Safi Ahmad Mohammad Jawabra, 11, was shot by Israeli forces in the head above his left eye with a rubber-coated metal bullet around 10 a.m. on May 29, 2022 at the entrance to Al-Arroub refugee camp, near Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Safi was walking home from school after completing his final exam in math when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head unexpectedly and without warning. While running away, another group of Israeli soldiers around 50 meters (164 feet) away fired tear gas canisters in front of Safi.
The Hadash-Ta’al list’s Chairman, Ayman Odeh, was forced out of the Knesset plenary last week during a vote on the Counterterrorism Law after condemning the Israeli attack on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin.
He said: “People killed in Jenin. People wounded in Tel Aviv. A killed soldier. All of their blood is because of your damned occupation. Occupation blinds you. Power blinds you. You are not only acting like occupiers, you are acting like idiots.”
His speech came just days after Israel concluded its largest military operation in Jenin in more than 20 years. At least 12 Palestinians were killed, including four children, and more than 140 were injured in the offensive, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The raid also left a massive trail of destruction across the West Bank city, with dozens of homes, vehicles, shops and utility lines destroyed.
“Every action has a reaction. These are the rules of nature,” added Odeh. “There’s a reaction to the occupation, so there will be resistance. Resisting against occupation is legal. Occupation is illegal. Long live the Jenin! Long live the Palestinian people! Long live their resistance! Shame on you! Take me down! But the Palestinian people will continue to fight!”
In response, Almog Cohen from the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party, shouted: “The blood of those murdered is on your hands; go to Gaza. The more terrorists we kill, the better.”
It all came amidst the approval of the Counterterrorism Law, which specifies that anybody who expresses support for “terrorists” may face up to five years in prison.
Religious Zionist Party MK Zvi Sukkot introduced the bill “to stop the probability test that is required today due to the seriousness of expressing solidarity or sympathy for an act of terror or its perpetrators.”
Following MK Odeh’s criticism against the Israeli invasion of Jenin, Sukkot appealed to the Ethics Committee of the Knesset, Israel Police, and the Attorney General to open an investigation against the MK for expressing his support for the residents of Jenin.
Palestinian Authority (PA) forces arrested journalist Aqil Awawdeh on 13 July after he refuted a statement from PA officials claiming there are no political arrests in the occupied West Bank.
“There is no case of arrest on the basis of political affiliation in the West Bank, and all that is being circulated about its existence are baseless rumors,” the PA statement released on Thursday reads.
Moments later, Awawdeh took to social media to refute this claim, highlighting that students and journalists are arrested regularly for supporting the resistance.
Hours after posting this video, PA troops took Awawdeh from his workplace in Ramallah under charges of “insulting the security services and leaders of Fatah.” Officials have yet to issue a statement on his arrest.
At least 54 political prisoners are currently being held in PA prisons, as the PA regularly hands over detainees directly to the Israeli army, Resistance News Network reported via Telegram.
Two years ago, Awawdeh was severely beaten inside a police station after covering a protest against the PA.
As discontent with PA rule in the occupied West Bank continues to grow exponentially, officials have maintained their grip on power by violently silencing dissent and crushing popular mobilizations.
In June 2021, Palestinian activist Nizar Banat was beaten to death by PA troops for accusing the PA of corruption and criticizing Ramallah’s security cooperation with the Israeli military. Last December, Banat’s family took the case to the International Criminal Court, accusing the PA of alleged war crimes and torture.
Last month, the repressive tactics of the PA once again made headlines following the violent arrest of student leader Abdul Majeed Hassan from his home in Ramallah.
“From the scene of the arrest, we thought that the kidnappers were Israeli undercover units since they have arrested many university students in this brutal way. Beating, dragging, undressing, and screaming were all Israeli means of arrest, but unfortunately, they were mimicked by the Palestinian security services against Abdul Majeed,” Ibrahim Bani Odeh told Middle East Eye about Hassan’s arrest.
