“Progressive forces need to push for the inalienable right of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, which has been systematically denied since the British mandate.”
South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, has said “it has never been so urgent for progressive forces around the world to come together in a collective effort to exert maximum pressure to end the genocidal campaign underway in Gaza and to end the apartheid system of Israel in the occupied territories.”
Minister Pandor delivered the keynote address at Friday’s opening of the Global Anti-Apartheid Conference for Palestine in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“Progressive forces need to push for the inalienable right of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, which has been systematically denied since the British mandate,” she said.
“They must also push for the right of refugees in the diaspora to return to their homeland,” stressed Pandor.
We’re at the Global Anti Apartheid Conference on Palestine in South Africa
She described the conference as “a watershed moment” as it is “the beginning of the global anti-apartheid movement on Palestine with all of us from around the globe coming together and joining forces in the struggle for justice for the Palestinian people.”
The three-day conference aims to set the basis for the mobilisation of a Global Anti-Apartheid Movement “to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people, and to work to dismantle Israeli apartheid,” according to the conference organizers.
Pandor said the “ongoing genocidal atrocities” being committed by Israel “have put renewed focus on the urgent need for wider international community demand for decolonization.”
Call to ICC
She also called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to expedite its investigation into the situation in occupied Palestine, saying the Court “must prioritize the case against Israel.”
“There can never be peace if the Palestinian people are not free …We should be ashamed that 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza,” the minister said.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 34,904 Palestinians have been killed, and 78,514 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Pandor said she was sure that when Israel planned its response to the October resistance operation, “it did not realize that its impunity and cruelty towards Palestinians will finally be naked to the world.”
She stressed that South Africa’s “association with the people of Palestine did not begin on the 8th of October 2023.”
The minister emphasized: “We continue to do so following in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela and will not rest until the freedom of the peoples of Palestine is realized.”
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) May 10, 2024
Symbolic Gesture of Kuffiyeh
In a symbolic gesture, Reverend Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem placed a kuffiyeh around the shoulders of Minister Pandor.
“There is symbolism in what I’m going to do, to take the keffiyeh from the shoulder of a Palestinian and place it on the shoulder of a South African leader, and acknowledge that today you carry our cross as Palestinians with us upon their shoulders,” explained the reverend.
Various other speakers addressed the conference on the first day including Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian Legislative Council; Reverend Frank Chikane, moderator of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs for the World Council of Churches; Declan Kearney, chairperson of Sinn Fein; and Ronnie Kasrils, former South African Minister of Intelligence.
The conference is being attended by delegations from across the globe, representing civil societies, religious institutions and Palestinian solidarity movements. Various workshops aimed at developing strategies for action are lined up for Day 2.
It seems that the Israeli occupation is still reluctant over demands presented by Hamas resistance movement regarding the ceasefire in Gaza, as the Tel Aviv Regime is still denying access of aid deliveries to northern Gaza amid catastrophic conditions in the besieged enclave on the day 152 of the aggression.
Hamas said on Wednesday it has shown the flexibility required to reach a truce that stops the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people but stressed that the Israeli occupation is evading demands for a ceasefire.
In a statement, the Palestinian resistance movement said these demands “include a permanent ceasefire, the return of the displaced Palestinians in Gaza to their homes, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the entry of humanitarian aid.”
“We will continue to negotiate through our brotherly mediators to reach an agreement that fulfils the demands and interests of our people,” Hamas said in a statement.
Strikes and Death Toll
Meanwhile, more casualties were reported as the Israeli occupation went ahead with bombing and artillery shelling in the central and southern Gaza Strip.
Several attacks were reported in Khan Younis, Deir Al-Balah, Nusseirat refugee camp and Rafah, Palestinian media reported.
A Palestinian man documents the massive destruction in Khan Yunis after partial Israeli military withdrawal from the area. pic.twitter.com/MVJtkzmt46
Palestinian children suffering from malnutrition receive treatment at a healthcare centre in Rafah (March 5, 2024).
“The famine is deepening and will claim thousands of lives if the aggression is not halted and humanitarian and medical aid is not immediately brought in,” the ministry said in a statement.
It added that the Israeli occupation was “deliberately” starving thousands of hungry people in northern Gaza and called on the international community and the UN to halt the war and avoid a “health catastrophe”.
Aid Access Denied
On the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief has called for more aid to enter Gaza, amid reports of children dying from malnutrition in the besieged enclave.
“Children who survived bombardment but may not survive a famine,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X. “Allow more aid for Gaza. Ceasefire.”
Children who survived bombardment but may not survive a famine.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 6, 2024
According to media reports, Palestinian Resistance ambushed IOF in Khan Younis, killing one soldier and injuring 12 others.
Earlier on Tuesday, the UN World Food Program (WFP) announced that efforts to deliver desperately needed food supplies to northern Gaza were largely unsuccessful.
“The emergency relief agency said that a 14-truck food convoy – the first by WFP since it paused deliveries to northern Gaza on 20 February – was turned back by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) after a three-hour wait at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint,” WFP said, referring to Israeli occupation forces.
Tel Aviv’s goal of dismantling the UN agency in the name of security is a strategic move aimed not only at depriving Palestinian refugees of lifesaving assistance, but completely eradicating the notion that they will one day return to the lands they were expelled from.
William Van Wagenen @WVanwagenen Know Me More..William Van Wagenen is a writer for the Libertarian Institute. He has written extensively on the Syrian war, with a specific focus on the role of US planners in sparking and exacerbating the conflict. William holds a master’s degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University and survived a kidnapping in the Sinjar region of Iraq in 2007.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing the gravest existential crisis in its 74-year history, as funding cuts by several western countries come on top of ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
The UN agency is unique in being the only one dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific areas, and the only relief organization that operates a full-fledged educational system. UNRWA is also the only organization mandated to work in Gaza and distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starved in the besieged enclave.
To compound these challenges, the occupation wants to see it dismantled.
UNRWA must be destroyed
In January, Israel alleged that Palestinian members of UNRWA’s staff participated in the resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, leading the US and 18 other nations to swiftly suspend funding for the organization.
The suspensions were met with shock, as UNRWA plays a key role in providing food and medicine to starving Gazans struggling to survive Israel’s siege and bombardment of the coastal enclave.
However, Israel’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign ministry to destroy UNRWA. It believes that UNRWA “works against Israel’s interests” by perpetuating the dream of the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the idea of armed struggle against occupation.
The foreign ministry plan leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 on 28 December, set out a three-stage process to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext:
First, prepare a case alleging UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas; second, reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find replacement service providers; and third, transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to another entity.
Channel 12 noted that Israel wants to move slowly, given that the US government sees UNRWA as crucial to humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The foreign ministry is seeking to gradually build the case for ousting the organization as part of the discussions on “the day after” the war – should Hamas be dismantled.
A sequence of events
According to a report by TheNew York Times, the “sequence of events” that led the US to suspend UNRWA funding began on 18 January when Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, met with Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA in Tel Aviv.
Weissbrod showed Lazzarini a dossier from Israeli intelligence claiming that 12 UNRWA employees had participated in the 7 October attacks.
After the meeting in Israel, Lazzarini made no effort to confirm the validity of the claims. Instead, he flew to New York to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and immediately began firing the employees, a UN official said.
The Guardianreported that Lazzarini was later asked in a press conference if he had looked into whether there was any evidence for the allegations presented to him by Weissbrod.
“No,” Lazzarini replied, “the investigation is going on now.”
Lazzarini said he made the “exceptional, swift decision” due to “the explosive nature of the claims,” rather than any evidence.
Lazzarini said he did not even read the dossier himself because it was in Hebrew. Instead, Weissbrod “was reading this and translating for me,” he said.
How did the US know?
The same New York Times report notes that UNRWA informed US officials about the allegations on 24 January. Just two days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the suspension of funding to UNRWA.
Shockingly, the State Department made the announcement amid reports that Gaza was on the brink of famine, and despite acknowledging that “UNRWA plays a critical role in providing lifesaving assistance to Palestinians, including essential food, medicine, shelter.”
Like Lazzarini, Blinken made the decision without seeking any evidence from Israel, but solely based on the supposedly serious nature of the allegations alone. Blinken justified his decision to suspend aid to starving Palestinians by saying, “We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible.”
In a seemingly coordinated effort, other countries – including Germany, Britain, and Australia – swiftly followed suit. Even Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged suspending aid without first receiving any evidence from Israel or even asking Lazzarini to share any evidence he might have.
The funding crisis escalated to such an extent that Juliette Touma, the UNRWA director of communications, said that after “decades of working together,” in “just over 24 hours, nine of our donors suspended funding to UNRWA.”
Another dodgy dossier
As criticism of the aid suspensions mounted, Israeli foreign ministry officials released a dossier to several foreign news organizations.
But after seeing the dossier, both the Financial Times and the UK’s Channel 4 reported that it provided “no evidence” for the claims.
Former UNRWA head Chris Gunness compared it to the “dodgy dossier” used by Tony Blair to take Britain to war in Iraq.
“There is no actual evidence. There are accusations,” Gunness concluded.
Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, tried to justify its refusal to provide any actual evidence by claiming, “the very nature of the allegations makes it impossible for Israel to share all the evidence it has with UNRWA.”
“They think that we can give them intelligence information, knowing that some of their employees work for Hamas? Are you serious?” he asked.
But Israeli propagandist and spokesperson Eylon Levy declined to say if Israel had provided evidence even to the US and UK governments. “I’m not personally aware of what material may have been passed on between our intelligence agencies,” he stated to Channel 4 when pressed for proof of the claims.
Links to Hamas?
The Israeli foreign ministry continued to implement the three-step leaked plan to destroy UNRWA by making additional allegations of UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas.
On 29 January, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported claims based on Israeli intelligence that “1,200 of UNRWA’s roughly 12,000 employees in Gaza has links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and about half have close relatives who belong to the Islamist militant groups.”
The article also provided no evidence, citing only Israeli intelligence, and was co-written by Carrie Keller-Lynn, an American who volunteered for the Israeli military and has a personal relationship with an Israeli army spokesperson.
Even if true, the allegations are meaningless. Hamas is the governing party in Gaza, making it self-evident that many UNRWA employees would be sympathetic or have family ties to the resistance movement.
Similarly, it would be unsurprising if an employee of an Israeli NGO or aid group was sympathetic to the Israeli army or had family members in the ruling Likud party.
As Haaretz noted, UNRWA employees in the West Bank and other countries where the organization operates are usually more aligned with whatever Palestinian faction is dominant in that area.
‘We could not verify this’
The Israeli foreign ministry’s plan to paint UNRWA as linked to Hamas soon continued with new and bizarre allegations that Hamas had placed a massive data center directly underneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.
The Times of Israelclaimed that the data center was “built precisely under the location where Israel would not consider looking initially, let alone target in an airstrike.”
But Israel has been bombing UNRWA schools and other UN facilities for decades, including when large numbers of civilians have been sheltering in them. No Hamas leader would imagine this would provide it any protection.
But as OSINT analyst Michael Kobs has shown, the alleged data center the Israeli army showed to foreign journalists was not under the UNRWA headquarters.
Kobs also notes that when Tageschau journalist Sophie van der Tann was taken through a tunnel to see the alleged data center, she stated, “We could not verify” it was under the UNRWA headquarters.
Erasing the right of return
But why is Israel determined to destroy UNRWA?
One reason is Israel’s ongoing effort to slowly starve Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
At the beginning of the war on 7 October, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant notoriously ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” The late January campaign to suspend UNRWA funding then came at a time when “famine” was already “around the corner” in Gaza, according to UN Emergency Relief Chief Martin Griffiths. Israeli officials knew that suspending funding for UNRWA at this time would only bring famine closer. One Israeli military official acknowledged to the WSJ on 13 February that “Without UNRWA, there is no humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
But there is another reason Israel wants to destroy UNRWA, which predates the current war.
Palestinian political analyst and researcher Hanin Abou Salem explained that Israel wants to dismantle UNRWA because it transmits refugee status from generation to generation, which keeps the right of return for Palestinian refugees alive and “ensures that their hopes for returning to their ancestral homeland do not perish with the death of the original 1948 refugees.”
If UNRWA is dismantled and replaced by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), as Israel hopes, this will guarantee that Palestinians can only be resettled in third countries and never return to the homes and lands from which Israel forcibly expelled their grandparents during the Nakba.
In 2017, Israel launched a propaganda campaign against UNRWA and succeeded in convincing the Trump administration to cut around $300 million in funding to the organization the following year, only for the Biden administration to restore $235 million in 2021.
Destroying an idea
But with the start of the war on 7 October, Israel feels it has a second chance, not only to destroy the right of return, but also the “idea” of armed struggle to achieve it.
Noga Arbell, a researcher at the right-wing Kohelet Forum, recently explained that UNRWA needs to be “annihilated” because it is the “source of the idea.”
“It gives birth to more and more terrorists in all kinds of ways. UNRWA needs to be wiped out immediately – now – or Israel will miss the window of opportunity.”
UNRWA allegedly ‘gives birth to terrorists’ through its 706 schools, where some 543,075 Palestine refugee children receive free basic education.
In Gaza, UNRWA uses Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks and supplements these with its own materials. Israel has long been irked that these textbooks include lessons on the life of one of the most famous symbols of Palestinian armed resistance, an 18-year-old young woman and Palestinian refugee born in Lebanon, Dalal al-Mughrabi.
In 1978, Mughrabi led a group of Palestinian guerrillas from PLO chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party to carry out an operation in Israel.
According to the Israeli version of events, Mughrabi “led one of the deadliest suicide attacks in Israel’s history,” by hijacking a bus and taking its passengers hostage on the highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. During the operation, the bus exploded, and “38 Israelis were murdered, including 13 children.”
Israel claims that UNRWA is, therefore, teaching “mass murder” by using PA books that encourage everyone to be like Mughrabi.
However, Palestinians claim that Israeli forces killed the hostages.
You can kill a revolutionary, but not the revolution
According to a 2008 report in the Guardian, Mughrabi and the Palestinian guerillas intended to attack the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and hijacked two buses carrying civilians on the coastal road near Haifa. Along the way, they engaged in an intense 15-hour gun battle with Israeli forces.
Palestinians maintain the bus exploded, killing the guerillas and hostages, after it was fired on from the air by Israeli helicopters or elite Israel commandos, in a possible early instance of the mass Hannibal Directive.
Israeli forces implemented the Hannibal Directive on 7 October, killing large numbers of their own civilians – and burning many of them alive – using attack helicopters, tanks, and drones, while blaming all these deaths on Hamas.
Even if Israel succeeds in executing its plan to destroy UNRWA, while starving and bombing tens of thousands to death in Gaza, it will not be able to erase the spirit of Dalal al-Mughrabi and the thousands of martyrs like her who have sacrificed themselves for the freedom of Palestinians.
Within 24 hours of the unsubstantiated accusations against UNRWA, the US, the UK, and 14 other nations suspended funding to the organization the Wall Street Journal described as the “main pillar of operations to move food aid, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza.”
The abruptness of these cuts was particularly jolting in light of the looming threat of famine, as highlighted by Griffiths, who warned that Gaza was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
These drastic measures were instigated by allegations based on a dubious six-page dossier, arguably part of a meticulously crafted plan orchestrated by Israel’s foreign ministry, aimed at dismantling the humanitarian and educational infrastructure serving internally displaced Palestinians.
