areer also worked as Professor of English Language at the Islamic University which was destroyed in the Israeli aggression. A number of its staff along with its President were martyred as well.
Al-Areer was one of the courageous voices who spoke and wrote in English about the Palestinian cause and refuted the Israeli narrative. He is the author of the book “Gaza Writes Back”.
He was also hosted in distinguished interviews with various Western media outlets.
Hamas ready to join Palestinian ‘national army’ if statehood achieved: Official
The Cradle | April 25, 2024
Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said in an interview published on 25 April that the group could potentially join forces with a Palestinian national army in the event that Palestine is recognized as a state.
“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army,” Hayya told AP.
He also said that Hamas would be willing to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank with the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Fatah party, on the condition of a “fully sovereign Palestinian state” on pre-1967 borders and “the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with the international resolutions.”
He added that Hamas would be willing to “live in a state and establish a ceasefire for five years or more in order to live in security.”
Hayya said that Hamas has offered this solution repeatedly over the years.
“Today, Israel has hit the resistance with great blows, but has not ended it … they have not destroyed more than 20 percent of its capabilities … If they can’t finish [Hamas] off, what is the solution? The solution is to go to consensus.”
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and all its combat capabilities at the start of the war but has so far failed to achieve this goal. The Israeli army is now planning to invade the overcrowded southern city of Rafah, which it says is Hamas’ last stronghold. Nonetheless, the resistance group remains entrenched across Gaza with several other factions.
The US has been pushing the idea of a ‘reformed’ PA assuming control over post-war Gaza. The plan, which Hamas has rejected, would depend on the resistance group’s defeat and the end of its political leadership in the strip.
Washington recently vetoed a resolution for the recognition of Palestine as a full UN member state.
Dozens of Israeli prisoners, including high-ranking army officers, are still being held by Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades.
The interview comes as truce negotiations remain stalemated by Israel’s repeated rejection of Hamas’ main terms, which the resistance group continues to hold fast. These terms include an end to the war and a permanent ceasefire, a withdrawal of all troops from Gaza, a return of the displaced to their homes, and reconstruction of the strip.
“If we are not assured the war will end, why would we hand over the prisoners?” Hayya told AP.
Palestinians ‘buried alive’ by Israeli army in Nasser Hospital mass graves
The Cradle | April 25, 2024
Officials from Gaza’s Civil Defense Department announced on 25 April that 392 bodies have been unearthed from three mass graves discovered at the Nasser Medical Complex in the city of Khan Yunis, with some showing signs of having been buried alive.
“We need forensic examination for approximately 20 bodies for people who we think were buried alive in the Nasser Medical Complex,” Palestinian Civil Defence member Mohammed Mughier told reporters on Thursday, adding that some were the bodies of children.
“Why do we have children in mass graves?” he added, stressing that the evidence shows the Israeli army committed “crimes against humanity.”
Ten of the bodies unearthed had their hands bound, while others still had medical tubes attached to them.
“There are indications of carrying out field executions against some of the victims, while the bodies of other victims carried signs of torture and others were buried alive,” officials from Gaza’s Civil Defense Department said during a press conference.
“Several victims were buried in plastic bags and placed at a depth of three meters, which accelerated their decomposition,” the officials added.
The mass graves were discovered after the Israeli army withdrew from Khan Yunis on 7 April following a four-month raid of the city that decimated most infrastructure and left thousands dead.
Gaza officials have previously stressed that the Israeli army uses forced disappearance as a systematic policy against the people of the strip, highlighting that thousands of Palestinians are still missing.
“Some of the bodies found have evaporated and turned to ash. International institutions must identify the type of weapons used [by Israel],” the Civil Defense Department said earlier this week. “We found in the Nasser Complex corpses without heads and bodies without skins, and some of them had their organs stolen,” Gaza’s Government Media Office office also revealed.
