Elizabeth Tsurkov Was Up To No Good When She Went Missing In Iraq
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JULY 10, 2023
It was just reported that US-based Russian-Israeli academic Elizabeth Tsurkov went missing in Iraq, where she was conducting fieldwork as part of her research at Princeton. She reportedly arrived in the country on her Russian passport since Iraq doesn’t allow Israeli citizens to enter. Iran is accused of organizing her kidnapping via its local allies, which one outlet speculated was to set up a high-profile prisoner exchange for an IRGC operative who Israel claimed last month was captured inside the Islamic Republic itself.
The Mainstream Media is portraying Tsurkov as an innocent victim after an unnamed senior Israeli official denied that she’s a member of Mossad like some had begun to suspect. Regardless of whatever her ties with that country’s intelligence agency may or may not be, she was up to no good when she went missing in Iraq. From the perspective of local patriotic groups, it would have been legitimate to detain Tsurkov for the five reasons that will now be explained.
For starters, she should never have entered a country that prohibits entry to Israeli citizens like herself. By arriving in Iraqi on her Russian passport, she deliberately deceived the authorities. Once this was discovered, it immediately put her and everyone who she’d hitherto come into contact with there under suspicion of being spies. She therefore behaved highly irresponsibly, which is unbecoming of an Ivy League researcher like she presents herself as and thus casts further doubt on her credibility.
The second point is that the very nature of her work makes her suspicious. According to the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy where she’s a Non-Resident Fellow, “Her research is based on a large network of contacts – ordinary civilians, activists, combatants and communal, political and military leaders – which she has established across the Middle East and particularly in Syria, Iraq and Israel-Palestine.” The Iraqi counterintelligence service therefore had grounds to be concerned by her activity.
Third, she was clandestinely cultivating her vast regional network with sources whose countries prohibit their people from having any ties with her country or its nationals. She as an Israeli would have certainly known this, which means that she purposely put these people at risk for reasons that only she herself can account for. Researchers are supposed to operate according to a code of ethics whereby they never do anything that could bring harm to their subjects, though Tsurkov did precisely the opposite.
The fourth point is that she was conscious of her work advancing Israeli interests, whether the way she subjectively understands them as being or per speculative orders from suspected handlers, as evidenced by the fact that her Twitter handle @Elizrael explicitly references that country. She has the right to publicly self-identify with any country and thus be associated with it by others, especially if she’s its national, but this just goes to show that she knew that everything she was doing put her sources at risk.
And finally, local patriotic groups might not have trusted their corrupt country’s security services to properly deal with the counterintelligence threat posed by Tsurkov upon discovering her ties to Israel and the suspicious nature of her work, which is why they might have acted unilaterally as vigilantes. No value judgement is being made either way about the scenario in which such groups might have been responsible for her disappearance, but just to point out why they might have acted outside legal bounds.
Tsurkov should have known better than to visit Iraq seeing as how it’s illegal for Israeli citizens to do so, yet she still went anyway in order to expand her network of sources there on the pretext of conducting fieldwork as part of her research at Princeton and deceptively entered on her Russian passport. Even if she had nothing to do with Israel, her work would have still placed her on the radar of regional counterintelligence services, who investigate foreign-connected networks inside their countries.
Nobody who’s truly up to any good would ever enter a country where they’re legally prohibited from visiting by using another passport, let alone to clandestinely expand their network of sources there. She knowingly misled the authorities and then put her contacts at risk by meeting with them in person afterwards. Even worse, she did all this while publicly self-identifying on social media with the same country that they’re legally prohibited from having any ties.
One can still support Tsurkov and remain convinced that she’s supposedly an innocent victim exactly as the Mainstream Media claims, but it’s dishonest to deny that she behaved highly irresponsibly at great risk to herself and her sources inside Iraq, which contradicted expectations of an Ivy League researcher. For that reason, there are indeed plausible reasons to suspect her of conducting espionage under that cover, though whether or not she should have reportedly been detained remains a matter of debate.
Palestine urges US to retract from building embassy in Jerusalem
MEMO | July 6, 2023
The Palestinian Presidency urged the US, on Thursday, to retract plans to build its embassy in Jerusalem because it will be built on Palestinian “private property”, Anadolu Agency reports.