This concerted effort to undermine UNRWA is nothing short of a calculated strategy to exert control over the narrative surrounding Palestinian refugees and to once again reshape the demographics in Palestine.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
100 Days of Ongoing Genocide in Gaza Amid the International Community’s Failure to Protect Palestinians
Today, 14 January 2024, Israel’s genocidal military campaign against Gaza enters its hundredth day. Over this period, Al Mezan, Al-Haq, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) have monitored and exposed the plethora of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts constituting genocide committed by the Israeli authorities and military across the occupied Palestinian territory, with its epicenter in Gaza. A hundred days later, the international community still falls short of fulfilling its duty to protect the Palestinian people.
The Israeli military is killing an average of 250 Palestinians per day in Gaza, a higher daily death rate than any other twenty-first-century armed conflict. In 100 days, Israeli attacks have killed one out of every 100 Palestinians in Gaza and injured—often with life-altering wounds—at least two Palestinians in every 100. As we write, thousands of Palestinians remain buried under rubble, whether dead or alive, some enduring this situation for days or even weeks. Hundreds of bodies are in a state of decay, deprived of the right to a dignified burial, as Israel continues to deny medical and rescue teams access to areas where its troops and soldiers are deployed.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, between 7 October 2023 and 12 January 2024, Israel’s genocidal military campaign in Gaza killed 23,843 Palestinians and wounded 60,317 more. According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, among those killed are approximately 10,400 children, 7,100 women, 337 medical personnel, 45 civil defense personnel, and 117 journalists. Our teams on the ground emphasize that the actual number of fatalities is considerably higher than the figure announced by the Ministry of Health, as a substantial number of individuals remain trapped under the rubble.
This chilling death and injury toll occurs amidst a deliberately imposed humanitarian crisis by the Israeli authorities upon the 2.3 million Palestinian residents of Gaza. Ninety percent of Palestinians have been displaced from their homes, with many experiencing displacement on multiple occasions, notwithstanding that there is not a single place in Gaza that can be called safe. Israel employs starvation as a method of warfare: 2.3 million residents of Gaza, including our staff, face significant daily challenges in accessing food and water. Reports of deaths from hunger, particularly among children, newborns and infants, are beginning to surface. The situation is particularly catastrophic in northern Gaza, where the presence of Israeli soldiers and troops on the ground has made the delivery of humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of civilians who are still located there virtually impossible.
Due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, every facet of life there has faced utter destruction. The local healthcare system has crumbled as Israel has declared an “unrelenting war” on the health system in Gaza, rendering it incapable of delivering essential care to the injured, sick individuals, and everyday patients. Educational pursuits have been severely disrupted, with Israeli attacks causing complete destruction to 95 schools and universities, and partial damage to 295 others, as reported by the Government Media Office in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes destroyed 145 mosques, while another 243 were partially damaged. Three churches have been destroyed by Israeli attacks, along with numerous archaeological and historical sites, as well as significant cultural landmarks, contributing to the erasure of Palestinian history and life throughout Gaza.
Simultaneously with the genocide in Gaza, Israel escalated attacks against Palestinians all across historic Palestine. In the occupied West Bank, between 7 October 2023 and 12 January 2024, the Israeli military and settlers killed 336 Palestinians, including 84 children. Over the same period of time, Israel started a campaign of mass arrest: since 7 October, at least 5875 Palestinians have been detained, as further punitive measures have been imposed on them and the existing 5,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including administrative detainees. Palestinians in Israeli custody and detention are subjected to torture, ill-treatment, inhumane or degrading treatment, and enforced disappearances. The Israel Prison Service announced the ‘death’ of at least seven Palestinian detainees and prisoners. Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship have also experienced various forms of persecution, including arbitrary arrests, threats of citizenship revocation, and a severe crackdown on freedom of speech.
Al Mezan, Al-Haq, and PCHR reiterate that the Palestinian people in Gaza are facing an ongoing genocide. Israel’s actions in Gaza—encompassing killings, causing severe bodily or mental harm, deliberately imposing conditions of life aimed at physical destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group—constitute genocidal acts under the 1948 Genocide Convention. These acts are committed with the intent to destroy, either wholly or in part, the Palestinian population in Gaza. This intent is substantiated by statements from official Israeli sources and individuals expressing the clear intention to carry out such destruction.
The recent address from the Israeli Prime Minister, delivered last night, underscores the lack of any inclination on Israel’s part to cease its genocidal military campaign in Gaza. The remarks made during this speech also underline Israel’s refusal to implement a ceasefire in Gaza, in violation of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/ES-10/L.27 adopted on 10 December 2023, highlighting the urgency for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to promptly issue provisional measures.
To this end, we urge the ICJ to swiftly issue provisional measures instructing Israel to cease military operations, refrain from genocidal acts in Gaza, and facilitate the entry of aid and fact-finding teams for accountability purposes, as requested by South Africa. We additionally call on all State Parties to the Genocide Convention to express their endorsements and formally support the legal proceedings initiated by South Africa at the ICJ.
We reiterate our plea to the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Ms. Alice Wairimu Nderitu, to officially acknowledge and publicly affirm that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip amount to genocide. Additionally, we urge her to condemn the genocidal rhetoric emanating from Israeli officials and emphasize the inherent dangers that such rhetoric poses to the international community.
Under international law, States must not recognize illegal situations as legitimate and must refrain from assisting in maintaining the illegal situation. States must also impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel and stop the provision and transit of military equipment that may foreseeably be used in the commission of international crimes.
Responsibility at the State level should be accompanied by individual criminal accountability. We strongly reiterate our calls on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to promptly issue arrest warrants for Israeli political, security and military officials—especially governmental officials and high-ranking military personel—believed to be responsible for perpetrating, ordering, planning, and instigating international crimes, including genocide, committed over the past 100 days as well as since 13 June 2014.
Israel’s international crimes against the Palestinian people must cease immediately and permanently. To this end, the international community must not only hold Israel and the Israeli authorities accountable, but address the root causes by dismantling Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime, and ensuring that all discriminatory and inhumane laws, policies and practices against the Palestinian people are abolished once and for all. The international community must also urge Israel, the Occupying Power, to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory, lift the closure and blockade of Gaza, and enable the Palestinian people to fully exercise their inalienable right to self-determination, including their right to return.
The Palestinian Ministry of Education confirmed that at least 3,714 Palestinian students have been killed by “Israel’s” attacks on Gaza and the West Bank since October 7.AP)
Israeli occupation forces are killing students both in Gaza and the West Bank, while also detaining school-age children in the West Bank.
According to the ministry’s statement, 3,679 students were martyred and 5,429 others were injured in Gaza while in the Occupied West Bank, 35 students were killed and 271 others were wounded.
The statement also noted that Israeli occupational forces (IOF) detained 82 students in the Occupied West Bank since October 7.
In addition, data showed that 209 teachers and administrators were killed and 619 were injured in Gaza, while two were wounded and 65 were detained in the Occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces also bombed 278 government schools and 65 UN-run schools in the Gaza Strip, the ministry said last week.
Last week, a report by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor showed that “Israel” has killed more than 10,000 children and infants since the onset of aggression against Gaza.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that the total death toll in the Israeli airstrikes and intensive artillery attacks has exceeded 23,012, including 9,077 children and infants, according to preliminary statistics – including those whose bodies remain under the rubble.
UN-built and funded schools have been among the institutions destroyed in Gaza, after being constantly targeted for housing Palestinian refugees since the start of the war.
The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, confirmed last Wednesday that one of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees’ schools in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza was blown up, failing to hold the Israeli occupation forces responsible for this crime.
“Saw videos of an @UNRWA school in northern #Gaza blown up. It is outrageous. All public facilities, including hospitals & @UN schools are protected under international law,” Lazzarini wrote on X after users circulated a video of the Israeli occupation forces destroying the school.
Lazzarini had written a letter to UN General Assembly President Dennis Francis on Friday, foreseeing the eventual loss of lives among his team due to the Israeli aggression on Gaza, which he described as the “darkest hour in the agency’s 75-year history.”
The curse of the Shujaiya neighborhood haunts the Israeli army… and this is what happened
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Named by Gizmodo as the most influential source of news on Israel/Palestine on Twitter/X, Visegrád 24 has shot to prominence, amassing more than one million followers across social media platforms. Yet it has consistently shared blatantly false information in an attempt to ramp up support for the state of Israel’s crimes in Gaza. Worse still, the semi-anonymous account pushing a far-right agenda worldwide is known to be funded by the deeply conservative Polish government.
A VIRAL SENSATION
If you have spent any amount of time on social media following the Israeli attack on Gaza, you are sure to have come across Visegrád 24 and its ultra-viral content. The Polish news aggregator is perhaps an unlikely candidate to become a key player in the information war. But in just a few short weeks, it has gained hundreds of thousands of followers across its platforms, especially Twitter/ and TikTok (currently at 843,000 and 183,000 followers, respectively).
A study published by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, titled “The New Elites of X,” identified Visegrád 24 as the most influential account engaged in Israel/Palestine discourse. One measure of its reach is that, in the first three days following Hamas’ surprise attack, the six traditional media outlets with the most followers on Twitter/X (CNN Breaking News, CNN, the New York Times, BBC Breaking News, BBC World News and Reuters) who collectively have nearly 300 million followers, received 112 million views on Israel/Palestine related content. Visegrád 24, by comparison, received 370 million views over the same period. Since then, its influence has only grown.
Its massive reach has led many to equate it with reliability, and the account is regularly cited in establishment media such as Newsweek or Fox News. But this is far from the case. Indeed, its accounts appear to exist to lionize Israel and its supporters, demonize Palestine and its supporters, fearmonger about refugees, and promote ultra-conservative politics in general.
FAKE NEWS FACTORY
Part of what makes Visegrád 24’s rise problematic is its propensity to publish blatantly fake news. Earlier this month, for example, it posted footage of Israeli satirist Yoni Sharon playing a character mocking Palestinians, telling its audience he was a real Palestinian.
“A Palestinian man thanks Hamas for making sure that all the Palestinian people who used to commute into Israel to work will now be unemployed. He also thanks Hamas for making sure Palestinian kids will no longer receive surgeries in Israel Great job!” it wrote.
A Palestinian man thanks Hamas for making sure that all the Palestinian people who used to commute into Israel to work will now be unemployed.
He also thanks Hamas for making sure Palestinian kids will no longer receive surgeries in Israel
Perhaps most shamelessly, however, Visegrád 24 has, on multiple occasions, taken footage from Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian photographer who has worked with MintPress News and twisted the images of Israeli crimes to present the apartheid state in a good light. Azaiza’s video showing Israeli forces shooting at a large caravan of fleeing refugees was repackaged with the caption, “Hamas terrorists shooting at a large group of Palestinians trying to flee south along the humanitarian corridors set up by Israel.”
Spooky propaganda accounts @TheMossadIL and @visegrad24 lied and claimed a video of Israeli soldiers opening fire on Palestinian civilians fleeing south actually showed Hamas militants shooting at them. But @azaizamotaz9, the journalist who filmed the shooting, called them out.… pic.twitter.com/erygCVcZSf
Another time, Visegrád 24 reposted an Azaiza video claiming that it showed a merciful Israeli Air Force dropping leaflets urging Gazans that the area was not safe and asking them to move southwards for their own well-being. “Stop the lies,” Azaiza replied, “I’m the one who filmed this. The leaflets [were] saying if you have any information about the kidnapped [Israelis], call us.”
In addition to this, it has repeated and amplified the beheaded babies hoax, called to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, described climate activist Greta Thunberg as a “Hamas propagandist,” and labeled pro-Palestine demonstrators as “thugs” and “mobs.”
It has also not been above sharing racially insensitive content depicting Palestine supporters as clueless liberals who would be executed in a second if they set foot in Gaza or asking highly-charged questions such as “Without Googling, name something that was invented, discovered or created by Muslims over the centuries.” The clear implication in the question is that Muslims have never contributed anything to society, which can perhaps explain why Visegrád 24 spends so much of its energy fearmongering about a wave of Muslim immigrants to Europe.
Visegrád 24 began as a Twitter account in early 2020. But for the longest time, its funding and the identities of its key staff remained shrouded in mystery. The news aggregator does not even have a website; instead, it directs readers to a crowdfunding platform that shows they have received only 723 donations.
For an operation believed to be around 12 people, this is clearly not sufficient to be financially viable. There is another source of confirmed funding, however: the ultra-conservative government of Poland. Last October, the Polish chancellery gave 1.4 million PLN (roughly U.S.$350,000) to Visegrád 24, a decision approved by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. It is not known whether Visegrád 24 has received any subsequent government funding.
Around the same time it was receiving government money, Polish media identified some of the key figures running the operation. One is Adam Starzynski, a Swedish-born Polish journalist who formerly worked at the English-language program Poland Daily, produced by TV Republika. Starzynski has experience in running conservative social media, as he operated the ultra-conservative @BasedPoland Twitter account. @BasedPoland spread nationalistic propaganda and anti-Muslim content, gaining more than 150,000 followers before it was banned.
Starzynski is a key figure in the resurgent Eastern European conservative movement. This “Make Europe Great Again” movement supports far-right populists like Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
A second key figure in what Visegrád 24 calls its group of conservative friends is Stefan Tompson, a Polish-South African PR strategist. Tompson grew up in London and cut his teeth working for the “Leave” campaign during the Brexit referendum, a vote marred by widespread fake news and disinformation. He has his own YouTube channel about Polish history and is a contributor to the Polish government-owned TV channel Telewizja Polska. He is reportedly preparing to launch a brand new media company to capitalize on Visegrád 24’s success.
UKRAINE BRAIN
Visegrád 24 established its brand and built a following, posting content strongly supportive of the Ukrainian military and their attempts to repel the Russian invasion. Poland and the other Eastern European NATO states have been particularly vocal opponents of Russia. While it now focuses on Israel/Palestine content, it continues to post content calling for greater European involvement in the war. For example, last week, it shared a video of a dying Ukrainian soldier and demanded to know “why the West is holding back crucial weapon systems from Ukraine?” and “Why they aren’t allowed to strike Russia?”
19-y-old Ukrainian soldier records a video after his unit is surrounded
He says they won’t make it out alive. He was right
Can somebody explain why the West is holding back crucial weapon systems from Ukraine?
Unfortunately, the news aggregator displayed the same propensity to publish incorrect information on Ukraine as it does with Israel. Among the fake stories it has promoted include:
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio donating $10 million to Ukraine
Polish politicians supporting a Polish-Ukrainian union
PornHub being blocked in Russia.
In their haste to drum up support for the Ukrainian cause, media in the West often overlooked or whitewashed the fascist or Neo-Nazi elements active within the Ukrainian armed forces. Chief among these is the Azov Battalion, a group whose insignia was directly lifted from the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division, a unit responsible for carrying out some of the worst crimes of Hitler’s holocaust. Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Battalion’s founder, said in 2010 that he believes Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen” – the word Hitler used to describe Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and other peoples he designated for extermination.