Hundreds of bodies were recently recovered in the northern Gaza Strip, particularly in and around Al-Shifa Hospital, where Israeli troops launched a bloody and destructive military operation lasting from 18 March until 1 April.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called on a “clear, transparent and credible investigation” into the mass graves found in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas holds dozens of high-ranking Israeli officers in Gaza: Report
The Cradle | April 24, 2024
A source within Palestinian resistance movement Hamas told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on 24 April that the group holds around 30 Israeli army generals and officers from the Shin Bet security service as prisoners in the Gaza Strip.
“The movement alone has about 30 generals and Shin Bet officers, who were captured on October 7, from military units and some highly sensitive military sites,” the source said.
The source added that “these people in particular are in highly secured places, far from the hands of the occupation, and it is impossible to reach them under any circumstances,” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have been hiding information from their people regarding “the identities of some of the prisoners.”
This concealment comes as part of efforts “to avoid provoking anger among the ranks of the combat forces.” He added that the military representative on Israel’s prisoner negotiation team, Nitzan Alon, is frustrated with Netanyahu’s “laxity” toward the issue.
The Israeli government has said that 129 Israeli prisoners remain captive in Gaza.
According to the source, Israel does not really know the exact number of prisoners left in Gaza after the prisoner exchanges in late November. He adds that Tel Aviv has not specified the number of imprisoned military officials, as part of a strategy “to classify some of the soldiers or officers … as civilians, in order to reduce the price of negotiating for them during the talks.”
The source also denied Hebrew media reports that only 20 prisoners are alive and that Hamas only proposed releasing 20, as opposed to 40, during the latest rounds of truce talks in Cairo.
Truce negotiations remain stalemated by Israel’s repeated rejection of Hamas’ main terms, which the resistance group continues to hold fast. These terms include an end to the war and a permanent ceasefire, a withdrawal of all troops from Gaza, a return of the displaced to their homes, and reconstruction of the strip.
“The only way [for Israel] to liberate the occupation prisoners is through serious negotiations followed by a full commitment to a ceasefire and reconstruction,” he said.
He also confirmed that the resistance remains in fighting form, and has not been defeated.
“The resistance is still fine, and is still in control in a disciplined manner within integrated structures in the field of operations.” Israel has repeatedly claimed that the southernmost city of Rafah is Hamas’ final stronghold, and is planning an operation against the desperately overcrowded city, posing the threat of a severe humanitarian catastrophe.
The source also confirmed that top Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is “not isolated from reality” or hiding within the tunnels of Gaza, as some have claimed. According to the source, Sinwar has met with some of the fighters of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, has “inspected” some of the areas where clashes took place, and “is carrying out his work as a leader of the movement in the field.”
Macron’s Olympic truce call takes gold for western cynicism
Strategic Culture Foundation | April 19, 2024
French President Emmanuel Macron wants a truce in Ukraine and Gaza for the duration of the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.
Macron said this week that his proposal is consistent with the ancient concept of an Olympic Truce when, historically, hostilities would be put to the side to showcase higher ideals of human fraternity and peaceful aspiration. In short, demonstration of the edifying notion that sport is above politics.
Russia responded that it was not against the idea in principle. However, Moscow pointed out that Macron’s Olympic peace idea lacks any practical details to vouchsafe a genuine initiative.
To put it more bluntly, the French leader has no credibility to proffer such a potentially important accord. His vague proposal is riddled with contradictions.
Only a few weeks ago, Macron was airing the idea of sending NATO troops to fight in Ukraine against Russia. He has not retracted that reckless provocation, which could escalate the conflict to a world war between nuclear powers.
Now we are to believe that Monsieur President is a tribune for world peace.
Paris and other NATO capitals are desperately pushing for more weapons to be sent to the NeoNazi regime in Kiev. The NATO proxy war against Russia is in its third year and is increasingly looking like a lost cause for Washington and its Western allies. Not one Western leader is prepared to give up the ghost of this bloody debacle to strategically defeat Russia by exploring a diplomatic solution to the war.
How then can Macron’s supposed concern for an Olympic Truce be taken seriously?
