Tag: Middle East & North Africa

Where Do We Go Once the Israel-Hamas War Ends?

  • Opinion by Alon Ben-Meir (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Nov 07 (IPS) – There are five measures the Israeli government, along with the US and Saudi Arabia, should put in place to move the peace process forward.

First, Israel must limit its ground invasion to northern Gaza, as a large-scale war will inevitably inflict massive destruction and thousands of casualties on both sides, especially Palestinian civilians, and put the lives of the hostages at a much greater risk.

More than anything else, it is a dangerous illusion for anyone to assume that a large-scale invasion will capture or kill all of Hamas’ leaders and senior operatives and prevent it from ever reconstituting itself both as a resistance movement and as a political entity.

Many of Hamas’ leaders have not lived in Gaza for years, or have recently fled. Most of Hamas’ commanders and ‘foot soldiers’ are embedded in the civilian community and a massive complex of tunnels while lying in wait for the ground invasion, in order to kill and injure hundreds if not thousands of Israeli soldiers.

They know full well that they will sustain massive casualties and destruction, but they will only technically lose the war and can still reconstitute themselves regardless of the immense losses they might sustain.

Israel simply cannot eradicate a religious movement or obliterate an ideology. And to suggest, as Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant recently stated, that “we will wipe them off the face of the earth,” is an illusion. Even if Israel manages to decapitate every senior Hamas leader, it will be only a question of time when a new generation of Palestinian leaders will rise.

If Israel reoccupies Gaza to prevent Hamas from reconstituting itself, it will be sheer madness, a quagmire from which Israel cannot exit without incurring massive casualties. Moreover, Israel will have to care for 2.2 million Palestinians, coupled with a relentless insurgency by Palestinian militants bent on killing and maiming Israeli soldiers.

The urge for revenge and retribution following the massacre of 1,400 Israelis is perfectly understandable, and in the minds of many, revenge is the only way to assuage the unbearable pain that so many Israelis are living with. But then the inevitable death of hundreds of young Israeli soldiers, should Israel decide to an all-out invade Gaza, will only add to the national tragedy and offer no solution.

The better path for Israel is to pursue targeting killings, and engage in a limited invasion into northern Gaza, keep Hamas’ leaders on the run, and cut off the flow of money, while focusing on releasing the hostages. Israel must make it publicly and unequivocally clear that its fight is against Hamas and not against innocent Palestinian people.

Furthermore, Israel ought to facilitate the delivery of all the basic necessities, especially drinking water, medicine, food, and under strict monitoring by UN observers, fuel to generate electricity and feed generators. But since Israel cannot eliminate Hamas, it can only weaken it to a point where it is effectively inoperative by providing an alternative that will dramatically improve the lives of the Palestinians and offer them a promising path for the future.

Second, Israel should come to terms with the inevitability of a Palestinian state and inform the US and Saudi Arabia that it is willing to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinians in the West Bank based on a two-state solution. I expect that the current Netanyahu government will fall and sooner perhaps rather than later, there will be a new government in Israel and a new Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

They should begin to engage, under the auspices of the US and Saudi Arabia, in a peace process accompanied from the onset by a process of reconciliation, both government-to-government and people-to-people, to mitigate the pervasive hatred and distrust between the two.

An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in the West Bank that would lead to a dramatic improvement in the living standard of the population and a growing sense of security will be the most potent weapon against Hamas. Hamas will have to choose between joining the peace process by first recognizing Israel’s right to exist, or remaining under blockade.

The Palestinians in Gaza will be well aware of the changing fortune of their brethren in the West Bank and will not accept a continuing life of despondency and despair in Gaza. Hamas being on the run and with depleting resources to deliver what the people need will be hard pressed to change direction, or else face the wrath of the people. Hamas’ claim that Israel is the cause of their suffering will no longer resonate.

In the final analysis, the creation of an independent Palestinian state will be strengthened and peacefully sustained through the establishment of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, once a Palestinian state is first established.

Indeed, given the interspersed Palestinian populations in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Israel proper, and Jordan, the geographic proximity of the three states, their unique religious affinity to Jerusalem, and their intertwined national security, it is not only possible but necessary to establish such a confederation where all three countries will collaborate on a host of issues to serve their national interests.

Some will say that this is a glaringly naïve proposal and, in any case, this is the wrong time to talk about a two-state solution. Naïve or not, I challenge anyone to tell me what is the alternative? Where does Israel go from here?

The Palestinian problem will not simply disappear; they are not going anywhere and they are more determined today than any time before to unshackle themselves from the occupation. The unfolding tragedy and its inescapably horrifying consequences made the need for a solution ever more urgent. And if not now, then when?

Third, the development of a major economic program is critical to sustaining any Israeli-Palestinian peace in the West Bank. What is needed is a sort of a Marshall Plan for the West Bank to be financed by the Gulf states, the US, and the EU. Such a program should be at the center of the peace process to relieve the people of their economic hardship. The West Bank is in desperate need of better infrastructure, schools, and hospitals. Such national projects would also provide job opportunities for the tens of thousands of unemployed youths.

Moreover, since the Palestinian refugees have and continue to play a major role in the search for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a solution to the Palestinian refugees must be found based on resettlement and/or compensation.

A solution to this and other conflicting issues, including the future of Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements, which have stymied peace negotiations in the past and remain contentious issues, can be and in fact must be resolved.

The inevitability of coexistence and the inescapable need for a peace agreement based on a two-state solution, coupled with a commitment by a new Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority, and the US’ determination to that end, will facilitate a solution to these conflicting issues, however intractable they may seem at this juncture.

Fourth, Saudi Arabia should play a front and center role, at the urging of the US. Saudi Arabia, which has been negotiating normalization of relations with Israel behind-the-scenes and has linked normalization to the establishment of a path that will solve the Israeli Palestinian-conflict, should publicly state so once the war ends.

This will not only assure the Palestinians that they will not be abandoned, but it will also send a clear message to the Israelis that they now have a historic opportunity not only to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but open up the door wide to normalization of relations between Israel and much of the Muslim world.

The Saudis and every Arab state in the region know that as long as there is no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, instability will continue to rattle the region, making normalization of relations with Israel tenuous at best. Moreover, Israel must remember that regardless of how the Saudis and other Arab states feel toward the Palestinians, in any violent confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians, as demonstrated in the current conflagration, they will always land on the Palestinians’ side.

And even though the Israel-Hamas war started because of the horrific massacre of Israelis, the Arab public throughout the region and beyond is sympathizing with the Palestinians. It is the death of thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza that is capturing headline news now, not the indescribably horrendous massacre of Israelis.

Thus, the greater the casualties and destruction inflicted on Gaza, the harder it will be for the Saudis to resume negotiations over the normalization of relations with Israel. Normalization can serve as the conduit for Israeli-Palestinian peace, which will be deferred for years if not lost for the foreseeable future unless Israel weighs carefully what will happen next if the war spins completely out of control.

But then again, it is up to Israel and the US—which will have a say on this matter as Israel today cannot simply say NO to the US—to ensure that the war does not cripple the prospect of normalization between Israel and other Arab states.

Fifth, the US paying lip service to the idea of a two-state solution must now be acted upon. Successive American administrations have demonstrated consistent support of Israel and the US became the de facto guarantor of Israel’s national security. No US president, however, has demonstrated in words and deeds the US’ commitment to Israel’s security and prosperity more than President Biden.

His visit to Israel in the moment of unprecedented national grief and his dispatch of formidable American forces to the region, including two aircraft carriers to deter Israel’s sworn enemies and prevent the escalation of the war, sent an unambiguous massage that has not been lost on Iran and Hezbollah.

Although Israel is receiving annually $3.8 billion in military aid from the US, at no time in recent memory has Israel found itself so dependent on the US for additional military aid and political backing. Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir’s statement earlier this year that Israel is “not another star on the American flag. We are a democracy and I expect the U.S. president to understand that,” is no less stupid than his boss Netanyahu, who stated in March that “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

Now the Israeli government recognizes how indispensable America is, forcing it to listen carefully to what President Biden is recommending, which is clearly against waging an all-out ground invasion without very diligent consideration of what comes next, which will otherwise be catastrophic by any account.