“It’s possible to both support Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression and be critical of neo-Nazis elements in Ukraine’s army,” Visegrád 24 once posted on Twitter. Yet analyzing all Visegrád 24 content containing the word “Azov”, it is difficult to find any posts that even take a neutral tone, let alone a critical one.
As such, they often appeared to act like an unofficial press agency for the group. Manypostshumanize the soldiers, showing their mothers and wives or presenting them as brave defenders of the motherland. Others are glowing obituaries of heroic Azov fighters who lost their lives.
Heartbreaking messages from the mothers and wives of the 53 Azov soldiers killed in the prison camp at Olenivka. pic.twitter.com/TeZvCVtj8N
“Every year, the soldiers of the Azov Regiment gather on the shortest night of the year to honor their fallen brothers-in-arms. This year, especially after [the battle of] Azovstal, they had more men to honor than ever. Through new recruits, the group has grown significantly in size since Azovstal,” they wrote in December.
While the European far-right is consistently and often virulently anti-Semitic, they regularly display strong support for the State of Israel and its policies, seeing the ethnostate Israel is creating as a blueprint for their own designs. Thus, an unlikely alliance now exists between fascist movements in Europe and the state where the descendants of the people those groups failed to kill just 80 years ago now live.
“Israel is losing the information war,” lamented Visegrád 24’s Stefan Tompson on Twitter. “Social media is dominated by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, if not overtly pro-Hamas and/or antisemitic content. If things are not turned around, the Hamas lobby will successfully not only appropriate but also redefine the ‘Holocaust,’” he added.
Putting aside the dramatic prediction, Tompson is correct that Israel is experiencing difficulty influencing worldwide public opinion. The genocidal destruction has brought millions of people around the world out into the streets to attend marches, lectures, protests and demonstrations. An estimated one million people filled the streets of London on November 11, despite direct instructions from the government not to do so.
In the United States, too, the situation in Gaza has ignited a massive reaction, with hundreds of large demonstrations taking place across virtually every major city. Pro-Israel demonstrations, meanwhile, have been comparatively poorly attended. President Biden’s support for Israel is a significant reason for his dwindling polling numbers.
The Biden administration continues to back Israel at the United Nations. But it is increasingly isolated. In October, the U.S. voted against a UN resolution calling for a cessation of the violence, one of only a handful of countries to do so.
Israel’s once rock-solid support among Americans is also floundering. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that overall sympathy for Israel has dropped seven points since October to 54% of Americans, with 24% saying they sympathized more with Palestine.
Most concerning for Israel supporters is that they appear to be losing the next generation. The same Quinnipiac poll found a huge generational gap in understanding of the conflict. While older voters stood solidly behind Israel, a majority of Americans aged between 18-34 said their sympathies lay with the Palestinians, while only 29% said they supported Israel.
Much of this chasm can be explained as a result of how the different generations get their news. Older Americans continue to rely on established legacy media, such as cable news and print, which continue to display extraordinary bias in favor of Israel. Younger generations, however, primarily use social media. While hardly free of restrictions, platforms like Twitter or TikTok allow a far more comprehensive range of news and views to circulate, including opinions from ordinary people.
Israel has attempted to game this system, spending heavily on ads targeted at Western audiences. Between October 7 and October 19, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spent more than $7 million on YouTube advertisements, equating to nearly one billion pairs of eyeballs. The top five countries targeted were France, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States. The MOFA also ran ad campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, mobile games and apps like language trainer Duolingo.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, pro-Israel trolls attempted to hijack the Community Notes function, attaching argumentative notes and warning labels undermining any post showing Israel in a negative light. And several prominent TikTok creators revealed they were offered large sums of money to record simple videos endorsing Israeli actions.
Despite this, there has been an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy for the people of Palestine. On TikTok, for example, between October 23 and October 30, 87,000 posts were using the #StandWithPalestine hashtag, garnering 285 million views. The equivalent pro-Israel #StandWithIsrael hashtag, meanwhile, generated only 9,000 posts and 64 million views.
In response to the news that their citizens are not receiving the preferred message on Israel/Palestine, U.S. government officials are pushing to simply ban TikTok altogether as a solution to the problem. GOP presidential candidates Chris Christie and Nikki Haley have repeatedly called for the total prohibition of the popular app. Senator Marco Rubio (R—FL) demanded that it was “time for TikTok to go,” accusing the company of “downplaying Hamas terrorism.”
Democrats have proven that censorship is a bipartisan issue. Senator Chris Murphy (D—NJ), for example, described TikTok as a Chinese-controlled platform that is “turning America against each other” through its promotion of “virulent pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic material.”
These calls were echoed by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who complained that users were being “brainwashed” by pro-Palestine content. TikTok has defended itself, claiming that its algorithms do not take sides and that young people are simply more sympathetic to Palestine.
Unlike TikTok, there have been no official calls to ban Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or other social media sites, perhaps because they are cooperating with authorities to censor dissenting voices. Twitter recently announced it had deleted more than 325,000 tweets relating to the violence and had removed more than 3,000 accounts, many linked to Hamas. It has not deleted any accounts affiliated with the Israeli government. Instagram locked a number of the most prominent pro-Palestine accounts, including Eye On Palestine (with 9.2 million followers).
Meanwhile, the Israeli Attorney General’s Office revealed that approximately 94% of the 9,500 requests it has made to Meta (the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) to delete content had been granted.
Just as important as the troops on the ground is the information war playing out in cyberspace. Israel could not carry out its actions without support from the Western public. On this front, it has found a key ally in Visegrád 24, a news aggregator that has exploded in popularity and influence of late. Unfortunately, the shadowy, Polish government-funded organization not only reports facts from a pro-Israel perspective but also consistently publishes blatantly false or misleading content. This, however, is far from unusual. In war, truth is always the first casualty. Visegrád 24’s rapid rise to prominence is a testament to this.
While the idea of relocating Palestinians to Iraq’s Anbar region may appear improbable, western-backed conflicts have already displaced millions in the region – many of which appear to be demographically-engineered.
The settlement of Palestinians in the Anbar desert, western Iraq, has become a topic of renewed discussion among Iraqis, thanks to the US-championed “Deal of the Century.”
As far back as February 2020, Iraqi MP al-Baldawi, the representative of the al-Fatah coalition in Iraq’s parliament, was alleging:
“The US is plotting to keep out Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU) from the western provinces of Iraq, specially al-Anbar province, in a move to provide a proper ground for sheltering the Palestinians inside Iraq.”
But now, the renewed interest in the topic coincides with the recent, unpublicized visit of the British ambassador to Iraq to Anbar Governorate.
Since the unveiling of the Trump era peace plan in 2019, reports have surfaced suggesting that the continued US presence in western Iraq has broader intentions beyond establishing military bases.
It is speculated that the goal is to create an “alternative homeland” for Palestinian refugees in the Anbar desert. This notion might have remained confined to the realm of “conspiracy theories” if it weren’t for suggestions made by Israeli leaders following the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood resistance operation, and their unprecedented genocidal aggression against the Gaza Strip.
Engineering another nakba
Israeli media leaked a document issued by the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, proposing the displacement of 2.4 million Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and other regions, a proposal strongly rejected by both Cairo and Amman.
The leaked plan has renewed serious Iraqi interest in the potential project to displace Palestinians to Anbar. Concerns of another Nakba have been echoed in statements from Iraqi political and religious leaders, including leading figures like Muqtada al-Sadr and Qais al-Khazali, as well as representatives of the Iraqi parliament – particularly those hailing from Anbar Governorate.
The leader of the National Resolution Alliance, Jamal al-Karbouli, condemned “the suspicious projects that attempt to displace the Palestinians out of Palestine,” and warned “everyone who dares to go too far with the people of Anbar and donate its land to please his masters..
Karbouli’s statements prompted Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi, the representative of Anbar in the council, to emphatically reject any attempt to implement the Deal of the Century in Iraq.
But observers like political analyst Mohsen al-Amiri believe that Karbouli’s claims forced Halbousi into issuing a denial: “It seems as if Anbar’s representative in parliament Al-Halbousi, who has close relations with foreign countries, especially the United Arab Emirates (the UAE has led the Arab normalization process with Israel), was trying to distance himself from these accusations.”
Hidden agendas in Anbar
The discussion surrounding the Israeli plan to displace the population of the Gaza Strip coincided with the unannounced visit of British Ambassador to Iraq Stephen Charles Hitchen to Anbar Governorate. Hitchen headed up the UK Foreign Office’s Iran Political Team at the start of the Arab uprisings, and moved up the ranks quickly to direct national security efforts in the entire region.
It’s worth noting that Hitchen’s meetings were limited to two Taqadum Party officials, whom he met separately, namely the Governor of Anbar Ali Farhan al-Dulaimi, and Ramadi Mayor Omar Dabbous. These individuals hold significant authority over administrative units and lands in the Anbar Governorate.
A source within the local administration informs The Cradle that the British ambassador discussed the construction of low-cost housing complexes to be financed by Britain in the desert areas to the west of the governorate. He also mentioned water desalination projects, although the exact nature and purpose of these initiatives remain undisclosed.
The source tells The Cradle that there were strict instructions to keep the visit of the British ambassador confidential and not to publish any news about it on the governorate’s website.
An Anbar-based journalist explains that there are often media blackouts imposed on visits by US and British ambassadors to the governorate, saying “we only learn about these visits days or weeks later by coincidence.”
Despite attempts to confirm this information from local administration officials, some refused to comment, and others claimed they had no knowledge of the visit. However, a photograph was obtained showing the British ambassador meeting with the mayor of Ramadi inside the municipal building.
An Iraqi political source tells The Cradle about the increasing frequency of American and British visits, both public and secret, to the governorate, fearing that Anbar might be manipulated to serve Washington’s agendas.
But political analyst Dr. Muhammad al-Anbari expresses surprise at the visit of a representative of a major power to a local mayor whose responsibilities are typically limited to urban management and sanitation. He tells The Cradle: “These suspicious visits did not occur until after one party took control of Anbar Governorate and its government departments.”
‘Autonomous Anbar’
In December 2022, Speaker Halbousi hinted at the possibility of the Sunni blocs leaving the political process and suggested the formation of an independent region in Anbar. Halbousi wields significant political influence in the governorate, which is not only Iraq’s largest in terms of geographical area, but also spans a desert region that extends from the Syrian border through the Jordanian border to the Saudi border, representing the western part of the country.
A political source in the governorate, who requested to remain anonymous, confirms that Halbousi is holding extensive meetings with Arab tribal sheikhs in the governorate to create the so-called autonomous Anbar.
Some Iraqi political sources view these actions as supporting Washington’s Deal of the Century project, aimed at resettling Palestinians – with the UAE and Britain identified as major supporters. They noted extensive meetings between Halbousi and Emirati representatives in Abu Dhabi and Baghdad in recent months.
Trump’s Deal of the Century also broke with decades of US policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, a move guaranteed to upset Arabs and Muslims everywhere.
This plan includes the displacement of Palestinians, particularly those from Gaza, and the creation of a small state for them in an Arab country’s desert, as reported in various press articles, including one from the Ultra Iraq website in May 2019, titled “Anbar is part of the deal of the century.”
The west’s ambition to reshape West Asia
Secretary-General of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq movement Qais al-Khazali warned, in a statement, that “Israel aims to occupy Iraq to implement the biblical prophecy (from the Euphrates to the Nile is your country, O Children of Israel),” calling on his supporters to prepare for “a major upcoming battle if the country and its sanctities are exposed to any new danger.”
Speaking to The Cradle, London-based Iraqi researcher Adnan Abu Zaid says that there is a US and European-backed plan to displace the people of Gaza and resettle them in Iraq. But he believes that “no one will be able to implement this plan, at least at the current stage.”
While the plan to relocate Palestinians to Anbar may not be immediately attainable, it remains a part of a broader US effort to reshape the West Asian region, potentially leading to the creation of small sectarian mini-states that may lack political or economic independence from the influence of the US and its ally, Israel.
For those skeptical of a plan to displace more than two million people from one country to another, it is worth taking into account the ongoing displacement trends in the wider West Asian region – much of it caused by western wars – which has seen millions uprooted from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen since the US occupation of Afghanistan.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The only country that could possibly distract the west from Ukraine is Israel. But the US and its allies are walking into an existential trap if they think a West Asian victory will be more easily won than a European one.
The Russia-Iran strategic partnership – with China in the wings – is laying an elaborate, Sun Tzu-tinged trap for the Hegemon in West Asia.
Apart from Israel, there is no entity on the planet capable of switching the focus, in a flash, away from the west’s spectacular debacle in Ukraine.
The warmongers in charge of US foreign policy, not exactly Bismarckian stalwarts, believe that if Project Ukraine is unattainable, Project Final Solution in Palestine could instead be a – ethnic cleansing – cakewalk.
A more plausible scenario, though is that Iran-Russia – and the new “axis of evil” Russia-China-Iran – have all it takes to drag the Hegemon into a second quagmire. It’s all about using the enemy’s own, discombobulated flip-flapping to unbalance him and disorient him to oblivion.
The White House’s wishful thinking that the Forever Wars in Ukraine and Israel are inscribed in the same lofty “democracy” drive and essential to US national interests, has already backfired – even among American public opinion.
That does not prevent cries and whispers along the Beltway revealing Israel-allied US neocons increasing the tempo to provoke Iran – via a proverbial false flag that would lead to an American attack. That Armageddon scenario neatly fits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblical psychopathy.
Vassals would be forced to meekly comply. NATO heads of state have made a beeline to visit Israel to demonstrate their unconditional support for Tel Aviv – including Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Britain’s Rishi Sunak, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, the senile lodger at the White House, and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
Avenging the Arab “century of humiliation”
So far, Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has shown extraordinary restraint by not taking any bait. Hezbollah supports the Palestinian resistance as a whole – and until a few years back, had serious issues with Hamas, with which it clashed in Syria. Hamas, incidentally, while partially funded by Iran, is not run by Iran. As much as Tehran supports the Palestinian cause, Palestinian resistance groups make their own decisions.
The big news is that all these issues are now dissolving. Both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) went to Lebanon to visit Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in person this week. That spells out unity of purpose – or what the region’s Axis of Resistance calls the “Unity of Fronts.”
Even more eye-opening was Hamas’ visit to Moscow this week, which was met with impotent Israeli fury. The Hamas delegation was headed by a member of its Politburo, Abu Marzouk. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri came especially from Tehran and met two of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s key deputies, Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin.
That spells out Hamas, Iran, and Russia negotiating at the same table.
Hamas has called on the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as the whole Arab world and all lands of Islam, to unite. Slowly but surely, a pattern may be discerned: could the Arab world – and great swathes of Islam – be on the verge of significantly uniting to avenge their own “century of humiliation” – much as the Chinese did after WWII with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping?
Beijing, via its sophisticated diplomacy, is certainly hinting at it to key players, even before the ground-breaking, Russia-China brokered Iran-Saudi rapprochement was struck earlier this year.
That by itself won’t thwart the perpetual US neocon obsession to bomb critical infrastructure in Iran. Worth less than zero when it comes to military science, these neocons ignore how Iranian retaliation would – accurately – target each and every US base in Iraq and Syria, with the Persian Gulf an open case.
