The Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Farce
By Ilana Mercer • Unz Review • March 18, 2025
‘A ceasefire is when the Israelis fire and we cease.’ ~ Refaat Al-Areer, RIP
Nobody can quite determine any longer which of the two countries, America or Israel, is the Great Satan and which is the Little Satan. ~ ilana
“We’re the United States. We’re not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play.” So said Trump Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Adam Boehler to Zionist enforcer Jake Tapper, on CNN.
Boehler had been deputized by President Donald Trump to bypass Bibi Netanyahu and negotiate directly with Hamas. More to the point, Boehler had described Hamas, whom by now very many around the world consider resistance fighters, as holding points of view that merit a hearing. He even suggested, as Jewish Insider reported, that—lo—! “they’re actually pretty nice guys.” Hamas, that is.
Whatever was he thinking! Boehler was off his leash. Israeli officials were scurrying about in an attempt to get him back on it.
Talking to Hamas? Now Trump was talking!
Unlike the president’s Gaza Rivera plan to evict Palestinian survivors from Gaza; negotiations with Hamas do indeed constitute “out-of-the-box thinking,” if not original thinking. Unoriginal, because diplomacy, namely talking to adversaries, is standard statecraft. At least it ought to be.
Excerpted but barely in the Washington Examiner, the testy Boehler-Tapper televised exchange took time to propagate to the Internet. You see, US Deep Tech, Google included, generally cover for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is also business partner to American tech. These multinationals are not about to throw sand in the IDF’s military bearings.
Tech multinationals (or Deep Tech, as I call them) have, after all, supplied the IDF with the killer infrastructure required to “build artificial intelligence (AI) programs designed to produce human targets with little human oversight.” (The other reasonable conclusion is that these multinationals are undisturbed by genocide.)
Talking to Hamas would certainly have been inconceivable under Joe Biden, alias Genocide Joe, remarks commentator extraordinaire Mouin Rabbani, a Palestinian. And while Trump has prioritized negotiations over American dual-national captives; his bold move broadcasts some salient facts about the situation:
Israel is an obstacle to an accord; to closing out the genocide. It is especially eager to avoid phase II of the January 17, 2025 ceasefire agreement. Not that the media system had noticed, but Israel never quite quit the killing.
By March 13, Israel had violated the ceasefire agreement upwards of one thousand times, in the estimation of Jon Elmer, military analyst at the Electronic Intifada. Staggering, perhaps, but utterly predictable historically. “Israel,” reminds a dejected Chris Hedges—he is a famed war correspondent—“has assassinated more people than any other people in the Western World.”
In the hours right after the ceasefire deal was announced; Israeli forces killed at least 87 Palestinians, 23 of them children. Quipped the late Refaat Al-Areer: “A ceasefire is when the Israelis fire and we cease.” As in “expire.” A mild-mannered, bookish Palestinian scholar, Dr. Al-Areer was murdered in his Gaza residence, in December of 2023.
Indeed, the low-grade killing across the coastal strip had continued throughout phase I of the “ceasefire.” To be exact, Israel had started up the killing fifteen minutes into the ceasefire’s implementation. Since January 15, 2025, Israel has murdered an average of three people every 24 hours—150 Palestinians since the start of the ceasefire on 19 January 2025.
No sooner were the Israelis steered by Steven Witkoff, in January, to a ceasefire; than the urge to kill overcame them. Israeli newspapers were telling about the “salty” language Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, had deployed with Netanyahu, instructing the Israeli prime minister’s aides, as follows (and I paraphrase), “I don’t care that today’s your Sabbath. Get down here and sign this [old] ceasefire on the dotted line.” I ad-libbed “old” in, because the January-15 accord was modeled after one Hamas had composed in May of 2024.
Did Witkoff remind Netanyahu that the Israeli army, the IDF, does not rest up on the Seventh Day from the slaughter of innocents, and that, surely its commander-in-chief could get off his duff to make peace on the holy Sabbath?! Probably not. Still, what transpired was refreshing, even delicious.
The March 2025 violations of the agreement have seen Israel halt the meager aid let into starving Gaza, and cut off the remaining supply of electricity to Gaza. Because the main desalination water-treatment plant is producing a fraction of its prior output, running as it is only on generators—only one-in-ten Gazans currently has access to safe drinking water.
From the start, Israel had failed to allow into Gaza the agreed-upon medicines, fuel, food, housing units (15 out of a promised 60,000), tents (20 percent of the requisite 200,000), heavy earth-moving machinery, spare parts, construction material, and alternative energy systems, like generators.
Still regionally omnipotent, still resistless—Israel has now put its exterminatory foot to the floor again. The Jewish State continues to bleed the region like a leech, seizing Lebanese and Syrian territory, including the Golan Heights. As I write, via the chyron scroll across the screen comes news that Israel has just extinguished nine lives in Northen Gaza, and two in southern Lebanon, where a ceasefire is in effect.
