Jailed Without Charge: Layan Kayed, West Bank student jailed for campus activism
By Humaira Ahad | Press TV | February 20, 2024
On the morning of June 7, 2023, Layan Kayed was sleeping peacefully in her room when Israeli soldiers appeared out of nowhere and ferociously banged on the door of her house in the occupied West Bank.
In a frightened state, Kayed’s father rushed through the gateway as the heavily armed regime soldiers stormed inside the house, seizing all the electronic gadgets and arresting the 26-year-old Kayed.
Kayed, a master’s student at the Birzeit University in occupied West Bank, had been an anti-occupation activist for years. She was first arrested in 2020 when she spent 16 months in different Israeli jails.
During her recent arrest, the young Palestinian activist was subjected to brutal custodial interrogation and was prevented from meeting her lawyer, according to reports.
In a message to her family during her first detention facility, Kayed said her relationship with prison is “that of a constant attempt to tame us and alienate us.”
In 2020, Kayed was arrested while crossing Za’tara military checkpoint, south of the city of Nablus. The Israeli soldiers handcuffed her, shackled her legs, and made her sit in an open area for hours.
She was later transferred to Hasharon prison of the Israeli regime.
The regime snatched from her the right to celebrate an important day of her life. She was arrested just before receiving her bachelor’s degree certificate.
“I was arrested at one of the checkpoints that separates my home from Birzeit University while I was in the family car with my mother on my way to the university to accept my (Bachelor of Arts) certificate,” the young Palestinian student was quoted as saying.
“After my arrest, I was left outdoors at the Zaatara Israeli military checkpoint for eleven hours, handcuffed and shackled. I was subjected to sexual insults, constant swearing, and verbal abuse from the Israeli male criminal inmates, under the watch of the Israeli guards who did not intervene.”
After her release from prison following her first arrest, Kayed narrated the inhumane treatment she was subjected to in Israeli prisons, similar to what other Palestinians have narrated over the years.
“One never received any sunshine and was fully monitored by security cameras around the clock.”
Kayed was kept in a cell with cameras fixed all around the room, violating the privacy of the young woman. She was not even provided a jail uniform and had to borrow clothes from an inmate.
The toilet she was forced to use was without a ceiling and a door, the Palestinian activist said.
On March 3, 2021, Ofer military court sentenced her to 16 months in prison in addition to a fine of 6,000 shekels. In the ruling, the military judge cited a previous ruling by the military appeals tribunal which stated that student wings of organizations deemed unlawful should not be underestimated, referring to the prosecution of students who belong to university unions, as they constitute a threat to “security”.
The Palestinian rights campaigner believes that the issue of Palestine is not just limited to Palestine but has worldwide reverberations.
“As a Palestinian people, we are facing the Zionist entity, which is organically linked to all imperialist interests in the region and the world. This means that the conflict with the Zionist project is not limited to the land of Palestine,” Kayed was quoted as saying.
The student bodies in Palestine have been advocating the total boycott of the apartheid regime.
Layan Kayed during an event at her university before her arrest. (X)
“In addition to boycotting Israel in all respects…, and launching pressure campaigns on governments and their pro-Israel policies, such as arms sales, trade exchange, or policies that adopt the Israeli discourse, we see that fighting injustice and oppression anywhere is part of our struggle against Israel,” she said.
“Israel actively contributes to supporting oppression around the world. Israel is a laboratory for weapons, surveillance, and military technologies, which it exports to oppressive governments around the world,” the student activist maintains.
In 2021, following Kayed’s first arrest, the UN working group on arbitrary detention said that the young Palestinian woman’s arrest was arbitrary, highlighting that it lacked a legal basis, and was carried out in breach of international human rights law.
The case was referred to the special rapporteur on violence against women and the working group on discrimination against women and girls.
Arbitrary detention is a form of administrative detention that is being used as one of the key tools by the regime to oppress Palestinians. Since October 7, Israel has dangerously increased its use of arbitrary detention across the occupied West Bank.
While Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank are subjected to civilian law, Palestinians have to face military laws. Military courts of Israel prosecute Palestinian children as young as 12.
As per the figures given by Military Court Watch, an NGO that monitors the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli jails, 95 percent of military court cases result in convictions.
Settlers burn through West Bank village under army protection
(Photo credit: AFP)
The Cradle | February 20, 2024
Israeli settlers rampaged through the occupied West Bank village of Burqa, northwest of Nablus, on the evening of 19 February, attacking homes and destroying vehicles under the protection and coordination of the Israeli military.
Settlers threw Molotov cocktails at several Palestinian homes as Israeli troops shut down all main roads to the village.
Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli troops “did nothing to stop the colonists’ attack,” adding that Israeli forces used large amounts of tear gas and prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded.
Earlier on Monday, Israeli settlers, with the help of troops, fenced off a tract of Palestinian-owned land south of Jerusalem with barbed wire to occupy it.
Settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has surged to all-time highs under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It has escalated even further since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the Gaza war.
Palestinians have been subject to increasing levels of forced displacement since the war began.
Since October, over 1,000 people – including hundreds of children – have been forced by settlers and Israeli army soldiers to abandon their homes, according to the UN.