Peerless Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov has shown what could happen to those expensive American iron bathtubs in the Eastern Mediterranean in case of an Israeli-threatened attack on Iran.
Moreover, there are at least 1,000 US troops in northern Syria stealing the country’s oil – which would also become an instant target.
Ali Fadavi, IRGC’s deputy commander-in-chief, cut to the chase: “We have technologies in the military field that no one knows about, and the Americans will know about them when we use them.”
Cue to Iranian hypersonic Fattah missiles – cousins to the Khinzal and the DF-27 – traveling at Mach 15, and able to reach any target in Israel in 400 seconds.
And add to it sophisticated Russian electronic warfare (EW). As confirmed in Moscow six months ago, when it comes to military interconnection, the Iranians told the Russians at the same table, “whatever you need, just ask.” The same applies vice-versa, because the mutual enemy is one and the same.
It’s all about the Strait of Hormuz
The heart of the matter in any Russian-Iran strategy is the Strait of Hormuz, through which transits at least 20 percent of the world’s oil (nearly 17 million barrels a day) plus 18 percent of liquified natural gas (LNG), which amounts to at least 3.5 billion cubic feet a day.
Iran is able to block the Strait of Hormuz in a flash. For starters, that would be some sort of poetic justice retribution for Israel aiming to gobble up, illegally, all the multibillion-dollar natural gas discovered offshore Gaza: this is, incidentally, one of the absolutely key reasons for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Yet the real deal will be to bring down the Wall Street-engineered $618 trillion derivative structure, as confirmed for years by analysts at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as well as independent Persian Gulf energy traders.
So when push comes to shove – and way beyond the defense of Palestine and in a scenario of Total War – not only Russia-Iran but key players of the Arab world about to become members of BRICS 11 – such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE – do have what it takes to bring down the US financial system anytime they choose.
As an old school Deep State higher up, now in business in Central Europe, stresses:
“The Islamic nations have the economic advantage. They can blow up the international financial system by cutting off the oil. They do not have to fire a single shot. Iran and Saudi Arabia are allying together. The 2008 crisis took 29 trillion dollars to solve but this one, should it happen, could not be solved even with 100 trillion dollars of fiat instruments.”
As Persian Gulf traders told me, one possible scenario is OPEC starting to sanction Europe, first from Kuwait and then spreading from one OPEC country to another and to all countries that are treating the Muslim world as enemies and war fodder.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has already warned that oil to western markets could be put off because of what Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has already called, on the record, for a total oil and gas embargo by Islamic countries against nations – essentially NATO vassals – that support Israel.
So Christian Zionists in the US allied with neocon asset Netanyahu threatening to attack Iran have the potential to pull down the entire world financial system.
Forever War on Syria, remixed
Under the current volcano, the Russia-China strategic partnership has been extremely cautious. To the outside world, their mutual official position is to refuse to side with either Palestine or Israel; call for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds; call for a two-state solution; and respect international law. All their initiatives at the UN have been duly sabotaged by the Hegemon.
As it stands, Washington has refused the green light for the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. The main reason is the immediate US priority: buy some time to expand the war to Syria, “accused” of being the key transit point for Iranian weapons to Hezbollah. That also doubles as re-opening the same old war front against Russia.
There are no illusions in Moscow. The intel apparatus knows well that Israeli Mossad agents have been advising Kiev while Tel Aviv was supplying weapons to Ukraine under serious US pressure. That infuriated the siloviki, and may have constituted a fatal Israeli mistake.
The neocons, for their part, never stop. They are advancing a parallel threat: if Hezbollah attacks Israel with something else than a few sparse rockets – and that simply won’t happen – the Hmeimim Russian Air Base in Latakia will be “eliminated” as a “warning” to Iran.
This does not even qualify as children playing in the sandbox. After the serial Israeli attacks on the civilian Damascus and Aleppo airports, Moscow did not even blink before offering its Hmeimim facilities to Syria – complete with clearance for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) cargo flights, according to some Russian intel sources. Netanyahu will not exactly harbor a death wish by bombing a fully A2/AD (anti-access/area denial) Russian Air Base.
Moscow also clearly sees what those expensive American iron bathtubs in the Eastern Mediterranean might be up to. The response has been swift: Mig-31Ks are patrolling neutral air space over the Black Sea 24/7, equipped with hypersonic Khinzals, which would take only six minutes to visit the Mediterranean.
Amidst all this neocon-drenched madness, with the Pentagon deploying a formidable array of weaponry plus “undisclosed” assets to the Eastern Mediterranean, whether the target is Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Russia, or all of the above, both China and North Korea – part of the new American-concocted “axis of evil” – have indicated they will not be mere bystanders.
The Chinese Navy is for all practical purposes shielding Iran from a distance. Yet even more forceful has been a statement by Premier Li Qiang – something unusually blunt and rare in Chinese diplomacy:
“China will continue to firmly support Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national dignity, and will strongly oppose any external forces interfering in Iran’s internal affairs.”
Never forget that China and Iran are linked by a comprehensive strategic partnership. Meanwhile, Russian Premier Mikhail Mishustin has reinforced the Russia-Iran strategic partnership in a meeting with Iran’s First Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber.
Remember those rice eaters from Korea
Pro-Iran militias across the Axis of Resistance, are keeping a carefully tempered degree of confrontation against Israel, close to guerrilla hit-and-run. They won’t be engaged in massive attacks yet. But all bets are off if Israel invades Gaza. It’s clear the Arab world, for all its massive internal contradictions, will simply not tolerate the civilian massacre.
Bluntly, at the current incendiary juncture, the Hegemon has found the offramp from its Project Ukraine humiliation. They erroneously believe that the same old Forever War rekindled in West Asia can be “modulated” at will. And if two wars turn into an immense political albatross, as they will, what else is new? They will simply start a new war in the “Indo-Pacific.”
None of that fools Russia-Iran and their ice-cold monitoring of the flipping and flapping Hegemon every step of the way. It’s enlightening to remember what Malcolm X was already predicting in 1964:
“Some rice eaters ran him out of Korea. Yes, they ran him out of Korea. Rice eaters with nothing but gym shoes, and a rifle, and a bowl of rice took him and his tanks and his napalm, and all that other action he’s supposed to have and ran him across the Yalu. Why? Cause the day that he can win on the ground has passed.”
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Islamophobe and “Israel”-apologist Brigitte Gabriel wants to push forward rhetoric against Islam during Operation Al Aqsa Flood to absolve “Israel” of its crimes and denounce the Resistance, but her rhetoric gets debunked.
Brigitte Gabriel, who claimed that “The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism,” tries to push Israeli rhetoric through a Christian Zionist lens, but Lebanese Christians will not stand for it. Especially not amid the liberation taking place through Operation Al Aqsa Flood; as “Israel” commits genocide in the Gaza Strip but the people, including Christians, continue to support their Resistance movement.
Lebanon was the only Christian-majority nation in the Middle East.
It’s where I was born.
We prided ourselves on inclusivity. Always welcoming Arab Muslim refugees from all over the Middle East.
We had the best economy despite having no natural oil. The best universities.…— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) October 12, 2023
Below is the post debunked!
Lebanon was the only Christian-majority nation in the Middle East. It’s where I was born. We prided ourselves on inclusivity. Always welcoming Arab Muslim refugees from all over the Middle East. We had the best economy despite having no natural oil. The best universities. They called Beirut the “Paris of the Middle East” and the Mountains of Lebanon was a tourist destination.
While Lebanon was a Christian-majority, the French-ordered country was only inclusive if you had enough money to be so. In 1943 the Lebanese Republic was considered an independent state and remained under French mandate until 1945. However, it was only in 1946 that the French troops withdrew from the newly independent Republic.
Just two years later, in 1948 the Palestinian Nakba occurred and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people at the hands of Jewish Zionists began. Those who escaped the genocide are those who have lived in the Nakba and were forcefully displaced with the hope that one day they will return.
Some of these Palestinian escaping death and occupation came to Lebanon and with them some of the richest Palestinian families such as Sursok and Bustros and others who had a positive impact on the Lebanese economy which was predominantly, by then, a rentier economy.
The refugees were indeed Arabs who were forcefully displaced and were welcomed by another Arab republic, Lebanon. If the French mandate made it seem like Christianity is a national identity, there might be a need to reconsider as many of the Palestinian refugees at the time were indeed Christians. The Christian-Arab dichotomy is false for Christians of the region are in fact Arabs. One is a religion while the other is a national identity.
But a turncoat to her nation would know the difference and just choose to alter the truth to entertain Israeli rhetoric pitting the Lebanese civil war as only a Muslim vs Christian war.
My early childhood was idyllic, my father was a prosperous businessman in town and my mother was at home with me, an only child. Slowly, the Arab Muslims began to become the majority in Lebanon and our rights began to wither away.
While Gabriel, whose name is Hanane Qahwaji/Nour Semaan, pitted the war to fit Israeli rhetoric, the truth was that the war was one of identity between those who wanted to make peace with the enemy and those who refused to allow that to happen and demanded the rightful liberation of Palestine and the return of its people to their land and homes without condition.
Lebanon has historically always been a multi-religious republic despite the majority-minority differences. And even today with Christians a minority, primarily thanks to the proxy wars waged by the West as well as the regional instability significantly caused by the Occupation entity, “Israel”, this remains true.
Gabriel whose name is not even credible and has been accused of fabricating her “surviving terror” story in Lebanon, even by historians based in the US, cannot possibly find a way to spin the truth.
Hundreds of Christians in the South of Lebanon, even in predominantly Muslim regions vouche they are living their regular lives. Even those that have grave political disagreements with their surroundings, among which is Hezbollah have a greater than needed margin for free speech without consequences.
Soon, we would find ourselves unable to leave our small Christian town without fear of being stopped and killed by Arabs.
Once again, Christians in Lebanon are Arabs. That’s a historical fact. Several priests and patriarchs have reaffirmed this claim using historical facts. But mainly Christianity is a religion that came after Judaism and before Islam. As such the people of this region have often adopted various religions without changing their collective national identity.
In Lebanon your religion is on your government-issued ID.
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The perception of conspiracy in the Arab world is ambiguous, to the extent that Arabs could be skeptical of major conspiracies, even if the details are revealed over time. Those who grasp the conspiracy’s details are mostly incapable of tackling it, given its concealed or obscured elements. However, if there are Arabs and Lebanese who remain skeptical of the ongoing conspiracy against the Palestinian cause, then this is certainly an unsolvable dilemma.
US-Led Meetings
The funding for UNRWA, which is in charge of providing relief and jobs to Palestinian refugees, started to dwindle at least 10 years ago, while alternatives were pushed by Western-funded organizations. Hence, the number of those wishing or seeking to immigrate to other countries around the world rapidly increased! During that time, meetings were held under the leadership of the United States, where delegates from Lebanon, the country harboring the greatest number of Palestinian refugees, were present.
In a famous meeting in Amman, Jordan, 9 years ago, a US official apprised the Lebanese to “think rationally” and stop repeating the “chant of Resolution 194″.
In that meeting, and in the presence of Dorothy Shea, the current US ambassador to Beirut, the aforementioned US official called on Lebanon to relocate Palestinian refugees in order to pave the way for their naturalization.
To avoid interrogation, the American official added, “Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are no more than 200,000, some of whom seek to travel to the West, and a minority is considering moving to the Gaza Strip. Thus, Lebanon must welcome those who remain and integrate them residentially by relocating them from camps to cities. In addition, the country must integrate them socially and economically by lifting the ban on practicing certain professions and providing them permanent residency while they await citizenship.”
Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al-Hilweh near the port city of Sidon (photo from archive).
Fatuous Endeavors
Although many things happened since then, this goal was not achieved, as the outcomes of the Syrian war hindered the project aimed at ending the Palestinian refugee issue in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Also, the resistance powers in Lebanon and Palestine have expanded, and the Palestinians have achieved victories that effectively permit them to return to their homeland. All of this, however, offered another reason for the US to speed up their efforts, the ultimate goal of which was to annihilate the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
Official Arab Document: The US Scheme
Back to 2023, when Palestinian General Intelligence Chief Majid Faraj visited Lebanon in the second half of July, many denied that his visit had anything to do with any adverse incidents in Lebanon. At the end of July, under the pretext of an assassination, clashes broke out in the Ain Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Sidon. Such clashes often involve unidentified assailant assassinations and result in open battles. Thereupon, some came out to clarify that there had been no coordination between the US and their allies in the region in a bid to ignite the refugee camps ahead of their removal and destruction.
Those who spoke out about a US scheme were accused (including us) of helping to demonize the Fatah movement and blaming the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA). However, the embassy of a prominent Arab country in Beirut, which has no link with Al-Akhbar newspaper, was observing and gathering data as well as preparing a report for its government that outlined the political and security developments in the past two months in Lebanon. The document concluded that what is happening is part of a US scheme—full stop!
What’s inside the Document?
Al-Akhbar Daily publishes the content (incomplete for professional reasons) of a “top secret” document prepared by the aforementioned embassy, which states:
“For quite some time, there have been early American preparations to eliminate the Ain Al-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon, as it is a major address for Palestinian asylum seekers in the diaspora. This practice was initiated by military leaders and officers sent by Washington in recent years.” “The repeated clashes in the Ain Al-Hilweh camp between the Fatah movement and extremist groups are not isolated from the secret visits of American military delegations to the area overlooking the camp. At the time, American delegations linked with the US Central Command (CENTCOM) had repeated field visits, resulting in at least three visits in 2018, the most notable of which was to then CENTCOM Commander General Joseph Votel”, the document adds.
General Votel in a meeting with Lebanese Army commander Gen. Joseph Aoun during a visit to Lebanon in June 2017.
The document also attributed to Lebanese security sources that “General Votel requested, during a routine visit to the Lebanese Army Command, to arrange for him a reconnaissance tour to the vicinity of the Ain Al-Hilweh camp along with Lebanese officers who are familiar with this file.”
General Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese Army Commander, was surprised by this request, given that the commander of the CENTCOM, whose military authority extends from Afghanistan to Lebanon, could instead send a team of his officers for this purpose and that the camp does not represent a challenging aspect in terms of strategic military calculations, as per Aoun.
Indeed, the American general got what he sought, as he inspected the refugee camp of Ain Al-Hilweh from Serob Hill overlooking it. Votel was carrying precise maps of the camp and surrounding areas with him, and he asked the army intelligence team that accompanied him specific questions about the following points:
First: The reality of the camp, both geographically and humanly.
Second: The identities of the armed groups in the camp, their numbers and locations. Here, Votel stopped and asked specifically about the Ansar Allah group led by Jamal Suleiman and other Islamic groups.
Third: The number of displaced Palestinians who moved from Syria to Ain Al-Hilweh camp.
Fourth: The nature of the measures taken by the Lebanese army around the camp.
Fifth: Latest developments in the plan to build a cement wall around the camp.
The document also stated that, “As a follow-up to this visit, meetings continued between the American and Lebanese sides, and a technical team from the US CENTCOM visited the Lebanese Army Command in September 2018. The team met with the Army Commander, the Director of Intelligence, and the official in charge of the Palestinian file in the Army.