As for Gaza, France and its NATO partners have been complicit in sponsoring a genocide over the past six and half months. The Israeli regime’s massacre of over 34,000 Palestinians – a death toll that mounts every week – and its continuing starvation siege on the Gaza Strip are crucially enabled by the military and political support of the United States and the European Union.
As if that is not bad enough, France, the United States and Britain are de facto supporting Israel’s aggression towards Iran, as well as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. The Western trio are helping Israel’s air defenses while at the same time condemning Iran and imposing economic sanctions. Their tacit involvement is green-lighting more Israeli belligerence and violation of international laws which is corroding the entire fabric of global security.
Given the appalling culpability of the Western powers in fueling these explosive conflicts, it is the height of duplicity for Macron to turn around and make his pompous proposal for a truce during the Summer Games being held in Paris from July 26 to August 11.
The real concern for Macron is to showcase France in all its presumed greatness in a worldwide spectacle.
The narcissistic Macron is driven by self-aggrandizing ambition and delusions of grandeur as a world statesman and the president who restored France’s international prestige. It is this same megalomania that drives his recent calls for greater NATO involvement in the proxy war in Ukraine. The former Rothschild banker and now Napoleon wannabe is a charlatan who is completely bereft of any principles.
Significantly, the opening ceremony for the Summer Games is planned to take place along the Seine River in the form of an extravagant regatta. This arrangement breaks with the modern tradition of all Olympics being opened in the main stadium that hosts the sporting events. The Stade de France is located outside the French capital. One gets the distinct impression that Macron wants the grand opening to be televised in the center of Paris simply for the purpose of showing off the capital and its renowned cultural landmarks.
For Macron, the quadrennial games are first and foremost all about displaying France in the best possible light to the world for political and commercial exhibition. The games themselves are a vehicle for his vainglorious ambitions.
The truth is the Olympic Games and other international sporting events have long been hijacked by Western politics for their imperialist agenda.
When the U.S. and its NATO allies were waging illegal wars in countless countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, there were never calls for an Olympic Truce. There were never calls for banning the U.S. and its allies from participating in games even though there were substantial grounds for such calls.
Russian athletes have for several years now been banned from sporting events based solely on trumped-up claims about drug abuse and other alleged infringements. As our columnist Declan Hayes has pointed out in several articles, Russia’s figure-skating champion Kamila Valieva and its other world-class athletes have been subjected to relentless Western efforts to destroy their reputations and participation in “NATO sporting circuses”.
Shamefully, the Western powers and their toxic mass media have done everything to ensure that politics are above sports. Sporting events have become just another adjunct of Western propaganda.
If Macron had any genuine motive for international peace, he would be calling for an end to arming the NeoNazi regime in Ukraine and advocating a credible diplomatic engagement with Russia.
If Macron earnestly wanted the Olympic Games to serve as an overture for peace and humanity, he would be calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and full respect for Palestinian national and human rights.
The Western-controlled International Olympic Committee has banned Russian athletes from participating in the games in Paris under their national flag. Their “concession” is that 40 Russian sportspeople may take part as long as they do so under a “neutral flag” and that they do not display any signs of supporting Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. Why were such strictures not imposed on Americans or Britons during their criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Russia is banned yet Israel is allowed to send a full team in national colors while it conducts the worst genocide in modern times. The Western hypocrisy here is absolutely revolting and self-indicting.
Like a Greek tragedy, the rampant cynicism and abuse by Western powers are destroying the Olympic Games, the very event that they are trying to monopolize for their nauseating virtue signaling.
In a crowded Western field competing for the dubious title, Macron takes gold for cynicism.
Operation True Promise
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | April 19, 2024
In what CNN reported was the largest drone attack in world history, the Islamic Republic of Iran struck at the Zionist entity on Saturday, April 13. It was in response to the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus carried out a fortnight before. CNN also noted it was an operation which “seemed planned to minimize casualties”, in stark contrast to the previous six months of the Zionist genocide in Gaza.
According to the Zionists, the operation was ineffective in that 99% of the drones and missiles launched were intercepted. But of course, as the experience of the Resistance Axis shows, the most efficient way to defeat the Iron Dome system is to overwhelm and confuse it.