The statement was in response to Israeli approval plans submitted by the US to build the embassy on lands the statement said were confiscated from Palestinian owners by Israel in 1948.
It described the move as “illegal” and “a violation of international law” because it will be built “on private property confiscated in 1948 from Palestinian owners, some of whom are holders of US citizenship”.
The Presidency said moving ahead with building the embassy “gives legitimacy to racist Israeli laws such as the absentee property law designed to legitimise the theft of Palestinian property”.
It added that the move is a “joint American-Israeli blow to any remaining hopes for a two-state solution.”
Former President, Donald Trump announced the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. The US moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May the following year.
Jerusalem remains at the heart of the decades-long Mideast conflict, with Palestinians insisting that East Jerusalem — illegally occupied by Israel since 1967 — should serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
Mike Pence, Other Prominent Hawks Back Regime Change in Iran at MEK Rally in Paris
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | July 3, 2023
Former Vice President Mike Pence participated in a rally outside Paris led by the exiled Iranian terrorist cult, the Marxist-Islamist Mujahideen-e-Khalq headed by Maryam Rajavi, and their political front the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), over the weekend.
Pence, a current GOP presidential hopeful, along with a host of other prominent hawks, including British ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss as well as former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, made calls for regime change in Tehran and railed against engagement with the Islamic Republic. Pence said “One of the biggest lies the ruling regime has sold to the world is that there is no alternative.” He added “no oppressive regime can last forever.”
Truss declared “[authoritarian] regimes have been emboldened as the free world has not done enough. I will never give up hope for a free and democratic Iran… Democracy is under threat around the world. Now is the time to turn our backs on accommodation and appeasement.”
Pompeo chimed in via video link, proclaiming any deal with Iran over its nuclear energy program would be a “calamity for the Iranian people and the world.” Per the NCRI, also in attendance at the event were former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark and erstwhile US Senator Joseph Lieberman.
These condemnations of diplomacy come as the White House is reportedly making some efforts to de-escalate tensions with Iran in an attempt to secure an interim nuclear deal. The new “understanding” could see Iran cap its enrichment of uranium at 60% purity in exchange for some limited sanctions relief.
Tehran has previously pledged not to enrich beyond this upper limit, which is still well below the 90% required for weapons-grade uranium. Iran took this step, for leverage at the negotiating table, after Israel attacked its Natanz uranium enrichment facility in April 2021 causing an explosion, damaging centrifuges, and power outages.
A Western official recently told Reuters that Washington is seeking this alternative agreement because Israel may launch a military assault against Iran, a potential escalation which the Joe Biden administration until now had repeatedly green-lighted.
In May, The Intercept reported that – according to the Discord Leaks – even the CIA is unsure whether Israel is truly preparing to unilaterally launch a war against Iran. Such a conflict would spread violently across the region and quickly draw in the United States.
During previous years, Israel and the MEK cult, who are trained, funded, and armed by the Mossad, have collaborated on the extrajudicial executions of several Iranian nuclear scientists. By likely working with the terrorist group, Tel Aviv assassinated the Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, outside of Tehran in November 2020.
Both Israel and the MEK were suspected in the May 2022 murder of a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei. Later, a US official confirmed to CNN that Israel was behind the hit. The latter killing touched off an unprecedented wave of assassinations in the country which targeted members of the IRGC and Iran’s aerospace industry.
Moreover, investigative journalist Gareth Porter has reported extensively on how the MEK and Mossad forged documents used to cultivate the propaganda narrative behind the phantom Iranian nuclear weapons program which Israel alleges was once headed by Fakhrizadeh.
The MEK lacks any support inside Iran, particularly after having murdered dozens of Iranian officials and allied with Saddam Hussein’s forces during the Iran-Iraq war. Nevertheless, Pence once dubbed the group a “perfectly qualified and popularly supported alternative” to the Islamic Republic.
Similarly, in 2017, ultra-hawk John Bolton told an MEK rally “There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs, and that opposition is centered in this room today… The behavior and objectives of the regime are not going to change, and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself.”