Additionally, more settlers are being armed. Thousands of weapons have been handed out to settlers in the occupied West Bank under an initiative sponsored by the Israeli National Security Ministry.
According to Israeli watchdog NGO Peace Now, Israeli settlers established a record-breaking 26 outposts in the occupied West Bank in 2023. The report correlates the rise in unlawful settlement construction with the Jewish supremacist policies of the Israeli government.
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law.
Nonetheless, the Don’t Buy Into Occupation (DBIO) civil society organization highlighted in December that European financial institutions have provided billions of dollars to support settlement construction in the occupied West Bank over the past few years.
US once again vetoes UN resolution for Gaza ceasefire
Press TV – February 20, 2024
Unsurprisingly, the United States has once again vetoed a UN resolution that calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s great benefactor used its veto at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday to block the draft prepared by Algeria.
It was the third time Washington has opposed such a resolution since Israel ignited its bloody war machine in Gaza in early October.
Representatives of 13 countries at the 15-member Security Council voted in favor of the resolution. Britain abstained.
The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations Riyad Mansour condemned the US veto as being “absolutely reckless and dangerous.”
“The message given today to Israel with this veto is that it can continue to get away with murder,” he said in a statement to the Security Council.
US says Gaza ceasefire ‘wishful and irresponsible’
In remarks to the Security Council after the US wielded its veto power, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza was “wishful and irresponsible.”
She claimed that such an action by the United Nations could stifle diplomatic efforts to broker an agreement between Hamas and Israel for a pause in the war.
“Colleagues, over the past few weeks, we have made incredibly clear that the resolution before the council would not achieve the goal of a sustainable peace, and may in fact run counter to it,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
Before the vote, Amar Bendjama, the Algerian ambassador to the UN, told the Council, “A vote in favor of this draft resolution is support to the Palestinians right to life.”
“Conversely, voting against it implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon them.”
The US had already threatened it would block the Algerian-proposed resolution.
Washington, instead, has been actively pushing for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza to facilitate the release of Israeli captives held by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
Israel’s savagery in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, after Hamas carried out the historic surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupiers.
So far, the regime has killed more than 29,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured about 70,000 others in Gaza.
Washington has since supplied the regime with more than 10,000 tons of military equipment.
The United States vetoed similar UN draft resolutions for a ceasefire in October and December.
Feeble BBC Hamas ‘exposé’ achieved one thing: obscuring genocide
By Jonathan Cook – February 20, 2024
Israel was put on trial for committing genocide in Gaza last month by the judges of the International Court of Justice. So far western governments have not only done nothing to intervene but are actively assisting in that slaughter. They have supplied arms and turned a blind eye to Israel’s denial of humanitarian aid. The people of Gaza are slowly being starved to death.
But it was at this moment, as the world watches in horror, that the BBC’s chief news investigation programme, Panorama, chose not to scrutinise that massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians but to hand the microphone over to the very military doing the killing.
On Monday it aired a programme titled “Hamas’s Secret Financial Empire” headed by reporter John Ware.
It leant heavily on Israel’s military spokesman, on documents that had almost certainly been supplied by Israeli military intelligence, on video footage from the Israeli military, and an Israeli survivor of the Hamas attack of October 7.
Ware and Panorama have worked together before, most notably on a special hour-long edition that doubtless equally delighted Israel.
Broadcast shortly before the 2019 general election, the programme served as little more than a hatchet job on Jeremy Corbyn, claiming that the then Labour leader had allowed antisemitism to run rampant in his party.
Serial failures in the programme were exposed, including by me at the time.
Quotes and interviews had been edited misleadingly, including one that implied an antisemitic incident had happened inside the Labour party when it had not.
Basic fact-checking had not been carried out, which led to the complete misrepresentation of a key incident the programme wrongly claimed as antisemitic.
The programme concealed the identities of those claiming to have suffered antisemitism in Labour, when most were in fact members of a highly partisan, pro-Israel group openly committed to the ousting of Corbyn as leader for his pro-Palestininan views. One had trained with the Israeli army.
Another unnamed, tearful interviewee, Ella Rose, had previously worked for the Israeli embassy, though the audience was not told. The programme also did not refer to the fact that she had admitted to being a confidante of an Israeli undercover agent, Shai Masot, who was later exposed trying to bring down a British government minister for his critical views of Israel – views far less critical than Corbyn’s.
One might have assumed that, given this disastrous outing for Panorama by Ware and his producers, they would have been considered by the BBC as a very unwise pick indeed to follow up with an investigation into another issue so close to Israel’s heart. But such an assumption would be wrong.
Much as the Corbyn “investigation” presented a distorted picture of what was taking place in Labour, the latest Panorama “investigation” completely obscured the reality of what is taking place in Gaza. Not least, Monday’s audiences would have been barely aware that Israel is currently under investigation by the World Court after its panel of 17 judges accepted that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza.
The Panorama narrative, following the BBC’s usual script, suggested instead that this was simply another round of fighting in a long-standing “conflict” in which, the programme limply conceded, both sides are suffering.
