The Palestinian Resistance factions have issued a powerful statement, declaring their readiness for any potential scenarios in the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, including a ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in the besieged territory.
In a joint statement released on Wednesday, the factions emphasized their determination to not stand idly by as they warned of the catastrophic and humanitarian consequences of an invasion of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million displaced Palestinians currently reside.
The factions held the US President Joe Biden’s administration and Western governments accountable for any potential Israeli aggression, stating that ongoing Western support to “Israel” despite its violation of international laws and conventions is unacceptable.
His entire family was wiped out in Rafah last night.
Meanwhile, the genocidal Zionist regime was celebrating the $26 billion of aid approved by the US Congress. Now, it can continue the slaughter of Gazan children with greater firepower.#GazaHolocaust#IsraeliNewNazismpic.twitter.com/Rh4ILpt2uY
In a call to action, the factions urged the Palestinian masses in the West Bank to rise up vehemently against the Israeli threats of invading Rafah, urging them to turn the West Bank into a fireball to combat Western and soldiers.
Additionally, the factions warned of a comprehensive escalation that could threaten regional security, especially Egyptian national security, should an invasion of Rafah take place, given its proximity to Egypt.
Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, denounced Washington’s deceptive stance and affirmed that the Palestinian people will not surrender if an invasion occurs, stating that the resistance is prepared to defend itself.
Palestinians walk through the destruction in Khan Younis.
Israeli occupation launched aggressive raids on several areas across the Gaza Strip central and southern areas on Tuesday, as details have emerged on the latest proposal on ceasefire.
Media reported that Israeli air raids were more aggressive on Tuesday, noting that they mainly concentrated in the central area, particularly on Deir Al-Balah.
In addition to Deir Al-Balah, strikes were also reported in Maghazi refugee camp, where Israeli warplanes bombed a council building and in Rafah, where quadcopters kept shooting in the eastern part of the southern city.
#BREAKING QNN, Press sources: The Israeli Force bombed and blew up a residential square in the eastern areas of Deir Al-Balah, Al-Masdar and Al-Maghazi in the central Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/7cHX4we0kW
Meanwhile, in the city of Khan Younis, more bodies have been removed from under the rubble, some fully decomposed after being there for three or four months. About 80 bodies have been recovered so far.
Also on Tuesday, Israeli warplanes bombed two homes in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, in northern Gaza Strip, leaving casualties.
The level of destruction in the eastern part of the city has made it unrecognizable, according to people who have checked on what remains of their homes.
#BREAKING QNN, Press sources: The Israeli Force bombed and blew up a residential square in the eastern areas of Deir Al-Balah, Al-Masdar and Al-Maghazi in the central Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/7cHX4we0kW
Meanwhile, in the city of Khan Younis, more bodies have been removed from under the rubble, some fully decomposed after being there for three or four months. About 80 bodies have been recovered so far.
Also on Tuesday, Israeli warplanes bombed two homes in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, in northern Gaza Strip, leaving casualties.
The level of destruction in the eastern part of the city has made it unrecognizable, according to people who have checked on what remains of their homes.
Internally displaced Palestinians return to their homes in Khan Yunis after pullout of the Israeli troops from the province, only to find most of their homes reduced to rubble or significantly damaged. pic.twitter.com/V3CJMMKMnc
Meanwhile, reports emerge on details related to the awaited ceasefire in the war-torn enclave, where more than 32,000 people have been martyred and the number of injured people neared 76,000.
Details on Ceasefire Proposal
Mediators presented a new ceasefire proposal to Hamas and the Israeli occupation that would include a six-week pause in fighting and a swap of 40 Hamas-held captives for at least 700 Palestinians imprisoned by the Zionist authorities.
The proposal was presented to delegations from Hamas and the Zionist entity during the latest round of negotiations in Cairo over the weekend, according to Egyptian officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Al-Jazeera reported.
Hamas would be required to provide a list of the captives it will release, as well as a list of Palestinian prisoners whose freedom it seeks. The proposal also includes the return of “a significant number” of Palestinians to northern Gaza.
The proposal stipulates that ‘Israel’ gradually dismantle checkpoints it built on a new road that split the strip in half to prevent the return of Palestinians to the north.
For its part, Hamas has issued a press statement saying it was studying a proposal reached in Cairo despite concerns that Israel’s position in negotiations “remains stubborn”.
Earlier, Netanyahu has threatened that “there is a date” for the Israeli assault on Rafah where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.
A Hamas delegation led by Khalil Al-Hayya, Gaza’s deputy chief, will attend ceasefire talks in Cairo on April 7 following an invitation from Egyptian mediators.
A Hamas delegation headed by the group’s deputy chief in Gaza, Khalil Al-Hayya, will go to Cairo on April 7 for ceasefire talks in response to an invitation extended by Egyptian mediators, the group said in a statement on Saturday.
The Movement repeated its requests outlined in a proposal from March 14 before the UN Security Council passed a resolution on March 25 calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. These demands comprise a permanent cessation of hostilities, the removal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the repatriation of displaced individuals, and a substantial exchange agreement involving Palestinian detainees for Israeli captives held in Gaza, as per the statement.
This comes after Hamas announced last week that its delegation would not travel to Cairo for some times, saying the delegation “is awaiting the results and outputs of the meetings between mediators and the Israeli delegation,” a source from the Palestinian Resistance told Al Mayadeen.
Following the United States’ abstention from the vote, the United Nations Security Council requested an immediate ceasefire between the Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian Resistance, as well as the immediate and unconditional release of all captives on March 25.
Algeria’s UN Ambassador Amar Bendjama expressed after the vote that the Palestinians have “suffered greatly”, citing that the “bloodbath has continued for far too long.”
Shortly before the meeting began, Israeli army radio claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would cancel a scheduled mission to Washington if the US did not reject the measure.
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A security official in the Gaza Strip’s Ministry of Interior revealed details on 4 March regarding a recent Palestinian Authority-led (PA) incursion into the enclave.
The incursion took place less than a week ago and was thwarted by authorities in the strip, according to a statement from Gaza’s Home Front late last month.
The Gaza Security official revealed to Al-Jazeera on Thursday “the results of the investigation with the leaders of a security force formed by Major General Majid Faraj and arrested in the Gaza Strip,” adding that Faraj “developed a security plan to manage the situation in Gaza, based on three stages.”
“The first stage is food security under the cover of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the second targets the tribes, and the third is comprehensive security. The plan designated the Red Crescent headquarters in Al-Quds Hospital as the headquarters of the security force, with Israeli air protection. Majid Faraj assigned a team of Palestinian intelligence officers to follow up on the implementation of the plan,” the official added.
The officers deployed by Faraj were identified as Nasser Adawi, Sami Nasman, Shaaban al-Gharabawi, and Fayez Abu al-Hindud.
“Members of the force were assigned to collect information from Al-Shifa for Majid Faraj two weeks before the last raid.”
According to a report by Hebrew newspaper Israel Hayom, the incursion was part of an Israeli-approved plan for Fatah affiliates in Gaza to secure the entry of aid into the strip and prevent “diversion” by Hamas.
On Saturday, 30 March, the Fatah-linked elements secured the entry of aid trucks into Gaza, the newspaper wrote.
“The personnel were armed only with batons and no firearms,” it cites security sources as saying, adding that some of them were killed by Hamas.