Bolton among other US political figures like Rudy Giuliani are paid handsomely for speaking at the terrorist cult’s events. “Estimates are in the range of $30,000 to $50,000 per speech. Bolton is estimated to have received upwards of $180,000 to speak at multiple events for [MEK]. His recent financial disclosure shows that he was paid $40,000 for one speech at an [MEK] event last year,” The Guardian reported in 2018.
As foreign policy analyst and Antiwar.com contributing editor Daniel Larison has written, “This is a group that has American blood on its hands, and it routinely abuses its own members. It is an oppressive and fanatical organization, and it would be a nightmare if it ever managed to gain power over a larger population. There is a reason it has sometimes been likened to the Khmer Rouge.”
The group’s base headquarters in Albania was recently raided by security police for unsanctioned activity being carried out at the camp in contravention of a US-mediated deal. The agreement had allowed the MEK to relocate to the Balkan country as they were no longer welcome in Iraq once Hussein was removed from power after the US invasion.
However, according to Responsible Statecraft, the cult was reportedly using “their presence in Albania as a base for political activities, including, at the very least, cyber-attacks directed against third countries (presumably Iran) and mass online trolling and harassment of the group’s many opponents.” The outlet also notes that, post Saudi-Iran rapprochement, Rajavi’s funding may be drying up as well. As Riyadh was long suspected of being one of the MEK’s major benefactors.
Thousands displaced from Jenin as Israeli siege enters second day
The Cradle – July 4 2023
Around 3,000 Palestinians were forced to leave the Jenin refugee camp overnight on 4 July, as the Israeli army pushed ahead with the second day of the largest military invasion into the occupied West Bank since 2002.
“There are about 3,000 people who have left the camp so far,” Jenin deputy governor Kamal Abu al-Roub told AFP on Monday night, highlighting that 18,000 people live there.
Palestinians leaving their homes told reporters that Israeli forces had threatened to target them if they refused to leave, while some said the troops fired live shots at their homes.
Several families were tear-gassed as they fled for safety.
According to the mayor of Jenin, Nidal Obeidi, the Israeli army started demolishing homes in the refugee camp after displacing their residents.
“Those being targeted now are not just the resistance fighters, but civilians are being killed and wounded as well,” he told Al Jazeera.
Tel Aviv’s brutal invasion of the flashpoint West Bank city started in the early hours of 3 July and has left at least 10 Palestinians dead. Over 100 others have been wounded.
Shelling and fighting continued overnight. In the early hours of Tuesday, Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes in the Al-Damej neighborhood, while drones could be seen flying over the camp.
The Israeli siege involved drone strikes, Apache helicopters, and ground forces, including army bulldozers that tore up streets across Jenin. The offensive has been widely described as one of the worst Israeli attacks on the West Bank since the end of the Second Intifada.
While reporting on the siege, several journalists reported they were directly targeted by Israeli live fire. Al Araby TV correspondent Ahmed Shehadeh said the army destroyed his camera while he and four other journalists were taking refuge inside one of the homes in the camp before being evacuated by the Red Crescent.
While the Israeli military initially declined to say how long the siege of Jenin would take, army spokesperson Daniel Hagari announced on Tuesday morning that the operation “could end faster than initially expected, even within a matter of days.”
The operation was launched in response to the unprecedented rise of armed resistance in the West Bank, which has become a significant threat to Israeli cities and illegal West Bank settlements.
Confronting the massive invasion are several different resistance factions, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Jenin Brigade, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and groups linked with Hamas.
The Jenin Brigade claims they have shot down at least four Israeli drones since the start of the siege.
Solidarity with Jenin has been pouring in from across West Asia and North Africa, with dozens of nations condemning the Israeli aggression.
A general strike was announced in the occupied West Bank for Tuesday, while people in Gaza held rallies to express solidarity with the people of Jenin.
Gaza resistance factions on Monday said in a statement, “We call on all our people in cities, villages, and camps, especially around Jenin, to confront the Israeli occupation and support Jenin.”
“We call on the resistance fighters in all arenas to respond to any aggression if the Israeli occupation continues its crimes against our people.”