The only non-official interviewed was an Israeli survivor of Hamas’s October 7 attack, a young woman present at the Nova festival. She felt betrayed that “people only look at the side of Hamas. We are invisible to them.”
Bizarrely, the BBC team took this patently preposterous view as the programme’s central premise. It was, said Ware, Hamas’s nefarious goal to “project itself as a resistance movement and Israel as a terrorist state”.
The BBC seemed to have forgotten that it was also the World Court, not just Hamas, seriously considering the idea that the Israeli military is flagrantly acting outside the laws of war. If, in the eyes of the BBC, a campaign of genocide does not constitute state terrorism – or worse – one has to wonder what does.
Former Foreign Office official Sir John Jenkins was given centre stage by Panorama to claim that Hamas, not the prolonged slaughter of children in Gaza, was fomenting the “delegitimisation of Israel”.
All of this served as the prelude to the programme’s efforts to delegitimise Hamas and any of its activities in creating a network of tunnels to resist Israel’s occupation and siege at a time when western capitals are more actively than ever assisting Israel in destroying Gaza.
If Israel posed no real threat to the people of Gaza, as the programme implied throughout, then Hamas apparently did not need to fortify the enclave to defend it from an Israeli attack. Its money could have been better used for the benefit of ordinary Palestinians.
The elephant in the room was genocide. Ware and the BBC had to keep treating Israel’s slaughter of at least 30,000 Palestinians over the past four months as an aberration – a reaction to the unprecedented events of October 7 – rather than as an intensification of Israel’s well-documented abuse of the Palestinian people spanning over decades.
The reference to Hamas’s “secret” financial empire was meant to sound sinister. But, as the programme-makers struggled to hide, there is nothing secret about Hamas’s funding.
After all, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally approved the flow of money to Hamas, wishing to keep the group just strong enough to ensure it could prevent the more compliant Palestinian Authority (PA), based in the West Bank, from re-establishing itself in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s goal – one he never concealed – was to keep the two rival Palestinian groups permanently feuding, the two territories split, and thereby undermine the case for any kind of Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
Ware informed us that Hamas’s “financial empire” derived from various funding sources: directly from Iran and Qatar, but also from humanitarian aid provided by international donors. The programme concluded that these donors were effectively “subsidising Hamas’s war machine” by easing the economic burden on Hamas in providing – in so far as was possible given Israel’s siege – essentials such as food, water and power to Gaza’s civilians.
Predictably, Ware’s argument echoed one of the main claims made by Israel in its current campaign to intensify the genocide in Gaza by destroying the United Nations’ refugee body, UNRWA. The relief agency is the last lifeline to a population of 2.3 million people brought to the point of starvation by Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid.
Israeli officials have consistently implied that the Palestinian population of Gaza may justifiably be starved to death as the price to be paid to avoid any risk that some of that aid ends up in the hands of Hamas fighters. Such a denial of assistance is not only patently immoral but constitutes a war crime.
If journalists are ever brought to the Hague accused of complicity in the current genocide, there should surely be a place reserved in the dock for Ware and his BBC team for breathing credibility into this monstrous argument.
Panorama’s central narrative was that Hamas had used parts of its revenues to build a network of resistance fortifications such as tunnels – money that, as Ware and his interviewees kept stressing, could have been spent on building schools and homes to aid the people of Gaza.
Ware omitted to mention, of course, that, more often than not, schools and homes actually needed rebuilding, not building, because Israel blew them up every few years with its bombs.
Again, all too predictably, the programme stripped out obvious context.
Hamas chose to build these fortifications, such as its extensive network of tunnels, because Israel is an offensive, occupying power that enjoys absolute control over Gaza’s borders, as well as its airspace and sea. Israel can bomb and invade Gaza any time it chooses. It can drag people off to “arrest” them – or take them hostage, as we would call it were the roles reversed.
Not only can it do those things, it did and does them regularly. And with complete impunity.
Pretending that Hamas had no reason to build a tunnel network, as Panorama does, is to rewrite history – to excise Israel’s decades of crimes against the Palestinians and their legitimate desire to struggle against that oppression.
It is to unthinkingly regurgitate Israel’s claim that these are simply “terror tunnels” rather than a way for Hamas to survive as a resistance organisation, as it is fully entitled to do under international law.
Hamas made it a priority to build a tunnel network to resist a violent, occupying army. Given limited resources and room to manoeuvre – after all, Gaza is a tiny territory and one of the most overcrowded places on the planet – Hamas had little choice but to move underground to avoid Israel’s sophisticated surveillance technology where it could build an arsenal of largely improvised, homegrown weapons.
Its historic popularity among ordinary Palestinians – at least compared to the supine, endlessly complicit PA in the West Bank – derives precisely from its refusal to submit to Israeli control. Panorama forgot to mention this too.
By contrast, and confounding Panorama’s thesis, the PA’s exclusive reliance on international diplomacy has won no tangible concessions from Israel – unless winning a reprieve from genocide, at least until this point, is considered such a concession.
Also inconveniently for Panorama, the PA’s standing with the Palestinian public continues to be dismal.
Bizarrely, Ware was equally troubled by the fact that Hamas raised import taxes on the limited goods that Israel did allow into Gaza.