Unless it is killing things, Israel is just not happy. Flora and fauna, too. Israeli genociders, candid economists might say, have a high time-preference mindset. In such an uncivilized society, impulses (to kill) are privileged over contractual commitments (to quit killing). Not some of the livestock, but all of the livestock. As hard as it is to believe, but under decades of a medieval blockade, Gaza’s farmers had, before October 7, fed a third of their people. Croplands, irrigation systems, batteries of greenhouses, living things that produce flowers then give fruit: everything has gone the way of cattle, poultry and family pets: dead.
The term Carthaginian Peace has lost its meaning under Israel’s malign sway. The bad idea of “peace” through crippling the opponent Israel has replaced with the idea of “peace” through conquering and killing the opponent off. Conversion is complete. The structural violence that is the State of Israel the US duopoly has helped normalize. Genocidal violence, yes or no, saturation bombing of civilians, pros and cons, and forced mass expulsion of starving, subjugated people—if not de rigueur, these state crimes are now part of normal governance in the West.
On top of all that, there was never a ceasefire in the West Bank. The West Bank’s civilians, so closely clustered, have been strafed from the air. For the first time in 20 years, tanks travel all over what are urban neighborhoods.
The depopulation underway in this de facto annexed territory hardly even percolates through to the West’s press. Yet thousands of West Bank Palestinians are being plucked from their homes, some detained, mostly without charges, at times shot on the spot; always degraded, tortured, and sicced upon by fulminating Jewish settlers, who “work” cheek-by-jowl with Israeli soldiers.
A screen picture of any day in the life of a subject in the State of Satan seconds my description. Taken on February 15, the captured headlines via Ha’aretz tell of 30,000 Palestinians driven from Jenin, a so-called refugee camp in the West Bank. The number of people evicted and dispossessed from these “camps” has since ballooned to close on 50,000. The West Bank’s Palestinians are denied access to their agricultural land, which means that soon it will lie fallow, and settlers will colonize it.
I call places like Jenin “so-called” camps because these were proper cities, not tent cities. As was noted in the Journal of Middle-East Studies (1992), these “camps are similar to any other urban neighborhoods,” into which they have evolved.
I’d been to Jenin. Our family had been invited as guests by generous residents. Childhood in Israel saw me visiting what I then knew as The Triangle: Tira, Tulkarem and Jenin. In the 1970s, these were not yet cities, but were definitely no nylon-dome encampments. My step-father, a doctor, headed healthcare clinics in what he called The Triangle. Daily, he’d return home laden with export-quality fresh produce. His patients were poor, yet so very generous. Upon the town’s doctor, a South African Jew who was appreciated in his role as a healthcare provider, they showered respect, affection and gifts.
We’d also be invited as a family to feasts held on the occasion of a wedding. The tables groaned with heavenly cuisine. Bestowed, this was a great honor, and these were grand affairs, an example of a culture in which hospitality and generosity are defining values. An invitation meant that you were never ignored. A lovely, if genteel, welcome awaited.
I do not know if the term Triangle deployed then denotes the same cluster of cities and villages. I do know that Jenin today is 70-percent levelled. Burdened by history like never before, I note, too, that Tira is no longer visible on the map.
Although the occupation army has pulled out of the Netzarim Corridor, which divides Gaza, it retains a presence in southern Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor. The serial-killer state had hoped, with Trump’s backing, to renege entirely on the ceasefire agreement, and, in particular, on its Phase-II obligations to permanently end the offensive and “withdraw armed forces from the Gaza Strip completely.” In order to “surmount the obstacle” that is Israel, the Trump Administration had, therefore, chosen to speak directly with Hamas leaders.
Early in January of 2025, there was hope. Trump is an Alpha Male; Bibi Netanyahu is a kept man. How long can the ego-bound leader of a Super Power tolerate being bossed about by the leader of a “sh-thole country,” to use Trump’s old coinage?
Two months distant, and hope is fading. Trump chose to channel son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner, the nepotistic scion of a dodgy New York realtor, and an empty husk of a man, has had his eye on the waterfront property of a conquered and dying people. He had said as much about Gaza in 2024.
In essence, some of the world’s wealthiest men were coveting the property of the world’s poorest and most persecuted people.
Soon to follow was Trump’s Gaza plan, a gaudy vulgar production, replete with bearded belly dancers. “Trump Gaza,” the plan’s title, was not “out-of-the-box thinking,” as some in the president’s Westen coalition had dubbed it. Rather, it sits on a continuum of evil. It is an extension and completion of Joe Biden’s genocide.
Eager, it would seem, to write the Palestinian People’s obituary, Trump had vowed to assume control over Gaza, rebuild it and evict the survivors of a genocide committed by client state Israel.
By removing the pitiful exhibits from the scene of the crime; Donald Trump would be covering-up the crime of genocide. Next, he planned to conclude Biden’s genocide by scattering the survivors across the Middle East. Israel will have been rescued. Gazans will have ceased to exist as a nation. The forced displacement and mass murder of Gaza’s Palestinians would have been achieved, completed.