A delegation of the United Nations has expressed shock at the level of destruction left as a result of Israel’s largest operation in Jenin in two decades.
Officials from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) visited the Jenin refugee camp on Sunday.
“The destruction I saw was shocking. Some houses were completely burned down; cars had been crushed against walls; roads were damaged. The UNRWA health center was destroyed. But more than the physical damage, I saw the trauma in the eyes of camp residents who had witnessed the violence. I heard them speak about their exhaustion and fear,” said Leni Stenseth, the UNRWA deputy commissioner-general.
The two-day deadly Israeli onslaught of July 3 was the fiercest of its kind in over 20 years, according to UNRWA, which is tasked with assisting Palestine refugees.
Twelve Palestinians, including four children, were killed. 140 were injured. Virtually 900 houses were damaged. Many are now uninhabitable. Also, at least 3,500 Palestinians were forced from homes. The UNRWA health center was so badly damaged it can no longer be used.
Some parents said children are too scared to go out.
“Children were shaken and shocked… many of them are too afraid to leave their homes. In one classroom we visited, students shared with us that just 10 days ago, they had buried a classmate who was killed in an incursion,” said Adam Bouloukos, the director of UNRWA West Bank.
“It is very hard for children to walk to school as the main roads are still unusable. When trying to find alternative ways to school, some younger children lost their way. We truly feared for their safety due to the risk of unexploded ordinance. A priority now is to provide mental and psychosocial support to help children cope with their fear and anxiety.”
Bouloukos said the refugee camp, home to nearly 24,000 people, now has no access to electricity and water. “The camp is now partially without access to electricity and water.”
“Nearly eight kilometers of water piping and three kilometers of sewage lines were destroyed due to the use of heavy machinery that ripped up large sections of the roads.”
Joe Biden administration’s frantic bid to convince Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with the Israeli regime has proved an exercise in futility, especially in the wake of the diplomacy drive sweeping the Persian Gulf region.
Despite high-profile visits by US officials to the Arab kingdom in recent months, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting with Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman in Jeddah last month, the US has failed to get any assurances from its Arab ally on the question of Israel normalization.
Blinken’s visit to Saudi Arabia in early June ended without any result, despite the statement before the high-stakes tour that normalization of Saudi-Israel relations was one of the top priorities of the US government.
The US Secretary of State not only failed to get any assurance from the Saudis on that front but had to concede some crucial ground on significant regional issues.
In a joint conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan before leaving Saudi Arabia, Blinken reiterated his government’s resolve to work for Israel-Saudi normalization, visibly unhappy and frustrated.
However, bin Farhan put a flea in Blinken’s ear, saying that “normalization of ties with Israel will have limited benefit without a pathway to peace for the Palestinians.”
The US Secretary of State’s visit to Saudi Arabia came on the heels of a separate visit by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to the Arabian country in May, who also failed to convince the Saudis to compromise with the Israeli regime.
The outcome of both of the visits was similar to the outcome of President Joe Biden’s visit to the kingdom last year when he failed to convince bin Salman to increase oil production to ease global prices, in the face of sanctions against Russia.
Biden’s efforts failed when the Saudis announced in October that they were cutting oil production, a move that blindsided American officials and strengthened the growing speculations that West Asia is no longer toeing the US line.
In an article published in Responsible Statecraft magazine, Daniel Larison hurled criticism at US efforts on brokering normalization in West Asia and said it remains a “long shot” and that “there is no compelling reason for the US to make this the focus of its diplomatic efforts in the region.”
He said a deal with the Saudis would come at America’s expense, as the Saudi price for normalization has been reported to include a US security commitment to Saudis and Washington’s support for the kingdom’s nuclear program, noting that the price would be heavy.
Meanwhile, even if Biden’s cabinet contends with the security guarantees to Saudi Arabia, a new nuclear deal with Riyadh would face another hurdle in a sharply divided US Congress, where some prominent members of Biden’s party would likely vote against it.