That is all the stranger given that the programme’s implicit – and entirely bogus – assumption is that Gaza is not under a belligerent Israeli occupation. Hamas, it therefore suggested, should have behaved more like a normal country.
But raising taxes on the import of goods is precisely what normal countries do. Why would Ware expect Hamas to behave differently?
And why would it be strange or sinister for it to use some of those revenues to build Gaza’s defences, as best it could, against an aggressive occupier?
Does Britain not also spend the money it raises from taxes to buy weapons and “subsidise its war machine”? And it does so, even though the UK is not under belligerent occupation and is unlikely to be invaded any time soon.
In dramatic fashion, Ware declared ominously: “We have obtained documents that Israeli intelligence say are from inside Hamas and shine a light on how it makes some of its millions.”
It is hard not to conclude that those words mean Panorama was fed those documents by the Israeli intelligence services. Nonetheless, with utter credulity, the programme treated the papers as though they were infallible proof of Hamas’s wickedness.
What they actually showed, assuming they are real, is that Hamas had gained a modest income stream from investments in Middle Eastern companies and ventures. Should Hamas not make investments to raise income, as countries and funds do around the world? And if not, why?
Moving money out of Gaza and investing it overseas seems eminently sensible given that Israel has so regularly laid waste to the enclave – and is doing so once again and on an unprecedented scale.
In similar credulous fashion, Ware accepted unquestioningly the claim that Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was known to “hate Jews”. On what basis? Because a former Israeli security officer who proudly admitted that years ago he interrogated Sinwar for “between 150 and 180 hours” said so. Interrogation of Palestinians by Israel typically includes lengthy periods of torture.
All of this was depressingly familiar. The BBC and Panorama rarely dig into issues that might reflect badly on Israel and risk a backlash of criticism, including from the British government. That toothlessness when a genocide is unfolding in Gaza is especially egregious.
But the BBC is not just overlooking that horrifying crime but using its resources – funds provided by British taxpayers – to actively obscure Israel’s campaign of genocide and implicitly rationalise it as warranted.
A programme whose thesis is that Hamas misused public funds for nefarious purposes is, paradoxically, doing the very thing it condemns. It has misused British taxes to make a entirely bogus case that provides cover for the slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
UN experts: Inhumane Israeli troops sexually assault Palestinian girls
Press TV – February 19, 2024
In yet another shocking revelation, the Special Rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council say Palestinian women and girls are being sexually assaulted and raped by Israeli troops in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
During a public hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday, the UN experts said they were “shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge.”
According to information they received, they told the hearing that hundreds of Palestinian women and girls are being detained and subjected “to inhuman and degrading treatment.”
“On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were allegedly kept in a cage in the rain and cold, without food.”
They said they were distressed by reports that the Palestinians in question have been “subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers.”
“At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence.”
They said Israeli forces took photos “of female detainees in degrading circumstances,” and shared them on social media platforms.
The experts said an unknown number of the Palestinians have gone missing after contact with the regime’s forces in Gaza.
“There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown.”
The Special Rapporteurs warned Israel that these inhumane acts could “amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute.”
“Those responsible for these apparent crimes must be held accountable and victims and their families are entitled to full redress and justice.”
The Special Rapporteurs are independent experts – part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council – whose mandate is to follow and report on the human rights situation of a specific country or thematic issues in all parts of the world.
The public hearings began at the ICJ in the Hague – at the request of the UN General Assembly – on Monday to examine the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The Resistance Has a Plan for Israel. But on the Other Side, Fantastical U.S. Stratagems Ensure a Cascading Failure
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 19, 2024
In a speech on Tuesday, Hizbullah leader Seyed Nasrallah said that the Party will continue the border offensive until at least the Gaza massacre stops. The war in Gaza however, is far from over. And Nasrallah warned that even were a ceasefire to be reached in Gaza, “should the enemy perform any action, we will return to operating according to the rules and formulas that existed before. The purpose of the resistance is to deter the enemy, and we will react accordingly”.
Israel’s Defence Secretary Gallant has underlined that contrary to international consensus expectations, he too expects the war in Lebanon to continue. Gallant said the military has stepped up its attacks against Hizbullah by one level out of ten:
“The Air Force planes flying currently in the skies of Lebanon have heavier bombs for more distant targets. Hizbullah went up half a step, whilst we, a full one … We can attack not only at 20 kilometres [from the border], but also at 50 kilometres, and in Beirut and anywhere else”.
It is not clear what ‘red line’ Hizbullah would have to cross for Israel to significantly escalate its response to much higher levels; Israeli leaders have suggested that an attack on a strategic site; or an attack leading to major civilian casualties; or a substantive barrage on Haifa might constitute the breaking point.
Nonetheless, with three military divisions rather than the usual one now deployed in the north of Israel, the IDF has more forces poised for action on the northern border than it has preparing for an incursion into Rafah – at this point. It is clear, as Chief of Staff Halevy has specified, that Israel is “preparing for war” against Hizbullah (more than preparing for Rafah).
Is the threat to Rafah a bluff to put pressure on Hamas to concede on the deal and hostages? One way or another, both Israel’s political and military chiefs are adamant: The IDF will incurse into Rafah – ‘at some point’.