Who said crime doesn’t pay? When the Superpower inverts the moral order of the universe; the Crime of All Crimes pays—and then some.
As Trump told it, nobody quite knows how or why Gaza became a “demolition site.” Somehow, the soil got soaked through with the blood of tens-of-thousands of Palestinians, and a toxic mix of 50-million tons of building debris. Somehow, piles of bodies decay beneath the surface. Somehow, garbage is piled as high as the bodies, were they to be stacked. Open sewage runs through what remains of the streets, and the byproducts and contaminants of munitions, like unexploded ordnance, lie everywhere.
It’s all a big mystery.
The other thing nobody can quite determine is which of the two countries, America or Israel, is the Great Satan and which is the Little Satan.
Back to Boehler: Israel went barking mad when our ex-envoy failed to show monk-like devotion to Israel, asserting, instead, American foreign-policy independence. The Lobby was marshalled. Fervid assurances were soon provided. Soon enough, Adam Boehler was gone. After being “nominated for the Senate-confirmed position of Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs,” he was demoted to “special government employee,” reports Ha’aretz. Found deficient in Zionist solidarity, Boehler “withdrew his nomination.”
The median elapsed time between an American official opposing anything Israel and then dropping out of history is getting shorter.
Like Joe Biden did before him, president Trump followed the Israeli prime minister on a leash. On March 5, he bellowed on Truth Social:
“Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you.” Buoyed, at 2:00 AM today, March 18, Israel murdered over 400 Gazans. It is currently demanding that Hamas hand over hostages for nothing.
Will the Palestinians wronged and ruined get a reprieve? Will the mercurial Trump, who, to his credit, is ideologically unattached to Israel, cut Israel dead, as he ought to? These possibilities are looking remote.
***
Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian theorist, author and essayist. Her new book is “The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy” (February 2024). Mercer is described as “a system-builder. Distilled, her modus operandi has been to methodically apply first principles to the day’s events.” She’s Jewish and grew up in Israel from which she fled, aged 19, never to return. She had refused to serve in the IDF, the Israeli military.
Jenin: Israeli occupation forces destroyed all Jenin camp’s streets, displaced entire neighborhoods
Palestinian Information Center – March 17, 2025
JENIN – The Jenin City municipality said that the Israeli occupation forces destroyed all the streets of Jenin refugee camp and 85 percent of the city’s streets and displaced the residents of entire neighborhoods in the camp.
In press remarks on Monday, Jenin municipality director Mamdouh Assaf said that about 8,000 commercial facilities had been completely shut down in Jenin as a result of the Israeli military operation. However, he did not specify whether these closures occurred within the city itself or in the refugee camp.
For his part, Jenin mayor Mohamed Jarrar said that 25 percent of Jenin’s residents had been displaced by the Israeli army, adding that the number of displaced citizens from Jenin camp surged to 21,000 people.
Jarrar described the scale of destruction caused by Israeli bulldozers in Jenin as “immense,” pointing to a sharp rise in the poverty rate as a result of the Israeli military operation that has severe economic repercussions for the residents.
In a related context, the Palestinian health ministry said that since the beginning of the second academic semester in early February, 72 schools in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarem have stopped providing direct education as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression.
The Israeli occupation army launched a large-scale military operation in the northern West Bank 56 days ago, unleashing a violent campaign in Jenin that resulted in the death and injury of dozens of civilians, widespread destruction of homes and public and private property, and the displacement of thousands.
The operation later expanded to Tulkarem and Tubas, targeting mainly the refugee camps of Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and al-Fari’ah.
Israel demolishes 50 Palestinians homes in single day in West Bank
MEMO | March 7, 2025
The Israeli occupation army yesterday demolished 50 homes in Nur Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarm city, in the northern occupied West Bank.
Local sources said occupation forces brought huge bulldozers to the refugee camp earlier in the morning and began the demolition operations.
According to the sources, the Israeli occupation army allowed some families to enter their homes in Nur Shams camp on Wednesday and retrieve some of their belongings before carrying out the large-scale demolition operation the following day.
The army detained a woman for a short period before releasing her, they added.
The Israeli military escalation in the camps in the northern occupied West Bank forced tens of thousands of families to flee their homes, amidst widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure.
Israel says army to stay ‘for next year’ in Palestinian refugee camp in occupied West Bank
MEMO | February 23, 2025
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the army will remain in Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank for the next year to prevent Palestinian residents from returning, Anadolu reports.
The Israeli army deployed tanks in the northern West Bank early Sunday, marking the first time since 2002 amid military escalation in the occupied territory.
“The Israeli army is expanding its operations in the northern West Bank, and starting tonight, it will also operate in the town of Qabatiya,” Katz said in a statement.
The defense minister said 40,000 Palestinians have been evacuated from Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps.
“UNRWA activity in the camps has also been stopped,” he said. “I instructed the IDF (army) to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year, and not allow residents to return.”
The army has been conducting military operations in the northern West Bank since last month, killing at least 60 people and displacing thousands.