Thus, President Biden is now in a position, more than any of his predecessors, to exert significant influence over Israel. There is no better time for the US to formulate a plan that would begin a peace process and stick to it regardless of what transpires on the ground. By providing Israel all it needs to protect itself and maintain a military edge over its adversaries and now to prevail in this war, the US becomes complicit to Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

This is also applicable to the occupation of the West Bank, which is inconsistent with the US’ formal position. Therefore, the US should make it clear to Israel that given America’s unflagging support, it is seen as a party to the occupation which must end.

It is time for the Biden administration to translate the lip service that the US has customarily been paying to the two-state solution into a plan of action. Upon his return from Israel, President Biden reiterated that the two-state solution is the only realistic option.

And however far-fetched this may seem to Israelis and Palestinians at this juncture, President Biden must begin to press the issue and pave the way for serious negotiations, albeit he has to wait for Netanyahu’s exile from the political scene, which may well happen sooner than later.

The breakdown in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can dawn a historic breakthrough to reach at last a peace agreement. There is no need for even one more Israeli or Palestinian child to die on the altar of misguided leadership on both sides. The Israeli and the Palestinian publics must rise in unison pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands and scream:

Enough is Enough.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

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Where Do We Go Once the Israel-Hamas War Ends?

  • Opinion by Alon Ben-Meir (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Nov 06 (IPS) – Since the 1967 Six Day War, many efforts have been made to reach a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians through mediation conducted by an impartial mediator, face-to face negotiations, international conferences, offering incentives, back-channel talks, interim agreements (in particular the Oslo Accords), and occasionally by an influential party exerting pressure on both sides, especially the US.

None of the above approaches nor several others to reach a peace agreement have worked. The failures to reach an agreement are fundamentally attributed to the fact that both sides claim exclusive ownership to the entire land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, albeit they blame each other for failing to make the necessary concessions to reach a peace agreement.

While the prospect of a two-state solution was viable following the 1993 Oslo Accords, the outlook for such a solution became progressively dimmer as Israel moved to the right-of-center. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was bent on sabotaging the Oslo Accords when he served as prime minister between 1996 and 1999, and has been in power for most of the past 15 years, made it clear repeatedly that there will be no Palestinian state under his watch.

The idea of a two-state solution was steadily losing traction in Israel, the occupation of the West Bank was normalized, and a de facto apartheid state was created, which became a way of life for most Israelis and Palestinians.

The changing dynamic of the conflict

It is well known in conflict resolution that sometimes it takes a major breakdown that precipitates an extraordinary crisis to change the dynamic of a conflict. The shockingly unexpected and devastating Yom Kippur War in 1973, which subsequently led to a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, offers a potent example.

As such, it made it simply impossible to return to the status quo ante. Indeed, neither Israel nor the Palestinians, including Hamas, will be the same following this most heinous and unprecedented massacre and Israel’s retaliation that has already exacted (as of this writing) more than 8,700 Palestinian casualties—not to speak of the unimaginable death and destruction that will occur as Israel undertakes its ground invasion of Gaza.

This unfolding horror should have been expected because of what was happening on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza over the past few years, especially in the last 10 months since the formation of the most extremist right-wing coalition government in Israel’s history (as I pointed out in my article published on October 3, 2022). Indeed, it did not take a prophet to augur what would happen next.

The increasingly violent flareups in the West Bank have been claiming hundreds of Palestinian lives, mostly under the age of 30, each year (so far this year over 300 West Bank Palestinians have already been killed, as of the time of writing, over 100 since October 7 alone). The frequent night raids, evictions, incarcerations, demolition of houses, and gross human rights abuses became the norm.

Despair, depression, and hopelessness swept much of the Palestinian population, akin to the gathering of a ferocious storm that successive Israeli governments led by Netanyahu chose to brush off. Moreover, it is the psychological dimension of the conflict that has now come into full display, exposing decades-old mental and emotional trauma the Palestinians have been experiencing to which the wright-wing Israelis were oblivious and which was bound to manifest in an unprecedented way.

The Palestinians’ resentment and hatred of Israel were intensifying. Since the new government could not formally annex Palestinians territories, it has resorted to intimidation and harassment of the Palestinians under the watchful eye of the criminal Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who gave the settlers free reign to rampage Palestinian communities in order to ‘encourage’ them to leave.

The Netanyahu government’s intent to slowly annex much of the West Bank became abundantly clear. Needless to say, none of the above can justify under any circumstances Hamas’ heinous attack on Israeli civilians. Hamas must pay for it dearly, and pay they will.

But such unthinkable carnage happened because of the perilous “strategy” that successive Israeli governments pursued that enabled Hamas and prevented the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. This also explains why Netanyahu consistently refused to negotiate with any prospective unity government between the PA and Hamas.

The creation of Hamas

Israel created Hamas to counter balance the secular national Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) movement led by Yasser Arafat, which was intended to divide the Palestinians into two camps and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. The creation of Hamas by Israel, which has been confirmed by many top Israeli military and civilian officials over a number of years, is unquestionable.

Former Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance Hamas as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat, stating “The Israeli Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques.” And among many others, Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009 that “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”

In a 2015 interview, Bezalel Smotrich, the current finance minister who is also in charge of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), stated “The Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset” . And in an article published in the New York Times on October 18, 2023, entitled “Netanyahu Led Us to Catastrophe. He Must Go.,” author Gershom Gorenberg stated that “Bringing Gaza back under the Palestinian Authority was apparently never part of the prime minister’s agenda. Hamas was the enemy and, in a bizarre twist, an ally against the threat of diplomacy, a two-state solution and peace.”

Indeed, no Israeli prime minister has pursued this disastrous policy of divide and conquer more vigorously than Netanyahu. Although he maintained the blockade over Gaza, he allowed the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar and other countries into Hamas’ coffers, knowing full well that more than 50 percent of these funds were used by Hamas to buy and manufacture weapons, including tens of thousands of rockets, and build a massive network of tunnels with command and control while readying itself for the next war.

Gorenberg further stated that “In 2019, for instance, Netanyahu explained why he allowed the Hamas regime in Gaza to be propped up with cash from Qatar rather than have it depend on a financial umbilical cord to the West Bank. He told Likud lawmakers that ’whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for’ the Qatari funding…” Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet from 2005-2011, stated in January 2013 that “If we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas’s strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister.”

And in a more telling statement from someone who has been deeply immersed in Israeli politics and governance, Ehud Barak stated in August 2019, “His strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking… even at the price of abandoning the citizens … in order to weaken the PA in Ramallah…”

Netanyahu’s ill-fated “strategy” was an illusion. He believed that he could control the monster that he nurtured over the years, which instead came back to slaughter hundreds of innocent Israelis who have been relying on their government for protection and were tragically let down.

They have been betrayed by a prime minister who has been fixated on bolstering Israel’s security in the West Bank while weakening the security of the southern front along the Gaza border. And while Netanyahu was sparing no efforts to ‘reform’ the judiciary, Hamas was planning, training, acquiring weapons, and perfecting the technique to wage an assault against Israel more daring than anyone could have possibly imagined.

It all happened under Netanyahu’s watch. And worse yet, how is it possible that the world’s most renowned intelligence agency, Israel’s Mossad, failed to detect the planning of an attack of such magnitude that it took perhaps more than a year to prepare? And why did Netanyahu ignore the warning of Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel, who personally called Netanyahu and warned him that Hamas was likely to do “something unusual, a terrible operation” only 10 days before the attack?

I do not suggest or even imply that Netanyahu knew what was going to happen but chose to ignore it, but rather that he was simply dismissive of what Hamas is capable of and believed that he had a good handle on what was happening in Gaza. He was preoccupied with passing legislation that would subordinate the Supreme Court and the appointment of judges to elected politicians, which would have destroyed Israel’s democracy and allowed him to assume authoritarian powers, to which he badly aspired.

Although the Palestinians on the whole, be they in the West Bank or Gaza, are innocent civilians, the extremists among them have committed many egregious acts of violence against Israel. The Palestinian leaders missed many opportunities to make peace, and made countless mistakes that aggravated their own situation.

Moreover, by threatening Israel’s very existence, extremist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad allowed successive Israeli governments to make a strong case against the Palestinians by portraying them as an irredeemable mortal enemy that poses the greatest danger to Israel’s national security and hence, the Palestinians cannot be a party to peace.

With these perspectives established by the Israeli government, maintaining the occupation became the state policy, however unsustainable it has been deemed by any keen and informed observer.