The qualitatively different Hizbullah strike on Safed on Israel’s northern regional command HQ on Wednesday – which resulted in 2 dead and 7 further casualties – is being treated in Israel as the gravest attack since the start of the war, with Ben Gvir calling it a “declaration of war”. Subsequent Israeli attacks killed 11 people, including six children, in a barrage of strikes on villages across southern Lebanon, in retribution for the Safed blitz – with the fierce exchange of fire still continuing.
The ‘Safed Strike’ deep into the Galilee very likely was intended to signal that Hizbullah is not about to capitulate to western demands that it provide Israel with a ceasefire that is intended to facilitate evacuated Israelis to return to their homes in the north. As Nasrallah confirmed in a scathing attack on those external (Western) mediators who serve only as Israel’s lawyers, and neglect to address the massacres in Gaza:
“It is easier to move the Litani River forward to the borders, than to push back Hezbollah fighters from the borders, to behind the Litani River … They want us to pay a price without Israel committing to a thing”.
In these circumstances, Nasrallah clarified that residents of northern Israel will not return to their homes – warning that even more Israelis risk being displaced:
“‘Israel’ must prepare shelters, basements, hotels and schools to house two million settlers who will be evacuated from northern Palestine, [were Israel to expand the war zone].”
Nasrallah outlined what is clearly the agreed Axis of resistance’s overarching strategic plan. (There has been a flurry of meetings between senior Axis principals over the last week, across the region, for which Nasrallah is speaking):
“We are committed to fighting Israel until it is off the map. A strong Israel is dangerous to Lebanon; but a deterred Israel, defeated and exhausted, is less of a danger to Lebanon”.
“The national interest of Lebanon, the Palestinians, and the Arab world is that Israel leaves this battle defeated: Therefore, we are committed to Israel’s defeat”.
Put bluntly, the Axis has its vision of the conflict’s outcome. And it is a “deterred, defeated and exhausted” Israeli State. By implication, it is an Israel that has relinquished the Zionist project – one that is reconciled to the notion of living as Jews between the River and the Sea – albeit with rights no different to others living there (i.e. Palestinians).
On the other side, the western strategic plan, as the Washington Post reports – which the U.S. and several Arab countries hope to present within a few weeks – is a long-term plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, including a “time frame” for the establishment of a provisional de-militarized Palestinian “state”:
“Imperatively, it begins with a hostage deal accompanied by a six-week cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. While it may be termed “cessation of hostilities” or an “extended humanitarian pause,” such a cease-fire will signal the de facto end of the war along the lines and scale that it has been fought since 7 Oct.”
The plan addresses “Post-war Gaza”, in terms already well-known. As senior Israeli commentator, Alon Pinkas, affirms:
“Parallel to the announcement U.S., Britain and possibly other countries will consider and eventually make a joint statement of intent by recognizing a provisional, demilitarized and future Palestinian state – without delineating or specifying its borders”.
“Such a recognition does not necessarily contradict Israel’s legitimate and reasonable demand to have overriding security control over the area west of the Jordan River in the foreseeable future … [it constitutes] a practical, timebound, irreversible path to a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace with Israel … whose recognition could also be submitted to the UN Security Council – as a binding resolution. Once the Arab countries sign off on such a framework, the U.S. believes that neither Russia nor China would veto it …
“Within the “regionalization” phase however, the Americans will craft a regional security cooperation mechanism. Some in Washington imagine a reconfigured region with a new “security architecture” as a harbinger to a gradual Mideast version of the European Union, with greater economic and infrastructure integration”.
Ah – the New Middle East again!!!
Even Alon Pinkas, an experienced former Israeli diplomat, concedes: “If the plan seems too fantastical to you: You’re not alone”.
The basic improbabilities to this plan simply are disregarded. Firstly, Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich responded to the reported American-Arab plan, saying: “there’s a joint American, British and Arab effort to establish a terrorist state” next to Israel. Second, (as Smotrich further notes): “They see the polls. They see how the absolute majority of Israelis oppose this idea [of a Palestinian State]”; and thirdly, some 700,000 settlers were installed in the West Bank – precisely to block any Palestinian State.
Is the U.S. really going to impose this onto a hostile Israel? How?
And, from the Resistance perspective, ‘a provisional, demilitarized and future Palestinian ‘state’, without delineated or specified borders, is not a state. It is truly a Bantustan.
The reality is that when a Palestinian State might have been a real prospect (two decades ago), the international community turned a willing ‘blind eye’ – for decades – to Israel’s successful and complete sabotage of the project. Today, circumstances are much changed: Israel has moved far to the Right and is in the grip of an eschatological passion to establish Israel on the entire “Land of Israel”.
The U.S. and Europe have only themselves to blame for the dilemma in which they now find themselves. And a policy stance – such as outlined by Biden – plainly said is doing untold strategic damage to the U.S. and its compliant European allies.
Even on the Lebanon track, let us be plain too, Israel’s demands from Lebanon go far beyond a mutual ceasefire. There is no guarantee, even should a ceasefire be reached in Gaza as part of a comprehensive hostage/end-of-war deal, that Nasrallah will agree to withdraw all his forces from the border with Israel, or conversely, that Israel will comply with its commitments.