Christianity’s Survival in Israel Is Under Attack
Extremist government headed by Netanyahu promotes de facto ethnic cleansing
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 4, 2023
Israel’s new government is still taking shape, but some of the policy changes being promoted are so Jewish-centric that they will inevitably impact disproportionately on minority disadvantaged communities like the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. The government itself is already being described in the press as the “most extremist or right wing in Israel’s history,” though what exactly that means is left to the perception of the reader. Several government ministers have even at times been excoriated for some of their extreme views inclusive of encouraging homicidal genocide or even the complete removal of all non-Jews by force from the country and occupied territories.
The Joe Biden Administration, in which nearly half of all senior appointments are Jews, as well as nearly everyone who deals with foreign policy, is doing its part to comply with traditional White House submission to Israel’s perceived interests. Israel is in the driving seat, and Biden knows it, declaring himself to be personally a Zionist. Much has been made of the fact that Biden has not invited Netanyahu to the White House to congratulate him on his latest electoral victory over concerns relating to the proposed judiciary changes and increasing settlement expansion, but it is clear that Israel and America’s Jewish Lobby are fully in control of both the White House and Congress.
Israel has certainly morphed into a nice place if one likes to feel racially and morally superior while shooting Arab children. This move of the Israeli government rightwards is reflected in a shift in popular sentiment. A recent poll by Israel Democracy Institute revealed that a record-high 62% of Israeli Jews place themselves on the right wing of the political map. The shift is best appreciated by examining the profiles of several of Netanyahu’s new ministers. The one most often cited is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party. Ben-Gvir, who calls for deporting Arabs, has been charged with crimes 50 times, and convicted on eight occasions, including once for involvement in a Jewish terrorist group. Ben-Gvir is notorious for his provocations directed against Palestinian Muslims and Christians, which have included marches of armed settlers flaunting Israeli flags through Arab quarters of cities and towns. To cap the irony, though he is a persistent law violator he has been the National Security Minister since November 2022, which gives him authority over the police. He is currently seeking to have the Knesset pass legislation explicitly conferring legal immunity on all Israeli soldiers for any and all killings of Palestinians and also pressed the parliament to institute a formal, judicially administered death penalty for “terrorists”, which would mean any Palestinian who physically resists the Israeli occupation.
Another extremist politician who has obtained a major ministry in the Netanyahu government is Bezalel Yoel Smotrich who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. He has recently completed a controversial trip to the United States where he met with American Zionist leaders. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, and lives in an illegal settlement in a house within the Israeli occupied West Bank that was also built doubly illegally outside the settlement proper. Smotrich supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, and even denies the existence of the Palestinian people. He has now been granted authority over settlement development and support on the West Bank.
Though Israel’s internal enemies, such as they are, are frequently characterized as Muslims, the dwindling ancient Christian community in Israel and what remains of Palestine has also been under increasing pressure as Israel becomes less multi-cultural and more a state designed only to accommodate Jews. Increasing illegal settlement growth in largely Christian areas has also threatened the survival of many Christian villages and towns. Nevertheless, Israel remains a home to 185,000 Christian Palestinians, most of whom reside in Nazareth, Haifa and Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of people of partial or full Christian ancestry, some of whom are married to Jews, live in Israel as well. Beyond that, there are many Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, institutions, holy places and cemeteries in Israel.
Several months ago, the head of the Roman Catholic church in Israel, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said that Christians have faced difficult challenges since the formation of Netanyahu’s far right-wing government last December. According to Pizzaballa, his government has emboldened ultra-nationalist religious activists, many of whom are armed settlers, and some of whom have harassed male and female members of the clergy and vandalized religious property. Pizzaballa observed how “The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new. These people feel they are protected … the cultural and political atmosphere can now justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians.” A colleague, Francesco Patton, the Custodian of the Holy Land, elaborated how “We are horrified and hurt in the wake of the many incidents of violence and hatred that have taken place recently against the Catholic community in Israel.” He described the desecration of a Lutheran cemetery, the vandalizing of a Maronite prayer room, urination on holy sites, destruction of sacred images and the spraying of “death to Christians” on church property, all taking place shortly after the new government was installed. He also noted “the responsibility of the leaders, of those who have power,” adding that the Israeli police routinely failed to investigate such incidents after the churches reported them.