What’s next

That said, once the war is over and the dust settles, a growing majority on both sides will come to recognize one irreversible fact. Co-existence is not one of many options, it is the only option, be that under conditions of peace or perpetual violent enmity. The two-state solution has come back to the table, as it has always been the only viable option. Both sides must now face this bittersweet reality.

The question is what will happen now that Israel and Hamas are engaged in fierce fighting on the ground that will surely exact an immense toll on both sides. I maintain that whether Israel limits its ground invasion of Gaza to its northern part, or continues its targeted bombing of Hamas’s encampments while seeking to decapitate as many of its leaders as possible, or simply stops the fighting, which is unlikely, and focuses on releasing the over 240 hostages, nothing will change in any substantial way the irreversible new paradigm that has bitterly awakened both sides to their miserable, unsustainable status quo.

To be sure, what option the Israeli government will choose to bring an end to the conflict will only define the length of time that that might take, the extent of difficulties in the negotiation, the modalities of the negotiating process, the level of public and international pressure to find a solution, and the likely intermittent violence. But none of these issues will change the fundamental point of departure that point to the endgame of a two-state solution, regardless of how many more hurdles might be encountered.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

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Gaza Spells Jungle — Global Issues

Missile strikes continue through the night in Gaza. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
  • Opinion by Tisaranee Gunasekara (colombo, sri lanka)
  • Inter Press Service

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Nov 03 (IPS) – During her 2013 visit to Sri Lanka, then UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay wanted to lay a wreath to commemorate the war-dead. “When I go to a country, I like to honour the victims, all victims, victims of LTTE, soldiers, families,” she explained.

“How much past tomorrow holds.” – Mahmoud Darwish (A rhyme for the odes Mu’allaquat)

The Rajapaksa regime refused permission and launched a campaign of lies against her. “Informed sources said that Pillay had initially informed of her desire to offer a floral tribute to the late LTTE terrorist leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran,” The Daily News wrote.

The Rajapaksas dubbed the final Eelam War a humanitarian offensive with zero-civilian casualties. Acknowledging civilian Tamil deaths was equated with playing the Tiger game. Mourning was a crime, criticising Lankan forces treachery, and referring to the root causes of the conflict justifying Tiger-atrocities. In this us-vs.-them universe, Ms. Pillay’s condemnation of the LTTE as a ‘murderous organisation’ counted for nothing.

Ms. Pillay, like UN agencies and humanitarian organisations, based her stance on International Humanitarian Law (IHL). IHL is premised on the concept of jus in bello, just conduct of war, which includes principles such as non-combatant immunity and proportionality. The Rajapaksas practiced the antithesis of IHL.

As Prof. Rajan Hoole wrote, “From 2006, the government began to do what would have been unthinkable after 1987. Intense shelling and deliberate displacement of Tamil populations became integral to its military strategy… (Himal – February 2009). Before launching the final offensive, the Rajapaksas ordered all UN agencies, INGOs, and media to leave the war-zone.

During the 2014 Gaza War, a pro-Netanyahu columnist in The Jerusalem Post urged the Israeli PM to learn from Lanka’s example of ‘resolute use of military force’ and give Hamas ‘the thrashing it deserves’ https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Fundamentally-Freund-Defeating-terrorists-From-Sri-Lanka-to-Gaza-371428).

Today Israel is waging a total war in Gaza, a war that has killed more than 3000 children so far (one child killed every 15 minutes). According to Save the Children, more children have been killed in Gaza in three weeks than in global conflicts annually in the last 4 years (2985 children 2022, 2515 in 2021, and 2674 in 2020). Oxfam has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. The UN is warning of hunger and desperation in Gaza leading to societal collapse.

How many Palestinian children must die for Israel to feel safe, or the West to say enough?

The targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas was an act of barbarism. Israel’s retaliatory war against the entire population of Gaza is no less barbaric. As Karim Khan, a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said, “Whether a child is born Jewish in Israel or is a Christian or Muslim in Gaza – they’re children and we should have that sense of humanity – that legal, ethical, and moral responsibility to do right by them.”

For Hamas and their supporters, Israeli children are not children. For Israel and its Western backers, Palestinian children are not children. Hamas committed war crimes. Israel is committing war crimes. And the West, the self-appointed guardians of International Humanitarian Law, is enabling Israel to go on committing war crimes. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has descended so low as to ask Qatar to ‘moderate Al Jazeera’s coverage’ of Israel’s air strikes against Gaza, according to a Guardian report.

The repercussions of this abandonment of jus in bello are likely to be both global and long-lasting. The world could regress to a time when anything was permissible in and during war. The UN and international humanitarian organisations could become totally irrelevant. The credibility of a legal system depends on its fair application. When laws are applied selectively, they lose legitimacy. One law for friends and another for foes results in jungle for all.

By permitting, indeed helping, Israel to violate IHL, the US and the West are opening the door to a world of complete lawlessness and injustice. They are not ending terrorism but birthing it, in ever more gruesome forms.

Allied powers did nothing to impede the Holocaust. Dresden which had no military value, was fire-bombed while railway lines to Auschwitz were not. From that civilisational failure was born the cry, Never Again. But as a Jewish protestor at the anti-war demonstration near the Capitol building said, “Never again means never again for anyone.”

The world needs impartial application of IHL to Israel and Hamas, to Russia and Ukraine. The failure to do so will push humanity back to an age when life for most humans was solitary, nasty, and brutish.

Marriages made in Hell

Conception was the name given to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-old policy of using Hamas to divide and weaken Palestinians. Addressing Likud party Knesset members in March 2019, he explained his rationale for favouring Hamas and permitting Qatar to fund it. “Whoever opposes a Palestinian state must approve the delivery of funds to Gaza because maintaining the difference between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement) does not accept Israel’s right to existence and wants to install an Islamic Caliphate in all Palestinian lands. Such an organisation would be the best excuse for Israel right’s own plans for a theocratic and non-pluralist Greater Israel.

As retired general Yair Golan pointed out, Netanyahu “created a situation in which, so long as the Palestinian Authority was weak, he could create the overall perception that the best thing to do was to annex West Bank. We weakened the very institution that we could have worked with, and strengthened Hamas” (The New Yorker – 28.10.2023). In pursuant of this, weapons were reportedly taken away from the Gaza border and given to settlers in West Bank.

Mr. Netanyahu’s Conception indirectly enabled Hamas’ October 7th attack just as his war will turn the Arab world into a breeding ground for Hamas. As Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh said, “It is a mistake to think that Hamas is an alien being – it is part of the national tapestry. It grows bigger or smaller depending on other factors. You can eliminate the guys running Hamas now, but you cannot eliminate it entirely. It will stay as a way of thinking, as an idea so long as there is a Palestinian-Israeli conflict” (ibid).

Had the Oslo Accords worked, had there been an independent democratic Palestinian state, Hamas could have been marginalised. The Accord’s monumental failure, and the resultant disillusionment in peaceful solutions (not to mention Fatah’s incompetent and corrupt practices in West Bank) helped Hamas thrive. As Hamas founder Sheik Ahmad Yassen once said, “When oppression increases people start looking for God.”

The plan to ethnic-cleanse West Bank piecemeal, using low intensity violence by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army, continues, empowered by Western indifference. As human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh wrote, even such a quotidian activity like olive picking has been politicised by expansionist settlers who attack Palestinian olive-pickers, preventing them from reaching their lands and sometimes stealing the harvest.

In the West Bank village of Deir Istiya, those returning home from harvesting olives found notices under car windshield-wipers telling them to wait for the Great Nakba – to leave or be forcefully evicted, Israeli columnist Hagar Shezaf wrote in Haaretz on October 27th.

The pursuit of Greater Israel is a threat to Palestinian Christians as well. Settler expansionists want a Jewish state in which Christians will have little or no space. In 2012, extremist settlers attacked the Trappist Monastery in Latroun, setting its door on fire and writing anti-Christian graffiti such as Jesus is a monkey on its walls. Jerusalem’s Monastery of the Cross too has been attacked.

Again in 2012, Israel politician Michael Ben Ari tore a copy of the New Testament in the Knesset and threw it into a rubbish bin after denouncing it as an abhorrent book. A second legislator wanted bible to be burnt. Neither was officially sanctioned.

