Israel bars Ahed Tamimi and her family from traveling abroad
Palestine Information Center – September 7, 2018
RAMALLAH – Israel has banned Ahed al-Tamimi, a Palestinian resistance icon, and her family from traveling abroad, her father said.
Basim al-Tamimi told Anadolu news agency that he and his family had planned to travel to Europe through Jordan in order to participate in some pro-Palestine events, but they were informed by the Palestinian authorities that Israel had banned them from traveling abroad.
They planned to leave Friday morning, he said, adding the Palestinian authorities did not provide a reason for the Israeli ban.
On July 29, the Israeli authorities released Ahed al-Tamimi and her mother, Nariman, after both had spent eight months behind bars.
The 17-year-old was arrested last December and was later sentenced to eight months in jail for slapping an Israeli soldier.
Fox News Report on Iran’s ‘Arms Smuggling’ Plays Into Pentagon’s Hands – Analyst
Sputnik – September 6, 2018
Fox News has accused an Iranian civil aviation company of smuggling arms into Lebanon, destined for the Hezbollah militant group, using “clandestine routes” said to have been uncovered by Western intelligence. Iran makes no secret of its political support for the Shia group but has vehemently denied supplying them with weapons.
In a recent report, Fox claimed, citing unnamed intelligence sources, that two “rare and unusual” flights by Qeshm Fars Air, a cargo hauler, were made from Tehran to Beirut recently, one of them making a short layover in Damascus. As possible evidence of wrongdoing, Fox cited the planes’ trajectories, with the flight paths allegedly avoiding parts of western Syria.

© Photo : FlightRadar24/Google Maps

One plane’s route showing that it passed over northern Lebanon after a brief layover in Damascus
Overlooking the idea that Qeshm Fars Air may have routed its planes this way out of security concerns, given that Syria is a war zone, Fox claimed, citing a “regional intelligence source,” that Iran was “testing and defying the West’s abilities” to track its alleged weapons smuggling.
Speaking to Sputnik Persian, Dr. Seyed Hadi Afghahi, a Middle Eastern affairs observer and former diplomat who has served in the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon, said that Fox’s coverage was not surprising, given their role in the American political and media landscape.
“First off, let’s recall what interests Fox News represents. This is one of the media mouthpieces sponsored by the US Department of Defense. Its senior executives consist of cadres representing the Zionist lobby in the US, or receive instructions from Tel Aviv,” Afghahi said.
“Second: why does Fox News cite ‘Western intelligence services’ without giving specifics, or the name of the service, for example, MI6? The channel offers very vague information without specifying even the name of the service which could confirm or deny such statements. This sort of reporting speaks for itself. Either documents must be presented, or reliable sources identified, which can confirm what the channel says.”
Finally, Afghahi said that given the fact that this was not the first time that Fox has been accused of spreading false stories, “the informational content presented, which isn’t supported by evidence, cannot be taken at face value.”
Who Benefits?
According to Dr. Afghahi, the more important aspect in the smuggling story is finding out what concrete goals Fox may be pursuing. Afghahi believes that the situation in the Syrian province of Idlib, the last major stronghold of extremist militants, and Syrian Army plans to liberate the territory, is the real “stick in the craw” for the US and Israel at this time. The “arms smuggling” story, in this light, is just an excuse for Western intervention in Syria against Damascus and its allies, including Iran and Hezbollah.
“Today, the region is in a very difficult and sensitive situation,” the observer stressed. “The operation to liberate Idlib, where terrorist groups and even the Turkish army are still operating, is approaching; this causes discontent among certain parties, who would like to prevent such an operation from being carried out. This, first and foremost, includes the United States, which uses its informational, strategic, military and political resources to engage in sabotage. Moreover, the US has officially warned that if the Syrian Army were to be joined by the forces of its allies, Iran and Hezbollah, this would constitute an escalation of the situation in the region, result in increased casualties, and possibly even the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces.”