To determine if the claims of increased violence and hate crimes directed against Christians were true, on June 26th the liberal leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz sent one of its journalists dressed as a priest into downtown Jerusalem. Within five minutes, the journalist Yossi Eli “was derided and spat at, including by a child and a soldier… A bit later a man mocked [him] in Hebrew, saying, ‘Forgive me father for I have sinned.’ Then an 8-year-old spat at [him], as did [another] soldier when a group of troops passed by later.”
Given what is going on on-the-ground, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has called for an investigation into the role that Israeli-US dual national settlers are currently playing in the recent wave of violence directed against both Christian and Muslim Palestinian towns and villages. ADC Executive Director Abed Ayoub has said that “We have strong reason to believe that American citizens are among the key perpetrators of the most recent brutal and violent attacks.” Since June 21st, armed Israeli settler mobs have been terrorizing Palestinian villages in the West Bank on a nearly daily basis. They have destroyed homes, burned vehicles, and killed at least one Palestinian. For decades US Citizens have moved to Israeli settlements, which they use as bases for regularly engaging in violence against Palestinians, all with impunity, as the Israeli police and army provide the Arabs with no protection and instead often protect the settlers. Many of these US Citizens also take advantage of American charitable and non-profit tax laws to fund illegal settlements and initiate violence against Palestinians.
In another major incident, five weeks ago dozens of Israeli extremists, primarily Orthodox Jews, disrupted a Christian prayer event for pilgrims near the Western Wall. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh King and leading Rabbi Avi Thau led the protesters. Denouncing the Christians as “missionaries” trying to convert Jews, the extremists spat at and cursed the pilgrims, many of whom were ironically normally strongly pro-Israel evangelical Christians from the US. Deputy Mayor King said that Christians should enjoy freedom of worship “only inside their churches.”
According to Protecting Holy Land Christians, an organization established by Christian groups to raise awareness of threats their religion, 2022 was “one of the worst years for Christians in Jerusalem to date.” The organization reported spitting attacks, vandalism, and property theft as mechanisms of erasure. And there are other accounts of how Christians have been subjected to increasing persecution. A recent report details how Palestinians have been targeted by what it calls settler-colonialism, which is a series of measures intended to destroy their communities and drive them from their land. It identifies seven policies that Israel uses against Palestinians throughout the whole of Mandatory Palestine (1948 Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem) and also to punish those in exile: “denial of residency; land confiscation and denial of use; discriminatory planning; denial of access to natural resources and services; imposition of a permit regime; fragmentation, segregation and isolation; denial of reparations; and suppression of resistance.” The report concludes “Whether these policies are considered separately or taken together, they amount to forced population transfer, a grave breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).”
To cite only one example of how it works, the venerable Armenian Christian community has been the victim of a controversial land sale in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City Armenian Quarter that is being developed as a luxury resort which will effectively destroy a neighborhood that has existed for seven hundred years. The Australian-Israeli developer who obtained the land apparently did so through a shady deal with a bribed community official that circumvented local zoning and property sale regulations. The religious leadership of the Armenian community, which numbers less than 1,000, fears that the resort will force many families, already suffering under Israel’s rule, to depart.
Recently, these essentially genocidal measures have included the outright theft of their historic buildings and land by the government, and denial of other rights, including refusal to permit gatherings of the faithful at the existing churches on major holidays like Christmas and Easter. There have also been many physical attacks on individual Christians carried out by extremist Jews as well as desecration of Christian religious sites and destruction or defacement of Christian relics and statuary. A conference in Jerusalem held last Friday to address the issue of increased violence against Christians attracted a number of diplomats, scholars and representatives of religious groups, but it was boycotted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The US Embassy also did not send a representative or observer, indicating clearly that it was not interested in the plight of Christians in Israel, or rather that it did not even want to admit that there was a problem.