As Father Pierbatista Pizzaballa, Custodian of the Holy Land, pointed out, “Israel has failed to address the practice of some ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools that it is a doctrinal obligation to abuse anyone in Holy Orders they encounter in public” (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9529123/Vatican-official-says-Israel-fostering-intolerance-of-Christianity.html).

In Sri Lanka too, political monks, extremist politicians, and retired military officers have stepped up their campaign to incite ethnic/religious tensions. Now that Kurundi has been neutralised by the government, these motley combos have shifted focus to Batticaloa. They are abusing even Buddha statues, using them as weapons of war and markers of territorial possession. Omalpe Sobitha thero, a bit-actor in the drama, asked, “If you can’t keep a Buddhist statue in places like Batticaloa, has a separate country come into being?”

The main actor in the unfolding Diwulpathana teledrama, the infamous Ampitiye Sumanarathana thero, set out a clear warning. “The country is angry and awake… They are ready to reply the President, Rasamannikam, Senthil Thondaman. The entire Sinhala nation is ready to reply to all of them anytime… I don’t know who sired Ranil Wickremesinghe. I don’t know if Tamil people have traditional properties in this Sri Lanka… There is a history going back beyond 2500 years for these properties… These are traditional properties of Sinhalese…

When Mahinda Rajapaksa became the president and the war ended, these people got back their rights… They lost their rights when Maithripala became the president, and regained them again when Gotabaya became the president and lost them again when Gotabaya was driven out. It’s after Ranil Wickremesinghe came to power that politicians like Shanakyam shout like this…” The monks and lay cohorts are acting with total impunity while the government looks away and the Opposition evades the issue. The moderate centre is unoccupied territory while the two antipodes are teeming with actual and would be owners.

Rational Resistance

When a policeman shot dead unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, USA, in 2014, mass protests erupted. Confronted by policemen armed as if for war, some demonstrators drew comparisons between themselves and the Gazans. Many Palestinians responded by tweeting practical advice (for instance, Mariam Barghouti from West Bank tweeted, “Always make sure to run against the wind/to keep calm when you are tear gassed, the pain will pass, don’t rub your eyes.”) When an American social-media user objected to the Ferguson-Gaza comparison, another responded, “I don’t think anyone is trying to compare Ferguson to Gaza; the point is solidarity and justice.”

Now also, the point is solidarity and justice, with Gazans and all Palestinians, with hostages, and the Israelis who lost their loved ones, with Palestinian journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh whose wife, daughter, and son were killed in Israeli bombings, and with the mother of Shani Louk, the German-Israeli tattoo artist murdered by Hamas. For solidarity with Palestinians to grown into a moral and political force, resistance needs to move out of the violent theocratic paradigm represented by Hamas. The locus should be not Islamic or Arab but global.

What is at issue is not the right to violent resistance but the efficacy of that path. Arab and Islamic leaders might breathe fire, but they are not even going to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel, let alone wage war against Israel, not even if every inch of Gaza is flattened and every Gazan perish under the rubble. The only way out is to do what national liberation movements did in the old days, from Vietnam to South Africa: gain and occupy the moral highground.

The repugnancy of Israel’s policies and actions cannot be showcased, if resistance to Israel is dominated by Hamas and its equally repugnant brand of violence. Just as it is possible to support Israel’s right to existence without supporting the Greater Israel project, it is possible to resist Israel occupation and expansion without descending to the depth of barbarism. To find that radically moderate path all Palestine has to do is to reach back to its own history.

As Palestinian cleric Munib Younan, Bishop emeritus of the Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land pointed out last month, “We have lived with the Jews all the time. Jews were persecuted in Europe. Never in Palestine. Anti-Semitism is a European construct.” Tolerating anti-Semitism, even in the face of the murderous attacks by Israel, is morally wrong and strategically counter-productive. Had Tamil struggle not succumbed to extremism, had the LTTE not targeted Sinhala and Muslim civilians and Tamil critics, it wouldn’t have gone down to utter defeat.

While October 7th attack was happening, Hamas exhorted Palestinians in the West Bank to rise against Israeli settlers, violently. West Bank Palestinians refused to heed that deadly call. Outside Israel, and even within, some Jews have endorsed the growing global call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Last week, hundreds of mostly Jewish demonstrators, members of Jewish Voice for Peace NY, took over the main hall of the Grand Central Station, protesting against the bombing of Gaza, shouting that Palestinians will be free. The sentiment of one of the young demonstrators provides a glimpse of a path out of the looming jungle of violent lawlessness: Mourn the dead. Fight like hell for the living.

Tisaranee Gunasekara is a Sri Lankan political commentator based in Colombo.

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The Killings in Gaza Should Stain Our Moral Conscience — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Lana Nusseibeh (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 01 (IPS) – In an address to the UN Security CouncilThank you for your presence here with us in New York, and for the special dedication that Brazil has given to peace in our region.

I also pay special tribute to our briefers, and to their teams’ dedicated work in the most unimaginable circumstances on the ground in the Gaza Strip.

Commissioner-General Lazzarini, I was very shaken by your recent words to your staff over the weekend, in which you said, “I am constantly hoping that this hell on earth will soon come to an end.” I want to extend the UAE’s deep condolences for the 64 UNRWA workers killed in this war.

They paid the ultimate sacrifice for the lifesaving work the United Nations does every day around the world, and we have failed to protect them.

Last Friday, 121 countries – representing an overwhelming majority of the world – issued an unambiguous call for an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce in Gaza.

They stood up for the humanitarian imperative, for human rights, for international law, and most importantly, for the self-evident truth that Palestinian life is precious, equal, and deserving of the full protection of the law.

We have heard many say that the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza are not Hamas, that this is not a war against them. And while these are welcome words, it is time that action reflected them.

The more than 8,000 people that have been killed in Gaza, and as we heard today, 70 percent of whom were women and children, were surely not all Hamas.

Nearly 1,000 children are missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble. They are not Hamas. Will we help them?

The number of Palestinian children killed in just three weeks of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza exceeds the total number of children killed in conflicts worldwide in each of the last four years.

As Ms. Russell has so eloquently said, that should stain our moral conscience, if nothing else does. Children do deserve our special protection, and are entitled to it today. If we lean on the General Assembly’s moral authority in other settings, we must also respect it in this one.

Indeed, members of this Council have repeatedly expressed their concerns about the fraying of the international order. This Council ignoring the expressed will of the majority of the world may be what breaks it.

Colleagues, we need a ceasefire now. As Foreign Minister Vieira said, we need to ensure that safe, sustained, and at scale humanitarian aid reaches Gaza, now. And that access to electricity, clean water, and fuel is restored now.

The shutdown of cellular and internet services over the weekend as part of the offensive meant that wounded civilians were searching for help in the dark. As we have heard today, there have been 76 attacks on healthcare, including 20 hospitals and clinics damaged or destroyed. More than 650,000 people are sheltering in UNRWA facilities.

Let me be absolutely clear on this point: these sites are protected by international humanitarian law. Announcements that they are targets or warnings for them to evacuate do not, I repeat, do not alter their protected status. We need to see the rescission of dangerous unrealistic evacuation orders.

On Saturday, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported warnings from Israel to immediately evacuate al-Quds Hospital which hosts hundreds of patients, including new-born babies in incubators.

Around 12,000 civilians are also seeking refuge there right now as we sit here in this chamber in New York speaking to each other again and again, and debating the language of our humanitarian resolution and response.

An evacuation order in these conditions is cruel. It is reckless. And so is our delay as a Security Council. All of Gaza’s civilian population is at risk by the escalating hostilities, as are the Israeli and international hostages taken by Hamas. Wrongly taken by Hamas.

While our eyes have been trained on Gaza, the occupied West Bank has not been spared from violence either. Israeli settlers are escalating their attacks against Palestinian civilians, and forcing their displacement. These attacks must be prevented by the State of Israel.

Across the region, there have been several credible warnings of a wider escalation. The drums of war are beating.

Colleagues, taking these warnings seriously begins with stopping this war in Gaza. We do not serve Israel’s security by enabling it to go on. We cannot reverse the heinous October 7th attacks by condoning this war in which civilians are paying the price.

Ignoring what could happen day after day, will have devastating consequences, not only for Israelis and Palestinians, but for the prospects of peace and stability in our region.

As we work on responding to the General Assembly’s clear call on this body to live up to its responsibilities under the UN Charter, we should also keep in mind, always, the dying words of the dead so that their memories are a blessing to us.