“The last thing that the US needs is another security commitment in a region where it has already wasted thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in unnecessary wars. A security guarantee to the Saudis would almost certainly encourage their government to engage in more reckless and provocative behavior,” a New York Times report said.
In an article published in The Hill, Jon Hoffman said increased security commitments by the US would “further solidify US support for the underlying sources of regional instability within the Middle East.”
In another article in The National Interest, Hoffman wrote that the Abraham Accords – which involved a series of joint normalization statements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain and were later expanded to include Morocco and Sudan — “continue to represent a top-down regional order destined to yield instability, not peace.”
The normalization agreements supported by former US president Donald Trump and hectic efforts by the current administration are all designed to ignore the Palestinians and give the Israeli regime a free pass to carry out criminal activities in the occupied territories.
A report in the Mondoweissnews website described the chances of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal brokered by the US as “microscopically thin” in the near future.
It is worth mentioning that Saudi Arabia seems to be reluctant toward a normalization act with Israel and is taking a cautious approach to any public steps that could be seen as a normalization act.
Axios news agency cited Israeli officials and Western diplomats with direct knowledge of the issue saying that Saudi Arabia has so far not signed a document committing to allow Israel to attend the upcoming UNESCO meeting in September, signaling the kingdom’s reluctance to allow the Israeli regime’s representatives to visit the kingdom for the first time.
At a critical time, when Biden is seeking re-election, the US government has been left embarrassed by Saudi Arabia’s bolstering of ties with Iran and Syria, and its further gravitation toward China.
The Biden administration’s push for Saudi-Israeli normalization reflects a misreading of domestic and international politics as the new world order minus the US takes shape.
Saudi-Iran rapprochement, mediated by China, and other similar developments, showing the integration in West Asia, have all strengthened the multi-polar world, defying US hegemony.
Under this new ‘systematic order’, the US influence is waning and a new ‘village-like order’ is fast emerging, where several regional coalitions maintain the balance of power in the world.
Reza Javadi is a Ph.D. Candidate in British Studies at the University of Tehran.
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.”
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.
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 toldReuters 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 Interceptreported 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.
A shocking document last September revealed that, during the 1948 Nakba, Zionist militias engaged in a wide-ranging chemical and biological warfare campaign to expel indigenous Palestinian communities from their lands, slow the advance of intervening Arab armies, and poison citizens of neighboring states.
This unconscionable use of biological weapons on civilian targets, which sought to infect the local Palestinian population with typhoid, dysentery, malaria, and other diseases by contaminating local water supplies, was subject to a concerted coverup at the time – one that was maintained by the Zionist state for decades thereafter.
Even after its exposure, the Israeli academics who helped break the story were at pains to diminish its significance, unconvincingly arguing it was a failed strategy promptly jettisoned and forgotten about as a result.
But newly declassified Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) files starkly underline this narrative to be an abject lie. Released by the Jewish Settlements Archival Project, an initiative of New York University’s Taub Center for Israel Studies, they amply show that the Israeli occupiers employed much the same tactics in order to purge Palestinian areas to make way for illegal settlements in the West Bank, and elsewhere.
Facts on the ground
In 1967, Tel Aviv emerged victorious in the Six Day War and effectively annexed significant swaths of surrounding territory from neighboring Arab states.
Israel’s occupation of these areas, and indeed the construction of settlements for Jewish colonists, was and remains absolutely illegal under international law and has been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. Initially, successive Israeli governments claimed the settlements were the work of individual settlers and non-governmental entities such as the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization, and insisted that the state neither approved of nor could prevent their expansion.
Again, the newly-released papers starkly demonstrate this to be a deliberate deception. The trail begins in January 1971, when the cabinet of then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir met to discuss the forthcoming construction of settlements. The need for unfailing public secrecy about what was about to happen was considered paramount. At the start of the summit, the premier requested:
“Before we move forward with our discussion, there’s something I’d like to ask. It was our habit that for anything that has to do with settlements, outposts, land expropriations, and so on, we simply do and do not talk [about it]… Lately, this … has broken down, and I’m asking ministers for the sake of our homeland to hold back, talk less, and do as much as possible. But the main thing, as much as possible, is to talk less.”