Gaza’s Home Front said in a statement at the time that it thwarted an incursion by members of the PA General Intelligence Service, based in Ramallah, into the strip. The plan reportedly called to “create a state of confusion and chaos among the ranks of the [Gaza] home front” in an arrangement reached between Tel Aviv and Ramallah “in their meeting in one of the Arab capitals” recently, the Home Front said.
Gaza security forces managed to detain 10 of the operatives and were on the hunt for an unknown number of others who evaded capture. Officials also said Cairo informed the border crossing authority that it was “unaware” of the covert force.
The incursion related to US-sponsored efforts to establish a local governing authority to assume control over post-war Gaza.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled in late February a plan for the “day after” in Gaza, which was more or less in line with the US-backed initiative to reform and strengthen the PA and have it take governorship of Gaza after the war.
This is despite previous statements by the prime minister rejecting the idea of the PA or its Fatah party from ruling Gaza in the future.
“Netanyahu opposes the entry of Fatah on the day after, but not now when the IDF is inside the Strip. It is preferable to position local elements at the forefront to secure the convoys,” one security official told Israel Hayom.
The PA intelligence incursion could also be linked to an alleged plan aimed at “cutting out” Hamas from aid distribution efforts in Gaza, as reported by the Wall Street Journal(WSJ) on 20 March.
Ever since 8 October, when Hezbollah rallied militarily to support the Palestinian resistance in Gaza in their war against Israel, Lebanese Christian political leaders have taken a firm stance opposing the entanglement of the Shia powerhouse – or any other Lebanese faction – in the region’s myriad conflicts.
Notable figures among these are former President Michel Aoun and Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader Gebran Bassil – both long-term Christian allies of Hezbollah since 2006, who now vocally oppose efforts to unite forces in support of Palestine. Even influential figures like the head of Lebanon’s Maronite Church, Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, echo this sentiment.
Samir Geagea, leader of the right-wing, pro-US Lebanese Forces, never one to mince words, accused Hezbollah of seeking to “obtain the presidency and Lebanon’s government in return for withdrawing weapons from the border” with Israel. Anyone thinking of a bargain involving the presidency and the border situation, Geagea said, would be “dreaming.”
According to Geagea – who served 11 years in prison for the 1994 bombing of a church and the assassination of top Lebanese political officials and their families – Hezbollah “does not want to engage in a war, but only wants to garner internal gains, while Iran wants to garner additional gains at the regional level.”
The former warlord stressed that “putting Lebanon in the barrel of the cannon will not benefit the Palestinian cause but will bring us total destruction.”
Lebanon’s political deadlock
For his part, Samy Gemayel, Head of the Kataeb Party, claims:
Hezbollah deceives both Lebanese and Palestinians when it pretends to open a support front in the Gaza war. However, this front practically has no impact on the situation in Gaza … Any barter that protects Israel’s security at the expense of handing over Beirut to Hezbollah … Anyone who thinks that such a settlement will pass is mistaken, as we will be in the face of any new settlement that threatens our future in Lebanon.
It should be noted that the Kataeb and Lebanese Forces parties (the latter existed initially as the military wing of the former) fired the first bullet in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war at Palestinian civilians and are responsible for the notorious Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre, in which thousands of Palestinians were gunned down over three days, all while Israeli choppers lit the night skies overhead.
Today, Lebanese political analyst Wael Najm says the country’s political parties are in limbo, “awaiting the outcome of the battle in Gaza and the confrontations in southern Lebanon. Thus, the movement in the presidential file has been frozen.”
These accusations from Lebanon’s Christian leaders come despite Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah stressing that his party would not seek to achieve political gains in Lebanon based on the results of the Gaza war.
As FPM member Rindala Jabbour tells The Cradle:
Hezbollah does not exert its military power in Lebanese internal politics. If it wanted to use its surplus power, it would have done so after the 2006 war, and there have been many opportunities to do so. Hezbollah does not impose its power. Otherwise, there would be many different equations. It would have imposed many things it wanted.
“I don’t think we are any longer in the era of political Shiism, Maronism, or even Sunnism. I think we [Lebanon] have passed those stages,” she adds.
Maronites for the Moqawama
Highlighting the interconnectedness of regional dynamics, Jabbour says, “There is an awareness that what is happening in Palestine, Syria, and the encirclement countries will inevitably affect Lebanon,” and that many Christians will ultimately support the fight against Israeli aggression.
Many Christians support the resistance because they know it has a fundamental role in protecting Lebanon and has given the country a deterrent force. This group knows that there are consequences and repercussions of the Palestinian war on Lebanon, especially if the Palestinian resistance is defeated and Israel achieves its goals.
Jabbour clarifies her party’s position: “By separating the squares, we mean not to put Lebanon in a crisis in which it cannot bear the repercussions. The Free Patriotic Movement is indeed with the separation of squares, but it appreciates the wisdom of the resistance in dealing with the different issues.”
There is a point of view that supports the resistance, but it expresses its fear of provoking an Israeli war and giving an excuse for Israel to invade Lebanon. Especially since Lebanon currently can’t handle any war.
Jabbour laments the shortcomings of some Christians who distance themselves from the resistance, expressing concerns that their words and actions may inadvertently align with Israel’s interests, as was the case with the Phalangists during the Lebanese Civil War.
Writer and researcher Qasem Qassir explains to The Cradle that many critics of Hezbollah’s battle on the southern border are so caught up in Lebanon’s endless, internal political squabbles that they can’t see the forest for the trees:
Hezbollah confirms, through all of its officials, that participation in the war has to do with confronting the Israeli enemy and supporting the Palestinian people and has nothing to do with any internal issue, regardless of the results of the war and its connotations. Hezbollah further confirms that with the implementation of the Taif Agreement and with the internal dialogue on all files, including the presidential file, no amendment will be put forward to the system and that it respects the Lebanese formula.
The Taif Agreement, for those uninitiated in Lebanon’s sect-based political system, is the 1989 deal struck between feuding Lebanese warlords to end the country’s 1975–1990 Civil War, in which all sides endorsed a plan to divide parliamentary seats equally between Muslims and Christians.
Concerning the negative repercussions that could impact Lebanese Christians in the widening regional war, Qassir believes that “First and foremost, the Israeli danger is a danger to all of Lebanon, not only to Palestine or Gaza, and there is an Israeli objective to displace Palestinians to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. Therefore, it is important to support the resistance and face Israel,”regardless of one’s views on the region’s Iran-led Axis of Resistance.
Gaza affects Lebanon
A recent survey conducted by the Jewish People’s Policy Institute revealed that 63 percent of Israelis believe that their military should attack Hezbollah with full force at the first available opportunity or after the war in Gaza subsides. These results are consistent with the official Israeli rhetoric calling for the invasion of Lebanon – irrespective of whether a lasting ceasefire is struck with Gaza.
Speaking to The Cradle, Palestinian political analyst Iyad al-Qara laments the shortsightedness of Lebanon’s naysayers: “The positions of some Christian parties, unfortunately, were negative, both regarding the resistance operations in southern Lebanon and those they had during the Gaza war. This is surprising.”
“If Gaza falls, this could be a prelude to the occupation of Lebanon,” he warns. Qara further points out:
The steadfastness of Gaza helps protect Lebanon from Israel’s attacks. Therefore, Christians should not look at the current conflict from the perspective of disagreements and wars with some Palestinians, especially since the circumstances are different from before. They must reconsider their position because the victory of Gaza is a victory for both Lebanon and Palestine. Thus, their position should be more positive.
“The Israeli army’s attempts to displace people from Gaza will continue, whether optional or mandatory,” Qara concludes.