So there you have it. The new Israeli government is not very interested in human rights for anyone who is not a Conservative or Orthodox Jew. It is, in fact, essentially hostile to all Palestinians and foreigners, be they Muslim, Christian or even irreligious. They denigrate such people as what Germans in the 1930s would have referred to as “untermenschen” meaning subhumans, a word then used to describe Jews, ironically enough. That the United States ignores all of Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations is disgraceful, but par for the course as American Jews who are advocates for Israel have corrupted and taken firm control of the political process. And do not think for a second that Israel’s leaders give one damn about the United States and its people. Recall for a moment how former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referred to Americans in a discussion with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” And more recently Netanyahu said “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” That is what they really think of us.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Spiraling West Bank violence could spell political doom for both Israeli and Palestinian leadership
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | July 3, 2023
The latest upsurge in violence throughout the occupied West Bank signals the failure of US-led efforts to create calm. Both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government were faced with domestic pressure to take escalatory measures against the opposing side, resulting in an Israeli military operation against Palestinian armed groups in Jenin.
Beginning with an Israeli raid on the city of Jenin, a string of violent events again ignited tensions between Palestinians and Israelis inside the occupied West Bank. In mid-June, a number of Israeli armored vehicles stormed Jenin to arrest members of the armed group known as the Jenin Brigades, when they were ambushed by local Palestinian fighters. Seven Israeli soldiers were injured by improvised explosive devices that were detonated underneath their military vehicles. This led to the deployment of Apache helicopters and a large number of Israeli ground forces, who ended up killing seven Palestinians and injuring 91.
Just one day later, two Palestinian gunmen carried out an attack near the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Eli, killing four Israeli settlers and injuring four others. The two shooters were identified as having an affiliation with the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades. Both were shot and killed by Israeli forces that same day.
The increase in violence followed the decision of the Israeli government to allow its far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, to assume special powers to develop settlement expansion plans, even without the approval of the Knesset. The move sparked only light condemnation from the US government, which said that it “opposes such unilateral actions that make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve and are an obstacle to peace.”
The following night, radical Israeli settlers decided to attack Palestinian villages, in what they called “revenge” for the shooting attack against settlers earlier that day. In the Palestinian village of Turmasaya alone, around 400 armed settlers torched 30 homes and 60 cars. The attack also resulted in over 100 injuries and 1 death. Israeli settler attacks like these target any Palestinian community that they are able to penetrate, almost always with the protection of the Israeli army. One such attack, earlier this year in the village of Huwara, was even described as a “pogrom” by Israeli general Yehuda Fuchs.
The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was put in an embarrassing position following the events in both Jenin and the settlement of Eli. Both these situations represented a clear development in the sophistication of the West Bank armed groups, proving them capable of inflicting casualties on both Israeli soldiers and settlers in just over a 24 hour window. Already there had been calls from Israeli settler communities, in the northern West Bank, to launch an all-out military operation in order to crush the armed groups, with the above mentioned incidents only leading to further pressure being placed on the government to act.
In an Israeli security session, held to assess the situation inside the West Bank following the Eli shooting attack, it was reported that both Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, opposed the option of launching a military operation inside the occupied territory at the time. The expectation was raised on the government, at that point, to react disproportionately to such attacks, given that the Israeli coalition is held together by a number of hardliners who seek a complete annexation of the West Bank and currently live inside illegal settlements themselves.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration set up two security summits, aimed at improving cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel. The conferences were held in Jordan’s Aqaba and the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh. The goal was to have the PA’s security forces and the Israeli military work together in order to prevent further deterioration in the security situation. One of the components to creating a more stable environment was a plan to utilize a specially trained PA force that would directly confront the West Bank armed groups that have emerged over the past two years. The plan, drawn up by US security coordinator Michael Fenzel, represented political suicide for a PA that is already facing a massive backlash from Palestinians.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, roughly 80% of Palestinians want the current PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. During the latest string of Israeli settler attacks against defenseless Palestinian villages, locals have also gone viral calling on the PA to deploy its roughly 70,000-strong security force to protect against settler attacks. The PA only has limited areas of jurisdiction inside the West Bank and uses its forces to handle domestic Palestinian crime, in addition to protecting Israeli security interests. Under the current circumstances, a direct confrontation between PA forces and Palestinian armed groups could lead to a revolt against its rule inside the territory.