I’d like to speak today of an Arab poet, Heba Abu Nada, a Palestinian woman killed in Khan Yunis several days ago.

“My friend circle diminishes, turning into little coffins scattered everywhere. As missiles launch, I can’t grasp the fleeting moments with my friends. These aren’t just names, they are reflections of us, each with a unique face and identity.”

Colleagues, we may have failed the dead, but we must channel our sorrow into saving the living. The time to reverse course is running out. What we, and 121 countries, are advocating for may be the harder road, but history warns us of the consequences of not taking it.

Lana Nusseibeh is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the United Nations.

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Biden Is a Genocide Denier and Enabler in Chief for Israels Ongoing War Crimes — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Norman Solomon (san francisco, usa)
  • Inter Press Service

SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Oct 31 (IPS) – For three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. That pretense is lethal nonsense as Israel persists with mass killing of civilians in Gaza.

The same crucial standards that fully condemned Hamas’s murders of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 should apply to Israel’s ongoing murders that have already taken the lives of at least several times as many Palestinian civilians. And Israel is just getting started.

“We need an immediate ceasefire,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote in an email Saturday evening, “but the White House and Congress continue to unconditionally support the Israeli government’s genocidal actions.”

That unconditional support makes Biden and the vast majority of Congress directly complicit with mass murder and genocide, defined as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The definition clearly fits the words and deeds of Israel’s leaders.

“Israel has dropped approximately 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza so far and has reportedly killed multiple senior Hamas commanders, but the majority of the casualties have been women and children,” Time magazine summed up at the end of last week.

Israel’s military has been shamelessly slaughtering civilians in homes, stores, markets, mosques, refugee camps and healthcare facilities. Imagine what can be expected now that communications between Gaza and the outside world are even less possible.

For reporters, being on the ground in Gaza is very dangerous; Israel’s assault has already killed at least 29 journalists. For the Israeli government, the fewer journalists alive in Gaza the better; media reliance on Israeli handouts, news conferences and interviews is ideal.

Pro-Israel frames of reference and word choices are routine in U.S. mainstream media. Yet some exceptional reporting has shed light on the merciless cruelty of Israel’s actions in Gaza, where 2.2 million people live.

For example, on Oct. 28, PBS News Weekend provided a human reality check as Israel began a ground assault while stepping up its bombing of Gaza. “As Israeli ground operations intensified there, suddenly the phone and internet signal went out,” correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reported.

“So, people in Gaza, voiceless through the night as they were under these intense bombardments. People were unable to call ambulances, and we’ve heard this morning that ambulance drivers were standing at high points throughout, trying to see where the explosions were, so they could just drive directly there. People unable to communicate with their families to see if they’re alright. People this morning saying ‘we’ve been digging children out of the rubble with our bare hands because we can’t call for help.’”

While people in Gaza “are under some of the most intense bombardment we’ve ever seen,” Molana-Allen added, they have no safe place to go: “Even though they’re still being told to move to the south, in fact most people can’t get to the south because they have no fuel for their cars, they can’t travel, and even in the south bombardment continues.”

Meanwhile, Biden has continued to publicly express his unequivocal support for what Israel is doing. After he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the White House issued a statement without the slightest mention of concern about what Israel’s bombing was inflicting on civilians.

Instead, the statement said, “the President reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism and to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law.”

Biden’s support for continuing the carnage in Gaza is matched by Congress. As Israel began its fourth week of terrorizing and killing, only 18 members of the House were on the list of lawmakers cosponsoring H.Res. 786, “Calling for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” All of those 18 cosponsors are people of color.

While Israel kills large numbers of Palestinian civilians each day — and clearly intends to kill many thousands more — we can see “progressive” masks falling away from numerous members of Congress who remain cravenly frozen in political conformity.

“In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.”

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in summer 2023 by The New Press.

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What is Happening in Gaza is Inhumane, illegal, and Unacceptable — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 (IPS) – Last August, 91 UN member states, “in a demonstration of solidarity and commitment”, signed a U.S.-Led Joint Communiqué condemning the Use of Food as a Weapon of War.

Roughly 345 million people – in 79 countries – face acute food insecurity, often caused or exacerbated by armed conflicts, the US said, pointing out that the joint communiqué was born out of the United States’ resolve to once again use its UN Security Council presidency to draw attention to conflict-induced food insecurity.

But paradoxically, one of America’s strongest political and military allies, is now “using starvation as a weapon of war against Gaza civilians”, says Oxfam, as it renewed its call for food, water, fuel, and other essentials to be allowed to enter Gaza.

The global humanitarian organization analyzed UN data and found that “just 2 percent of food that would have been delivered has entered Gaza since the total siege—which tightened the existing blockade—was imposed on October 9 following the atrocious attacks by Hamas and the taking of Israeli civilian hostages.”

While a small amount of food aid has been allowed in, no commercial food imports have been delivered, Oxfam said.

Asked if the use of food as a weapon of war was rare– or common — in military conflicts, Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s Associate Director of Peace and Security, told IPS unfortunately, we’ve observed a marked increase in the deprivation of food and other necessities in conflicts over the past few years.

“What is happening in Gaza is inhumane, illegal, and unacceptable”, he said.

“We must see more aid reach civilians in Gaza, but more importantly we need to see an end to the violence that is destroying bakeries and other key infrastructure and an end to the siege keeping out food and other vital goods,” he declared.

In 2018, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2417, which unanimously condemned the use of starvation against civilians as a method of warfare and declared any denial of humanitarian access a violation of international law.

Providing or withholding food during times of conflict has been described “just as potent a weapon as the guns, bombs, and explosives of opposing armies”.

As the escalation of the conflict extended to its 19th day, said Oxfam, a staggering 2.2 million people are now in urgent need of food. Prior to the hostilities, 104 trucks a day would deliver food to the besieged Gaza Strip—one truck every 14 minutes.

Despite 62 trucks of aid being allowed to enter southern Gaza via the Rafah crossing since the weekend, only 30 contained food and in some cases, not exclusively so. This amounts to just one truck every three hours and 12 minutes since Saturday.

Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Regional Middle East Director said: “The situation is nothing short of horrific—where is humanity?”

“Millions of civilians are being collectively punished in full view of the world. There can be no justification for using starvation as a weapon of war. World leaders cannot continue to sit back and watch, they have an obligation to act and to act now,” said Khalil.

“Every day the situation worsens. Children are experiencing severe trauma from the constant bombardment. Their drinking water is polluted or rationed and soon families may not be able to feed them too. How much more are the Gazans expected to endure?”

According to Oxfam, International Humanitarian Law (IHL) strictly prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare and as the occupying power in Gaza, Israel is bound by IHL obligations to provide for the needs and protection of the population of Gaza.

Oxfam said that it is becoming painfully clear that the unfolding humanitarian situation in Gaza squarely fits the prohibition condemned in the resolution.

Clean water has now virtually run out. It is estimated that only three liters of clean water are now available per person—the UN said that a minimum of 15 liters a day is essential for people in the most acute humanitarian emergencies as a bare minimum.

Bottled water stocks are running low and the cost of bottled water has already surged beyond the reach of an average Gaza family, with prices spiking fivefold in some places.

A spokesperson for the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA) pointed out that some of the food aid allowed in—rice and lentils—is useless because people do not have clean water or fuel to prepare them.

A series of airstrikes have left several bakeries and supermarkets either destroyed or damaged. Those that are still functional can’t meet the local demand for fresh bread and are at risk of shutting down due to the shortage of essentials like flour and fuel.

Gaza’s only operative wheat mill is redundant due to the power outages. The Palestinian Water Authority says Gaza’s water production is now a mere 5 percent of its normal total, which is expected to reduce further, unless water and sanitation facilities are provided with electricity or fuel to resume its activity, Oxfam said.

“Notably, essential food items like flour, oil, and sugar are still stocked in warehouses that haven’t been destroyed. But as many of them are located in Gaza City, it is proving physically impossible to deliver items due to the lack of fuel, damaged roads, and risks from airstrikes”.

The electricity blackout has also disrupted food supplies by affecting refrigeration, crop irrigation, and crop incubation devices. Over 15,000 farmers have lost their crop production and 10,000 livestock breeders have little access to fodder, with many having lost their animals.