This extended to Meir demanding ministers not attend settlement opening ceremonies, and avoid being seen by the media anywhere near the sites. In April 1972, this oath of silence remained very much in force, with minister without portfolio Yisrael Galili reminding his cabinet confederates at a meeting to “refrain from dealing with the matter in the press, as it could cause damage.”
Around this time, the Israelis began constructing the first illegal Jewish settlement, Gitit, in the West Bank. Kickstarting the criminal enterprise required displacing Palestinians from the nearby village of Aqraba. This was first attempted by brute force, with IDF soldiers demanding they vacate the area to make way for a new military training zone.
The Palestinians ignored them, and continued cultivating the land, prompting Israeli forces to damage their tools. When they still refused to budge, the IDF was ordered to use vehicles to destroy crops, and dispossess the indigenous population. Soldiers struck upon a radical, bloodcurdling solution: a crop duster would rain down toxic chemicals, lethal to animals and dangerous for humans, to precipitate their departure.
Still, Aqraba’s population refused to budge, prompting the IDF to up its devilish campaign’s ante quite considerably. In April 1972, the military’s Central Command met with representatives of the Jewish Agency’s settlements department. They established “responsibility and schedule for the spraying,” at such a density that it would preclude humans from inhabiting the area for several days “for fear of stomach poisoning” and animals for a full week.
The Jewish Agency was given the job of obtaining the plane, which it did from Chemair, a local crop-dusting company. The explicit aim was to “destroy the harvest” of the Palestinians, and forcibly expel them from the area in perpetuity.
The next month, the destruction was so severe that Aqraba’s mayor wrote to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. They stated the village had 4,000 residents, who until recently had cultivated “145,000 dunams of agricultural land.” Now, after “the authorities” had burned wheat and confiscated land, the Palestinians were left with just 25,000 dunams.
“The damage is unbearable … how will we be able to provide for ourselves?” the mayor despaired.
Israeli occupation forces finally took over the land in May 1973. Tel Aviv was asked for permission to “seize the land for the purpose of establishing a settlement,” which was granted. Three months later, construction commenced.
‘Get cover for it’
While Israeli governments covertly encouraged and facilitated the creation of illegal settlements, it is clear there was some internal dissent on the issue at various times.
In 1974, the head of the Israel Lands Administration began steps to establish another Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Ma’aleh Adumim, before the government had made a formal decision on the matter. Former IDF general turned Knesset representative Meir “Zarro” Zorea actively lobbied the Jewish Agency to allocate an appropriate budget for the effort, suggesting the organization “funnel money to settlement activity and get cover for it after a while, when I request budget approval.”
At a subsequent cabinet meeting however, then-Housing Minister Yehoshua Rabinovitz was dismayed, declaring, “this has no budget, and I don’t know how work is being started without sitting down with us.” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin attempted to calm him, stating, “that’s what we’re meeting about right now.”
“There might be room for clarifying this issue, but I wouldn’t suggest going into it today. I know it may not be following the neatest definitions, but I’m in favor of them starting to carry out this infrastructure work,” he added.
Later on, the aforementioned Yisrael Galili pressed ministers to define Ma’aleh Adumim as “an A-class area,” thereby granting it and its Jewish settler population greater benefits from the government, despite the fact it would lie in illegally occupied territory. The Israeli government officially granting the settlement this classification would, by definition, amount to a de facto endorsement, in contradiction to its official public stance.
“I’m surprised that you don’t understand that this whole subject is one of the ingenious methods to alleviate a process that could be very dangerous internally in Israel,” Galili explained.
These shocking communications remained concealed for half a century before the Jewish Settlements Archival Project released them to the world. It is almost inevitable that a great many more incriminating documents remain sealed in the IDF’s vaults. The project’s archives end in summer of 1977, and as of January 2023, there are 144 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem, housing 450,000 colonizers.