In this context, extremist Israeli activist Daniella Weiss, the “godmother” of the Zionist settler movement, which for the first time in Israel’s history has powerful cabinet members representing its interests at every level, recently told CNN: “No Arab, I’m speaking about more than two million Arabs. They will not stay there. We Jews will be in Gaza … 500 families have already signed up to resettle in Gaza.”
Be careful what you wish for
According to UNRWA, there are 1.2 million Palestinians in the Rafah area, south of Gaza, who are currently surviving in catastrophic humanitarian conditions.
A report by Lebanese academic and researcher Abbas Assi, published on the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace website, states, “The Christian community in Lebanon has several concerns about the ongoing war. They fear that if Israel defeats Hamas, it may be tempted to launch a full-scale war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, further impacting the already fragile Lebanese economy.”
Moreover, they worry that Israel’s success in deporting Palestinians from Gaza could impede the return of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to their homeland, and their naturalization in Lebanon would become inevitable. As a result, the power of the Christian minority, which is already grappling with a demographic decline, would be further weakened.
Lebanese journalist Ghassan Saoud says the Lebanese Church is now working to mitigate negative fallout by crafting a national document in cooperation with several Christian political parties. Among the paper’s goals is “to be frank with others about concerns (among Christians in particular) in a calm, rational, and sober language, far from street hooliganism.”
In the final analysis, the war on Gaza should not be allowed to negatively impact Lebanon’s political fabric – especially during a period of insecurity.
Rather than banking on the downfall of Palestinian resistance or envisioning a post-Hezbollah Lebanon, Lebanon’s Christian politicos should consider the broader, more immediate ramifications of the growing regional conflict. The loss of Gaza could fundamentally alter their position in West Asia, with the refugee crisis exacerbating their demographic minority status in Lebanon.
This could potentially necessitate amendments to the Taif Agreement to align with Lebanon’s evolving demographic and political reality. Consequently, Christian political leaders – particularly those aligned with anti-Hezbollah foreign states – are advised to weigh these issues carefully before lashing out at Lebanon’s resistance, the country’s only safeguard against Israel.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
All eyes are on Rafah as Israel prepares to mount an invasion to expel Palestinians or decimate them. It is this pivotal battle that will either force Israel into a ceasefire or thrust the region into an all-out, multi-front war.
The temporary truce struck on 24 November between the Hamas resistance movement and the Israeli government could have paved the way toward successive truces and potentially a sustainable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
But the opportunity was squandered by Tel Aviv, who viewed the continuation of its genocidal war as a means to reshape Gaza’s political and security landscape under the guise of ‘restoring deterrence’ and mitigating domestic fallout from Hamas’ 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood Operation.
Now, nearly six months since the commencement of what Israel calls a ‘war of survival and existence’ against Gaza, it has become clear that the occupation state’s military aggression cannot unseat Hamas from either the Strip or the broader Palestinian political arena.
The recent flurry of indirect Hamas–Israel negotiations held in Paris, Cairo, and Doha have revealed a stark political reality: Hamas is the primary Palestinian negotiating party where Gaza is concerned. This tacit acknowledgment by Tel Aviv marks the strategic failure of one of Israel’s dual objectives set forth last October, aimed at eradicating Hamas and its allied resistance factions in the Strip.
Bibi’s political interests v domestic backlash
This reality raises questions about the potential pathways available to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he struggles with immense international pressure to stop the carnage. Will he persist with the war on Gaza and risk global pariah status, or will he be compelled to pursue a politically costly settlement? The latter option, it should be noted, will not be an easy fix. It could potentially unleash a storm of domestic backlash within Israel, with various political factions eager to hold him accountable from multiple angles.
Since Netanyahu abandoned the truce in November, prominent Israeli political commentators and even former prime ministers have been surprisingly unanimous in their assessment. They argue that Netanyahu’s decision to prolong the war serves mainly his personal political interests, allowing him to project an illusion of victory while evading political, security, and judicial scrutiny.
Accordingly, Netanyahu’s stance remains firmly opposed to a war settlement. He has instead doubled down on the necessity of eliminating the military capabilities of Hamas and its allies, and is ostensibly pursuing an ‘absolute victory’ through total war.
The prime minister’s roadmap hinges on continuing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. In this scenario, he envisions the Battle of Rafah as the decisive climax that will definitively render the already terminal ‘two-state solution’ obsolete and permanently sever any ties between Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The Battle of Rafah thus emerges as a pivotal juncture, delineating two competing trajectories: one driven by regional and international efforts towards a negotiated settlement, and the other dictated solely by Netanyahu’s ambitions.
Regional ramifications and Egypt’s dilemma
This raises complex questions about whether Netanyahu can prolong the war and influence regional and international actors – to buy time, if you will – all while factoring in the delicate balance of power involving Egypt and the wider regional war against other members of the Axis of Resistance.
Indeed, the Battle of Rafah presents a multi-level challenge for Egypt, encompassing political, security, and popular dimensions. Should the Israeli army invade Rafah, it will have significant implications for Cairo’s relations with Tel Aviv, in addition to severely impacting Egypt’s domestic security landscape.
A recent poll by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies revealed that three-quarters of Egyptians view Hamas positively. This popular sentiment influences Egyptian policy regarding potential Israeli actions in Rafah.
On 10 March, TheNew York Times and Wall Street Journal reported warnings from Egyptian officials on the potential suspension of the Camp David Accords if Israel were to attack Rafah.
Diaa Rashwan, head of the Egyptian Information Service, emphasized the seriousness of Israel’s occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor – a buffer zone on the Sinai–Gaza border designated by the Camp David agreement – stating it poses a grave threat to Cairo–Tel Aviv relations.
Dealing with the potential mass influxes of Gazan civilians seeking refuge and Palestinian fighters crossing into Egyptian territory also poses significant logistical and security challenges. This scenario also raises questions about the Israeli army’s potential incursions into Egyptian territory and how the Egyptian military would respond.
Moreover, any intensification of pressure on Rafah or a full-scale Israeli invasion will lead to widespread regional ramifications, potentially including the unraveling of the Abraham Accords. The Axis of Resistance has made it clear that the elimination of Hamas is unacceptable and, if threatened, may trigger a regional war.
Complicating matters further is the lack of substantive US pressure on Israel to halt its actions in Gaza. While the Biden White House seeks a ‘credible operational plan,’ it has not unequivocally opposed an attack on Rafah. This ambivalence enables and even emboldens Netanyahu to continue his military operations.
Rafah could reshape the region
Regardless of the outcome of the Battle of Rafah, both Israeli and US perspectives interpret it as a campaign directed against Hamas, which they view as an extension of Iranian influence in the region. This narrative aligns with what Thomas Friedman, writing for the New York Times, referred to as the new “Biden Doctrine,” which emphasizes confronting Iran and its allies in West Asia. This marks a significant shift in US strategy since 1979.
The convergence of US and Israeli interests casts suspicion on ongoing efforts to bring about a long-term ceasefire, with all eyes focused on the current round of talks in Doha. Amos Harel, writing for Haaretz, frames the discussions as a race toward either a negotiated ceasefire or a potentially expansive regional conflict involving multiple fronts.
Yemen’s Ansarallah movement, which last week expanded its naval operations into the Indian Ocean, has issued a stark warning against a Rafah invasion, threatening a sharp escalation in both sea and air operations, including the closure of the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Similarly, the Lebanese front remains sensitive to developments in Rafah. Despite the northern front’s expansion since the onset of 2024, recent Israeli attacks targeting Baalbek, over 100 kilometers from the southern border, suggest Tel Aviv’s misguided willingness to escalate.