And with the U.S. defining its Palestinian ‘solution’ as an improbable, provisional, disarmed and wholly impotent Palestinian entity, nestled within a fully militarised Israel, exercising ‘full security overlordship from the River to the Sea’, it would not be surprising were Hizbullah rather, to opt to pursue the Axis’ plan of a defeated, exhausted post-Zionism.
Israeli commentator, Zvi Bar’el, writes:
“Even were the American assumptions to become a working plan, it is still unclear what policy Israel will adopt on Lebanon. Even pushing Hezbollah back so that Israeli communities are no longer within the range of its anti-tank missiles does not remove the threat of tens of thousands of medium and long-range missiles. The deterrence equation between Israel and Hezbollah will continue to determine [the true] reality along the border”.
[The current U.S. working assumption, as presented by the Administration’s special envoy Amos Hochstein in his previous visits to Lebanon], “is that a border demarcation agreement between Israel and Lebanon will result in final and full recognition of the international border and thus deny Hezbollah the formal basis for justifying its continued fight against Israel to liberate occupied Lebanese territories. At the same time, it allows the Lebanese government to order its army to deploy its forces along the border in order to assert its sovereignty over its entire territory and demand that Hezbollah forces pull back from the border”.
This is just more wishful, ‘fantastical’ thinking. And it contains a flaw: Hochstein’s work plan does not include an agreement on the Sheba’a Farms, but only on the ‘Blue Line’ – the border agreed in 2000, but which is not recognized by Lebanon as an international border. If the issue of the Sheba’a Farms is not settled, Hezbollah will not be bound by a limited demarcation accord that omits the Sheba’a area.
Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, every stratagem and protocol, dug from some musty West Wing cupboard, and upon which the U.S. leant, has failed. What was supposed to be a limited and compartmentalized military operation in Gaza by the IDF has turned into a regional firestorm. Aircraft carriers sent to deter other actors from getting involved failed with the Houthis; U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria became targets, with attacks on U.S. bases continuing, despite U.S. attempts at delivering deterrent ‘punches’.
Quite clearly, Netanyahu is ignoring Biden, and ‘defying the world’ – as this week’s headlines attest:
“Defying Biden, Netanyahu Doubles Down on Plans to Fight in Rafah” (Wall Street Journal )
“As Israel corners Rafah, Netanyahu defies the world” (Washington Post )
“U.S. won’t punish Israel for Rafah op that doesn’t protect civilians” (Politico )
“Egypt Builds Walled Enclosure on Border as Israeli Offensive Looms: Authorities are surrounding an area in the desert with concrete walls as a contingency for possible influx of Palestinian refugees” (Wall Street Journal ).
Netanyahu has vowed to forge ahead, saying on Wednesday that Israel would mount a “powerful” operation in the city of Rafah, once residents have been “evacuated”. Israelis explicitly say the White House is not opposed to the Rafah blitz, provided Palestinians are given the opportunity to “evacuate” (to where, is left unsaid). (Meanwhile, Egypt is building a refugee camp inside its border, surrounded by concrete walls …).
At this point, all of the U.S.’ various problems – the political polarization, widening war, funding for wars, the alienation amongst the swing-state Arab constituencies and Biden’s sinking ratings – are beginning to feed into, and reinforce, each other. What began as a foreign-policy issue – Israel defeating Hamas – has become a significant domestic crisis. Dissatisfaction within the U.S. at Israel’s conduct of the war is fuelling the growth of significant protest movements. Who can truly believe that yet another trip by Blinken to the region will solve anything at this point, asks Malcom Kyeyune?
It is hard to say where things in the region will stand, a couple of months from now. We have entered a period of breakdown and violence, as the forces pulling apart the old status quo cascade and mutually reinforce one another.
US changes position on Gaza ceasefire – Reuters
RT | February 19, 2024
US President Joe Biden’s administration has reportedly dropped its opposition to a humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and proposed a UN resolution calling for Israel to cancel its planned military offensive in the Palestinian enclave’s last refuge for displaced civilians.
The draft resolution noted that the planned storming of Rafah would harm civilians and displace more Gaza residents, potentially pushing many into Egypt, Reuters reported on Monday, citing a copy of the text.
Israel’s Rafah operation – targeting the last Hamas stronghold in the besieged enclave – “would have serious implications for regional peace and security, and therefore underscores that such a major ground offensive should not proceed under current circumstances,” according to the proposed resolution.
Washington’s UN delegation has previously opposed making demands for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and has twice vetoed UN Security Council resolutions since the conflict began in October. Its new proposal comes in response to a draft resolution from the Algerian delegation, which demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has said the Algerian resolution could undermine “sensitive negotiations” to broker a pause in the fighting. She indicated on Saturday that the US would veto the resolution if it came up for a Security Council vote on Tuesday.
About 1.4 million Gazans displaced by Israeli bombardments have been crammed into Rafah, a city on the strip’s southern border that normally has a population of around 280,000, according to the UN.