Mahmoud Abbas is currently 87 years old and there is a fear that when he passes away, there will be a power vacuum, which could result in the PA’s collapse or even a revolutionary anti-Israeli group taking over. Although the PA is currently attempting to sit on the fence, knowing that no conflict resolution dialogue has even been entertained with the Israeli side since 2014. It attempts to pretend as if there aren’t thousands of armed Palestinian fighters who are currently operating outside of the administration’s control and that it cannot do anything about Israel’s actions either. This attitude is mostly born out of a desire to remain in the good graces of their top donors, the United States and European Union. While the PA does not want to assume the role of an active protector against Israeli military and settler attacks, which the Palestinian people call on it to be, neither does it want to commit to being a direct aggressor against the armed militant groups.
Unlike the PA, the Israeli government was in the position to launch a military operation against the West Bank armed groups, so it waited and decided to carry out its attack on Sunday night. In 2002, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, during which they killed around 500 Palestinians and effectively eliminated many of the strongholds for the armed groups that were operating at the time. Israel’s army would seek to replicate the 2002 model in any large-scale operation, however, it has instead chosen to isolate Jenin in order to set back the groups, instead of attempting all out elimination. If it is to launch an all encompassing campaign, it is also likely that it will lose many soldiers and that there will be attacks from other territories, such as Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Therefore, there will be a political price to pay for launching such an operation, which is something that Netanyahu knows and is perhaps why he ordered a more limited attack.
Instead of declaring war inside the entire West Bank, it seems that the Israeli army has decided to increase the heat on the armed groups, using tactics like drone strikes to assassinate fighters, while this current escalation is an attempt to show strength and cut back the abilities of the groups. The day after the settlers’ “revenge” attack, Israeli forces announced that they had carried out a missile strike on a car, near a checkpoint that is located in Jenin, killing three Palestinian fighters. This airstrike was significant because it was the first assassination by missile strike in the West Bank since 2005. Now, the current invasion of Jenin is the largest since 2002.
If the Palestinian armed groups are allowed to grow stronger and their influence spreads to other cities, it may be politically impossible in the future for the Israeli government not to launch a large-scale military campaign, which is likely why it has opted for the current approach. However, one interesting element to the recent military operation in Jenin, is the lack of care from Palestinians in Ramallah and other cities, only Palestinians from the refugee camps came out in large demonstrations. This reflects a massive victory of Israeli policy over the Palestinians of the West Bank, they have successfully disconnected them from the suffering of their fellow people and it seems as if life can go on as normal for people living in cities like Ramallah.
Due to the US refusal to present any pathways forward, the West Bank is heading towards even greater violence. Its roadmap for the PA is not reasonable, given that it essentially asks the Palestinian Authority to commit suicide, but on the other hand, it won’t actually punish Israel for violating its own red-lines. Washington is frequently expressing its concern over the Israeli government’s constant approval of settlement expansion plans, yet it is unwilling to take a single step toward doing anything about it and supports Israel’s military solution to a problem that Washington failed to solve. The Biden administration has the power to pressure both the PA and Israel to sit down together today, yet it refuses, offering nothing more than platitudes about peace negotiations that have essentially been dead since the late 1990s. Without any viable options for a solution on the table, there will only be more violence, even if tensions calm temporarily.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
Israel worried Hezbollah’s air defense systems will ‘limit freedom of action’ over Lebanon
The Cradle | July 1, 2023
Israeli military planners are concerned about what they describe as “a significant change in the concept of air defense by Hezbollah in Lebanon” after the resistance group “doubled” the number of air defense systems in its possession, according to a report by Maariv newspaper published on 30 June.
The report cites unnamed military officials saying the resistance’s air defense systems will “restrict the freedom of action of the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon.”
“[Hezbollah] doubled the amount of air defense systems in its possession during the last five years … these defense systems are based mainly on modern Iranian systems,” the report adds.
Furthermore, Tel Aviv claims Hezbollah is in possession of the SA8 and SA22 Russian air defense systems, which have been previously deployed in Syria.
“The attack by an Israeli drone, in August 2019, on a facility in a building in the heart of the southern suburbs of Beirut … initiated the turning point in Hezbollah’s strategy, leading to the threat by [Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah] … to start shooting down Israeli drones,” the report highlights.