The incorporation of the “Basateen Al-Tayyar” area, which has served as a training camp for Ain Al-Hilweh’s prominent Islamic faction, the Asbat Al-Ansar (Ansar League), was also discussed. This League had previously been suspected of involvement in assassinations, most notably the deaths of four judges at the Sidon courthouse. However, its relationship with the Lebanese army improved in later years, particularly in terms of assisting in the regulation of smaller organizations’ actions.”
“The construction of a wall around the Ain al-Hilweh camp was originally based on an American proposal,” the document continued, “although the Lebanese army at time justified this step by the need for security measures in light of violations committed by armed factions from within the camp towards the surrounding area. However, opposition to this step did not prevent its fulfillment.”
The document continued: “Several terrorists who had previously left the camp to fight in Syria returned to Ain Al-Hilweh at specific times, contributing to tension within the camp and raising fears that this would be a prelude to blowing up the camp from within on the way to dismantling it and ending the Right of Return. This situation prompted Lebanese security sources to ask whether a specific Gulf country with ties to ‘Islamic’ groups, as well as the US, had pushed for the return of those militants, resulting in labeling the camp as a bastion of terrorism. This plan was accompanied by facilitating for several Palestinian youths in Ain al-Hilweh to travel to European countries, especially Scandinavian ones. Lebanese travel agencies carried out this process.”
In the report’s summary, “diplomatic sources outlined several goals for the tours and visits of American officers, including:
Isolating the camp from its surroundings by a wall that allows the events occurring or that will occur within it to be separated.
Making it more difficult for “terrorist groups” to enter and exit. The Americans claimed to know of the existence of roughly 500 armed terrorists inside the camp, including Saudis, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, during their subsequent conversations with the Lebanese side.
The main goal, which the Americans withheld from the Lebanese side, is maintaining the Deal of the Century’s terms, imposing a scenario that exhausts the Palestinians, and forcibly relocating some of them to Lebanon and others to countries that can accommodate them.”
The document’s most significant conclusion appears in noting that “security sources are anticipating the occurrence of tensions and clashes occasionally in the Ain Al-Hilweh camp, under the guidance of Arab and American security services, to aggravate the situation and displace the camp’s residents. This serves the purpose of integrating a portion of these refugees into Lebanese culture while encouraging the remainder to move to foreign nations that provide special facilities in collaboration with the Israeli entity.”
Wall in Ain Al-Hilweh refigee camp (photo from archive).
Votel: The wall and Special Forces in Lebanon
General Joseph Votel, whoserved as the CENTCOM Commander between March 2016 till March 2019, conducted a press conference with correspondents from Arab media at the end of January 2018, following a series of visits to Lebanon and other countries in the region. In response to a question by the Beirut0based newspaper The Daily Star correspondent, Victoria Yan, about the role of US Special Forces in Lebanon, he said: “I make frequent visits to Lebanon. I won’t delve into details about the particular operations we support, but our role is to enhance the capabilities of the Lebanese Armed Forces and help them confront terrorism in Lebanon and prevent its influence on the region.”
In April 2018, the residents of Sidon awoke to extraordinary measures taken by the Lebanese army before a military helicopter carrying an American military delegation with an official at the American embassy in Beirut landed on the city’s sports stadium, supported by another military helicopter. The delegation was led under heavy escort to the Muhammad Zgheib barracks in Sidon. Following a conference with army intelligence officers, the delegation visited the Serob region, overlooking the Ain Al-Hilweh camp, amid security measures along the road leading to the location.
It was later known that Votel was present in the US delegation. However, his deputy, General Charles Brown, undertook the same tour in September 2017, accompanied by officials from the American Embassy in Beirut. The delegation was briefed on the stages of construction of the security wall, which was scheduled to rise to more than 6 meters and be equipped with towers reaching a height of 9 meters, extending west and south of the camp towards Darb Al-Sim and up to the Al-Aytam area. Then, the Americans requested that the Lebanese army meet with the Palestine Liberation Organization factions and inform them that the goal of the wall is to defend the camp and that it should not be labeled a wall but rather a “protection fence” with the aim of “preserving the safety of the camp.”
الجنرال فوتيل يتفقد محيط المخيم ويسأل الجيش عن تفاصيله عزل المخيمات عن محيطها… توتير فاشتباكات تمهيداً لإزالتها
(الأخبار)
علاقة العرب بفكرة المؤامرة ملتبسة إلى حدّ تمرير مؤامرات كبيرة لا يقتنع أحد بها، حتى ولو كشفت تفاصيلها بعد زمن. أما العارفون بتفاصيلها، فغالباً ما لا يجيدون التعامل معها، كون عناصرها غالباً ما تكون سرية، أو مغلّفة بعناصر أخرى. وإذا كان هناك، بين العرب واللبنانيين، من ليس مقتنعاً بالتآمر المستمر على القضية الفلسطينية، فهذه على الأغلب مشكلة لا علاج لها.
قبل عشرة أعوام على الأقل، بدأ مسلسل تراجع تمويل منظمة «الأونروا» المسؤولة عن غوث اللاجئين الفلسطينيين وتشغيلهم، وفُرضت بدائل عن طريق منظمات يموّلها الغرب ويديرها. وسرعان ما ارتفعت نسبة الراغبين أو الساعين إلى الهجرة إلى بلاد العالم!
في تلك الفترة، عُقدت اجتماعات بإدارة الولايات المتحدة، حضرها لبنان عبر موفدين لرئاسة الحكومة باعتباره البلد المضيف لأكبر عدد من اللاجئين. وفي اجتماع شهير في عمّان، قبل نحو تسع سنوات (بالمناسبة، شاركت فيه السفيرة الأميركية الحالية في بيروت دوروثي شيا)، تبلّغ اللبنانيون من مسؤول أميركي بأن عليهم التفكير بواقعية والتوقف عن ترداد معزوفة القرار 194. وحتى لا تكثر الأسئلة، بادر المسؤول الأميركي نفسه بالقول: «لم يعد في لبنان أكثر من 200 ألف لاجئ فلسطيني، بعضهم يريد السفر إلى الغرب، وقسم صغير يدرس إمكانية الانتقال إلى قطاع غزة، وعلى لبنان استيعاب من يتبقّى منهم ودمجهم سكنياً – بإخراجهم من المخيم الى داخل المدن – واجتماعيا واقتصادياً – من خلال إلغاء الحظر المفروض على ممارستهم لمهن وأعمال معينة -، ومنحهم إقامات دائمة في انتظار اللحظة المناسبة لتجنيسهم.
حدثت أمور كثيرة خلال هذه الفترة، لكن هذا الهدف لم يتحقق. وعاكست نتائج الحرب على سوريا المشروع الرامي إلى إنهاء ملف اللجوء الفلسطيني في دول الطوق. وتطوّر واقع قوى المقاومة في لبنان وفلسطين، وحقّق الفلسطينيون إنجازات تتيح لهم فعلياً العودة إلى بلادهم. إلا أن هذا كله تحوّل إلى سبب إضافي عند الأميركيين للتسريع في خطوات، هدفها الفعلي إزالة المخيمات الفلسطينية في لبنان من الوجود.
وثيقة رسمية عربية: المشروع الأميركي
عندما زار رئيس المخابرات العامة الفلسطينية ماجد فرج لبنان في النصف الثاني من تموز، نفى كثيرون أي علاقة للزيارة بأي تطورات سلبية في لبنان. وعندما اندلعت الاشتباكات في عين الحلوة، نهاية تموز، بذريعة عملية اغتيال (غالباً ما تحصل عمليات كهذه مجهولة المنفّذ وتتسبب بمعارك مفتوحة)، خرج من يؤكد أنه لا يوجد أي تنسيق بين الولايات المتحدة والقوى الحليفة لها في لبنان وفلسطين والمنطقة لإشعال المخيمات تمهيداً لتدميرها وإزالتها. أما من تحدثوا عن المشروع الأميركي، فقد اتُّهموا (ونحن منهم) بأنهم شركاء في شيطنة حركة «فتح»، وبتحميل سلطة رام الله أكثر مما تحتمل. غير أن سفارة دولة عربية بارزة في بيروت، لا تربطها أي علاقة بـ«الأخبار»، كانت تراقب وتجمع المعطيات، وأعدّت تقريراً إلى حكومتها، عرضت فيه التطورات السياسية والأمنية التي شهدها الشهران الماضيان. وكانت خلاصة الوثيقة أن ما يجري هو جزء من مشروع أميركي ونقطة على السطر!
في ما يلي، تنشر «الأخبار» نصاً (غير كامل لضرورات مهنية) لوثيقة مصنّفة «سرّيةً للغاية» أعدّتها هذه السفارة، وجاء فيها:
«منذ وقت غير قصير، هناك تحضيرات أميركية مُبكّرة لتصفية مخيم عين الحلوة في جنوب لبنان باعتباره عنواناً أساسياً من عناوين اللجوء الفلسطيني في الشتات. وقد بُوشر هذا التوجه من قبل قادة وضباط عسكريين أوفدتهم واشنطن في السنوات الأخيرة». وتضيف الوثيقة «أن الاشتباكات المُتكررة في مخيم عين الحلوة بين حركة فتح وجماعات ذات طبيعة عقائدية مُتشددة ليست بعيدة عن تحركات قامت بها وفود عسكرية أميركية، وبسرية تامة، إلى المنطقة المُطلة على المخيم، حيث سُجلت زيارات ميدانية مُتكررة للوفود الأميركية التابعة للقيادة العسكرية الوسطى، بلغت ثلاث زيارات على الأقل عام 2018، أبرزها لقائد القيادة الوسطى آنذاك الجنرال جوزيف فوتيل».
ونسبت الوثيقة إلى «مصادر أمنية لبنانية، أن الجنرال فوتيل طلب خلال زيارة دورية لقيادة الجيش اللبناني ترتيب جولة استطلاعية له إلى محيط مخيم عين الحلوة على أن يرافقه فيها ضباط لبنانيون مُلمّون بهذا الملف. وقد استغرب قائد الجيش العماد جوزيف عون هذا الطلب، باعتبار أن بإمكان قائد المنطقة الوسطى الذي تمتد سلطته العسكرية بين أفغانستان ولبنان أن يوفد بدلاً منه فريقاً من ضباطه لهذه الغاية، فضلاً عن أن المخيم لا يُمثل في نظره رقماً صعباً في الحسابات العسكرية الإستراتيجية. وبالفعل، تم للجنرال الأميركي ما أراد، حيث عاين المخيم من تلة سيروب المطلّة على المخيم. وتبيّن أن فوتيل يحمل معه خرائط مفصّلة للمخيم ومحيطه، وقد وجّه أسئلة مُحددة إلى فريق مخابرات الجيش الذي رافقه تناولت النقاط الآتية:
أولاً: واقع المخيم جغرافياً وبشرياً.
ثانياً: هوية المجموعات المسلحة المُنتشرة في داخله وأعدادها وأماكن تمركزها، وتوقف بالتحديد بالسؤال عن جماعة «أنصار الله» بقيادة جمال سليمان ومجموعات إسلامية أخرى.
ثالثاً: عدد النازحين الفلسطينيين الذين وفدوا من سوريا إلى مخيم عين الحلوة.
رابعاً: طبيعة التدابير التي يتخذها الجيش اللبناني حول المخيم.
خامساً: تطورات خطة بناء جدار إسمنتي حول المخيم».
وجاء في الوثيقة أيضاً: «متابعة لهذه الزيارة، تلاحقت الاجتماعات بين الجانبين الأميركي واللبناني، وقام فريق تقني من القيادة المركزية الأميركية بزيارة قيادة الجيش اللبناني في أيلول 2018 والتقى قائد الجيش ومدير المُخابرات ومسؤول الملف الفلسطيني في الجيش. وتناولت مهمة الفريق جوانب تنفيذية، لعل أهمها استكمال بناء الجدار الذي يفصل المخيم عن محيطه، وتم بحث ضم «بساتين الطيار» الواقعة داخل المخيم إلى الجدار، وكانت هذه بمثابة معسكر تدريب لعصبة الأنصار التي تُعتبر فصيلاً بارزاً من بين المجموعات الإسلامية في المخيم. وسبق أن اتُّهمت العصبة بالوقوف وراء عمليات اغتيال من أبرزها قتل القضاة الأربعة على قوس المحكمة في صيدا. لكن علاقة العصبة مع الجيش اتخذت منحى إيجابياً في السنوات اللاحقة، وخاصة لجهة المساعدة في ضبط سلوك مجموعات أقل حجماً».
مسؤول اميركي في لقاء مع مسؤولين لبنانيين في عمان: قسم من ابناء المخيمات يسافر وتوطين منيتبقون في لبنان
وتابعت الوثيقة: «إن بناء جدار حول مخيم عين الحلوة جاء في الأساس بناءً على اقتراح أميركي، على الرغم من أن الجيش تعلّل في حينها بالحاجة إلى اتخاذ تدابير أمنية في ضوء الخُروقات التي تقوم بها عناصر مُسلحة من داخل المخيم باتجاه المُحيط. ولم تَحُل الاعتراضات على هذه الخطوة دون إتمام بنائه. ولاحظت أن عدداً من الإرهابيين الذين غادروا المخيم في أوقات سابقة للمُشاركة في القتال في سوريا، عادوا إلى عين الحلوة مُجدداً في توقيت لافت، الأمر الذي ساهم في إذكاء التوتر داخل المخيم وأثار مخاوف من أن يكون ذلك مقدّمة لتفجير المخيم من الداخل على طريق تفكيكه وإنهاء حق العودة، ما دفع مصادر أمنية لبنانية إلى السؤال عما إذا كانت هناك دولة خليجية مُعينة لها علاقة بمجموعات «إسلامية» وبالولايات المتحدة في آن واحد قد دفعت باتجاه عودة هؤلاء المسلحين بما يؤدي إلى وصم المخيم بأنه معقل للإرهاب». وحسب الوثيقة «ترافق هذا المُخطط مع تقديم تسهيلات لأعداد من الشباب الفلسطيني في عين الحلوة للسفر إلى دول أوروبية، ولا سيما الدول الأسكندنافية. وتولّت هذه العملية شركات سفر لبنانية».
وفي خلاصة التقرير تذكر الوثيقة أن «مصادر دبلوماسية رسمت أهدافاً عدة لجولات وزيارات الضباط الأميركيين، منها:
أولا : فصل المخيم عن جواره بجدار يمكّن من عزل الأحداث التي تجري أو ستجري في داخله عن المحيط
ثانيا: تعقيد مهمة الخروج والدخول على «المجموعات الإرهابية». وادّعى الأميركيون خلال مباحثاتهم المُتتالية مع الجانب اللبناني أن لديهم معطيات عن وجود حوالي 500 إرهابي مسلح داخل المخيم، من بينهم سعوديون وفلسطينيون وسوريون ولبنانيون.
ثالثا: الهدف الأساسي الذي لم يفصح عنه الأميركيون للجانب اللبناني يتعلق بعملية مواكبة صفقة القرن وفرض واقع يؤدي إلى إنهاك الفلسطينيين وفرض توطين قسم منهم في لبنان وتهجير قسم آخر إلى دول يمكن أن تستقبلهم».