Washington, according to Afghahi, “is distraught” over the fact that the victory over terrorism in Syria will be won by Bashar and his allies Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, and not by the US. “This fact is a great disappointment to the US and its allies. Therefore, they are preparing the groundwork, using all possible levers of influence, including spreading fake news, to ensure that this doesn’t happen.”
Ultimately, Afghahi emphasized that by pushing the smuggling narrative, Fox is working to provide both Washington and Tel Aviv with a pretext to strike Iranian advisers and Hezbollah fighters in Syria, where the latter have assisted in Damascus’s fight against terrorism.
Report on Israel funding Syrian rebels pulled on request of ‘army’s censor’
RT | September 5, 2018
IDF has forced the Jerusalem Post to remove its explosive report on the Israeli military giving weapons to the Syrian rebels, the newspaper’s managing editor confirmed to RT.
“We were told by the army’s military censor to remove that part of the story,” David Brinn, the managing editor of the Jerusalem Post told RT as he replied to a request for comment. The report, ‘IDF confirms: Israel provided light-weapons to Syrian rebels,’ which claimed that the Israeli military acknowledged for the first time that it had provided money, weapons and ammunition to the Syrian militants, was removed just hours after being published without any explanation.
According to Brinn, the story was removed “for security reasons evidently.” The IDF told RT that it would not comment on the issue.
The Jerusalem Post article was removed shortly after being published, but a version of the article can still be read using Google cache
It claimed that regular supplies of light weapons and ammunition to the Syrian militants holding the territories near the Israeli border were part of the Operation Good Neighbor, which Israel portrayed as a humanitarian mission, which was focused on providing Syrians with “food, clothes and fuel.”
Israel has been arming at least seven different armed groups in Syria’s Golan Heights, the report said. It also added that the Israeli military believed that providing weapons to the militants was “the right decision” as they sought to keep Hezbollah and Iran away from Israel’s Golan Heights by such means.
The deleted report comes on the heels of another major disclosure. On Monday, the IDF announced that Israel has carried out more than 200 strikes on Syrian targets in the past year and a half.
Paraguay cancels embassy move to Jerusalem, Israel responds by closing its embassy in Paraguay
RT | September 5, 2018
Paraguay will return its embassy in Israel to Tel Aviv, after the country’s previous government relocated it to Jerusalem in May. In a tit-for-tat response, Israel announced it would close its embassy in Paraguay.
National chancellor Luis Alberto Castiglioni announced the move on Wednesday, calling the decision by former President Horacio Cartes “visceral and without justification.” Cartes, a right-winger, made the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem in May, and was present for its inauguration.
It was one of the last decisions Cartes made before President Mario Abdo Benitez took office last month, and followed the controversial decisions of the US and Guatemala to move their embassies to Jerusalem.
Benitez, the grandson of a Lebanese immigrant, said that he was not consulted about the move.
“Paraguay wants to contribute to an intensification of regional diplomatic efforts to achieve a broad, fair and lasting peace in the Middle East,” said Castiglioni on Wednesday.
The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a controversial one. East Jerusalem has been claimed as the capital of the Palestinian state, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the US embassy there as “an American settlement outpost in East Jerusalem.”
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki claimed on Wednesday that he pushed President Benitez to reverse the move to Jerusalem.
Israel responded to Paraguay’s decision by recalling its ambassador to Paraguay and closing its embassy in the Latin American country’s capital, Asuncion. Before the diplomatic spat erupted, the Israeli ambassador, Zeev Harel, had been meeting with the Paraguayan minister for education, discussing cooperation between the two countries.
Family of 9 homeless as Israel demolishes Hebron home at behest of settlers
MEMO | September 4, 2018
At approximately 4am yesterday, Israeli forces entered the Palestinian village of Khirbet Qawasis and demolished the home of Yousef Abu ‘Aram following protests by settlers from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Yaier.
The soldiers then stormed the village of Zuwaidin and destroyed several community bathrooms legally built on the side of a main road to the village. Soldiers prevented local activists from leaving their vehicles to film the demolition.