In addition, however, it is plain that the missiles which did strike home – in particular at the Nevatim air base near Bir Al-Sabe’ and at the Ramon base some 90 km to the south – caused significant damage to the base as satellite imagery showed. F35 aircraft departed from here to bomb the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Western media are very reluctant to even mention the other major target – an intelligence base for Israeli military intelligence, known as Unit 8200. The Zionists tried their best to suppress all mention of the attack on the top secret base, which as the Israeli press has previously noted, is the “first line of defense in preventing surprise attacks” and is an outpost that has been labeled “the eyes of the nation.”
The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammed Bagheri noted that it was from there that the operation against Iran in Damascus was directed. The outpost ”is located literally inside the mountain, in tunnels dug in the 1980s” in the illegally occupied Golan Heights. It’s not only the Palestinian Resistance that has tunnels.
The Islamic Republic quoted the right to self-defence from Article 51 of the UN Charter. The Russian Foreign Ministry cited Article 51 in its own response, failing to accede to Zionist demands to condemn Iran. China too did not condemn Iran, calling its response “restrained”.
Though it was condemned by the West, some Western figures conceded its legitimacy, albeit grudgingly. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron was asked what the UK government would do if a hostile nation flattened one of Britain’s consulates. He answered, “We would take very strong action”. He also appeared to simply take issue with the proportionality of the strike, saying, “Countries have a right to respond when they feel they have suffered an aggression. Of course they do.”
Operation True Promise was the first direct military strike on “Israel” by the Iran. It’s unlikely to be the last. It utilised a tiny fraction of the available armaments and it showed that it can successfully penetrate the much vaunted air defence systems of the Zionist entity.
The Iranian operation was widely welcomed in the region. In Tehran, crowds gathered in Palestine Square to celebrate. They lit flares and set off fireworks. The Iranian Parliament stood as one to cheer the strike.
Meanwhile, Palestinians gathered in the West Bank chanting “God is Great” as Iranian missiles soared overhead. In Jordan, while the government collaborated with the Zionist entity, the citizens were out on the streets.
In Gaza, there were relieved observations that for the first time in months there were no drones overhead, and bombing in Rafah and the rest of Gaza was suspended.
The next day, three bakeries opened their doors in Gaza for the first time in six months.
These had reportedly been authorised by the Zionist regime, itself a scandalous indication that they had been forcibly closed by the Zionists. In the West Bank, Palestinians took matters into their own hands and tore down sections of the apartheid wall.
Unfortunately, genocidal Jewish settlers also launched a mass pogrom against the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah. The sooner the settlers are driven out, the sooner peace can come. But the Iranian retaliation has certainly given confidence and increased morale to Palestinians all over the world.
Overall, it is clear that the Iranian response was a major strategic defeat for the Zionists. While they crowed about 99% of the drones and missiles being intercepted, it is clear that the main targets were hit. But the degree of destruction caused was also not the point of this demonstration. The point was to indicate that despite the much-vaunted air defence systems and the direct military support given by the US, UK, and Jordan, with indirect help from France and Saudi Arabia, among others, the Islamic Republic can evade the defences of the Zionist entity at will. As a result, a “new equation” of deterrence is being spoken of. It was reported that Iran “decided to create a new equation,” said the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, in a television interview on Sunday. “From now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, figures, and citizens anywhere, we will retaliate from Iran.”
An immediate indication of the new equation is that it was reported that the planned invasion of Rafah had been postponed. Amos Yadlin, a former director of Israeli military intelligence who advises opposition leader and war cabinet member Benny Gantz, reportedly said, “Last night’s attack could lead to a strategic change in the war and even to its end,”
Another sign was that the US let it be known that it “is privately telling officials there: If Israel strikes back militarily, it will do so alone.” The goal for Iran, as British commentator Batool Subeiti has argued, was to strike back but not to provoke a regional war, as that will simply take attention away from Gaza, where it needs to remain.
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