وأبرز ما تنتهي إليه الوثيقة هو أنها تنقل «عن مصادر أمنية استشرافها بحدوث توترات واشتباكات من وقت إلى آخر في مخيم عين الحلوة، بتوجيه من أجهزة أمنية عربية وأميركية، بهدف تأزيم الموقف إلى أقصى حد مُمكن وتهجير سكان المخيم، توطئةً لتوطين قسم منهم في المجتمع اللبناني، ودفع القسم الآخر للسفر إلى دول أجنبية تقدم تسهيلات خاصة بالتنسيق مع إسرائيل».
فوتيل: الجدار والقوات الخاصة في لبنان
بعد سلسلة زيارات قام بها إلى لبنان ودول المنطقة، عقد قائد المنطقة العسكرية الأميركية الوسطى الجنرال جوزيف فوتيل لقاء صحافياً نظّمته وزارة الخارجية مع مراسلين لصحف عربية نهاية كانون الثاني 2018. ورداً على سؤال لمراسلة «دايلي ستار» فيكتوريا يان عن دور القوات الخاصة الأميركية في لبنان، قال: «أقوم بزيارات متكررة إلى لبنان.
لن أدخل في الكثير من التفاصيل حول العمليات المحددة التي ندعمها، ولكن يتمثل دورنا في بناء قدرات القوات المسلحة اللبنانية ومساعدتها في مكافحتها للإرهاب في لبنان ومنع تأثيرها على المنطقة».
في نيسان من العام نفسه، أفاق أبناء مدينة صيدا على إجراءات استثنائية اتخذها الجيش اللبناني، قبل أن تحطّ على أرض ملعب المدينة الرياضية طوافة عسكرية تُقل وفداً عسكرياً أميركياً مع مسؤول في السفارة الأميركية في بيروت، وتؤازرها طوافة عسكرية أخرى. وانتقل الوفد وسط حراسة مشددة إلى ثكنة محمد زغيب في حارة صيدا، وبعد اجتماع مع ضباط من مخابرات الجيش، انتقل الجميع إلى منطقة سيروب المُطلة على مخيم عين الحلوة، وسط انتشار أمني على طول الطريق المؤدي إلى المنطقة. وتبيّن لاحقاً أن فوتيل كان في عداد الوفد الأميركي، علماً أن نائبه الجنرال شارل براون قام في أيلول 2017 بالجولة نفسها برفقة مسؤولين في السفارة الأميركية في بيروت. وقد اطّلع الوفد على مراحل العمل في إقامة الجدار الأمني الذي تقرّر أن يرتفع إلى أكثر من 6 أمتار، على أن يُزود بأبراج يصل ارتفاعها إلى 9 أمتار، تلفّ غرب المخيم وجنوبه باتجاه الشرق نحو درب السّيم وحتى منطقة الأيتام. وطلب الأميركيون من الجيش اللبناني الاجتماع بفصائل منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية وإبلاغها أن الهدف من الجدار هو حماية المخيم، وأن لا يطلق عليه اسم جدار، بل «سور حماية» بهدف «الحفاظ على سلامة المخيم».
Ain El-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. (Photo: via UNRWA website)
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website iswww.ramzybaroud.net
Trapped in the middle are 120 thousand people, the estimated population of Ain Al-Hilweh – and, by extension, all of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees.
Ain Al-Hilweh is known as the “Capital of Palestinian Shatat.”
The term might not stir many emotions among those who do not fully understand, let alone experience the harrowing existence of ethnic cleansing and perpetual exile – and the tremendous violence which followed.
‘Shatat‘ is roughly translated into “exile” or “Diaspora”. However, the meaning is much more complex. It can only be understood through lived experience. Even then, it is still not easy to communicate. Perhaps, the Kafkaesque blocks of concrete, zinc and rubble, towered one on top of another and serving as ‘temporary shelters’ for tens of thousands of people, tell a small part of the story.
On July 30, violence in the extremely crowded Palestinian camp resumed, interrupted briefly after the intervention of the Palestinian Joint Action Authority, then resumed, harvesting the lives of 13 people, and counting. Scores more were injured and thousands have fled.
Yet, the majority of the refugees stayed, because several generations of Palestinians in Ain Al-Hilweh understand that there is a point where running away serves no purpose, for it neither guarantees life nor even a dignified death. The massacres of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in September 1982 were a testament to this collective realization.
Before writing this, I spoke to several people in South Lebanon and sorted through many articles and reports describing what is taking place in the camp now. Yet the truth is still blurry, or, at best, selective.
Many in Arabic media have largely relegated Ain Al-Hilweh to a symbolic representation of a rooted Palestinian pain.
Mainstream Western media was hardly concerned about Palestinian pain but focused mostly on the ‘lawlessness’ of the camp, the fact that it exists outside the legal jurisdiction of the Lebanese army, and the proliferation of weapons among Palestinian and other factions, who are engaged in seemingly endless, and supposedly inexplicable infighting.
But Ain Al-Hilweh, like the 11 other Palestinian refugee encampments in Lebanon, is a story of something else entirely, more urgent than mere symbolism, and more rational than being the outcome of lawless refugees.
It is essentially the story of Palestine, or rather, the destruction of Palestine at the hands of Zionist militias in 1947-48. It is a story of contradictions, pride, shame, hope, despair, and, ultimately, betrayal.
It is not easy to follow the timeline prior to the latest round of violence. Some suggest that the fighting began when an assassination attempt – blamed on Fatah fighters in the camp – was carried out against a leader of a rival Islamist group.
The attempt failed and was followed by an ambush, carried out by alleged Islamists who killed a top Fatah commander and several of his bodyguards.
Others suggest that the assassination of the General of the Palestinian National Security, Abu Ashraf Al-Armoushi was completely unprovoked.
Yet others, including Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, blamed outside forces and their “repeated attempts to use Lebanon as a battleground for the settling of scores.”
But who are these entities, and what is the point of such meddling?
It gets murkier. Though impoverished and overcrowded, Ain Al-Hilweh, like other Palestinian camps, is a greatly contested political space. In theory, these camps are meant to solidify and protect the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. In practice, they are also used to undermine this internationally enshrined right.
The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, for example, wants to ensure Fatah loyalists dominate the camp, hence laboring to deny Palestinian rivals any role in South Lebanon.
Fatah is the largest Palestinian group within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It dominates both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. In the past, the group lost its dominance over Ain Al-Hilweh and other camps. For Fatah in Lebanon, it is a constant struggle for relevance.
Ain Al-Hilweh is important for the PA even though the PLO under Abbas’ leadership has largely disowned the refugees of South Lebanon and their Right of Return; it has focused mostly on governing specific regions in the West Bank under the auspices of the Israeli occupation.
Yet, Lebanon’s refugees remain important for the PA for two main reasons: one, as a source of validation for Fatah and, two, to stave off any criticism of, let alone resistance to, the Western-backed Palestinian camp, in Lebanon and everywhere else.
Throughout the years, hundreds of Ain Al-Hilweh refugees were killed in Israeli bombings, but also Palestinian-Lebanese and Palestinian-Palestinian infighting.
Israel did much of the killings to ensure Palestinian resistance in Lebanon is eliminated at the source.
The rest of the violence was carried out by groups that sought dominance and power, sometimes for their own sake, but often as proxy militias for outside powers.
Trapped in the middle are 120 thousand people, the estimated population of Ain Al-Hilweh – and, by extension, all of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees.
Not all Ain Al-Hilweh’s inhabitants are registered Palestinian refugees. The latter is estimated by the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, at approximately 63,000. The rest fled there following the Syrian war, which swelled the population of the Lebanon camps and heightened existing tensions.
The entrapments of refugees, however, are manifold: the actual physical confinement dictated by the lack of opportunities and acceptance in mainstream Lebanese society; the great risks of leaving Lebanon as undocumented refugees smuggled across the Mediterranean, and the feeling, especially among the older generations, that leaving the camps is tantamount to the betrayal of the Right of Return.
All of this is happening in a political context, where the Palestinian leadership has completely removed the refugees from its calculations, where the PA only sees the refugees as pawns in a power play between Fatah and its rivals.
For decades, Israel has sought to dismiss the discussion on Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return. Its constant attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Palestine itself, and its interest in what is taking place in the Shatat is part of its quest to shake the very foundation of the Palestinian cause.
Infighting in Ain Al-Hilweh, if not brought under total and lasting control, might eventually get Israel exactly what it wants: presenting Palestinian refugees as a liability to host countries and, ultimately, destroying the ‘Capital of Shatat‘, along with the hope of four generations of Palestinian refugees to, someday, go back home.
Ain Al-Hilweh is known as the “Capital of Palestinian Shatat.”
The term might not stir many emotions among those who do not fully understand, let alone experience the harrowing existence of ethnic cleansing and perpetual exile – and the tremendous violence which followed.
‘Shatat‘ is roughly translated into “exile” or “Diaspora.” However, the meaning is much more complex. It can only be understood through lived experience. Even then, it is still not easy to communicate. Perhaps, the Kafkaesque blocks of concrete, zinc and rubble towered one on top of another and served as ‘temporary shelters’ for tens of thousands of people tell a small part of the story.
On July 30, violence in the extremely crowded Palestinian camp resumed, interrupted briefly after the intervention of the Palestinian Joint Action Authority, then resumed, harvesting the lives of 13 people and counting. Scores more were injured, and thousands have fled.
Yet, the majority of the refugees stayed because several generations of Palestinians in Ain Al-Hilweh understand that there is a point where running away serves no purpose, for it neither guarantees life nor even a dignified death. The massacres of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in September 1982 were a testament to this collective realization.
Before writing this, I spoke to several people in South Lebanon and sorted through many articles and reports describing what is taking place in the camp now. Yet the truth is still blurry or, at best, selective.
Destruction caused by heavy clashes between Palestinian factions leave a street in Ain al Hilweh in ruin, August 2, 2023. STR | AP
Many in Arabic media have largely relegated Ain Al-Hilweh to a symbolic representation of a rooted Palestinian pain.
Mainstream Western media was hardly concerned about Palestinian pain but focused mostly on the ‘lawlessness’ of the camp, the fact that it exists outside the legal jurisdiction of the Lebanese army, and the proliferation of weapons among Palestinian and other factions, who are engaged in seemingly endless, and supposedly inexplicable infighting.
But Ain Al-Hilweh, like the 11 other Palestinian refugee encampments in Lebanon, is a story of something else entirely, more urgent than mere symbolism and more rational than being the outcome of lawless refugees.
It is essentially the story of Palestine, or rather, the destruction of Palestine at the hands of Zionist militias in 1947-48. It is a story of contradictions, pride, shame, hope, despair, and, ultimately, betrayal.
A Palestinian refugee runs past burning tires during a 2019 protest in Ain al-Hilweh against a decision by Lebanon to impose work restrictions on Palestinians. STR | AP
It is not easy to follow the timeline prior to the latest round of violence. Some suggest that the fighting began when an assassination attempt – blamed on Fatah fighters in the camp – was carried out against a leader of a rival Islamist group.
The attempt failed and was followed by an ambush carried out by alleged Islamists who killed a top Fatah commander and several of his bodyguards.
Others suggest that the assassination of the General of the Palestinian National Security, Abu Ashraf Al-Armoushi, was completely unprovoked.
Yet others, including Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, blamed outside forces and their “repeated attempts to use Lebanon as a battleground for the settling of scores.”
But who are these entities, and what is the point of such meddling?
It gets murkier. Though impoverished and overcrowded, Ain Al-Hilweh, like other Palestinian camps, is a greatly contested political space. In theory, these camps are meant to solidify and protect the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. In practice, they are also used to undermine this internationally enshrined right.
A general view of Ain al-Hilweh in the Lebanese southern port city of Sidon. Marwan Naamani | AP
The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, for example, wants to ensure Fatah loyalists dominate the camp, hence laboring to deny Palestinian rivals any role in South Lebanon.
Fatah is the largest Palestinian group within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It dominates both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. In the past, the group lost its dominance over Ain Al-Hilweh and other camps. For Fatah in Lebanon, it is a constant struggle for relevance.
Ain Al-Hilweh is important for the PA even though the PLO under Abbas’ leadership has largely disowned the refugees of South Lebanon and their Right of Return; it has focused mostly on governing specific regions in the West Bank under the auspices of the Israeli occupation.
Yet, Lebanon’s refugees remain important for the PA for two main reasons: one, as a source of validation for Fatah and, two, to stave off any criticism of, let alone resistance to, the Western-backed Palestinian camp, in Lebanon and everywhere else.
Throughout the years, hundreds of Ain Al-Hilweh refugees were killed in Israeli bombings, but also Palestinian-Lebanese and Palestinian-Palestinian infighting.
Israel did much of the killings to ensure Palestinian resistance in Lebanon is eliminated at the source.
The rest of the violence was carried out by groups that sought dominance and power, sometimes for their own sake, but often as proxy militias for outside powers.
Trapped in the middle are 120 thousand people, the estimated population of Ain Al-Hilweh – and, by extension, all of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees.
Not all Ain Al-Hilweh’s inhabitants are registered Palestinian refugees. The latter is estimated by the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, at approximately 63,000. The rest fled there following the Syrian war, which swelled the population of the Lebanon camps and heightened existing tensions.
The entrapments of refugees, however, are manifold: the actual physical confinement dictated by the lack of opportunities and acceptance in mainstream Lebanese society; the great risks of leaving Lebanon as undocumented refugees smuggled across the Mediterranean, and the feeling, especially among the older generations, that leaving the camps is tantamount to the betrayal of the Right of Return.
All of this is happening in a political context, where the Palestinian leadership has completely removed the refugees from its calculations, where the PA only sees the refugees as pawns in a power play between Fatah and its rivals.
For decades, Israel has sought to dismiss the discussion on Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return. Its constant attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Palestine itself and its interest in what is taking place in the Shatat is part of its quest to shake the very foundation of the Palestinian cause.
Infighting in Ain Al-Hilweh, if not brought under total and lasting control, might eventually get Israel exactly what it wants: presenting Palestinian refugees as a liability to host countries and, ultimately, destroying the ‘Capital of Shatat,’ along with the hope of four generations of Palestinian refugees to, someday, go back home.
Fatah official Abbas Zaki and PFLP official Maher Al-Taher comment on the meeting of leaders of the Palestinian factions in Egypt.
Commenting on the meeting of the leaders of the Palestinian factions in the Egyptian city of El Alamein, Abbas Zaki, a member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement, pointed out that the Israeli occupation did not leave any justification for preserving any agreement with it.
In an interview for Al Mayadeen, Abbas stressed that there are some sides that benefit from the Palestinian division and financed it and do not want to overcome the differences.
He stressed that Palestinian factions “must give ourselves some hope, especially since this stage requires overcoming all differences and the past to start a new beginning.”
On his part, Maher Al-Taher, the head of international relations in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), told Al Mayadeen that the goal of the Egypt meeting is to create a form of procrastination, with the continuation of the current situation, making reference to the Palestinian Authority in particular.
Al-Taher considered that the latest meeting did not yield any results, adding, “Why did the Palestinian Authority not implement what was previously agreed upon?”
The PFLP official accused the Palestinian Authority of pursuing a policy of “procrastination and indecisiveness,” claiming that the latter does not seek to implement the discussed files.
He said there are developments at all levels, whether at the international, regional, or Palestinian level, underlining that the Palestinian people “shall never surrender.”
Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas thanked Egypt and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for hosting the meeting of Palestinian factions in the Egyptian city of El Alamein.
In the concluding statement of the meeting, Abbas considered the event a first and important step to complete the Palestinian dialogue, hoping that it would achieve the desired goals as soon as possible.
On his part, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said during the meeting that the Palestinian people “are facing an exceptional stage in the course of the struggle with the enemy, which requires us to think collectively and take exceptional decisions in the face of Zionist policies.”
In his speech, Haniyeh stressed the importance of continuing such meetings until the completion of the comprehensive national formula, noting that the Israeli occupation government “wants to put an end to the struggle by all means possible, which is evident in its terrorist attacks on the Palestinian people.”
It is noteworthy that the Egypt meeting was boycotted by three Palestinian factions, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, in protest of the continuation of political detention in the occupied West Bank.
The deadly Israeli invasion of Jenin on July 3 was not a surprise.
Also unsurprising is the fact that the killing of 12 Palestinians, wounding of 120 more and the destruction of nearly 80 percent of the Jenin Refugee Camp’s homes and infrastructure will not make an iota of a difference.
Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite his lofty promises of destroying the “safe haven … of the terrorist enclave in Jenin”, must have known that his bloody exercise was ultimately futile.
Indeed, as the Israeli military machine was toppling homes, smashing cars and harvesting lives, several Palestinian retaliatory attacks were reported, including in Tel Aviv on July 4 and in the Kedumim illegal settlement on July 6.
In fact, unlike the Israeli response to the Second Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) of 2000, extreme violence will not weaken but heighten Palestinian Resistance and counterattacks.
Back then, the Palestinian Authority had a degree of control over Palestinian groups and managed, although with great difficulties, to contain the Palestinian street.
Now, the PA has no such leverage.
Indeed, when a delegation of PA officials visited Jenin on July 5 to show ‘solidarity’ and to promise help in the recovery efforts, Jenin residents kicked the officials out of their camp.
Thus, neither did Israel manage to regain any kind of control over Jenin, nor did the PA succeed in reinventing itself as the savior of the people.
So, what was the point of all of this?
he deadly Israeli invasion of Jenin on July 3 was not a surprise.
Also unsurprising is the fact that the killing of 12 Palestinians, wounding of 120 more and the destruction of nearly 80 percent of the Jenin Refugee Camp’s homes and infrastructure will not make an iota of a difference.
Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite his lofty promises of destroying the “safe haven … of the terrorist enclave in Jenin”, must have known that his bloody exercise was ultimately futile.
Indeed, as the Israeli military machine was toppling homes, smashing cars and harvesting lives, several Palestinian retaliatory attacks were reported, including in Tel Aviv on July 4 and in the Kedumim illegal settlement on July 6.
In fact, unlike the Israeli response to the Second Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) of 2000, extreme violence will not weaken but heighten Palestinian Resistance and counterattacks.
Back then, the Palestinian Authority had a degree of control over Palestinian groups and managed, although with great difficulties, to contain the Palestinian street.
Now, the PA has no such leverage.
Indeed, when a delegation of PA officials visited Jenin on July 5 to show ‘solidarity’ and to promise help in the recovery efforts, Jenin residents kicked the officials out of their camp.
Thus, neither did Israel manage to regain any kind of control over Jenin, nor did the PA succeed in reinventing itself as the savior of the people.
So, what was the point of all of this?
Palestinian youth take shots at invading Israeli troops in Jenin. Right, an explosion as a bomb erupts in front of an Israeli military vehicle in Jenin. Photos | AP
Writing in Haaretz, Zvi Bar’el linked the whole Jenin operation, dubbed ‘House and Garden’, to Netanyahu’s “loss of political control” over his government, in fact, the whole country.
It was “a showy operation,” Bar’el wrote, and “no sensible person in the army or the Shin Bet security service, or even in the silent circles of the right, actually believed that the operation would eradicate” the armed resistance, not only in Jenin but anywhere throughout the West Bank.
A ‘showy operation,’ indeed, and the best proof of that is the language emanating from official Israeli sources, lead among them Netanyahu himself.
The politically but also legally embattled rightwing Israeli leader bragged about his army’s “comprehensive action”, carried out in a “very systemic way … from the ground, from the air (and) with superb intelligence.”
He vowed to “return to Jenin” if “Jenin returns to terror”, and this “will happen much faster and with much greater power than what people might imagine.”
Tel Aviv’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, also spoke about the military’s “success”, in “deal(ing) a heavy blow to the terror organizations in Jenin” and recording “impressive operational achievements.”
But none of this hyped language is true. What Israel refers to as ‘terror organizations’ in Jenin is part of a much larger phenomenon of armed Resistance, itself an outcome of an even larger movement of popular resistance that is felt in every corner of Occupied Palestine.
Quelling the rebellion is not a question of firepower. On the contrary, Israel’s ‘impressive operational achievement’ has simply poured fuel on a raging fire.
To distract from his mounting problems and to keep his hardline coalitions of far-right politicians and their popular base of illegal Jewish settlers happy, Netanyahu has done the most foolish thing. He has simply turned a potential armed rebellion in Palestine into an imminent West Bank-wide revolution.
Unlike the Second Intifada, neither Israel nor the PA has any leverage over the new generation of Palestinian resisters. They are neither moved by false promises of a state, of jobs, of international funds nor seem to fear threats of detention, torture or even death.
On the contrary, the greater the violence Israel metes out against Palestinians, the more emboldened they become.
Any examination of the political discourse of this new Palestinian generation, including that of social media, demonstrates a degree of fearlessness that is truly unprecedented.
This courage can be attributed in part to Gaza, whose ongoing resistance, despite the siege and horrific wars in the last two decades, has greatly impacted the youth of the West Bank.
And, while PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian enemies engaged in a protracted charade of ‘national unity talks’ and ‘power-sharing,’ the new generation operated entirely independent from these superficial and insincere slogans.
Though they were mostly born or matured after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, they perceive the political language and culture of that era as alien to them.
It is as if two different Palestines exist – one of Abbas, Fatah, factions, Oslo, donors’ money, ‘peace process’ and dirty politics and another of united Resistance on the ground, sumoud (steadfastness), Gaza, Jenin, Nablus, Lions’ Den and more.
Neither Netanyahu and Gallant nor Abbas and his PA allies seem to understand, nor are willing to understand, this historical shift in political discourses, cultures and language.
They are disinterested in the cultural shift simply because it does not serve the status quo, which has served them well. Netanyahu wants to stay in power as long as possible; Gallant wants to demonstrate his military prowess – for the sake of running for a higher office in the future – and Abbas wants to keep whatever share of power and money allocated to him.
Perhaps, at a deeper level, they all understand that what worked in the past – more violence in the case of Israel and more financial bribes and corruption in the case of the PA, will not work in the present.
Yet, they are likely to stay the course simply because they are weak, desperate and have no long-term visions, let alone real understanding of what is transpiring in Palestine now.
In some ways, it is a generational problem and a conflict.
As soon as Israel invaded Jenin, all the traditional actors returned to the old script of previous Israeli wars and invasions. They scurried into position, using the ever-predictable language, approving, condemning, applauding and cautioning.
For the older generation, the time has stood still. But it has not. The new Palestinian generation has buried the ghosts of the past and moved on. And now, they are ready to speak for themselves and to fight for themselves. Jenin is just the start.
Egyptian Prime Minister Nasser cheered in Cairo. (Photo: via Wikimedia Commons)
– Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Nasser miscalculated Israel’s reaction. Though the Israeli government knew full well that Nasser did not intend to go to war, they used his brinkmanship as a pretense to start a war of their own, with the aim of building a mini-empire, a greater Israel.
June is the month when one recalls the June 1967 war.
Historians re-evaluate an event not only based on new evidence. Their analyses are also influenced by the passage of time, which enables them to reconsider different aspects of formative events such as this one.
And when you probe into history and use documents and solid evidence, you sometimes disappoint friends and enemies alike.
In this piece, I would like to revisit the role of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser in that war. His role, I think, does not always match everyone’s perceptions of this great leader, and maybe disappoints perceived evaluations of his contributions to the struggle.
Nasser, Palestine and Israel
Here, I write from a Palestinian perspective, in the sense that I am less interested in what happened to Egypt because of Nasser’s role in Palestine – undoubtedly a worthy topic. Instead, I am interested in the Egyptian leader’s impact on the history of modern Palestine.
Nasser came to power as part of the Free Officers movement in the July 1952 Revolution. Very soon after, he settled in his office as deputy leader of the movement, before taking over the leadership from Muhmad Naguib.
Even as a deputy, he was interested in negotiating with Israel. He used a senior diplomat in France to initiate talks with the Israelis. His counterpart was Moshe Sharett, at the time Israel’s Foreign Minister.
Nasser saw the Nakba, indeed, as a catastrophe. He believed strongly in the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and deemed Israel as a huge threat to the Arab world. But Nasser was also a pragmatist who understood well how Israel became an essential part of the American imperialist set-up in the Arab world, thus sought ways to limit its potential danger.
Back then in 1952, Nasser did not necessarily deem the United States as the arch-enemy of progressive Arab regimes and was hoping that a realistic approach towards Israel would curry favor with the Americans.
In 1952, he made reasonable twin demands, and was surprised to learn that both Britain and the US found acceptable: An unconditional return of Palestinian refugees; and a land bridge through the south of the Naqab (the Negev) linking Jordan and Egypt. In return, he was willing to agree to a non-aggression pact with Israel and, eventually, peace.
Ben Gurion and His Two Cronies
The Israeli Prime Minister at the time, David Ben Gurion, categorically rejected any contact with the Egyptian leader. In fact, from the moment it was clear that Nasser would be the leader of Egypt, Ben Gurion searched for a way of toppling him.
Sharett, on the other hand, was more forthcoming; not that he agreed to Nasser’s conditions, but he valued the very idea of negotiations and hoped to find a compromise.
For a brief period, a compromise seemed possible, when Sharett replaced Ben-Gurion as prime minister of Israel for a year and a half, between 1954-1955.
Although he was no longer in government, Ben-Gurion left behind two cronies, who, like him, believed Nasser had to be overthrown. This belief was itself an outcome of a rooted ideology according to which only a display of Israel’s ruthlessness could tame the Arabs and obliterate any pan-Arabist agenda that could be of help to the Palestinians.
One of the two cronies was the Minister of Defense, Pinchas Lavon, and the other was the Chief of the General Staff, Moshe Dayan.
The three plotted a series of actions to defeat Sharett’s desire to reach an agreement with Nasser. It began by violating the armistice agreement with Egypt by building an illegal colony on no man’s land, followed by the infamous massacre in the village of Qibyah in the West Bank.
The Qibyah massacre was carried out by an Israeli commandos unit headed by Ariel Sharon in 1953. 65 villagers were murdered, partly by blowing up their houses while they were still sleeping inside.
But the peak of this campaign was the setup of a terrorist organization of Egyptian Jews that was ordered to plant bombs in cinemas and libraries associated with Western culture, to increase the mistrust of Nasser in the eyes of the Americans.
The terrorists were caught before they were able to carry out their actions.
Ben Gurion Back in Power
Ben Gurion returned to power after a relatively brief absence. In February 1955, he sent his army into the Gaza Strip to carry out a military operation, which resulted in the killing of 37 dead Egyptian soldiers. Until that very moment, as he indicated by Nasser himself in his memoir, the Egyptian leader was open to negotiations with Israel, sticking to a position that the Americans and the British still regarded as common-sensical and doable.
When Nasser understood that the West was unwilling to exert pressure on Israel and would not lift a finger to stop Israel’s colonial, annexationist ambitions towards the Arab world, he changed course. He now believed that Israel would attack both Syria and Jordan to expand its geographic boundaries. That called for a new way of thinking.
Nasser’s New Strategy
Then, Nasser embarked on a new strategy, which included more visible support for the nascent Palestinian guerrilla resistance efforts against Israel, attempts at pan-Arab unity, the creation of a non-alignment bloc with India and Yugoslavia, and purchasing more modern arms for his army.
On top of all these policies, he opted for what is known as brinkmanship policy – using war rhetoric and seemingly preparation for war, with the hope that this would be enough to force the West to exert pressure on Israel to cease its aggression.
This strategy included the closure of the Tiran straits connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, concentrating an army in the Sinai Peninsula, and asking the UN to withdraw from the border between Egypt and Israel.
But Nasser miscalculated Israel’s reaction. Though the Israeli government knew full well that Nasser did not intend to go to war, they used his brinkmanship as a pretense to start a war of their own, with the aim of building a mini-empire, a greater Israel.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Declassified Documents
Recently declassified documentation from the Israeli cabinet meetings shows clearly that the Israeli leaders understood that war was not imminent and that much depended on their own actions.
In fact, one did not need to wait for the opening of the archives to reach such a conclusion. Several Israeli leaders admitted as much. One of them was Menachem Begin, who was part of the government at the time, and who told senior officers in the Israeli army:
“In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Israel’s Need for War
As in 1948, in 1967, Israel also needed wars to fulfill the typical objectives of any settler colonial movement: having more geographical space with less native population living in it.
Since 1963, Israel had prepared comprehensive plans, waiting for the perfect movement to initiate its ‘greater Israel’ project. But Israel failed because it erroneously believed that the demographic imbalances resulting from the creation of such an entity can easily be solved by oppressing, for decades, millions of Palestinians. Since it was not possible for Israel to replicate the ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948, it opted to treat the newly occupied peoples as inmates in a huge, and ever-growing prison.
The Palestinian resistance to this monstrous policy continues to this very day.
The lesson is that, even with a leftist, Labor government, which ruled Israel between 1948 to 1977, Israel did not seek peace. To the contrary, Tel Aviv hoped to impose its will on the Arab world, by allying itself closely to the West.
The consequences of this strategy were felt beyond Palestine, whose people were the main victims of this Israeli intransigence. In fact, it impacted drastically and detrimentally the whole of the Arab World.
Unfortunately, we are still witnessing the bitter fruits of this aggression, which can only be stopped by the liberation of Palestine and the creation of a democratic state over the whole of historical Palestine, which would ensure the return of its refugees.
Only this would enable us to close this dangerous and sorrowful chapter in the history of the Arab World and, hopefully, allow all of us to begin a new and more hopeful chapter.
An Israeli settler stands beside a stolen Palestinian home in the village of Lifta, whose residents were forced out in 1948 during the Nakba, on the outskirts of Al-Quds, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023. (AP)
Israeli media publishes documents revealing that the Israeli Occupation Forces poisoned the lands of the village of Aqraba, south of Nablus, in 1972, in order to uproot its residents and occupy their lands and homes.
Israeli media published documents revealing that the Israeli Occupation Forces poisoned the lands of the Palestinian village of Aqraba, south of Nablus, in 1972 in order to force out its residents and occupy their lands.
Haaretz published the report on its Hebrew page without making any reference to it on its English website. According to the report, the documents tell the story of “the ways in which the governments of Israel worked behind the scenes, and their settlement projects, in a way that has not been told before.”
In the beginning, the report explained, the IOF confiscated land from the Palestinian village of Aqraba, under the false pretext of establishing training fields for its members. After the Palestinians insisted on continuing the cultivation of their land. As a result, the IOF then ordered its members to ensure “non-cultivation of land in the field, including the elimination of existing cultivation by driving in the field.”