“We are sad and upset about what happened today,” says Yousef. “The Israeli authorities want to move us from our land and take it, but we will not move.”
Yousef had completed construction of the house on his land in the southern West Bank governorate of Hebron only a fortnight ago; a house he had hoped would protect his seven children from the coming winter.
“The situation is really bad,” says Yousef, who had intended to plough the land and nurture his trees in the South Hebron Hills, just a few metres from the settlers’ road to Mitzpe Yaier.
“They have left a family of seven children and their parents with no shelter, and now we sit under the trees and will be sleeping on the ground and covering ourselves with the sky.”
Israeli settlers routinely harassed Yousef during the construction of his concrete house and the Israeli Civil Administration, under pressure from the settlers, confiscated some of his building materials. The fate of the house was due to be determined at a court hearing scheduled for yesterday, however the Israeli Civil Administration unlawfully demolished the home ahead of the hearing.
“It’s a new thing for settlers to go out to Palestinian houses to protest against the buildings,” says human rights activist, Tariq Hathaleen, who lives in the nearby village of Umm Al-Khair. “The military want to satisfy the settlers, so if there are building materials they confiscate them. If there’s a tent, they will dismantle it and take it away. If it’s a building, the Civil Administration will work very hard to demolish it.”
Hathaleen says that the rate of demolitions is increasing in the South Hebron Hills, where some 30 Palestinian villages can expect as many demolitions to occur in a month as they once did in a year.
“The number is increasing because of the settlers’ pressure. Not just them, but also because of settler NGOs, like Regavim, that works in the South Hebron Hills and across Palestine. They have people who drive cars around Palestinian villages and they also fly drones. Once they catch a Palestinian building a house, they inform the Civil Administration and the military.”
Regavim, a pro-settler not-for-profit that has received millions of shekels of public funds, is leading the legal battle to demolish the Palestinian village of Susiya.
According to B’Tselem, Israel demolished at least 1,342 Palestinian residential units in the West Bank between 2006 and 30 June 2018, displacing 6,024 people including at least 3,040 children. Israel has aggressively pursued a policy of demolishing Palestinian homes, schools, health facilities and other essential infrastructure since it began occupying the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. These demolitions are a violation of The Hague and Fourth Geneva Conventions.
Israeli authorities deny most Palestinian applications for the necessary building permits in Israeli-controlled “Area C”, which accounts for around 60 per cent of the West Bank, forcing Palestinians to build without permission and live under constant threat of demolition.
Meanwhile, Jewish-only settlements like Mitzpe Yaier continue to expand on Palestinian land with the backing of the Israeli government. Around 600,000 Israelis live in over 250 settlements and outposts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids occupying powers from transferring their civilians to occupied territory. Settlements are usually built on stolen Palestinian land in “Area C”, where Khirbet Qawasis is located.
Israel has demarcated approximately 70 per cent of Area C for unlawful settlement expansion, as well as outposts, firing zones, state lands and national parks. This policy has fractured Palestinian land and created a hostile environment for Palestinians living nearby.
“Every day we hear of a new incident of settler violence happening,” says Hathaleen. “Two people from the South Hebron Hills were attacked this year. These people were attacked in less than one week.”
According to Hathaleen, both incidents involved settlers from the illegal Israeli outpost Havat Maon. His friend Sami was injured in one incident after settlers drove their motorcycle down a Palestinian road directly at him, running him over and breaking his leg in three places. The other incident involved a shepherd, who was walking with his flock when settlers attacked him with wooden sticks, leaving him with a broken leg and injuries to his head and hand. One of the settlers tried to shoot the shepherd several times but the gun did not fire. “This man was lucky to survive,” says Hathaleen, who adds that Palestinian shepherds are routinely attacked by Israeli settlers and soldiers if they aren’t accompanied by international volunteers. “Settlers don’t attack Palestinians in front of cameras.”
Many settlers carry government-issued weapons with them outside their homes. Settlers usually attack Palestinians in groups, and attacks often involve throwing stones at people and their property; firing live ammunition at or near Palestinians, homes and schools; the burning of trees and agricultural land; and vandalising vehicles and other property.