The raids were the latest in Israel’s ongoing military escalation in the West Bank where at least 923 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers since the start of the onslaught against the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The International Court of Justice declared in July that Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal, demanding the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
What Does Israel Want in The West Bank?
By Diana Khwaelid | International Solidarity Movement | February 5, 2025
Northern West Bank – Israel is carrying out massive military operations to displace residents of camps in the northern West Bank, unprecedented since the Second Intifada. Since the seventh of October, Israeli attacks on West Bank cities, especially in the north, have not stopped. We are talking about the cities of Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas, Nablus and Qalqilya.
Destruction of Palestinian refugee camps
At the end of January, Israel carried out a large scale military operation in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, which has lasted for ten days so far.
Its military operations are based in the Jenin refugee camp, in various city areas, and in some nearby villages. The Jenin camp has become an unfit place for human habitation, dozens of Palestinian houses have been destroyed and bombed, and the neighborhoods and streets of the camp have already been destroyed. Electricity,water pipes and infrastructure have been destroyed.
A residential block and an entire neighbourhood have been completely destroyed due to aerial bombardment.
Did you succeed in transforming the Jenin camp like Jabalia camp in Gaza?
This is what senior Israeli officials promised before the start of the recent military operation in the West Bank, especially in the Northern West Bank. The Israeli occupation continues its aggression on Jenin, Tulkarm, and Tubas, murdering 29 martyrs, dozens of injuries, arrests, demolition of houses and forced displacement. Amid widespread destruction of property and infrastructure.
Entrance to Tulkarem
JENIN
Jenin, for the fifteenth day in a row, the occupation continues its aggression against the Jenin city and its camp, which has so far resulted in 25 martyrs, dozens of injuries, arrests, and the demolition of dozens of houses, amid a large displacement process that affected 15 thousand citizens.
Yesterday morning, the occupation army forced residents of the buildings supervising the Jenin camp to evacuate, as several military vehicles were stationed near the buildings demanding evacuation.
Street in Jenin
Residential buildings and apartments are being emptied, forcibly displacing citizens.
The occupation forces in the Jenin camp simultaneously blew up about 20 buildings in the eastern side of the camp, after booby trapping them, which caused damage to some sections of the Jenin government hospital, without injuries being recorded. The occupation continues to push reinforcements to the city of Jenin camp from the Jalama military checkpoint, while its bulldozers continue to destroy houses in the merge lane, with approximately 15 thousand people now displaced from the Jenin camp the target neighborhood, distributed throughout 39 local community bodies in the Jenin governorate and its towns.
Transfer of an injured person in Tulkarem
TULKAREM
For the ninth day in a row, the occupation continues its aggression against the city of Tulkarm and its camp, resulting in the martyrdom of four citizens, amidst extremely difficult humanitarian conditions.
The occupation forces are still pushing more of their vehicles into the city and its camp from the “tasnouz” military camp west of Tulkarm, and deploying infantry patrols in large numbers in the streets, neighborhoods, and the center of the vegetable market, combing and searching between houses and alleys and harassing citizens.
These forces also continue to besiege the martyr Thabit Thabit government and specialized hospitals, obstruct the work of ambulances and their medical crews, and subject them to inspection and field investigation, while they have taken military barracks and places for snipers from the buildings surrounding them.
The occupation forces escalated their violations against citizens in the city and its camp through a series of attacks, which included raiding houses, forcing their owners to flee, vandalizing and stealing their contents, blowing up and destroying a number of them, in addition to restricting movement, while seizing commercial and residential buildings and turning them into military barracks and places for snipers.
In Tulkarem camp, the occupation forces continue to deploy large numbers of infantry soldiers in all its neighborhoods and alleys, raid houses, force residents to leave them, seize high buildings and turn them into sniper platforms and shoot at Citizens, which led to the injury of a citizen (40 years old), shot by an occupation soldier sniper stationed inside one of these buildings.
House of the martyr Tamer Fugha
Tulkarem camp is living amid this unprecedented continuous escalation, amid difficult humanitarian conditions, after the occupation bulldozers completely and partially destroyed houses and shops, blowing up a number of them and burning others, coinciding with the destruction of infrastructure, which led to the interruption of water, electricity, communications and the internet, making it difficult for specialized crews from the municipality, and others, to repair them because the occupation prevented them from entering the camp. The situation of citizens who are still in their homes ~ the elderly, the sick, women and children has also been aggravated by the acute shortage of food, medical, drinking water, and infant formula.
TUBAS
For the third day in a row, the occupation is besieging AL- FARA’ camp and the town of Tamoun south of Tubas, amid arrests, bulldozing of infrastructure and forcing citizens to flee.
Since the beginning of the storming, Israeli Occupation Forces forces have bulldozed the roads and infrastructure leading to the AL-FARA’ camp, in addition to closing all entrances to it with earthen berms and raiding houses in the vicinity of the camp, forcing its residents to be displaced, and turning them into military barracks.