This possibility could spill over into reality if Israel invades Rafah, as the occupation army may resort to preemptive actions to mitigate perceived threats from Lebanese resistance forces.
Overall, the Battle of Rafah will likely reshape the regional conflict, adding new layers to existing pressure fronts. Importantly, it challenges the notion that Hamas stands alone, abandoned in Rafah, as various regional actors, including Iran and its allies, are closely watching and prepared to intervene.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Washington DC — (Scheerpost) — Piers allow things to come in. They allow things to go out. And Israel, which has no intention of halting its murderous siege of Gaza, including its policy of enforced starvation, appears to have found a solution to its problem of where to expel the 2.3 million Palestinians.
If the Arab world will not take them, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken proposed during his first round of visits after Oct. 7, the Palestinians will be cast adrift on ships. It worked in Beirut in 1982 when some eight and a half thousand Palestine Liberation Organization members were sent by sea to Tunisia, and another two and a half thousand ended up in other Arab states. Israel expects that the same forced deportation by sea will work in Gaza.
Israel, for this reason, supports the “temporary pier” the Biden administration is building to ostensibly deliver food and aid to Gaza – food and aid whose “distribution” will be overseen by the Israeli military.
“You need drivers that don’t exist, trucks that don’t exist feeding into a distribution system that doesn’t exist,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Biden administration and now president of the Refugees International aid advocacy group, told The Guardian.
This “maritime corridor” is Israel’s Trojan Horse, a subterfuge to expel Palestinians. The small shipments of seaborne aid, like the food packets that have been air-dropped, will not alleviate the looming famine. They are not meant to.
Five Palestinians were killed and several others injured when a parachute carrying aid failed and crashed onto a crowd of people near Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp.
“Dropping aid in this way is flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service,” the media office of the local government in Gaza said. “We previously warned it poses a threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip, and this is what happened today when the parcels fell on the citizens’ heads.”
If the U.S. or Israel were serious about alleviating the humanitarian crisis, the thousands of trucks with food and aid currently at the southern border of Gaza would be allowed to enter any of its multiple crossings. They are not. The “temporary pier,” like the air drops, is ghoulish theater, a way to mask Washington’s complicity in the genocide.
Israeli media reported the building of the pier was due to pressure from the United Arab Emirates, which threatened Israel with ending a land corridor trade route it administers in collusion with Saudi Arabia and Jordan to bypass Yemen’s naval blockade.
The Jerusalem Post reported it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who proposed the construction of the “temporary pier” to the Biden administration.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has called Palestinians “human animals” and advocated a total siege of Gaza, including cutting off electricity, food, water and fuel, lauded the plan, saying, “it is designed to bring aid directly to the residents and thus continue the collapse of Hamas’s rule in Gaza.”
“Why would Israel, the engineer of the Gaza famine, endorse the idea of establishing a maritime corridor for aid to address a crisis it initiated and is now worsening?” writes Tamara Nassar in an article titled “What’s the Real Purpose of Biden’s Gaza Port?” in The Electronic Intifada. “This might appear paradoxical if one were to assume that the primary aim of the maritime corridor is to deliver aid.”
When Israel offers a gift to the Palestinians, you can be sure it is a poisoned apple. That Israel got the Biden administration to construct the pier is one more example of the inverted relationship between Washington and Jerusalem, where the Israel lobby has bought off elected officials in the two ruling parties.
Oxfam, in a March 15 report, accuses Israel of actively hindering aid operations in Gaza in defiance of the orders by the International Court of Justice. It notes that 1.7 million Palestinians, some 75 percent of the Gaza population, are facing famine, and two-thirds of the hospitals and over 80 percent of all health clinics in Gaza are no longer operable. The majority of people, the report reads, “have no access to clean drinking water” and “sanitation services are not functioning.”
The report reads:
The conditions we have observed in Gaza are beyond catastrophic, and we have not only seen failure by Israeli authorities to meet their responsibility to facilitate and support international aid efforts, but in fact seen active steps being taken to hinder and undermine such aid efforts. Israel’s control of Gaza continues to be characterized by deliberate restrictive actions that have led to a severe and systemic dysfunctionality in the delivery of aid. Humanitarian organizations operational in Gaza are reporting a worsening situation since the International Court of Justice imposed provisional measures in light of the plausible risk of genocide, with intensified Israeli barriers, restrictions and attacks against humanitarian personnel. Israel has maintained a ‘convenient illusion of a response’ in Gaza to serve its claim that it is allowing aid in and conducting the war in line with international laws.
Oxfam says Israel employs “a dysfunctional and undersized inspection system that keeps aid snarled up, subjected to onerous, repetitive and unpredictable bureaucratic procedures that are contributing to trucks being stranded in giant queues for 20 days on average.” Israel, Oxfam explains, rejects “items of aid as having ‘dual (military) use,’ banning vital fuel and generators entirely along with other items essential for a meaningful humanitarian response such as protective gear and communications kit.” Rejected aid, “must go through a complex ‘pre-approval’ system or end up being held in limbo at the Al Arish warehouse in Egypt.” Israel has also “cracked down on humanitarian missions, largely sealing off northern Gaza, and restricting international humanitarian workers’ access not only into Gaza but Israel and the West Bank including East Jerusalem too.”
Israel has allowed 15,413 trucks into Gaza during the past 157 days of war. Oxfam estimates that the population of Gaza needs five times that number. Israel allowed 2,874 trucks in February, a 44 percent reduction from the previous month. Before Oct. 7, 500 aid trucks entered Gaza daily.
Israeli soldiers have also killed scores of Palestinians attempting to receive aid from trucks in more than two dozenincidents. These attacks include the killing of at least 21 Palestinians and the wounding of 150 on March 14, when Israeli forces fired on thousands of people in Gaza City. The same area had been targeted by Israeli soldiers hours earlier.
“Israel’s assault has caught Gaza’s own aid workers and international agencies’ partners inside a ‘practically uninhabitable’ environment of mass displacement and deprivation, where 75 percent of solid waste is now being dumped in random sites, 97 percent of groundwater made unfit for human use, and the Israeli state using starvation as a weapon of war,” Oxfam says.
There is no place in Gaza, Oxfam notes, that is safe “amid the forcible and often multiple displacements of almost the entire population, which makes the principled distribution of aid unviable, including agencies’ ability to help repair vital public services at scale.”
Oxfam blasts Israel for its “disproportionate” and “indiscriminate” attacks on “civilian and humanitarian assets” as well as “solar, water, power and sanitation plants, UN premises, hospitals, roads, and aid convoys and warehouses, even when these assets are supposedly ‘deconflicted’ after their coordinates have been shared for protection.”
The health ministry in Gaza said Monday that at least 31,726 people have been killed since the Israeli assault began five months ago. The death toll includes at least 81 deaths in the previous 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 73,792 people have been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7. Thousands more are missing, many buried under the rubble.
None of these Israeli tactics will be altered with the building of a “temporary pier.” In fact, given the pending ground assault on Rafah, where 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are crowded in tent cities or camped out in the open air, Israel’s tactics will only get worse.
Israel, by design, is creating a humanitarian crisis of such catastrophic proportions, with thousands of Palestinians killed by bombs, shells, missiles, bullets, starvation and infectious diseases, that the only option will be death or deportation. The pier is where the last act in this gruesome genocidal campaign will be played out as Palestinians are herded by Israeli soldiers onto ships.