According to UN OCHA, an average of seven incidents of settler violence a month led to Palestinian casualties in the first four months of 2018. An average of 14 incidents a month caused property damage. Israeli human rights group Yesh Din reports that only 8.1 per cent of investigations into ideologically motivated offenses against Palestinians have led to an indictment since 2005, and 82 per cent of investigations were closed due to police failures.
READ ALSO:
Israel demolishes Palestinian school near Hebron
Report by Sawsan Bastawy, @SawsanHefny
Israel pressured EU to cancel meeting with MK Ayman Odeh
MEMO | September 4, 2018
Israeli officials “pressured the European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in recent weeks to cancel her meeting with Joint List chair Ayman Odeh regarding the nation-state law”, reported Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Citing sources “involved in arranging the Mogherini-Joint List meeting”, Haaretz said “Israeli officials tried to convince Mogherini to have a lower-level EU official meet with Odeh” instead.
Mogherini responded by saying “she would meet with representatives of the Joint List as she had with other Knesset parties, and hear from them about issues involving Arab citizens in Israel.”
As noted by Haaretz, “Joint List MKs are lobbying European Union officials in Brussels against the nation-state law”, and Odeh is set to meet Mogherini today.
“Odeh is expected to ask Mogherini to try to compel Israel to cancel the law and see that it is condemned in international forums, including the United Nations,” the report added.
“We have three days filled with meetings with ambassadors and ministers in the European Union, including Mogherini,” Odeh told Haaretz, speaking from Brussels. “We are going to ask the European Union to intervene with the Israeli government to cancel the law.”
Odeh “said the European Union has ways of working against the law, mainly by using trade agreements and cooperative ventures with the European Union, in which Israel is pledged to respect human rights and democratic values.”
Israel’s Fifth Column
Exercising control from inside the government
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 4, 2018
Referring to Israel during an interview in August 1983, U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer said “I’ve never seen a President — I don’t care who he is — stand up to them. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn’t writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don’t have any idea what goes on.”
Moorer was speaking generally but he had something specific in mind, namely the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship, U.S.S. Liberty, which killed 34 American crewmen and wounded 173 more. The ship was operating in international waters and was displaying a huge stars and stripes but Israeli warplanes, which had identified the vessel as American, even strafed the life rafts to kill those who were fleeing the sinking ship. It was the bloodiest attack on a U.S. Naval vessel ever outside of wartime and the crew deservedly received the most medals ever awarded to a single ship based on one action. Yes, it is one hell of a story of courage under fire, but don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make a movie out of it.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, may he burn in hell, had ordered the recall of U.S. carrier planes sent to aid the stricken vessel, saying that he would prefer the ship go to the bottom rather than embarrass his good friend Israel. Then came the cover-up from inside the U.S. government. A hastily convened and summarily executed board of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain, father of the senator, deliberately interviewed only a handful of crewmen before determining that it was all an accident. The sailors who had survived the attack as well as crewmen from Navy ships that arrived eventually to provide assistance were held incommunicado in Malta before being threatened and sworn to secrecy. Since that time, repeated attempts to convene another genuine inquiry have been rebuffed by congress, the White House and the Pentagon. Recently deceased Senator John McCain was particularly active in rejecting overtures from the Liberty survivors.
The Liberty story demonstrates how Israel’s ability to make the United States government act against its own interests has been around for a long time. Grant Smith of IRMEP, cites how Israeli spying carried out by AIPAC in Washington back in the mid-1980s resulted in a lopsided trade agreement that currently benefits Israel by more than $10 billion per year on the top of direct grants from the U.S. Treasury and billions in tax exempt “charitable” donations by American Jews.
If Admiral Moorer were still alive, I would have to tell him that the situation vis-à-vis Israeli power is much worse now than it was in 1983. He would be very interested in reading a remarkable bit of research recently completed by Smith demonstrating exactly how Israel and its friends work from inside the system to corrupt our political process and make the American government work in support of Jewish state interests. He describes in some detail how the Israel Lobby has been able to manipulate the law enforcement community to protect and promote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s agenda.