Israeli Occupation Forces also raided the homes of citizens on the outskirts of the town of Tamun, forcibly displacing residents, giving them orders not to return within ten days.
Water pipelines have been destroyed between the Town of Tamun and the village of Atouf, in addition to closing of the road connecting the two areas with earthen berms.
The occupation continues to push military reinforcements to Tamun and the AL-FARA’ camp, while the Israeli reconnaissance aircraft continues to fly intensively in the skies of the governorate.
Military reconnaissance aircraft
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health: the number of Palestinian martyrs in the West Bank since the beginning of this year 2025 has reached 70 martyrs.
38 martyrs in Jenin
15 martyrs in Tubas
5 martyrs in Tulkarem
3 martyrs in Hebron
2 martyrs in Bethlehem
6 martyrs in Nablus
1 martyr in Jerusalem
10 of them are children, 2 are women, 2 are elderly people.
10-year-old Palestinian boy in critical condition after Israeli soldier shoots him in Tulkarem
Saddam Hussein Iyad Mohammad Rajab, 10, was shot by an Israeli soldier in front of his home in Tulkarem on January 28 and is now in critical condition. (Photo: Rajab family)
Defense for Children International – Palestine | January 31, 2025
Ramallah — A 10-year-old Palestinian child is in critical condition after an Israeli soldier shot him in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday.
Saddam Hussein Iyad Mohammad Rajab, 10, was shot in the abdomen by an Israeli soldier around 6:10 p.m. on January 28 during an Israeli military incursion into Tulkarem in the northern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Israeli forces attacked Saddam’s father as he attempted to carry him to receive medical aid, and after paramedics placed him in an ambulance, soldiers detained his father for about an hour. After three hours of surgery at Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital, doctors referred Saddam to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, and during the transfer Israeli forces detained the ambulance transporting Saddam. While Israeli soldiers held up the ambulance, one soldier told Saddam’s father, “I am the one who shot your son. God willing, he will die.” Saddam remains in the intensive care unit at Rafidia Hospital.
“Israeli forces have utter contempt for Palestinian children’s lives as they deliberately target children with live ammunition with no accountability,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “This deliberate obstruction of medical aid reflects the Israeli military’s routine disregard for the protections afforded to medical personnel and infrastructure under international law, often intentionally targeting these entities and rendering essential health resources for Palestinian children ineffective.”
Saddam sustained a gunshot wound to his waist that exited from his chest, according to information collected by DCIP. The bullet tore through his intestines and injured the pancreas and other vital organs in the abdomen.
The attack was captured on camera and has gone viral on social media.
Saddam and his family had been trapped at home for two days as the Israeli military carried out an incursion into the city of Tulkarem. Saddam’s father said he was going to go downstairs for a minute and took a mobile phone with him.
“After about a minute, I heard the sound of only one bullet with my son Saddam’s scream,” Saddam’s father, Iyad, told DCIP. “He called out in a loud voice that still echoes in my ears, as he said “Dad!” and his voice disappeared.”
“I carried him in my arms, wanting to take him to the nearest vehicle or hospital or something to save his life,” Iyad continued. “When I carried him in my arms, I found that more than 20 Israeli soldiers surrounded me within moments, as some of them assaulted me with severe beatings, punches, and blows using their hands, feet, and rifle butts. I was carrying my son in my arms, and I was telling them to hit me and do whatever you want, but let me take my son for treatment.”
Saddam’s medical care was obstructed by Israeli forces several times, including immediately after the shooting and during the transfer from Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital in Tulkarem to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus.
Under international law, children are entitled to special protections, which necessitate that they receive the care and aid that they need during times of armed conflict. Palestinian children like Saddam are systematically denied that right, as Israeli forces simultaneously continue to indiscriminately and fatally target children throughout occupied Palestinian territory. These ongoing assaults on children’s lives are perpetuated by Israel’s entrenched culture of impunity, which continues to claim the lives of Palestinian children nearly every day.
Prisoner thanks Gazans after release, says Israel tortures Palestinians
Press TV – January 31, 2025
One of the high-profile Palestinians released as part of the third batch of an agreement between Hamas and Israel on the exchange of Palestinian prisoners with Israeli captives under a Gaza ceasefire agreement was Zakaria Zubeidi.
Zubeidi, a senior leader of the Fatah movement and commander of its armed wing the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the West Bank, was freed on Thursday alongside 109 other Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Their release came after Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad released three Israeli captives along with the five Thai nationals. They were handed over to the Red Cross.
“Today I say thank you to Gaza, which liberated me and brought me back to my family. I was isolated, tortured and beaten, and repeatedly humiliated, and the situation of all prisoners is the same,” Zubeidi said in his first remarks after the release.
He went on to describe Israeli prisons as centers of killing and daily torture.
“Gaza now needs reconstruction, and all levels of the Palestinian people must come together to accomplish this, and return our people to their homes safely,” the former Palestinian prisoner pointed out.