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) May 25, 2023
When that failed, the IOF scaled up their aggression and held a discussion on the subject of “Spraying the Deviation Areas in the Tel Tal Sector [Aqaba region].” The decision was made after it was confirmed that this aggression would have “prohibited” farmers from entering their lands for three days “for fear of stomach poisoning,” while their cattle would be “banned from entering these areas for another week” due to the health risks it posed.
It is worth noting that this was not the first aggression of its kind. Last year, it was revealed that ‘Israel’ also used biological weapons to uproot Palestinians and steal their lands and homes.
‘Israel’ wages biological warfare against Palestinians in 1948
The Israeli occupation committed various atrocities against the Palestinian people before the establishment of the Israeli entity in 1948, but it was only now revealed that the occupation carried out campaigns of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in 1947 and 1948 using biological and bacteriological warfare, according to Israeli historians.
The details of “Israel’s” secret use of biological weapons and poison against Palestinians during the 1947/48 ethnic cleansing campaign have been revealed in a recent article titled “‘Cast Thy Bread’: Israeli Biological Warfare during the 1948 War” by historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar and published by Middle Eastern Studies.
According to Haaretz, the article is a rarity because it was researched and published against the wishes of the Israeli security establishment, which has tried for years to block any embarrassing historical documents that expose war crimes against Arabs, such as murdering prisoners, ethnic cleansing, and destroying villages. Moreover, the article is based on original documents obtained from the Israeli occupation’s national archive.
Scientists and battlefield units alike joined forces, the article said, to carry out campaigns aimed at killing Palestinians by poisoning their water sources, such as wells, in addition to spreading typhoid in Palestinian villages. The typhoid bacteria was also used by “Tel Aviv” against the Egyptian and Jordanian armies in a bid to weaken them and force them to retreat.
According to historians, the systemic campaign of biological warfare was approved by the founder of “Israel” and the occupation regime’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
Read: Since the Nakba – More than 100,000 martyrs, 6.4 mln refugees
“Israel” used poison in various ways, one of which cited by the article includes sending typhoid in bottles to the southern front via Israeli occupation forces. The villages mentioned in the article include Akka and Al-Jalil, which goes with documents from the British, Palestinians, Egyptians, and the Red Cross recording dozens of cases of poisoning and severe illness among local residents.
The Israeli occupation, right after its declaration as a colonialist arm usurping the state of Palestine in May 1948, used the same methods in Gaza, sending Israeli soldiers who posed as Palestinians to the strip with tubes containing typhoid on their person with the aim of poisoning the local water supply.
Despite a lot of evidence pointing to the Israeli occupation’s use of biological weapons, and “Tel Aviv” getting caught red-handed on various occasions, the occupation is yet to admit to its usage of biological warfare.
The Israeli security establishment has for decades been trying to cover up its tracks of violating international law against Palestinians, blocking any historical documents exposing its war crimes, such as ethnic cleansing, from ever making it into the hands of the public.
And despite the mountains of evidence stacked against the Israeli occupation, “Israel” was never sanctioned or had war declared against it by the West that used the pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and biological weapons to invade Iraq – all due to “Tel Aviv” being a class ally to the United States and its friends in Europe.
It is noteworthy that the Israeli occupation has refused on numerous occasions to commit to the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed warfare, and though it signed the Geneva Convention, the Knesset has never ratified the document.
Fadi, a Syrian teenager with curly hair and an acne-covered face, has miraculously survived one of the greatest migrant boat disasters in the modern history of the Mediterranean.
Only 104 people have been rescued from a boat that carried an estimated 750 refugees after it capsized on June 13 in the open sea near the coastal town of Pylos.
Scores of lifeless bodies have been pulled out from the water, and many more have washed ashore. Hundreds are still missing, feared dead, many of whom are women and children, as they huddled on the lower deck of the 30-meter boat.
Fadi survived. A heart-rending photo shows the young Syrian sobbing as he met his older brother, Mohammed, who rushed to the port of Kalamata, Greece, to see him. The two brothers could not embrace, as Fadi was still trapped behind metal gates in a confinement made for the survivors.
The latest boat disaster tells a much bigger story than the sympathetic news headlines attempted to convey. It is a story of war, poverty, inequality and despair.
The identity of those who died at sea gives us clues to the origins of the story. They were Syrians, Palestinians, Afghans and more. These refugees were seeking safety, coveting mere survival.
The sad irony is that the latest episode of this seemingly endless horror took place exactly one week before the United Nations was set to ‘celebrate’ World Refugee Day, held on June 20 of each year.
Most references to this day by the UN, UN-related organizations and international charities around the world seem to emphasize empowerment and positivity. A statement by the UN Refugees Agency (UNHCR) spoke of “honoring the refugees around the globe” and referenced Refugee Day as one that “celebrates the strength and courage” of refugees.
The contradictions of the discourses pertaining to the refugees should be too obvious to miss. But we often do. Too many lavish dinners will be catered in the name of the refugees in many Western capitals and embassies around the world. Diplomats will demand action, and well-paid intellectuals will enunciate the moral and ethical responsibilities of governments and civil societies. Many will clap, and numerous business cards will be exchanged. But little will change.
Over 23,000 refugees have drowned or gone missing while trying to reach European shores between 2014 and 2022. The real number is expected to be much higher as there are no official records of how many people embark on these deadly journeys in the first place. “We have hundreds of records of bodies that are washed up to Mediterranean shores when we don’t know of any known shipwreck,” Julia Black of the International Organization for Migration told the BBC’s Today Program.
The identity of the victims – Syrians, Palestinians, Afghans, Sudanese … – should have been a major clue as to why people take such terrible risks only to reach European countries, where they endure great hardships, including racial discrimination, just to survive.
Yet, we hardly confront the real culprits behind all of this: weapon manufacturers and military interventionists and political meddlers who provoke and/or exacerbate conflicts. These individuals and governments see the Middle East, Africa and the rest of the Global South as mere space for geopolitical rivalries, cheap raw materials and human and economic exploitation.
But when the outcome of such dreadful policies results in the least irritant to the socioeconomic fabrics of Western societies, desperate refugees become villains, to be shunned, ignored, imprisoned, and deported.
In reality, world refugees, estimated at over 100 million, are not ‘celebrated’, but mostly vilified. They are seen as a burden, not an opportunity to confront and fix the underlying problems, old and new, that led to their original displacement.
While visiting Tunisia on June 11, along with far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, was adamant about rebranding the tragedy of refugees as something else entirely.
In their joint statement, the high-ranking European politicians vowed to break “the cynical business model of smuggler(s)” because “it is horrible to see how they (the smugglers) deliberately risk human lives for profit.” Considering that the arms industry is one of Europe’s most thriving business models, one cannot help but pause at the irony of such remarks.
No other collective experiences illustrate Western complicity as that of the Palestinian people. Thousands of them have perished while escaping for their lives from Israel’s horrific wars and sieges. They were dying in large numbers as soon as Zionist militants began the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-48.
Yet, after 75 years of such suffering and pain, western countries continue to do everything in their power to support Israel and disempower – even blame – Palestinians.
Indeed, those who are truly interested in commemorating World Refugee Day ought to fully fathom the protracted Palestinian refugee experience to truly understand where the problem actually lies.
On a recent trip to Turkiye, I met with many Palestinian refugees, mostly from Gaza, whose families were also made refugees by Israel in 1948, and again in 1967. These mostly young people are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to cross the sea into Greece, then to other European countries in search of work.
Mohammed B. told me that he had attempted 9 times to reach Greece. “The last time I was caught. I was severely beaten and left for dead in a dark forest,” he said, “but I will try again.”
Mohammed’s uncle was killed by Israel during the First Intifada; several members of his family died due to the lack of medicine in the besieged Strip, and nearly 35 members of the family, mostly children, live in a three-bedroom house that was bombed by Israel on two separate occasions.
Mohammed, and millions like him, are not the villains. They are the victims.
For World Refugee Day to matter, it must address the root causes of such complex and ongoing problems. Only an honest and deep understanding can serve as a starting point for a meaningful conversation and, hopefully, meaningful actions.
Feature photo | Felipe Dana | AP
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Global Campaign to Return to Palestine honors several “Return Ambassadors” in Beirut, Lebanon, May 29 2023. (@return_ar/Twitter)
By Al Mayadeen English
The Global Campaign to Return to Palestine honors several influential political and intellectual figures from around the world who have been at the forefront of the Palestinian cause in Beirut Lebanon.
The Global Campaign to Return to Palestine honored several influential political and intellectual figures from around the world who have been at the forefront of the Palestinian cause. The ceremony took place on Monday and was attended by dozens of activists. The event, known as the “First International Meeting of Return Ambassadors,” was held in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
— الحملة العالمية للعودة إلى فلسطين – GCRP (@return_ar) May 29, 2023
According to the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine, the concept of “Return Ambassador to Palestine” aims to enhance solidarity with Palestine and utilize available global opportunities to raise public awareness about the rights of the Palestinian people and their just cause.
The campaign emphasizes that the “Return Ambassador” title is bestowed upon a group of international symbolic figures known for their supportive positions regarding the Palestinian cause.
The Global Campaign to Return to Palestine affirms its commitment to the right of the Palestinian people to return to their land and their ongoing struggle for this right, participating in various international and local forums where the “Return Ambassadors” are involved.
On the second day of the International Meeting of Return Ambassadors, the inaugural session, titled “Challenges and Prospects of Solidarity Work with Palestine,” took place. The second session discussed the challenges and prospects of solidarity work with Palestine, along with the project of the “Return Ambassador.”
— الحملة العالمية للعودة إلى فلسطين – GCRP (@return_ar) May 26, 2023
During the first meeting day, the “Return Ambassadors to Palestine” visited several Palestinian refugee homes in the Burj Al-Barajneh camp, where they received a warm popular reception. The ambassadors reaffirmed the Palestinians’ right to return and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
— الحملة العالمية للعودة إلى فلسطين – GCRP (@return_ar) May 29, 2023
The three-day meeting, attended by political, sports, and artistic personalities, as well as influential individuals from 24 countries, aims to solidify the presence of the Palestinian cause in the international arena across various fields and geographical regions.
زيارة سفراء العودة إلى فلسطين لعدد من منازل اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في مخيم برج البراجنة بعد الاستقبال الشعبي الحاشد لهم .. وأكدو على حق العودة وتحرير فلسطين من البحر إلى النهر ..
— الحملة العالمية للعودة إلى فلسطين – GCRP (@return_ar) May 28, 2023
In preparation for the meeting, the campaign displayed welcoming banners for the guests in the streets of Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
خلال استعداد الحملة العالمية للعودة إلى فلسطين لاستقبال الضيوف الأعزاء المشاركين في الملتقى الدولي لسفراء العودة إلى فلسطين والمقام من 28 إلى 30 آيار في بيروت، تنشر الحملة العالمية لافتات طرقية ترحيبية على امتداد طريق مطار بيروت الدولي، حيث يظهر في اللافتات صور المشاركين في… pic.twitter.com/zM3A4N6XfY
— الحملة العالمية للعودة إلى فلسطين – GCRP (@return_ar) May 27, 2023
The Global Campaign to Return to Palestine consistently organizes honorary and solidarity events for the Palestinian cause, with the aim of cementing its presence on the international stage in all fields and geographic areas.
Activists of Palestine Action, UK-based pro-Palestine protest network, taking over a Newcastle factory owned by Israeli-owned weapons company Rafael on The Nakba Day (May 15, 2023).
On May 15, 2023, the United Nations General Assembly will convene a significant high-level meeting to solemnly observe the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, a term denoting the mass displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948.
This historic occasion marks the first time the international community has officially acknowledged the date, serving as a poignant reminder of the profound historical injustice endured by the Palestinian people.
Nonetheless, the UN’s decision to commemorate this day has faced opposition from certain nations. The United States and the United Kingdom were among those that voted against the commemoration. Furthermore, the Israeli foreign ministry has called upon UN member states to refrain from participating in an event that it perceives as adopting a narrative that undermines Israel’s right to exist.
All the way to the US, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has made a noteworthy effort by introducing a resolution in the US House of Representatives to recognize the Palestinian Nakba. This term encapsulates the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
The proposed measure, presented by Tlaib, a Palestinian American representing Michigan, comes at a time when progressive voices in the United States are gaining momentum in advocating for Palestinian rights and seeking to impose restrictions on U.S. aid to Israel.
The resolution describes the Nakba as the “uprooting, dispossession, and exile of the Palestinian people from their homeland.” It asserts that addressing the Nakba and remedying the injustices inflicted upon the Palestinian people are indispensable components of establishing a just and enduring peace. The proposal emphasizes that the Nakba represents the fundamental cause underlying the complexities and divisions between Israelis and Palestinians.
As Tlaib prepared to introduce the resolution in the House of Representatives, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attempted to cancel an event organized by the congresswoman on Capitol Hill to commemorate the Nakba. Nevertheless, the commemoration proceeded on Wednesday, albeit with a change of venue from the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center to a nearby Senate office building, still within the Capitol campus.
Amidst this alteration, a multitude of supporters of Palestinian rights crowded into a Senate committee hearing room, many adorned with keffiyehs and traditional Palestinian thobes.
In front of the enthusiastic audience, Tlaib expressed her resolute stance: “I declare loudly and unequivocally, through the introduction of a historic resolution in Congress: The Nakba occurred in 1948, and its ramifications persist to this day.”
The Nakba stands as a poignant reminder of a profound historical injustice, and its recognition within international forums contributes to a broader understanding of the plight endured by the Palestinian people. By amplifying their voices and advocating for justice, these efforts aim to foster a more equitable future in the pursuit of lasting peace in the region.
Countries across the World Commemorate Nakba
To commemorate Nakba, a remarkable demonstration was held in London, as protesters marched towards the British cabinet headquarters, chanting in support of Palestine and denouncing the Israeli occupation. The demonstration, titled “Nakba 75 – End Apartheid, End the Occupation,” commenced in the heart of London outside the BBC headquarters before proceeding to Downing Street, the location of the British prime minister’s office.
BREAKING: Palestine Action spray Britain’s Foreign Office with blood-red paint, to commemorate 75 years since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began #Nakba75pic.twitter.com/hyNp2DmZHE
Zaher Birawi, the head of the UK-based EuroPal Forum, emphasized that the commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba serves as a reaffirmation of the ongoing struggle of the Palestinian people for their sacred right of return. Birawi called upon the British government to acknowledge its historical responsibility for the sufferings endured by Palestinians from the time of the Balfour Declaration until the present day. He urged the government to promptly cease its support for the occupying entity, discontinue all forms of assistance in international forums, bring an end to the Israeli occupation, and establish an independent Palestinian state with Al-Quds as its capital.
In a remarkable display of solidarity, many French citizens also stood with Gaza on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba.
Throughout various regions in Lebanon, movements in solidarity with Gaza emerged in response to the Israeli aggression. These gatherings also served as a commemoration of the Nakba anniversary, with hundreds of Palestinians from refugee camps participating alongside representatives of national and Islamic forces, popular committees, and active organizations in the Lebanese and Palestinian arenas.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 