A key component in the Israeli penetration of the U. S. government has been President George W. Bush’s 2004 signing off on the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) within the Department of the Treasury. The group’s website proclaims that it is responsible for “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats,” but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel’s perceived interests. Grant Smith notes however, how “the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons complex.”
The first head of the office was Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey, who operated secretly within the Treasury itself while also coordinating regularly both with the Israeli government as well as with pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC, WINEP and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Levey also traveled regularly to Israel on the taxpayer’s dime, as did his three successors in office.
Levey left OTFI in 2011 and was replaced by David Cohen. It was reported then and subsequently that counterterrorism position at OTFI were all filled by individuals who were both Jewish and Zionist. Cohen continued the Levey tradition of resisting any transparency regarding what the office was up to. Smith reports how, on September 12, 2012, he refused to answer reporter questions “about Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, and whether sanctioning Iran, a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, over its internationally-inspected civilian nuclear program was an example of endemic double standards at OTFI.”
Cohen was in turn succeeded in 2015 by Adam Szubin who was then replaced in 2017 by Sigal Pearl Mandelker, a former and possibly current Israeli citizen. All of the heads of OTFI have therefore been Jewish and Zionist. All work closely with the Israeli government, all travel to Israel frequently on “official business” and they all are in close liaison with the Jewish groups most often described as part of the Israel Lobby. And the result has been that many of the victims of OTFI have been generally enemies of Israel, as defined by Israel and America’s Jewish lobbyists. OTFI’s Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN), which includes sanctions and enforcement options , features many Middle Eastern Muslim and Christian names and companies but nothing in any way comparable relating to Israel and Israelis, many of whom are well known to law enforcement otherwise as weapons traffickers and money launderers . And once placed on the SDN there is no transparent way to be removed, even if the entry was clearly in error.
Here in the United States, action by OTFI has meant that Islamic charities have been shut down and individuals exercising their right to free speech through criticism of the Jewish state have been imprisoned. If the Israel Anti-Boycott Act succeeds in making its way through congress the OTFI model will presumably become the law of the land when it comes to curtailing free speech whenever Israel is involved.
The OTFI story is outrageous, but it is far from unique. There is a history of American Jews closely attached to Israel being promoted by powerful and cash rich domestic lobbies to act on behalf of the Jewish state. To be sure, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East and one can reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pockets of Jewish billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.
Neoconservatives, most of whom are Jewish, infiltrated the Pentagon under the Reagan Administration and they and their heirs in government and media (Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol) were major players in the catastrophic war with Iraq, which, one of the architects of that war, Philip Zelikow, described in 2004 as being all about Israel. The same people are now in the forefront of urging war with Iran.
American policy towards the Middle East is largely being managed by a small circle of Orthodox Jews working for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. One of them, David Friedman, is currently U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has no diplomatic or foreign policy credentials, is a Zionist Jew who is also a supporter of the illegal settlements on the West Bank and a harsh critic of other Jews who in any way disagree with the Israeli government. He has contributed money to settlement construction, which would be illegal if OTFI were doing its job, and has consistently defended the settlers while condemning the Palestinians in speeches in Israel. He endlessly and ignorantly repeats Israeli government talking points and has tried to change the wording of State Department communications, seeking to delete the word “occupied” when describing Israel’s control of the West Bank. His humanity does not extend beyond his Jewishness, defending Israel’s shooting thousands of unarmed Gazan protesters and the bombing of schools, hospitals and cultural centers. How he represents the United States and its citizens who are not dual nationals must be considered a mystery.