Oxfam said that the siege, combined with the airstrikes, has crippled the fishing industry with hundreds of people who rely on fishing losing access to the sea.

Oxfam is urging the UN Security Council and UN Member States to act immediately to prevent the situation from deteriorating even further. Oxfam is also calling for an immediate ceasefire, unfettered, equitable access to the entire Gaza Strip for humanitarian aid, and all necessary food, water, and medical and fuel supplies for the needs of the population to be met.

“We can deliver lifesaving aid to those in urgent need,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said during the UN Security Council High-Level Open Debate on Famine and Conflict-Induced Global Food Insecurity, last August.

“We can ensure that people around the globe are fed, now and for years to come. If we do that, if we build a healthier, more stable, more peaceful world for all, we will have at least begun to live up to the responsibility entrusted to us, entrusted to this Council, entrusted to this institution,” he pledged

U.S. Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, “In a world abundant with food, no one should starve to death – ever. This is a humanitarian issue, this is a moral issue, and this is a security issue. And we must address the most insidious driver of famine and food insecurity: conflict.”

But two months later, reality has set in – this time in Gaza.

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A Tug of War and Peace in Yemen — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Magdalena Kirchner (amman, jordan)
  • Inter Press Service

AMMAN, Jordan, Oct 26 (IPS) – For the first time since the beginning of a war that claimed the lives of over 220,000 people, a senior Houthi delegation travelled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh in mid-September.

The timing of the visit, just before the anniversary of the capture of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, on 21 September 2014 and the subsequent military escalation between the rebels (also known as Ansar Allah) and a Saudi-led military coalition, marks a diplomatic success for the de facto rulers of northern Yemen.

This is despite the fact that their only significant concession so far has been the temporary cessation of cross-border attacks using missiles or drones on neighbouring states such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Some observers cynically suggest that Riyadh’s real motivation is not to create an inclusive and lasting peace in war-torn Yemen but ‘not to disturb the newly bought European football stars with the sound of explosions’. However, the Houthis are showing a genuine interest in continuing negotiations with Riyadh and in exploiting the advantageous momentum of an Iranian-Saudi détente.

With Tehran’s support, they have developed a credible military deterrent in recent years. Neither their internal Yemeni opponents nor the latter’s regional and international supporters have succeeded in preventing or even reversing the consolidation of their rule over large parts of the country and its population.

Yet, with the end of Saudi air strikes in April 2022 and the lifting of air and sea blockades crucial to economic prosperity in northern Yemen, the rebels now lack a key driver for mobilising and securing popular support within their own territory: an external enemy.

Normalisation efforts externally, consolidation of power internally

In the past months, critical voices have grown significantly louder, particularly about the fact that while revenues from taxes, increased tariffs on imports from government-controlled areas and the boosted activity at the port of Hodeida have increased by nearly half a billion US dollars between April and November 2022, public sector employees continue to wait for salaries and pensions that have been overdue for years.

Criticism also came from the ranks of the General People’s Congress (GPC), the former unity and ruling party, to whom, until his surprising ouster by the National Security Council on 27 September, the prime minister of the Houthi government, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtoor, had belonged.

Hence, negotiations and the prospect of a financial peace dividend (i.e. an economic boost a country will get from a peace that follows a war) could be enticing and might buy the rebels time at home — even if it remains unclear how payments from a neighbouring state or the internationally recognised government (IRG) can be reconciled with their own claim to be Yemen’s only legitimate government.

Improving relations with regional states, which could offset reduced or even suspended aid from the West, may help reduce the rulers’ dependencies.

In recent months, the Houthi leadership has therefore taken stronger and more repressive measures to consolidate their rule internally. This has been particularly evident in the area of education and through significant restrictions placed on civil society organisations and women’s freedom of movement.

The latter, in particular, has put the rebels on a confrontational course, especially with Western donor states, whose humanitarian support is the livelihood of more than 20 million people across the country. These tensions are further fuelled by the fact that aid organisations’ ability to prevent the misuse of aid by those in power through independent needs assessments is systematically and sometimes violently curtailed.

Improving relations with regional states, which could offset reduced or even suspended aid from the West, may help reduce the rulers’ dependencies. This also explains why, on the anniversary of the capture of the capital, the Houthi leadership publicly announced that it wanted to address any concerns on the part of Saudi Arabia that might stand in the way of an agreement and stated its intent to double its own combat readiness if an ‘honourable peace’ could not be achieved.

The fragility of normalisation efforts between the former adversaries was underscored when a drone strike on a patrol by the Saudi-led military coalition in the Saudi border area with Yemen killed three Bahraini soldiers on 25 September.

Stuck in the starting blocks: an intra-Yemeni peace process

Although the international conflict dimension has de-escalated, this has not yet been accompanied by significant progress in a potential intra-Yemeni peace. In late September, hundreds of Yemenis commemorating the 1962 establishment of the Yemeni Arab Republic were detained in Houthi-controlled areas.

Although military clashes between the Houthi rebels and the armed forces of the IRG and its allies, assembled in the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), have significantly decreased, attacks on government troops have not ceased. In July 2023, the rebels employed drones, battle tanks and artillery in the southwestern governorate of Ad Dali. However, a new form of economic warfare is hitting the IRG and especially the people living in areas under its control even harder;

Since October 2022, the Houthis have been using drones to launch attacks on critical oil production and export facilities in IRG-held areas. According to its own reports, the IRG has suffered losses of more than $1 bn in revenue as a result. The Houthis have also imposed a ban on importing gas from government-controlled territory and made it difficult to trade goods within Yemen, especially those imported via the port of Aden.

Although Saudi Arabia stepped in to assist the struggling IRG by pledging $1.2 bn in economic aid at the beginning of August, the economic situation remains dire. The national currency, the Yemeni Rial, has lost a quarter of its value against the US dollar in the past year alone. Gas stations have frequently had to close in recent months, and the people in the southern city of Aden had to endure power outages of up to 17 hours — in sweltering heat.

Frustration among the population is running high, and there have been repeated roadblocks, injuries and even deaths during protests. Despite increased efforts by European partners to bolster the IRG through more frequent visits and a greater presence in Aden, the glaring weakness of state institutions and lack of unity among key actors in the south remain the government’s biggest Achilles heel.

Former allies become estranged

These intra-Yemeni dynamics make Saudi Arabia’s current negotiating strategy, as well as the support it receives from most international actors, all the more problematic. A statement by the US government on the Riyadh talks failed to mention the IRG or the fact that they, along with the United Nations, other conflict parties and civil society actors, are excluded from these ‘efforts for peace’.

The UAE, the second major regional power with high stakes in the conflict, might feel equally left out. Its allies, such as the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which pursues the goal of southern statehood, could perceive their own interests as being at risk. The once-close relationship between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed is now widely considered to have broken down. At the same time, the former allies now find themselves separated by the tangible geopolitical conflicts of interest in Yemen and the strategically important straits surrounding the country.

The talks in Saudi Arabia offer hope for a peaceful future for Yemen as they shed light on the real political interests of the Houthis, especially in the area of economic cooperation.

It should come as no surprise then that the President of the STC, Aidarus Al Zubaidi, publicly expressed sharp criticism of Riyadh’s actions on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. In his view, a ‘bad deal’, which could ultimately pave the way for a complete Houthi takeover, would primarily lead to Iran gaining control not only of Yemeni oil resources but also of strategically important trade routes.

He firmly rejected the notion of unilateral participation by the Houthis in the state revenues generated in the south – particularly in light of the current emergency situation in the region – as well as concessions related to salaries, seaports or the withdrawal of foreign forces in response to what he sees as blackmail tactics by the Houthis before an actual ceasefire is reached.

The talks in Saudi Arabia offer hope for a peaceful future for Yemen as they shed light on the real political interests of the Houthis, especially in the area of economic cooperation, providing a basis for substantial leverage in longer-term negotiations.

However, as long as Saudi Arabia’s primary objective remains limited to a face-saving exit from its involvement in the war and to securing its own border, there is a growing risk that former allies may disrupt the peace process. Additionally, the danger of new military expansionist efforts by the rebels, with potentially dramatic consequences for an already suffering civilian population, increases.

In view of these scenarios, international actors such as the German government should intensify their efforts to promote Yemen-Yemeni reconciliation, including in areas related to development and economic policy, and enable political institutions to regain the trust of an increasingly disillusioned population.