Zubeidi was born in 1976 at Jenin refugee camp in the northern part of the occupied West Bank. He became a military commander for the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the Second Intifada (2000–2005), leading armed resistance.
He lost his mother Samira and his brother Taha in 2002, as Israeli occupation forces stormed the camp.
Zubeidi was constantly pursued by the occupying Tel Aviv regime.
On July 15, 2007, Israel granted amnesty to several al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade members, including him, in exchange for their surrender to the Palestinian Authority.
Following the amnesty, Zubeidi got married and had two children – a son and a daughter. He shifted his focus to theater arts, and became a prominent advocate for Palestinian arts with the Freedom Theater in Jenin.
He met with many international activists and supporters of Palestinian rights.
But four years later, on December 29, 2011, Israel revoked his amnesty, despite Zubeidi’s insistence that he had not violated its terms.
He was detained without charge by the Palestinian Authority (PA) for six months, and then later held in a PA jail in “protective custody.”
In 2018, he pursued a master’s degree at Birzeit University.
He and his lawyer, Tariq Barghout, were arrested in January 2019 and charged with engaging in “new incitement activities” and armed resistance against the Israeli regime.
Zubeidi finally obtained his master’s degree behind prison bars.
On September 6, 2021, he escaped from the Gilboa maximum security prison in the northern sector of the Israeli-occupied territories alongside 5 other Palestinian inmates by digging a tunnel from their cell.
Israeli forces recaptured all six Palestinian inmates days later, but the daring escape, known as Operation Freedom Tunnel, was widely praised as legendary among Palestinians and Muslim nations.
Last May, Zubeidi’s son Dawoud succumbed to injuries sustained in an armed confrontation with Israeli forces in Jenin.
Last September, his other son Mohammad was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the West Bank city of Tubas along with several other Palestinians.
Israel releases 110 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for eight captives
Press TV – January 30, 2025
Israel has released 110 Palestinian prisoners after a temporary delay ordered by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu even as Hamas had released eight captives in the third phase of the prisoner swap.
The prisoners released on Thursday evening included 30 minors, 32 Palestinian who had received life sentences, and 48 others who were serving prison terms of different duration.
Most of them reunited with their families in the occupied West Bank, while 23 of them were sent to Egypt. The prisoners released on Thursday were all men, aged 15 to 69.
The released inmates transported by Red Cross buses to both Palestinian territories were greeted with cheers by thousands of joyful Palestinians.
Zakaria Zubeidi, Mohammed Abu Warda and Mohammed Aradeh were among the high-profile Palestinians released on Thursday.
Israeli drones dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip warning Palestinians not to hold flags or banners or celebrate the release of prisoners in any way, Al Jazeera reported.
Israeli soldiers often attack crowds that gather near prisons to celebrate the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Earlier Thursday, 12 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli soldiers in Beitunia, near the prison in the West Bank where Palestinian prisoners were due to be released.
Two Palestinians were wounded by live bullets, two by rubber bullets and eight by tear gas, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
Earlier in the day, Hamas released three Israeli captives, a female soldier and two settlers, plus five Thai nationals, fulfilling its part of the third phase of the prisoner swap, paving the way for Israel to to release 110 Palestinian prisoners, as scheduled.
However, Netanyahu said in a statement that he had ordered a halt to the release of Palestinians until further notice, claiming that the handover of eight captives had been conducted in a “chaotic” condition.
The Israeli premier said the exchange would be delayed until mediators secured guarantees from Hamas of “the safe exit of our hostages in the next rounds.”
Surrounded by masked Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, the captives made their way through large Palestinian crowds toward the Red Cross vehicles on Thursday without any incident.
Also a day after a second exchange of Israeli captives held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners, Netanyahu ordered Israeli troops to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes in northern Gaza.
Israel said then Hamas had failed to free a captive who it claimed should have been released, but Hamas denied such an arrangement had ever been agreed.
The holdup left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians stranded behind an Israeli military barrier for two days before being allowed to head to their homes.
Israeli forces fired on the crowds on three occasions, killing two people and wounding nine, including a child, according to al-Awda Hospital, which received the casualties.
Israel has pulled back from several areas of Gaza as part of the ceasefire, which came into effect last Sunday.
The ceasefire is aimed at ending the 15-month Israeli war on Gaza and freeing captives still held in Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Over six weeks, Hamas will release 33 Israeli captives – about one-third of those in captivity – in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
In the last two exchanges, Hamas released seven Israeli captives in return for 290 prisoners, nearly all of whom were Palestinians, except for one Jordanian.
A fourth exchange scheduled for Saturday will involve the release of three Israeli men, according to Netanyahu’s office.
Israeli forces fatally shoot 2-year-old Palestinian girl in the head near Jenin
Laila Mohammad Ayman Khatib, two, was shot and killed by Israeli forces while she ate dinner with her family near Jenin on January 25. (Photo: Courtesy of the Khatib family)
Defense for Children Palestine | January 26, 2025
Ramallah — Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian toddler near Jenin last night.