Friedman’s top adviser is Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who is described by the Embassy as an expert in “Jewish education and pro-Israel advocacy.” Once upon a time, in an apparently more enlightened mood, Lightstone described Donald Trump as posing “an existential danger both to the Republican Party and to the U.S.” and even accused him of pandering to Jewish audiences. Apparently when opportunity knocked he changed his mind about his new boss. Pre-government in 2014, Lightstone founded and headed Silent City, a Jewish advocacy group supported by extreme right-wing money that opposed the Iran nuclear agreement and also worked to combat the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He is reportedly still connected financially with anti BDS groups, which might be construed as a conflict of interest. As the Senior Adviser to Friedman he is paid in excess of $200,000 plus free housing, additional cash benefits to include a 25% cost of living allowance and a 10% hardship differential, medical insurance and eligibility for a pension.
So, what’s in it all for Joe and Jill American Citizens? Not much. And for Israel? Anything, it wants, apparently. Sink a U.S. warship? Okay. Tap the U.S. Treasury? Sure, just wait a minute and we’ll draft some legislation that will give you even more money. Create a treasury department agency run exclusively by Jews that operates secretly to punish critics of the Jewish state? No brainer. Meanwhile a bunch of dudes at the Pentagon are dreaming of new wars for Israel and the White House sends an ignorant ambassador and top aide overseas to represent the interests of the foreign government in the country where they are posted. Which just happens to be Israel. Will it ever end?
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
What Lies Beneath: The US-Israeli Plot to ‘Save’ Gaza
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | September 4, 2018
Israel wants to change the rules of the game entirely. With unconditional support from the Trump Administration, Tel Aviv sees a golden opportunity to redefine what has, for decades, constituted the legal and political foundation for the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict.’
While US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has, thus far, been erratic and unpredictable, his administration’s ‘vision’ in Israel and Palestine is systematic and unswerving. This consistency seems to be part of a larger vision aimed at liberating the ‘conflict’ from the confines of international law and even the old US-sponsored ‘peace process.’
Indeed, the new strategy has, so far, targeted the status of East Jerusalem as an Occupied Palestinian city, and the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. It aims to create a new reality in which Israel achieves its strategic goals while the rights of Palestinians are limited to mere humanitarian issues.
Unsurprisingly, Israel and the US are using the division between Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, to their advantage. Fatah dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah while Hamas controls besieged Gaza.
A carrot and a stick scenario are being applied in earnest. While, for years, Fatah received numerous financial and political perks from Washington, Hamas subsisted in isolation under a permanent siege and protracted state of war. It seems that the Trump Administration – under the auspices of Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner – are turning the tables.
The reason that the PA is no longer the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership it used to be in Washington’s ever self-serving agenda is that Mahmoud Abbas has decided to boycott Washington in response to the latter’s recognition of all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. True, Abbas’ subservience has been successfully tested in the past but, under the new administration, the US demands complete ‘respect’, thus total obedience.
Hamas, which is locked in Gaza between closed borders from every direction, has been engaging Israel indirectly through Egyptian and Qatari mediation. That engagement has, so far, resulted in a short-term truce, while a long-term ceasefire is still being discussed.
The latest development on that front was the visit by Kushner, accompanied with Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, to Qatar on August 22. There, Gaza was the main topic on the agenda.
So, why is Gaza, which has been isolated (even by the PA itself) suddenly the new gate through which the top US, Israeli and regional officials are planning to reactivate Middle East diplomacy?
Ironically, the suffocation of Gaza is particularly intense these days. The entire Gaza Strip is sinking deeper in its burgeoning humanitarian crisis, with August being one of the most gruelling months.
A series of US financial aid cuts have targeted the very socio-economic infrastructure that allowed Gaza to carry on, despite extreme poverty and the ongoing economic blockade.
On August 31, Foreign Policy magazine reported that the US administration is in the process of denying the UN Palestinian refugees agency, UNRWA – which has already suffered massive US cuts since January – of all funds. Now the organization’s future is in grave peril.
The worrying news came only one week after another announcement, in which the US decided to cut nearly all aid allocated to Palestinians this year – $200 million, mostly funds spent on development projects in the West Bank and humanitarian aid to Gaza.
So why would the US manufacture a significant humanitarian crisis in Gaza – which suits the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu well – while, simultaneously, engaging in discussions regarding the urgent need to end Gaza’s humanitarian woes?