How appropriate that the Biden administration, without whom this genocide could not have been carried out, will facilitate it.
Feature photo | Israel’s Trojan Horse | Mr. Fish
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
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Fabio G. C. Carisio Fabio is investigative journalist since 1991. Now geopolitics, intelligence, military, SARS-Cov-2 manmade, NWO expert and Director-founder of Gospa News: a Christian Information Journal. His articles were published on many international media and website as SouthFront, Reseau International, Sputnik Italia, United Nation Association Westminster, Global Research, Kolozeg and more…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the latest truce and prisoner-exchange proposal by Hamas and has approved an IDF plan to launch an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Israeli media reported on Friday.
”The IDF is prepared for the operation and to evacuate the [civilian] population,” the PM’s office said in a statement, as cited by the Times of Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu said the IDF is prepared to conduct the attack and evacuate the civilian population
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the latest truce and prisoner-exchange proposal by Hamas and has approved an IDF plan to launch an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Israeli media reported on Friday.
”The IDF is prepared for the operation and to evacuate the [civilian] population,” the PM’s office said in a statement, as cited by the Times of Israel.
Earlier in the day, Hamas announced on social media that it had presented its “vision” of a prisoner swap with Israel to Qatari and Egyptian mediators and was looking towards a ceasefire agreement which would involve the withdrawal ofIsrael Defense Forces from Gaza.
As reported by Reuters, which has seen the proposal, the Palestinian militants proposed the release of Israeli women, including female soldiers, children, the elderly and ill hostages, in exchange for Israel freeing between 700 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Once the prisoner exchange is complete, Hamas said it would be ready to negotiate a date for a permanent ceasefire.
The Jewish state, however, dismissed the proposal and accused Hamas of making “unrealistic demands.” On Thursday, Netanyahu also reiterated Israel’s determination to complete its mission of “eliminating” Hamas.
After Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israeli settlements last October 7, which saw 1,100 people killed and 250 taken hostage, Israel has been conducting a relentless siege on Gaza.
According to the latest information from Palestinian health authorities, at least 31,341 people have been killedand 73,134 others injured in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in the enclave over the past half a year.
British legislator George Galloway is welcomed after his arrival in Gaza at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)
The former Labour MP secures an impressive victory with 12,335 votes – 39.7% of the total.
Former Labour MP George Galloway secured the position of lawmaker for the English town of Rochdale on Friday.
Galloway secured an impressive victory with 12,335 votes – 39.7% of the total – surpassing predictions and establishing a significant 5,697-vote majority.
He surpassed the second-placed independent candidate David Tully, while the former Labour candidate, Azhar Ali, came in fourth after losing support from the opposition party over accusations against “Israel”.
“[Labout Party leader] Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” he said in his victory speech. During his campaign, Galloway criticized both Labour and the Conservatives for their support of the Israeli occupation entity in its war on Gaza.
“Keir Starmer. This is for Gaza.” George Galloway victory speech. He says his victory is a warning for Keir Starmer that Labour has lost the confidence of their voters. #RochdaleByElectionpic.twitter.com/wNPMs96cwN
“You will pay a high price for the role that you have played in enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Gaza, in the Gaza Strip.” This marks Galloway’s seventh parliamentary win and poses a challenge to Labour, a party he was once part of but was expelled for criticizing then-Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war.
Galloway’s victory marks the inaugural representation of his left-wing Workers Party of Britain in parliament.
Galloway has pledged to be a vocal advocate for Gaza in parliament, challenging Labour’s evolving stance on the war that initially included full backing for the Israeli occupation, followed by a shift toward calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
“Labour is on notice that they have lost the confidence of millions of their voters who loyally and traditionally voted for them generation after generation,” he said following his victory.
He expressed his aspiration to form a “grand alliance” with Rochdale councilors to address local issues. He had advocated for the reinstatement of maternity services in the town.
Galloway’s support for Palestine
The Palestinian cause is not new to Galloway’s political career and identity. Back in 1977, after he made a visit to Beirut, he said: “Although it was a difficult decision for me to make the journey back to Scotland, barely a week after my return I made a pledge, in the Tavern Bar in Dundee’s Hawkhill District, to devote the rest of my life to the Palestinian and Arab cause, whatever the consequences for my own political future.”
Since then, Galloway formed the British Trades Union Friends of Palestine and became its first General Secretary in 1980. Two years later, in 1982, he founded the Emergency Committee against the invasion of Lebanon.
I'm proud of my support for #Palestine for 50 years. I'd rather die than recant it. As long as God gives me breath I will support them and after me my six children. And their children. Anyone who imagines otherwise is a fool. pic.twitter.com/p6ZBn2ehto
When he was a young Labour Party activist, he called for his home town of Dundee in Scotland to be twinned with Nablus in the Occupied West Bank.
His unwavering support for Palestine and Gaza throughout his career has naturally caused tension between him and both American and British politics. He has spoken publicly during conferences and events to remind the public of the atrocities being carried out in Gaza and Palestine by “Israel”, and he has walked out during multiple meetings in refusal of debating with Israelis.
He currently hosts a talk show on YouTube called Mother of All Talk Shows (MOATS) in which he tackles global political matters, but the main highlight concerns Gaza. He also has a show on Al Mayadeen called Kalima Horra in which he also talks about the same matters.
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Despite public protestations, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is helping Israel transfer 1.4 million Palestinians from Rafah to tent cities in the Sinia Desert
On Saturday, western news agencies reported that closed-door negotiations took place in Paris that were aimed at reaching an agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza. According to Reuters the talks represented “the most serious push for weeks to halt the fighting in the battered Palestinian enclave and see Israeli and foreign hostages released.” Regrettably, the reports from Paris were largely a media-engineered deception intended to divert attention from the real purpose of the confab. Keep in mind, the primary attendees of the gathering were not senior-level diplomats or trained negotiators, but the directors of the Intelligence services including the head of Israel’s Mossad, David Barnea, Egyptian spy-chief Abbas Kamel, and CIA Director William Burns. These are not the men one would choose to hammer-out a hostage exchange or a ceasefire deal, but to implement electronic surveillance, espionage or black ops. Thus, it is extremely unlikely that they met in Paris to settle on a plan for the cessation of hostilities. The more probable explanation is that the respective spy-chiefs are putting the finishing touches on a collaborative plan to breach the Egyptian border wall so that one and a half million severely-traumatized Palestinians can flee into Egypt without any serious opposition from the Egyptian army.
Such an operation would require considerable coordination in order to minimize the casualties while, at the same time, achieving its overall objective. Naturally, any breach would have to be blamed on Hamas who will undoubtedly be the convenient scapegoat for blowing up a section of the wall creating an opening for thousands of stampeding Palestinians. In this way, Israel could characterize the mass expulsion as a “voluntary migration” which is the cheery-sounding Zionist sobriquet for ethnic cleansing. In any event, the bulk of Gaza’s Moslem population will have been evicted from their historic homeland and forced into refugee camps scattered across the Sinai Desert. This is Netanyahu’s endgame which could take place at any time.
There is some doubt as to whether Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will cooperate with Israel and allow the Palestinians to enter Egypt en masse, but those doubts are based on speculation not fact. For those who care to dig a bit deeper, there’s a clear money-trail connecting the dodgy Egyptian president to a policy-change that will more than accommodate Netanyahu’s ambitious ethnic cleansing plan. In other words, the fix is already in. This is from Reuters:
Talks with Egypt to boost its International Monetary Fund loan program are making excellent progress, the IMF said on Thursday, saying that Egypt needs a “very comprehensive support package” to deal with economic challenges, including pressures from the war in Gaza….