Laila Mohammad Ayman Khatib, two, was shot and killed by Israeli forces around 8:30 p.m. on January 25 while she was in the living room in her family’s home in the Palestinian town of Muthallath Al-Shuhada, south of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Laila was having dinner with her mother, grandparents, and aunts when sudden Israeli gunfire erupted without warning. Israeli forces fired four bullets through the living room window, one of which struck Laila in the back of the head. Laila’s grandfather carried her out of the house and brought her to Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin, where she received emergency surgery. Laila was pronounced dead around 10 p.m.
“Israeli forces regularly and routinely carry out military operations with complete contempt for Palestinian life,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Little Laila was having dinner with her family when Israeli forces, unprompted, fired live ammunition into their living room, killing her. It is outrageous that the Israeli military has been permitted by world leaders to kill Palestinian children with impunity in flagrant violations of international law.”
Laila’s mother and aunt sustained injuries from shrapnel during the attack, according to information collected by DCIP.
When Laila’s grandfather exited the house carrying her, he saw Israeli snipers stationed in a Palestinian home across the street from their house. No residents of Muthallath Al-Shuhada were aware of an Israeli military presence at the time of the attack, and later learned that Israeli special forces had infiltrated the Palestinian home. Israeli forces remained in the town until about 11 p.m.
Jenin, its refugee camp, and the surrounding villages have been under an ongoing Israeli military attack dubbed “Operation Iron Wall” since January 21, 2025.
Since the beginning of Operation Iron Wall, 16 Palestinians have been killed, including Laila and 16-year-old Motaz Abu Tabeekh. This operation has also been accompanied by Israeli drone strikes, widespread destruction of infrastructure and homes in the Jenin refugee camp, and the bulldozing of roads. Additionally, hundreds of Palestinians families have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to the continued military assault.
Israeli forces have killed eight Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in 2025, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Five children were killed by Israeli drone strikes and three children were shot and killed with live ammunition.
How likely is a ceasefire In Gaza?
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | January 2, 2025
As the Gaza ceasefire talks stall yet again, some analysts argue that Donald Trump’s inauguration could be the key. However, the prospects for ending the war are dependent upon a variety of other factors that are making an Israeli victory impossible.
Despite the recent progress towards securing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the Zionist regime has again employed its delaying tactics in order to find the opportune moment. While the Resistance in Gaza has proven flexible on the fine details of a prisoner exchange and cessation of hostilities, it has also proven steadfast on the battlefield, making an Israeli victory declaration implausible.
The popularly accepted analysis at this stage is that with the start of Donald Trump’s second term in office, the possibility of a Gaza ceasefire will increase greatly. It is believed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could even present the implementation of such a deal as a gift to Trump; kick-starting his Presidency with a diplomatic breakthrough.
It is also true that the Zionist Entity’s richest billionaire, Miriam Adelson, had pledged 100 million dollars to the Trump campaign, with the quid pro quo that in return for bankrolling his presidential bid, he would permit an Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank.
What Could Make or Break A Gaza Ceasefire
The reality that must be accepted when it comes to the Israeli approach to a Gaza ceasefire/prisoner exchange agreement is that the United States will not use its leverage to secure one and instead only seeks to support the Zionist entity towards securing the best possible deal. Therefore, arguments presented about the possibility of the Trump administration actually using Washington’s leverage are ludicrous and should be discarded as fanciful.
The reason why Donald Trump could make a difference in this case comes down to two major factors: His support within the Zionist regime and his willingness to permit them to completely crush the idea of a so-called “Two-State solution”.
There is no one that commands quite as much public support amongst Israelis as Donald Trump, in fact, he is more loved by them than his own population in the United States. This means that his word carries weight and him throwing his support behind the Netanyahu-led coalition could force the more fundamentalist elements of his government to fall into line. In addition to this, there will be no hesitancy when it comes to permitting an Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank.
These two components are essential for ensuring that a Gaza deal will not collapse the current Israeli coalition. If the Israeli PM is going to secure the support he needs for such a ceasefire, he needs the extremists on his side and can only do this by fulfilling the pledge to annex the West Bank.
Another major issue, besides the domestic Israeli political divisions is the activity and risk of battle across a variety of fronts. In order to annex the West Bank, the Israeli military will need to deploy enormous numbers of soldiers, private security forces and occupation police into the territory. In the event of mass civil unrest, or even a worse scenario for them like the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, they will need to send a force that could amount to hundreds of thousands of fighters, into the territory in order to control the situation.
Already the Zionist military is in a State of exhaustion, with many of its soldiers refusing to show back up when called upon to redeploy into the Gaza Strip. They have tens of thousands of wounded fighters and countless others suffering from psychological disorders, all of which place a burden on the regime alone. There’s also a deficit that has to be filled in the rank and file that the Israelis need in order for their military to function at proper capacity, which has led to desperate attempts to draw in new reserve soldiers and force the Ultra-Orthodox population to draft their young.