The UN has warned that Israel’s planned Rafah operation would have “dire humanitarian consequences.” Dozens of European countries issued a similar warning on Monday, following in the footsteps of such nations as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to completely eliminate Hamas in response to the deadly October 7 attacks by Palestinian militants that triggered the war. He has rejected international calls for a ceasefire and has insisted that only “total victory” will make Israel safe. “Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are essentially telling us, ‘Lose the war,’” he told reporters on Saturday.
While publicly supporting Israel’s war effort – and providing US weaponry – Biden has reportedly clashed with Netanyahu behind the scenes. During a telephone call with Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden “reiterated his view that a military operation should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of, and support for, the civilians in Rafah,” according to a White House statement.
The UN resolution proposed by the Biden administration also would condemn any efforts to reduce Gaza’s territory or move Israeli settlers into the enclave, Reuters said.
US Official Admits Israeli Actions Make It ‘Virtually Impossible’ to Distribute Aid in Gaza
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 18, 2024
A US Middle East official explained that Israeli decisions to target police in Gaza have made the distribution of aid in the besieged enclave “virtually impossible.” The official added that Israel has failed to provide evidence for its claim that Hamas is stealing the aid sent into Gaza. Tel Aviv has used allegations that Hamas is tied to international humanitarian agencies and steals shipments to severely restrict aid deliveries into Gaza as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are starving to death.
David Satterfield, the Biden administration’s special Middle East envoy for humanitarian issues, explained that Israel had killed several members of the police force in Gaza that safeguarded aid deliveries. Targeting the police force led to them being unable to escort aid deliveries.
“With the departure of police escorts, it has been virtually impossible for the UN or anyone else, Jordan, the UAE, or any other implementer to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal elements,” Satterfield said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Friday.
The Middle East envoy went on to admit that Israel has not presented “evidence of diversion or theft” of aid shipments into Gaza. Tel Aviv has used claims that assistance to the Palestinian people is exploited and stolen by Hamas to restrict the amount of food, fuel, and medicine that enters the enclave. Tel Aviv also restricts many medications, including painkillers, antibiotics, and anesthetics, from entering Gaza, claiming the aid could be used by Hamas militants.
Since October 7, Tel Aviv has exploited and promoted several lies to justify the genocide that is being inflicted on the Palestinian people. Last month, Israel claimed 12 members of the UN aid agency UNRWA participated in the Hamas attack on Israel. The US and over a dozen other Western nations cut funding to the agency based on Israeli allegations. However, several media outlets that have reviewed the Israeli dossier, which supposedly supports Tel Aviv’s assertions, say it contains no evidence.
Tel Aviv has asserted that Hamas command and control centers were built under critical civilian infrastructure in Gaza, such as cemeteries, the UNRWA headquarters, and Shifa Hospital. But, Israel was unable to produce evidence to back their claims even after having total control over the facilities.
The Israeli destruction of Gaza and restriction of aid have created a humanitarian catastrophe for the 2.3 million Palestinians that live in the Strip. Food, medical supplies, clean water, and fuel are scarce. Hundreds of thousands of people are in a state of famine.
Genocide Court Calls on Israel to Prevent ‘Exponential Increase of Humanitarian Nightmare’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 18, 2024
The International Court of Justice demanded that Israel abide by a ruling the court issued last month as Palestinians suffer in a “perilous situation.” The court issued the statement in response to a request by South Africa for the court to intervene and prevent an Israeli attack on Rafah.
Near the end of last year, South Africa filed a suit with the ICJ alleging Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. In January, the court issued a primary ruling that Israel was committing a genocide fueled by statements from Israeli officials.
The ICJ ruling demanded that Israel halt operations that endanger civilians, end genocidal rhetoric, and punish those who commit or encourage war crimes. Israel and the US dismissed the ICJ ruling.
Last week, Pretoria filed a request with the court to issue an additional ruling against Israel as Tel Aviv planned operations in Rafah. Rafah is the last remaining city in Gaza not completely decimated by the Israeli military operations. At least 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in the city, many in tents and on the streets.
The ICJ responded to the South African request by declining to issue further orders to Israel but cited its previous ruling that called on Israel to halt operations that could endanger Palestinian civilians. “The Court notes that the most recent developments in the Gaza Strip, and in Rafah in particular, would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences,” A statement from the ICJ said.
“This perilous situation demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024.” The press release continues, “The Court emphasizes that the State of Israel remains bound to fully comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention and with the said Order, including by ensuring the safety and security of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
The Israeli government is planning the attack on Rafah, and Prime Minister Netanyahu says it will go ahead despite international pressure. Human rights organizations and Western governments are warning Israel not to attack the city because of the suffering it will inflict on Palestinian civilians.
It is unclear where the Palestinians will go once Israel destroys Rafah. Tel Aviv says it will not push the Palestinians from Rafah across the border into Egypt. However, Cairo is preparing for an influx of refugees.
Israeli military, intelligence bodies admit Hamas will survive onslaught on Gaza Strip
Press TV – February 18, 2024
Israeli military and intelligence institutions have warned the regime’s top-ranking authorities that the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement will survive the unrelenting ground and air strikes against the besieged Gaza Strip.