Asked about the impact on the talks from challenges posed by the expected entry of Gaza refugees into Egypt, Kozack said: “There is a need to have a very comprehensive support package for Egypt, and we’re working very closely with both the Egyptian authorities and their partners to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs and also to ensure that the program is able to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability in Egypt.” IMF sees progress on Egypt loan program amid Gaza pressures, Reuters
Repeat: “to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs”??
WTF? So the IMF now provides financial support for ethnic cleansing?
It certainly looks that way. The IMF wants to make sure that el-Sisi has sufficient money to cover the costs of feeding and housing one and a half million refugees. But is that where those billions of dollars will actually go; to the starving Palestinians who have lost their homes and all their material possessions, or will it vanish into the offshore accounts of corrupt Egyptian politicians just as it has in Ukraine. We’ve all seen this movie many times before and it doesn’t end well. Here’s more from the Financial Times:
Let me get this straight: The IMF halted payouts on a $3 billion loan to Egypt, but now they are prepared to hand-over $10 billion to a debt-ridden, credit risk nation whose currency suffered a 40% devaluation last year and whose economy is presently in the dumps? Does that make sense? Of course, not. Here’s more from The Cradle:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says there is “excellent progress” in talks with Egypt over a loan program that seeks to “support” the country in weathering its financial woes and handling a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees that Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse from Gaza.
So, someone finally has the courage to say what everyone knows to be true already, that the IMF is financing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Here’s more from the same article:
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in November that the agency was “seriously considering” a possible augmentation of Egypt’s loan program due to “economic difficulties posed by the Israel–Gaza war.”
“The loan could reach up to $10 billion to help the Egyptian economy survive amid local and external factors, including the Israeli onslaught on the neighboring Gaza Strip and tensions in the Red Sea…
This coincided with the start of construction work on an “isolated security zone” in the eastern Sinai Desert on the border with the Gaza Strip, which many expect will serve as a buffer zone for displaced Palestinians.
“The construction work seen in Sinai along the border with Gaza – the establishment of a reinforced security perimeter around a specific, open area of land – are serious signs that Egypt may be preparing to accept and allow the displacement of Gazans to Sinai, in coordination with Israel and the United States.” IMF vows to support Egypt as nation braces for mass displacement of Gazans, The Cradle
It’s worth noting, that by accepting the IMF loan of $10 billion, el-Sisi has agreed to peg Egypt’s currency to black market rates, which means its value will be cut in half on the day the deal is consummated. Egyptian working people—half of who already live below the poverty line—will be severely hurt by the bailout although not nearly as much as the Palestinians who be left to rot in tent cities in the desert.
Also, it appears that the IMF will continue to dangle the $10 billion loan(bribe?) beneath el-Sisi’s nose until the Palestinians finally cross-over into Egypt and the operation is concluded. This is how western oligarchs use international institutions like the IMF to coerce their puppets to do what they want. In this case, they needed a pliable Judas who would be willing to double-cross his fellow Muslims in order to line his pockets and those of his closest allies. They apparently found their man in el-Sisi.
This may also help to explain why Egypt is currently clearing a vast track of land just a stone’s throw from the Gaza border. Cairo is preparing the land to accommodate the burgeoning flow of refugees who will soon be pouring into the country. This is from Forbes:
Egypt is setting up a camp near its border with Gaza as a contingency for a potential exodus of Palestinians from the enclave if Israel goes ahead with a ground offensive on Rafah, the border region where more than half of Gaza’s population is taking refuge, Reuters reported….
Citing four unnamed sources, Reuters reported Egypt is preparing a “desert area with some basic facilities” to shelter potential refugees as a “temporary and precautionary measure,”
The human rights group, the Sinai Foundation, has shared images of the purported camps, showing trucks and cranes in the area setting up a “high-security area” surrounded by concrete fences.
Israeli, American and Egyptian Intel chiefs met in Paris (IMO) to put the finishing touches on a plan to expel the Palestinians from Gaza.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is about to provide Egypt with a $10 billion loan for “handling a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees that Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse from Gaza.” (The Cradle)
Egypt is preparing a “desert area with some basic facilities” to shelter potential refugees” in the near future.
The IDF has continued its daily airstrikes on civilian sites in Rafah in order to intensify feelings of high-anxiety and panic that will help to trigger a stampede into Egypt.
Food trucks are prevented from entering Gaza. Israel is deliberately starving the Palestinians so they will flee their homeland as soon as there is an opening at the border.
All of these measures are aimed at one objective alone, the complete eradication of the Palestinian population. And, now—after a bloody four month-long military campaign—Israel’s goal is clearly in sight.
It will take a monumental effort to stop this evil plan from going forward.
The visit of former Lebanese PM Saad Hariri to Beirut has tongues wagging. Will the impetus of the expanding Gaza war force a Saudi–Syrian settlement that can once more impose stability in Lebanon?
The visit of former Lebanese PM Saad Hariri to Beirut has tongues wagging. Will the impetus of the expanding Gaza war force a Saudi–Syrian settlement that can once more impose stability in Lebanon?
On 21 February, a Syrian website, citing sources in Damascus, broadcasted news that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) would shortly pay a visit to Syria, causing an uproar in regional political circles. Despite government-aligned newspaper Al-Watan denying the report, the prospect of a top Saudi visit evoked memories of an era past when Syrian–Saudi understanding secured Lebanon’s internal balances, which are shaken or resolved based on the tempo of West Asia’s hegemons and the status of their relations with one another.
عاجل – مصدر سوري مطلع لـ"الوطن": لا يوجد أي شيء رسمي حول زيارة محتملة لولي العهد السعودي الأمير محمد بن سلمان إلى سورية.
A decisive response to rumors of an impending MbS visit remains elusive. A Syrian diplomatic source would only confirm to The Cradle that “Syrian–Saudi communication is gradually developing, and the discussions have become more detailed about the mutual common interests of the two countries” concerning the “post-war scene in Gaza.”
While the source did not deny or confirm Bin Salman’s visit, he suggested that the development of communications might reach the stage of “mutual visits” not only with Saudi Arabia “but also with Egypt.”
While the improvement in relations between Syria and Arab states is not limited to Saudi Arabia, discussions with Riyadh have become more significant recently – to the extent that an Arab foreign minister, believed to be the Emirati FM, made an effort in mid-February to persuade members of the US Congress to retract its Syrian boycott law, which US-based anti-Syria activists insist on upholding. A source tells The Cradle that these activists “train with a US agency, alongside the Iranian opposition, on formulating and marketing these lobbying projects and forming pressure groups” to halt any policy reversals in Washington.
But the discussion about reopening relations with Damascus is no longer only taking place in Arab corridors. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, in an announcement following talks last week with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, revealed “the work of the Republic of Cyprus in cooperation with other member states” to advance European–Syrian ties.
The EU, in general, shares that view about opening up member-states’ relations with Damascus, in discussionswhich the Syrian source says are also progressing, especially in the matter of identifying “the parts of Syria that are sufficiently safe” for the return of refugee populations.
On 16 February, on the sidelines of the 60th Munich Security Conference in Germany, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell to discuss several regional issues, including Syria, reports Anadolu Agency, which quotes Turkish Foreign Ministry sources as saying “both sides” stressed the need to involve Damascus “in the political process.”