“Hezbollah implemented this threat two months later when it fired an SA8 missile at an Israeli Hermes 450 drone, which was on an intelligence-gathering mission, but the missile missed the target,” it adds.
In recent months, Israeli military planners have been on edge over Hezbollah’s vast military advancements coupled with the growing coordination among resistance factions in the region.
Earlier this week, Israeli media revealed that the US has stepped in to pressure Lebanon into having Hezbollah remove an outpost erected in the occupied Shebaa Farms.
Hezbollah has so far rejected these demands.
“You cannot threaten us with a large-scale war; it is us who are threatening you … Your follies, not ours, might blow up the entire region and lead to the Great War,” Nasrallah told Israeli leaders during a speech in May.
“The resistance is expanding by the day and has witnessed a great [positive] change in its financial and military capability,” he added.
Israel backs down on threats to bomb Iranian nuclear sites
The Cradle | July 1, 2023
Israel is not planning to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser said on 30 June, as indirect talks between Tehran and Washington regarding the nuclear issue have continued in recent weeks.
Asked whether an Israeli decision on a preemptive strike against Iran was any closer, Tzachi Hanegbi said:
“We are not getting closer because the Iranians have stopped, for a while now, they are not enriching uranium to the level that, in our view, is the red line.”
Hanegbi added: “But it can happen. So we are preparing for the moment.”
For several decades, Israel and the US have accused Iran of being “weeks away” from building a nuclear weapon. However, Iran says its nuclear industry is for peaceful purposes, including energy, and has stressed that Islam forbids pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Hanegbi said it was still unclear what would come of the US-Iran talks. Still, he insisted that if an agreement is signed between Israel’s primary sponsor and main enemy during the indirect talks that began in Oman, this will not obligate Israel to abide by it.
Last week, Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting that Israel opposes any interim agreement between the US and Iran regarding the latter’s nuclear program.
Israel opposed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and celebrated when Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.
The deal limited Iranian uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent. After the US withdrew from the agreement, Iran began enriching to 60 percent, which is still far from the 90 percent needed for use in a nuclear weapon.
“We also tell [the US] that even… ‘mini agreements,’ in our opinion, do not serve our goals, and we oppose those as well,” Netanyahu recently stated.
At the same time, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly accused Israeli officials of leaking information about the indirect US-Iran talks while complaining that the leaked information was inaccurate.
This included claims that the Biden administration seeks to reach an informal deal with Iran limiting its nuclear enrichment to bypass getting approval from Congress.
According to the New York Times, the US seeks an agreement that would include a pledge by Tehran not to enrich uranium beyond 60 percent purity, to better cooperate with UN nuclear inspectors, to stop attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria, to avoid providing Russia with ballistic missiles, and to release three American-Iranians held in the Islamic Republic.
In exchange, the US would release billions in seized Iranian funds, commit not to impose additional sanctions, and not take action against Iran in international forums such as the UN and IAEA.
Featured Video
Larry Johnson: U.S. Desperation Grows as Iran Is Winning
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Minab children massacre not ‘unfortunate situation’ but ‘heinous war crime’: Tehran
- OPCW Forced To Pay Damages To Whistleblower Who Found Evidence Of False Flag In Syria
- Iran can thrive under blockade, the US and its allies cannot
- Iran slams US leadership, debunking fabrications, false war costs
- Here’s why Iran is sovereign and Germany is not
- Israel pours $730m into global propaganda machine as reputation collapses
- Leaked audios reveal pro-Israel groups ‘paid’ for US pardon of convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez
- Congress Extends Section 702 Spy Program 45 Days
- Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech
- Larry Johnson: U.S. Desperation Grows as Iran Is Winning
- If Americans Knew
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- Nun assaulted in Jerusalem amid ‘pattern’ of anti-Christian attacks by Israelis
- Former Tik Tok official describes massive pressure from Israel lobby
- Amid ceasefire violations and genocide, Israel commits piracy – Daily Update
- Five Laws and Standards That Require the US Cut Off Weapons to Israel
- Israel’s diabolical killing machine and how it targets journalists.
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
Aletho News 