Stealing that much land, and displacing so many people in the process, was a vast undertaking that frequently met bitter local resistance, which continues today. Given the efficacy of chemical and biological warfare in stealing Palestinian land over so many years, there is no reason to think this heinous approach wasn’t employed again and again over the years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is known to be against the establishment of a Palestinian state, but now he has made it clear that he wants to go even further. “We need to eliminate [Palestinian Arab] aspirations for a state,” he told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee as reported in Israeli media on 26 June. The right-wing leader added that his government is “preparing for the day after Abbas,” referring to the 88-year-old head of the Palestinian Authority. “We have an interest in the [Palestinian] Authority continuing to work. In the areas in which it manages to act, it does the work for us.”
Some people, including Palestinian Authority officials, seemed surprised by his words, which is odd, given that Israel’s intentions regarding Palestinian freedom and statehood are known even to political novices.
The official spokesperson for the Palestinian presidency retorted by emphasising that only an independent Palestinian state can achieve “security” and “stability”. This terminology is often used by Palestinian officials to induce sympathy in the US, as such language is borrowed from Washington’s narrative about Palestine and the Middle East. Practically-speaking, “security” is almost always linked to Israel, and “stability” is related to the US agenda and interests in the region.
For Israel, however, such language lacks any urgency, because “security” from Tel Aviv’s perspective is obtained through unconditional US support and “security coordination” between the Israeli military occupation and the PA. Both are already satisfied. That is why Netanyahu told the Knesset committee that the PA “does the work for us” and added, “And we have no interest in it collapsing.” In other words, the Israeli prime minister sees the PA as another line of defence against the very Palestinians whose interests the Authority is supposed to represent and promote.
As for “stability”, this is of little concern to Israel, for in practical terms it defines stability as its own complete dominance over the Palestinians. Actually, make that the whole region.
None of the above assertions are predicated on complex analyses or guesswork; they are extracted from official Israeli statements and actions on the ground.
When Israel’s far-right Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared in March that there was “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people,” he was not giving a history lecture, or merely engaging in hate speech. He was stating circuitously that Israel is neither morally, legally nor politically accountable for its actions against those who do not exist in the twisted Zionist worldview.
His remarks were consistent with the ongoing pogroms carried out by his supporters, the armed and dangerous illegal Jewish settlers across the occupied West Bank, against Palestinians in Huwara in February and, more recently, against Turmus Ayya and other Palestinian towns and villages. Neither the Americans nor the Europeans have imposed any punitive measures against Smotrich or even against the gangs of settlers who torched Palestinian homes and cars, killing and wounding many in the process.
Yet that is only a microcosm of the larger picture, whereby Israel says and does what it wants, while the Americans continue to read from an old political script as if nothing has changed on the ground. There can be no doubt, though, that US foreign policymakers know very well that Israel has zero interest in a just and peaceful settlement to its military occupation of Palestine.
We are entitled to ask, therefore, why the US government insists on following the same tired formula and urges both sides to re-engage in the so-called “peace process” and return to negotiations. This mantra continues to define US foreign policy, as it has done since the early 1990s, when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords. Oslo made a bad situation much worse; the number of illegal settlements and settlers has since tripled, and the Palestinian people are even more vulnerable, not only to Israeli violence but also to the PA’s repression and corruption. It is surely no coincidence that Abbas played a key role in getting the Oslo Accords signed.
Although Oslo was unfair to the Palestinians since it operated largely outside acceptable international paradigms and had no enforcement clauses or deadlines, Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders objected to it anyway, because — albeit symbolically — it expected Israel to behave in a certain manner. To be told not to build or expand settlements, for example, has always infuriated Netanyahu, who has lashed out even at his American benefactors many times in the past over this issue, most notably under the administration of President Barack Obama.
Israeli leaders feel that they are above any law or expectations emanating from outside, even if these expectations are quite minimal and made by close allies, such as Washington. With time, of course, Netanyahu prevailed, not only over any supposed “pressure” from the US and the international community, but also over the more “liberal” political forces in his own society.