As for the Americans, the White House is engaged in difficult negotiations with many Arab states “in search of a diplomatic achievement” for the Joe Biden administration as his re-election campaign heats up. Washington is busy seeking mechanisms to consolidate its interests in West Asia within the significant barriers created by the Chinese-brokered Saudi–Iranian rapprochement agreement, which, for the US, has been maddeningly stable thus far. Indeed, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan went to bat in Munich for his “Iranian neighbors,” saying the Iranians “do not want escalation in the region.”
As US–Iraqi negotiations over US troop withdrawal pick up pace, a Syrian source tells The Cradle that an American delegation “visited northeastern Syria, to discuss the possibilities of maintaining a US presence there in the event of withdrawal from Iraq.” Interestingly, the head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units, Faleh al-Fayyad, visited Turkiye on 20 February to discuss “the future of the process of securing the borders from Kurdish organizations in the event that the US–Iraqi negotiations lead to the dismantling of the US military bases and the retention of officers as advisors only,” according to an Iraqi journalist source.
Where does this leave Lebanon?
There is no doubt that the recent Beirut visit of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri – who currently resides in Abu Dhabi, which enjoys friendly relations with Syria – resonated deeply in Lebanon. It was viewed as a harbinger of the return of “Hariri-ism,” which comes laden with regional political settlements and top-level shuttle diplomacy – and reflected a tacit sign of new Saudi approval.
During his visit, Hariri spoke in the language of his father – former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, assassinated in Beirut on 14 February 2005 – about “peace and stability” in Lebanon and its neighborhood, and even invoked, during an interview with Saudi news channel Al-Hadath, his father’s key political role in Lebanon’s civil war in paving the way to the Saudi-brokered Taif Agreement that settled the 15-year conflict.
It is important to note that Riyadh–Hariri relations have been estranged for years – unlike the close Saudi relations his father enjoyed. Tensions between them grew during the war in Syria, with Hariri’s inability or unwillingness to curb Lebanon’s Hezbollah from defending the Syrian state from a Saudi-backed war.
While Hariri said during his Beirut stopover that the time was not yet ripe for him to return to Lebanon’s muddy political arena, he offered his “intervention” if he “felt that the Sunni community in Lebanon was leaning toward extremism.” Many have linked his comments to the trial of 84 civilians in the UAE last week, charged with membership in “Muslim Brotherhood” (MB) organizations – a group banned in the UAE – as well as Turkiye’s remarkable withdrawal of MB leading figure Mahmoud Hussein’s citizenship amidst Ankara’s thrust to mend ties with Abu Dhabi.
A Lebanese source who accompanied Hariri on his visit hints to The Cradle that “concern over the Muslim Brotherhood may pave the way for the return of Hariri’s relations with Syria.” In other words, the former PM could gain support from the anti-MB Saudis, Emiratis, and Syrians if he toes this political line within Lebanon. Interestingly,a Lebanese figure close to pro-MB Qatar attacked Hariri immediately upon his arrival at the airport via X (formerly known as Twitter).
Regional winds appear to be shifting direction, in large part because the Gulf’s traditional “guarantor” of security, the United States, is knee-deep in fanning an untenable crisis by unconditionally supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza. In Munich, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry sought a “Palestinian consensus” that would pave the way for a “two-state” settlement, in which, according to him, Hamas is excluded. The Arab–Islamic consensus is currently seeking a long-term Palestinian solution after the dust in Gaza settles, which would necessarily include luring “Hamas” and “Fatah” into a national consensus government.
In Beirut, former President Michel Aoun senses this consensus and has made a show of opposing any links of “Lebanon’s fate to Gaza.” Aoun, who once opposed the Taif Agreement, awaits the opportunity to oppose it again. This is, of course, a domestic play mainly to ensure the country’s minority Christian voice is heard in whatever political arrangements lie over the horizon.
But Gaza remains unavoidable in Lebanon, with Israel waging war against Hezbollah on the country’s southern border, which reached 45 kilometers into the country this week when Tel Aviv struck civilian sites near Sidon. The Gaza war is now being played out in multiple theaters – in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Yemen – and has the potential to expand and deepen further. It is this war waged by Israel and its US ally that is rapidly drawing Arab states to recalibrate the region’s direction from within and amongst themselves.
This begs the question now frequently heard in Beirut: What if Damascus, Riyadh, and Tehran agree this time? Everyone is waiting for that moment to reserve their seats in West Asia’s latest theater.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
As the world increasingly reacts with alarm at Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s declared goal of leveling the southern Gaza city of Rafah to the ground, the spotlight has fallen on Egypt.
Will the North African heavyweight stand idly by, allowing the Tel Aviv regime to intensify its ongoing genocide in Gaza, or make good its threat to annul the so-called “peace treaty”?
Authorities in Cairo would know that plans by Israel to populate Gaza with Jewish settlements require Egypt’s collaboration to absorb Palestinian refugees into parts of the Sinai.
What it translates to is that Gaza is ethnically cleansed of 2.3 million Palestinians and replaced with an exclusively Jewish settler colony.
However, the sticky point is Rafah, where more than a million and a half Palestinians who were violently forced to evacuate their homes in the North are huddled in tents and makeshift shelters, facing death from relentless air strikes, hunger, cold and thirst.
In addition, the dire need for essential medical supplies has spawned the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, something the world has never seen in the modern era.
So, the big question is, how will Egypt respond to these developments?
Egypt, of today, under the military rule of General Abdel Fateh el-Sisi, is a far cry from the leadership of Mohamed Morsi.
During the exciting but short-lived era of the Arab Spring, tens of thousands of protesters across Cairo flooded Tahrir Square demanding the removal of Hosni Mubarak from his thirty-year reign.
Following the popular mass revolt against his brutal dictatorship, Mubarak was forced to resign. It marked a period that saw the country transitioning from tyranny to democracy when Morsi was elected to lead Egypt in its first free and fair democratic election.
The change of fortunes did not sit well with Western powers that began a series of dirty tricks to oust him, notwithstanding the fact that Morsi had acquired a comfortable majority during the elections.
A classic case of a regime-change plot began to be engineered when a number of countries connived to unseat him through a bloody military coup.
America, Israel, UAE and Saudi Arabia’s candidate for regime change was the head of Egypt’s notorious secret service/intelligence unit – el-Sisi – who was also in charge of the military.
In an elaborate scheme, a rebellion against Morsi was orchestrated as a prelude to the coup. Reports subsequently revealed that the UAE government funded the uprising.
These regimes shared common misgivings about Morsi’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan Al Muslimeen) and were reluctant to have the Arab world’s most powerful nation-state in the hands of the Ikhwan.
Chatham House reported that recordings leaked from the Egyptian Ministry of Defence and confidential testimony from US officials fingered the UAE as having provided funds to support the activity of Tamarrod, the movement that organized the rebellion against Morsi.
As soon as el-Sisi stepped in to take Morsi’s seat, Saudi Arabia and the UAE made no effort to conceal their approval. Both Western-backed oligarchs gleefully displayed their support with transfers of huge chunks of money.
The background to the massacre is well documented. According to media reports, tens of thousands of Egyptians were out in the streets and city squares to demand the reinstatement of Morsi.
To illustrate the brazeness of the UAE, its Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed led a delegation to Cairo in solidarity with coup leader el-Sisi, less than a fortnight after the horror of the Muslim Brotherhood, when around a thousand people were mowed down.
On August 14, 2013, as the protests had entered their sixth consecutive week, thousands staged a sit-in at the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, one of Cairo’s busiest thoroughfares, as they had for more than a month.