Dr Magdalena Kirchner heads the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s offices for Jordan and Yemen, based in Amman. Previously, she was the FES representative in Afghanistan.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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The Hamas-Israel Conflict — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Kevin P. Clements (tokyo, japan)
  • Inter Press Service

TOKYO, Japan, Oct 25 (IPS) – The world and the Middle East do not need another violent conflict. This is a region that has experienced far too much violence over the years. Hamas’ desperate attacks on innocent civilians was intended to provoke an Israeli overreaction that would, among other things, jeopardise Israeli diplomatic negotiations with the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia and create generalised anxiety within Israel. It was also aimed at demonstrating Hamas’ military capacity and vengeance for years of a humiliating blockade of Gaza. Kidnapping Israeli civilians was callous and brutal but part of a plan to use hostages as bargaining chips around the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

The ferocity of the Hamas violence against innocent Israelis was appalling and many war crimes were committed in the first 24 hours of the invasion. After the initial shock, Israeli military vengeance has been swift in coming.

Since the events of the weekend, a gigantic humanitarian catastrophe and many other war crimes are unfolding in Gaza itself. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised “Vengeance”. He stated that there would be no “restraint on the military” and that the newly formed coalition government would crush Hamas, whose fighters he called “wild animals” and “barbarians.”

“We are fighting a cruel enemy, an enemy that is worse than ISIS,” he said, adding “and we will crush and eliminate it, like the world crushed and eliminated ISIS.” While the swift military response is understandable, an unencumbered Israeli military operation to extract vengeance for the 1,200 Israeli’s killed is likely to generate many more casualties and new martyrs especially since Israel has “laid siege” to Gaza, cutting off water, power, electricity and food supplies. Medical and health facilities are overstretched and supplies running out.

There are two wars currently in play. The first has to do with the battle on the ground. Initially Hamas’s unrestrained militia had the upper hand but now the formidable Israeli military machine is moving into action with terrifying consequences for the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza, not all of whom are Hamas supporters. One million are under the age of 19. The Israeli air force has been dropping hundreds of bombs on Gaza including strikes throughout the day and night. Over 263,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, as heavy bombardments from the air, land and sea continue to hit the Palestinian enclave. There is nowhere for these displaced persons to go. Over 2,000 Palestinians have been killed since the blockade and bombing of Gaza began.

There are no exits to Egypt and certainly none to Israel. The presence of thousands of Israeli self-defence forces in tanks and on foot all around Gaza suggest that an invasion of the strip is highly likely with 2.3 million Palestinians unable to escape Israeli “vengeance” .

The second battle is for control of the narrative. Israel immediately moved into a victim narrative, comparing the Hamas assault to 9/11, Pearl Harbour and the Holocaust. President Biden called the Hamas attacks “pure evil”. All of these comparisons are intended to evoke memories of swift and “legitimate” military action and “vengeance”. Hamas, on the other hand claims that its actions are justified by years of blockade, oppression and humiliation. Gaza, for example, is often referred to as the largest open-air prison in the world. The world’s media (led by the United States) promotes the first narrative while pro-Palestinian states and free Arab media the second. Neither narrative, however, can be used to demonise, and justify unrestrained bloodshed against, the other.

Despite years of occupation and humiliation by Israel, Hamas gains nothing by killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians and randomly terrorizing the Israeli population.

On the other side, nothing is gained by Israel declaring “vengeance” against Hamas, bombing civilians and now blockading Gaza.

All victims will and must be grieved and mourned by friends and families. There are no winners in this war. It’s a disaster for everyone.

As the SG of the United Nations put it. This most recent violence “does not come in a vacuum” but “grows out of a long-standing conflict, with a 56-year long occupation and no political end in sight.”

Antonio Gutteres appealed for an end to “the vicious cycle of bloodshed, hatred and polarization”:

Israel must see its legitimate needs for security materialized – and Palestinians must see a clear perspective for the establishment of their own state realized. Only a negotiated peace that fulfils the legitimate national aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis, together with their security alike – the long-held vision of a two-State solution, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements – can bring long-term stability to the people of this land and the wider Middle East region.

In the meantime, we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe unfold before our eyes. We cannot remain mute in the face of violence on both sides. There can be no military solution to the Palestinian conflict. It’s critical that there be swift negotiations to generate some humanitarian corridors to let those that wish to leave Gaza do so and to enable the UN and other humanitarian organisations bring in water, power, food and medical supplies to serve the needs of a besieged population. It’s also important (even as the Israeli army prepares for an invasion) that both sides are reminded of and are willing to fight according to long established rules of war. Proposing that Israel will fight “without restraint” is a recipe for multiple human rights violations in response to those already perpetrated by Hamas.

Let’s hope and work for a return of hostages, and reinforce all Turkish and UN moves for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war. Without imagination and courage there will be no end to Palestinian hopelessness, humiliation, death and destruction. Without imagination and creativity on the Israeli side there will be no real security, and cycles of vengeance and violence will be deepened and normalised. The challenge is to draw on all the rich Jewish traditions of forgiveness and reconciliation to ensure that the responses to Hamas’s appalling slaughter are proportionate and restrained. There is no room for Gaza to become another Warsaw Ghetto with Israel responsible for vengeful death and destruction.

Kevin P. Clements is the Director of the Toda Peace Institute.

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The Palestinians Subject to 56 Years of Suffocating Occupation — Global Issues

UN Secretary-General addresses the Security Council 24 October 2023. Credit: UN Photo
  • by Guterres (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 (IPS) – UN Secretary-General, in an address to the Security CouncilThe situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour. The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region.

Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over. At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.

I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel. Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.

All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions. I respectfully note the presence among us of members of their families.

It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.

The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.

They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.

UN Secretary-General addresses the Security Council 24 October 2023. Credit: UN Photo

But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

Even war has rules.

We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians; and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians.

The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming.

I mourn and honour the dozens of UN colleagues working for UNRWA – sadly, at least 35 and counting – killed in the bombardment of Gaza over the last two weeks. I owe to their families my condemnation of these and many other similar killings.

The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict. Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields.

Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.

I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza. Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.

Thankfully, some humanitarian relief is finally getting into Gaza. But it is a drop of aid in an ocean of need.

In addition, our UN fuel supplies in Gaza will run out in a matter of days. That would be another disaster. Without fuel, aid cannot be delivered, hospitals will not have power, and drinking water cannot be purified or even pumped.

The people of Gaza need continuous aid delivery at a level that corresponds to the enormous needs. That aid must be delivered without restrictions.

I salute our UN colleagues and humanitarian partners in Gaza working under hazardous conditions and risking their lives to provide aid to those in need. They are an inspiration.

To ease epic suffering, make the delivery of aid easier and safer, and facilitate the release of hostages, I reiterate my appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Even in this moment of grave and immediate danger, we cannot lose sight of the only realistic foundation for a true peace and stability: a two-State solution.

Israelis must see their legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see their legitimate aspirations for an independent State realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements.

Finally, we must be clear on the principle of upholding human dignity.

Polarization and dehumanization are being fueled by a tsunami of disinformation. We must stand up to the forces of antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hate.

Today is United Nations Day (October 24), marking 78 years since the UN Charter entered into force.

That Charter reflects our shared commitment to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.

On this UN Day, at this critical hour, I appeal to all to pull back from the brink before the violence claims even more lives and spreads even farther.

IPS UN Bureau


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© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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Quo Vadis Israel-Palestine? — Global Issues

Missile attacks on Gaza. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
  • Opinion by Purnaka de Silva (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Oct 24 (IPS) – The bloodletting in Israel-Palestine is nothing new, perhaps the ferocity and intensity has become much worse and more frenetic. Ever since the Zionist project to establish a Jewish nation took hold in 1948, and flourished thereafter, the local inhabitants, mostly Arab Muslims and Christians, were displaced in the power equation and became dispossessed in every sense of the word.

Leading to wars between Arab neighbors and Israel, most notably in 1948-1949, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and 2006. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has remained the predominant military in Israel-Palestine.

In the 1980s Israel played a significant role in the creation and promotion of Hamas as a counter to weaken Fatah/PLO. Retired IDF Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev who was the Israeli military governor of Gaza in the early 1980s confessed that the government gave him a budget to engage fringe Palestinian Islamists.