The answer lies in the need for the US to manipulate aid to Palestinians to exact political concessions for Israel’s sake.
Months before rounds of Egyptian-sponsored indirect talks began between Israel and Hamas, there has been an unmistakable shift in Israeli and US attitudes regarding the future of Gaza:
On January 31, Israel presented to a high-level conference in Brussels ‘humanitarian assistance plans’ for Gaza at a proposed cost of $1 billion. The plan focuses mostly on water distillation, electricity, gas infrastructure and upgrading the joint industrial zone at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. In essence, the Israeli plan is now the core discussion about the proposed long-term ceasefire.
The meeting was attended by Greenblatt, along with Kushner who is entrusted with implementing Trump’s unclear vision, inappropriately termed ‘the deal of the century.’
Two months later, Kushner hosted top officials from 19 countries to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
There is a common thread between all of these activities.
Since the US decided to defy international law and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last December, it has been in search of a new strategy that will circumvent the PA in Ramallah.
PA President, Abbas, whose political apparatus is mostly reliant on ‘security coordination’ with Israel, US political validation and financial handouts, has little with which to bargain.
Hamas has relatively greater political capital – as it has operated with less dependency on the Israeli-US-western camp. But years of relentless siege, interrupted by massive, deadly Israeli wars, have propelled Gaza into a permanent humanitarian crisis.
While a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian groups in Gaza went into effect on August 15, a long-term ceasefire is still being negotiated. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, citing Israeli officials, the truce would include a comprehensive ceasefire, opening all border crossings, expansion of the permitted fishing area off the Gaza coast, and the overhauling of Gaza’s destroyed economic infrastructure – among other stipulations.
Concurrently, Palestinian officials in Ramallah are fuming. ‘Chief negotiator,’ Saeb Erekat, accused Hamas of trying to “destroy the Palestinian national project,” by negotiating a separate agreement with Israel. The irony is that the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and PA have done just that for over 25 years.
However, delinking the future of Gaza from the fate of all Palestinians can, indeed, lead to dangerous consequences.
Regardless of whether a permanent truce is achieved between Israel and the Hamas-led Gaza factions, the sad truth is that, whatever grand illusion is harboured by Washington and Tel Aviv at the moment, is almost entirely based on exploiting Palestinian divisions, for which the Palestinian leadership is to be wholly blamed.
Israel newspaper incites against Corbyn, Muslims in UK
MEMO | September 3, 2018
Israel Hayom newspaper yesterday ran an article inciting against Muslims in the UK and leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
“The British capital of London has become a base for Islamic groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood outside the Middle East and the centre for the campaign to delegitimise Israel,” columnist Eldad Beck said in an article published yesterday.
Beck added that this comes in the context of “the radical speech led by British leader Jeremy Corbyn, noting to the increase in non-governmental political movements with only one common goal that is calling for the elimination of Israel.”
“There are a number of Hamas men who are running the battle to delegitimise Israel in Britain and are working to spread it around the world in order to legitimise the elimination of Israel. They have been organising fleets for solidarity with Gaza since 2010, led by the Turkish Mavi Marmara flotilla which caused Israel unprecedented harmful propaganda,” he claimed.
“Some Hamas figures in Britain are leading the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and some have even filed legal complaints against British journalists who claimed that they have links with Hamas’ military activities, while others have issued anti-Semitic statements and got closer to Corbyn who received at the British Parliament Hamas representatives who had expressed their support for armed operations,” Beck added.
Meanwhile, former Director General of the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, Major General Yossi Kuperwasser, said “Britain is witnessing the emergence of what we can call the Green-Red Alliance, and one of its objectives is to wipe Israel off the map.”
“This alliance extends from Britain to the rest of the Western countries including the United States, but Britain is still the strongest body to export the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology to the rest of the globe.”
“Palestinian activists in Britain are aiming to establish more Islamic organisations to influence the Kingdom’s internal and external policies,” he added.