A document circulated from Israeli military leaders to senior politicians states that “authentic support remains” for Hamas among Gazans, according to a report published by the Hebrew-language Keshet 12 television channel.
The document, put together by the Israeli army’s research division, also warned that “Gaza will become an area in deep crisis”, given the lack of plan for the “day after” war.
The document was reportedly presented on Monday to leading Israeli officials following a week of senior military and intelligence talks about the findings, Keshet 12 noted.
Ilana Dayan, an investigative journalist at the broadcaster, said that the “bottom line” of the document was that the Hamas movement would inevitably survive Israel’s offensive.
The report comes as Israel prepares a ground offensive on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.
The UN special rapporteur on Palestine has slammed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to push on with the assault.
“Rafah stands as the last line of Palestinian existence in Gaza, amidst the relentless anguish faced by the people trapped therein,” Francesa Albanese wrote on X.
“How can we possibly allow another Nakba? Have we really lost our minds?”
According to diplomatic sources quoted by the AFP news agency, the UN Security Council is set to put to vote a new resolution put forth by Algeria that demands an “immediate” truce in Gaza.
The latest version of the text “demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that must be respected by all parties”, the agency said.
It also “rejects forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population”, and it “demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”, AFP reported.
Earlier, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield issued a statement responding to reports that Algeria plans to put the resolution to a vote on Tuesday.
“Should it come up for a vote as drafted, it will not be adopted,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
The US has previously used its veto to prevent the UN Security Council from passing resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has reiterated his country’s “categorical rejection of the displacement of Palestinians to Egypt in any shape or form”.
During a phone conversation with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, the two leaders agreed on the need to “stop the bloodshed” in the Gaza Strip and discussed advancing the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestinian state, a statement by the Egyptian presidency read.
Israel has been waging the war against Gaza since October 7, 2023, when the coastal sliver’s resistance groups staged an operation, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupied territories.
Nearly 29,000 Palestinians, mostly women, children, and adolescents, have been killed so far as a result of the brutal military onslaught.
Israeli army converts Nasser Hospital into military barracks, arrests dozens of doctors, patients
Palestinian Information Center – February 18, 2024
GAZA – Israeli occupation forces converted the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis into a military barracks after taking it out of service. They have arrested dozens of medical staff and patients.
Dr. Ashraf al-Qudra, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said on Sunday that the Israeli occupation has turned the Nasser Medical Complex into a military barracks and taken it out of service.
He pointed out that the Israeli occupation forces kept medical personnel for hours in the maternity building, handcuffed them, beat them, and stripped them of their clothes. He pointed out that the occupation army arrested 70 healthcare workers in the medical complex.
He said that there are now only 25 medical personnel left in the Nasser Medical Complex who are unable to handle cases in need of critical care. He warned that the occupation army has arrested the intensive care doctor and there is no doctor to follow up on critical cases.
He noted that the Israeli occupation forces have arrested dozens of immobile patients who are receiving treatment and placed them in military beds, loaded them onto trucks, and taken them to an unknown location, putting their lives at risk.
He added that the electricity has been cut off from the Nasser Medical Complex for three days, resulting in lack of oxygen for the patients. This has led to the death of seven patients so far, with fears of the death of dozens of critical cases.
He pointed out that three women, including a female doctor, gave birth in the Nasser Medical Complex under difficult and unsafe conditions, lacking water, food, electricity, and cleanliness. The water supply to the Nasser Medical Complex has been completely cut off for three days due to the power generators being out of service.
The spokesperson held Israel fully responsible for the lives of the medical staff and patients in the Nasser Medical Complex.
The Israeli army since January 22, following the expansion of its ground attack to the west of Khan Yunis and their issuance of more evacuation orders for the area, has been besieging the Nasser Hospital with a capacity of 475 beds, Al-Amal Hospital with a capacity of 100 beds, the Jordanian Field Hospital with a capacity of 50 beds, and Al-Khair Hospital, in addition to three health clinics, which housed thousands of displaced people along with patients, according to the statement.
On the same day, the Israeli occupation forces raided Al-Khair Hospital, which is run by a charitable association, and ordered women and children to evacuate towards Rafah. They also arrested several medical staff members and completely took it out of service.
In the following days, the Israeli occupation forces continued to shell and fire at Al-Amal Hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex, using artillery, snipers, and quadcopter aircraft, resulting in the killing and injury of dozens of civilians. The hospital grounds turned into temporary graves before being raided, and taken out of service, along with the medical staff and patients inside.
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Mossad ‘in contact from very beginning’ with killers of Italian PM, reporter reveals
By Kit Klarenberg and Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | October 5, 2025
A roving reporter who covered Italy’s top politicians explains to The Grayzone how his country was reduced to a joint US-Israeli “aircraft carrier,” and raises troubling questions about an Israeli role in the killing of Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
For years, Israel’s Mossad monitored and secretly influenced a violent communist faction that carried out the March 16, 1978 kidnapping and murder of Italian statesman Aldo Moro, veteran investigative journalist Eric Salerno has documented.
Having worked closely alongside multiple Italian heads of state during his 30-year career as a correspondent, Salerno published an expose of their secret relationship with Israeli intelligence in 2010 called Mossad Base Italy. … continue
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