For more details see Mehdi Hassan and Dina Sayedahmed, February 18, 2018, in the Intercept“Blowback: How Israel Went from Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It: Hamas wants to destroy Israel, right? But as Mehdi Hassan shows in a new video on blowback, Israeli officials admit they helped start the group”.

In fact, Hamas was originally viewed as a religious and charitable organization and Sheikh Yassin its founder was feted – a potential rival to Yasser Arafat it was thought at the time by Israeli pundits. For more details see Lorrie Goldstein October 18, 2023, in the Toronto Sun “Goldstein: Israel’s enormous blunder – it helped to create Hamas”.

Today, Hamas has become a veritable monster. Israel is not the first country to engage in such fruitless, disastrous, and ultimately counterproductive dalliances. History is replete with examples of blowback.

In the late 1970s, Indira Gandhi attempted to co-opt Bhindranwale and the Khalistan movement by allowing it to flourish to split Sikh votes and weaken the Akali Dal party, her chief rival in Punjab. After the Khalistan movement reached its pinnacle, it was too late to contain them, as in the case of Hamas today.

Indira Gandhi authorized Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army to plan the 1984 Operation Blue Star, which was executed by LTG Kuldeep Singh Brar, killing Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers holed up in Sikhism’s holiest house of worship the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab – akin to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.

For more details see Smita Prakash’s podcast on ANI reported in the Economic Times of India“Indira Gandhi let Jarnail Bhindranwale to become Frankenstein monster, claims Operation Blue Star commander”. Sadly, on October 31, 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated at her residence in New Delhi by her two Sikh bodyguards.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used Operation Cyclone to provide weapons (including stinger manpads to bring down Soviet Hind D helicopter gunships) and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979-1992 to defeat the USSR’s military.

For more details see Steve Coll February 24, 2004 Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, New York: The Penguin Press. On February 15, 1989, the last Soviet military column occupying Afghanistan withdrew, under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov.

The mujahideen veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War including Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, Muhammad Atef, and Ayman al-Zawahiri created Al Qaeda, following a series of meetings in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1988. As the whole world knows, Al Qaeda launched four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, against the United States.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, well before the Festival of Sukkot ended at sundown Hamas launched a vicious, well-planned dawn raid into southern Israel from the Gaza enclave, where Palestinians have been hemmed in for decades in what has been referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison.

The attack was heralded by launching over 5,000 rockets, many likely 122mm Chinese WS-1E design (used as early as August 2008 – 15 years ago). For more details see the report of December 31, 2008, in WIRED“Hamas Fires Long-Range Chinese Rockets at Israel”. According to a report shared privately by a retired senior Indian Army officer (which needs to be independently verified by Israeli sources):

As IDF (Israel Defense Forces) publishes names of KIA (Killed in Action) in Hamas assault, IDF losses are clearer. IDF signals intelligence losses in the first 24 hours was nothing short of catastrophic. Unit 414, the Neshar (Vulture) Battalion, a pivotal piece of the IDF Combat Intelligence Collection Corps, lost 19 personnel KIA and its base infrastructure was heavily damaged during Hamas assault on Camp Urim. Gaza Division Signals Battalion commander was KIA at Camp Re’im, along with the Multidimensional “Ghost” unit commander.

Perhaps even more dramatic were the heavy losses of IDF special forces. All SOF (Special Operations Forces) units which responded to the attacks suffered heavy casualties, both to ambushes prepared by Hamas and also during clearing operations of the Hamas-occupied bases and kibbutzim (civilians had to be rescued despite casualties). Israel’s premier SOF unit Sayaret Matkal suffered 11 KIA, which is 5-10% of its total number of operators. Shayetet 12 naval special forces (another tier 1 unit) lost its unit commander.

The airborne Shaldag special operations unit lost 5 KIA and at least as many heavily injured in multiple engagements. Other losses: 933rd Nahal infantry brigade suffered 23 killed in action at Kerem Shalom checkpoint, including the brigade commander and the commander of the brigade reconnaissance battalion and his deputy. More or less the entire Nahal brigade command cell suffered very heavy losses. Overall, it is clear why IDF command is very, very annoyed, and not just because of the civilian casualties.

The combat losses it suffered on October 7 including from among its most elite units, represents a humiliating defeat for the IDF. Under the pressure of the assault and especially the loss of its HQ at Re’im, IDF Southern Command’s Gaza Division collapsed. SOF units were unable to compensate and were hammered badly. SIGINT personnel and infrastructure were destroyed, key unit commanders were killed. It was a Mess.

So where do we go from here? How do Israelis and Palestinians retain their collective humanity? There are no “good guys and bad guys” in the Israel-Palestine imbroglio. All parties to varying degrees are complicit in the utter savagery visited upon civilians, since the ethnic cleansings of 1948. The last real chance for peace that Israelis and Palestinians had was snuffed out 28 years ago on November 4 when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in an internecine killing by a fellow Israeli Jew. Yitzhak Rabin had the gravitas and vision to make peace happen. From that time on it has been a downward spiral into the depths of hell, most times willfully.

Successive Israeli governments ratcheted up the pressure by making conditions in Gaza and the West Bank unlivable for the inhabitants – despite withdrawing from the entire Gaza Strip on September 22, 2005. The Israeli settler movement added further misery. We forget Voltaire’s wise words from centuries ago when denouncing the Catholic Church, which is applicable today in Israel: “If we believe in absurdities, we shall commit atrocities”. In June 2007 Hamas took over the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority and the dye was cast with Israel pitted against its monstrous creation from the 1980s.

It has also laid Israel open to external interference. In the case of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Russia’s fingerprints are all over as British, European, and American top brass and security experts will confirm. Many of Hamas’s leadership studied in Russia and speak Russian. The Israel-Gaza war is a perfect diversionary tactic for Mr. Putin whose War of Aggression in Ukraine is bogged down, taking huge losses. Diverting American and European attention and war fighting men and material to aid Israel is of huge benefit to the Russians and detrimental to the freedom of Ukraine.

In Israel-Palestine, matters became compounded during the last decade that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party and their far-right allies have been at the helm of Israeli government, security, politics, and discourse. Hubris and braggadocio are the hallmarks of a less-than-intelligent approach to dealing with Palestinians in Israel-Palestine. And rather than strengthening the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s most reliable partner to date, efforts were made systematically to undermine it. Leaving the field clear for Hamas to capture imagination of the youth.

It is ironic that Binyamin Netanyahu is still Prime Minister in all but name with mounting Israeli public pressure calling for his resignation. Guest Essay of October 18, 2023, in The New York Times“Netanyahu Led Us to Catastrophe. He Must Go.” Unlike his more famous and honorable predecessor Prime Minister Gold Meir who took responsibility and resigned after the surprise Egyptian attack in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, a similar momentous event like the attacks that unfolded on October 7, 2023, in southern Israel.

Non-stop aerial bombing of northern Gaza will not solve the crisis. It is not a solution; in fact, it strengthens Hamas in many unintended ways. The only immediate move must be to walk back from the brink, call a ceasefire and halt the planned ground assault of Gaza, and look outside the box that Israel-Palestine in trapped inside.

Israel’s stalwart allies the United States, and the European powers must act as good friends and not provide bad advice in supporting the launch of a ground assault on Gaza. Revenge and counter-revenge lead to a never-ending spiral of bloodletting with no end in sight, generation after generation.

Israel has claimed that after this most recent war in Gaza it will cut ties with the territory. Israel’s custodianship of the occupied territories has been far from ideal, and they have created hellish conditions for Palestinians and Israelis alike – which in all accounts is an unmitigated failure. Egypt ruled Gaza for 250 years and for a short time under President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1949.

As an immediate stopgap measure, maybe the reluctant Egyptians could be persuaded by the United State and European allies and through the provision of requisite resources to take over Gaza as a protectorate, where civilians can go about their daily lives without the threat of aerial bombardment or fear of medieval sanctions denying water, food, electricity and other basic needs – which is absolutely prohibited under the laws of war, and the Geneva Conventions. Time is fast running out and Israel-Palestine must step back from the brink of hell in the name of humanity.

Purnaka L. de Silva, Ph.D., is Faculty and University Adjunct Professor of the Year 2022, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, New Jersey; and Director, Institute for Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta. He was previously Senior Advisor, United Nations Global Compact in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General (EOSG) of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

IPS UN Bureau

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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