In the best case scenario for the Israelis – when carrying out their annexation – they will still need to dedicate a tremendous amount of resources and manpower to fulfilling the task properly. This is essential to understanding why the annexation will prove extremely difficult in the event that one of the various war fronts expands, particularly the Lebanon or Syria fronts.
While the future of resistance inside Syrian territory is unclear and not certain, if such a force does manage to rise and challenge the occupation of their territory in the south, it will require major investments to combat it and will be greatly draining for the Zionist armed forces. Although this appears to be the least likely of the fronts to again deteriorate into war, it is certainly still a question mark.
Then we have Lebanon. The Israelis have not respected the ceasefire for a single day since its announcement, committing hundreds of violations. The Zionist regime is not only continuing to maintain its presence in southern Lebanon, but has even penetrated further into the country during this period, forcing their way into territories that they couldn’t reach due to the fierce resistance against them.
The Israelis now discuss re-occupying southern Lebanon, blow up homes, mosques and other infrastructure daily, murder civilians, bomb targets deeper into the country and provocatively fly their flags in the south. Such a situation has not occurred since Hezbollah kicked the Zionist regime out of their nation in 2000, battering the Israelis again in 2006 and liberating their land. There is no conceivable way that the situation in Lebanon can remain like this, either the Israelis decide to leave the country altogether, or they will eventually face a response from Hezbollah.
If these fronts ignite, or tensions escalate with Iran, annexation will prove a difficult task for the decision makers in “Tel Aviv”, as they will be faced with a potentially dangerous predicament. Again, without the annexation of the West Bank, it is hard to imagine the Zionist regime being able to conclude a Gaza ceasefire.
On top of this, the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza has shocked everyone and is not only continuing to fight, it still possesses the rocket capabilities to strike occupied Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In fact, the last burst of long-range rockets from the Gaza Strip towards occupied Jerusalem were fired from Beit Hanoun, an area in the besieged enclave that the Israelis have been stationed in throughout almost the entirety of the war.
Palestinian Resistance fighters continue to kill and injure Israeli soldiers, destroy and damage their military vehicles, while also firing rockets and drones. This is happening almost 15 months into the fighting and with no known supply lines to Gaza. Yet, the people continue to remain steadfast, while the resistance continues to recruit more fighters and manufacture new weapons.
Because of the refusal of the people of Gaza to lessen their cause, they have thwarted several attempts to impose a new rule upon them. Despite suffering through a Genocide and losing everything around them, they have not allowed for a foreign regime and fighters to be imposed. Also, the Zionists have not come up with any valid strategy to allow for a takeover of the Palestinian territory, having failed to destroy Hamas.
This is another issue that rears its head, what will the day after look like? There is no clear answer to this question yet and none of the proposals on the table will give the Zionists the image of a full victory that they have proposed from the start.
Female Palestinian journalist shot dead as PA forces raid Jenin refugee camp
Deceased Palestinian journalist Shaza al-Sabbagh
Press TV – December 29, 2024
A female Palestinian journalist has been killed after she was shot in the head during a raid by the Palestinian Authority (PA) forces at the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank.
The family of Shaza al-Sabbagh said their daughter was on the way to a grocery store when she was directly shot from a PA forces military point located near their house.
A spokesman for the PA’s so-called security forces, Colonel Anwar Rajab, claimed in a statement that the troops were not present in the area at the time of the shooting.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says the death of Shaza al-Sabbagh, who was reportedly studying journalism at al-Quds Open University, has to be investigated.
The group called for an independent committee to be formed “to uncover the truth, hold the killers accountable, and ensure they do not escape punishment.”
Sabbagh is the eleventh person to be killed since PA forces started an offensive in the Jenin refugee camp three weeks ago to root out what it calls “lawless elements.”
Earlier this month, the Hamas resistance movement condemned PA forces for killing a commander of the fellow Islamic Jihad group during a raid in the occupied West Bank, warning that such actions will aggravate the years-long rift among Palestinian factions.
The Gaza-based movement, in a statement released on December 14, expressed its condolences over the shooting death of Yazid Jaya’isa, a leader of the Jenin Brigade, in the Jenin refugee camp.
It said that PA forces’ targeting of resistance figures falls within the framework of the crimes of the occupying Israeli regime.
Hamas called the attack “a disgraceful act” that will deepen internal divisions at a critical moment in the Palestinian struggle.
Hamas also warned that the ongoing pursuit of resistance fighters would only fuel internal conflict at a time when unity is most needed.
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Is Israel Uniquely Evil?
By Irfan Chowdhury | Palestine Chronicle | July 18, 2020
… Israel has been carrying out the longest-running military occupation in modern history and the longest-running siege in modern history. These two facts alone render Israel unique in terms of the scope of its brutality and criminality.
There are other respects in which Israel stands out from other countries in its use of terror and violence; for example, it is one of the most aggressive countries in the world, having waged wars of aggression against Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006, and against Gaza in 2004, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, killing huge numbers of civilians in the process (all while issuing threats and carrying out various covert attacks against Iran, which are all in violation of the UN Charter). … continue
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