Now, armed with a stable coalition government and apparently immune from any meaningful criticism, let alone tangible consequences for his actions, the Israeli leader is ready to carry out his right-wing agenda without hesitation.
Hence his recent remarks, which are a more emboldened version of the comments made in October 2004 by top Israeli government advisor Dov Weissglas, who explained the true intentions behind the Israeli military deployment in Gaza in 2005. It was an Israeli tactic aimed at “freezing the peace process,” Weissglas toldHaaretz. “And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.”
Even though this “whole package” has, indeed, been long removed from the Israeli agenda, the country’s leaders kept referencing a Palestinian state anyway in order to satisfy the minimal expectations of US policy. Netanyahu has played this game on more than one occasion, including his February interview with CNN, where he argued that a Palestinian state is possible, but only if it has no sovereignty. Now, he is ready to move past that seemingly old language, to new political territories, where even the aspiration for an independent Palestine is not permissible.
While Netanyahu’s disturbing but honest language is likely to invite yet more Israeli violence and Palestinian resistance, it should also bring about greater clarity by shelving, once and for all, the fraudulent discourse of “security”, “stability” and the moribund “peace process”.
On 14 June, Germany announced its first National Security Strategy since the end of World War II under the slogan “To promote world peace in a united Europe.”
While the strategy takes aim at several “integrated security” elements, from military and “terrorist” threats to those posed by climate change, healthcare, and “the decline of democracy,” the document also stresses that a central security pillar for Berlin is to “take on responsibility for Israel’s right to exist.”
“We will continue to bear responsibility for Israel’s right to exist … The responsibility for Israel’s right to exist remains a permanent commitment for us,” the executive summary reads.
While Germany’s position is not new, it confirms what many have seen as certain through the years. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly emphasized that Germany’s support for Israel’s “right to exist” is a national interest and “must never be questioned.”
During the visit of former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid to Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed that Germany “will always stand by Israel and that Germany and Israel. They are the closest allies, strategic partners, and friends.”
Berlin also remains one of the most important trading partners for Tel Aviv, as the volume of trade exchange between the two reached $5.2 billion in 2020. Both nations also partner in several defense projects.
Following the start of the war in Ukraine, Scholz described it as a “turning point” and stressed, “Germany must stand on the right side of history.” However, since making these statements, Berlin has only redoubled its reliance on US diktats, even after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing cut the EU nation off from vital natural gas supplies.
In an article published by Foreign Affairs, Scholz stressed that today’s priority is “the defense of the rules-based world order,” that is, the defense of US hegemony over the world order, including Israeli supremacy in West Asia.
In this regard, Berlin’s National Security Strategy takes aim at Iran by accusing the Persian nation of “violating the human rights of its own citizens,” “pursuing its nuclear ambitions,” and even of “blocking efforts” to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that was blown up by the US in 2018.
The document also takes aim at Russia, calling it “the most significant threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area” while calling China “a partner, competitor and systemic rival.”
Moreover, the document highlights that Germany “owes its security, as well as peace at the heart of Europe, to the United States of America.”
It also reaffirms Germany’s commitment to NATO, saying Berlin will increase its military spending to 2 percent of its GDP.
Another security issue for Berlin is the delivery of oil and gas from West Asia and spreading “democracy and protecting human rights” via government-funded NGOs.
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.”
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.
I doubt these professors have anything to fear from a food tax
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | November 19, 2016
A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change. […]
This proposal, from a group of people who have probably never missed a meal in their lives, is totally obscene. High income countries often have a lot of poor people who would be hard hit by increases in the price of food.
Needlessly exacerbating the risk poor people don’t get enough to eat, especially children and pregnant mothers, who are especially vulnerable to adverse health impacts from lack of protein in their diet – if this ghastly proposal is ever implemented, future generations will look upon it as a crime against humanity. – Read full article
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