Sisi’s forces moved in using armored vehicles and bulldozers, in addition to ground troops and snipers on rooftops carrying live ammunition, to attack the square from all sides and close off safe exits, according to witnesses and human rights organizations, as reported in media.
Morsi, the elected president, was jailed where he subsequently died, while el-Sisi has now been in power for just over a decade. To date, there has been no accountability for the Rabaa massacre.
From Rabaa to Rafah, el-Sisi’s dismal human rights record does not hold any promise that he will deter Netanyahu’s planned incursion into Rafah or stop him from expelling Palestinians from there.
Egypt under el-Sisi has been reduced to a mere spectator, observing the slaughter of thousands of innocent Palestinians as the genocide intensifies in Gaza without any effort to flex its muscles.
Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.
(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)
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Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaks on a screen via a video link during a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hezbollah leaders, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, February 16, 2024 (AP)
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah underlines that the Israeli occupation’s crimes in southern Lebanon will be responded to in kind and that Hezbollah will not only strike military sites.
The Israeli occupation will pay with blood for its killing of civilians in southern Lebanon, as this is a sensitive issue for the Resistance and a red line that was crossed, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said during a speech on Friday to commemorate the fallen leaders of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.
“The aggression on Nabatieh and al-Sawaneh is a momentous development in the ongoing confrontation because it targeted civilians,” he underlined, stressing that the Israeli occupation killed civilians intentionally.
“The enemy will pay with blood for its shedding of our women and children’s blood in Nabatieh and al-Sawaneh,” he stressed.
“Civilians are a sensitive issue, and the enemy must understand that it has gone too far if it gets to killing our civilians,” the Lebanese Resistance leader affirmed, noting that the occupation deliberately killed civilians to force the Resistance to halt its operations, as “all the pressures exerted since October 7 had the goal of shutting down the southern front.”
“Bombing ‘Kiryat Shmona’ with dozens of Katyusha rockets and several Falaq missiles is a preliminary response,” Sayyed Nasrallah underlined.
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon – Hezbollah continued on Thursday targeting Israeli military sites and settlements in support of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the Palestinian Resistance, as well as in response to the Israeli occupation’s attacks on Lebanese villages and civilian homes in southern Lebanon.
The Islamic Resistance issued a brief statement announcing that its fighters targeted the Israeli settlement of “Kiryat Shmona” with dozens of Katyusha rockets as an initial response to the massacres in Nabatieh and al-Sawaneh.
Furthermore, the fighters of the resistance targeted the Samaqa site with missiles, with several direct hits confirmed.
The Islamic Resistance also declared that its fighters, using suitable weapons, attacked espionage equipment at the Marj, al-Raheb, and al-Naqoura locations in addition to the Ruweisat al-Alam site in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms.
While lamenting the loss of civilian life, Sayyed Nasrallah went on to underline that military casualties were a natural part of any battle of liberation. “We are at the heart of a battle that spans over 100km, and the martyrdom of Resistance fighters is part of this battle,” he said.
As he went on to vow that the Resistance would retaliate against the Israeli occupation, he said the response to the massacre in southern Lebanon “must be an escalation in jihadist work on the battlefront,” warning the Israeli occupation that the Resistance has a massive missile power that would allow it to strike Israeli targets from “Kiryat Shmona” all the way to “Eilat”.
Capitulation is not an option
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed the minority calling for the Resistance to halt its operations and allow for the continuation of the bloodshed in Gaza, saying capitulation “bears a great, devastating cost that could even become existential.”
“Capitulation means subservience and humiliation, and it will allow for violations of our elders, our youth, our women, and our property,” he explained.
In a similar vein and in light of the Arab and Islamic worlds allowing Gaza to be violated as they stood idle, Sayyed Nasrallah asked: “Is it not humiliating and a symbol of weakness that entire states ruling over 2 billion Muslims are unable to administer medicine and food to the people of Gaza?”
Speaking further on internal Lebanese issues, he pledged that the Resistance’s arms “are not to be used for altering the Lebanese political regime or constitution and imposing a sectarian status quo in the country.”
Moreover, he said the Resistance’s arms “are to protect Lebanon, and the land borders are demarcated; the only way any negotiations take place will be on the basis of exiting our Lebanese soil.”
“The US is preventing the Lebanese Army from having adequate arms and missiles for defending Lebanon and deterring any aggression on it,” he added.
US to blame for the bloodshed
If an investigation is opened into October 7, Sayyed Nasrallah said, “the basis for the moral and legal pretexts Netanyahu and Biden are using for their goal of destroying Hamas will collapse.”
“Many people have fallen for the historic Israeli false narrative regarding October 7, including countries that claim to be friendly with Hamas,” he said. “The Palestinian Resistance has been subjected since October 7 to the worst humiliation and smear campaigns any Resistance movement has been subjected to in our contemporary history.”
“The worst case of hypocrisy witnessed by the world today is the stance of the US administration regarding what is going on in Gaza,” he further said, noting that if Washington were to stop arming the Israeli occupation, “the war on Gaza will stop whether Netanyahu wills it or not.”
“The United States is more insistent than “Israel” on the destruction of Hamas,” Sayyed Nasrallah added, holding the US responsible for “every drop of blood in the region, while Israeli officials are mere tools used in this bloodshed.”
“[Israeli Security Minister Yoav] Gallant has nearly gone mad,” he jokingly said about the Israeli official. “He’s talking about [striking] 50km [deep into Lebanon] and [striking] Beirut. It appears that he forgot that the Resistance – he might be [having a mental breakdown] and he forgot, although we have addressed this several times – has major precision missile capabilities.”
Resistance sole option
“The Resistance in Lebanon and Palestine broke Israeli deterrence and destroyed its image while shifting the balance of power by establishing a deterrent,” he added.
The Israeli occupation’s goal of the siege on Gaza prior to October 7, was to kill all of Gaza silently while the world stood idle.
“The goal of the Israeli occupation is to expel all the people of the West Bank to Jordan, the people of Gaza to Egypt, and the people of the occupied Palestinian territories to Lebanon,” he underlined.
“It is our responsibility to prevent the displacement of Palestinians, which requires a major confrontation,” he added.
“No matter how much we praise it, we will not be able to describe the legendary Resistance in Gaza and the historic resilience of the people of Gaza,” Sayyed Nasrallah said, commending all Gazans for their steadfastness.
Further stressing that the Lebanese Resistance was acting in solidarity with the people of Palestine, he said: “The Israelis and Americans did not think that the Resistance in Lebanon would have the bravery or the will to launch a front in support of Gaza.”
“Our goal in the Axis of Resistance as peoples, states, and Resistance fighters was and will remain the defeat of the enemy,” he said. “The enemy’s defeat is by foiling its plans,” he further stressed.
“The goal of the Axis of Resistance is inflicting the largest amount of losses on the enemy during this battle to force it to withdraw,” he explained.
Finally, commenting on the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli occupation, Sayyed Nasrallah said, “The parties involved in political negotiations are the Palestinian Resistance factions that delegated Hamas, and we have no hand in the ongoing talks.”
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1.4 million desperate women and children living in tents as refugees in Rafah are being indiscriminately killed by the Jewish army as this is being written.
The IDF has failed against Hamas in Gaza and the Netanyahu government has rejected the Palestinian proposal for a ceasefire. Their final gambit appears to be to eliminate the existence of the Palestinian people from Israeli occupied territory.
Many left-leaning and Muslim commentators have responded to Israel’s plan to “destroy Hamas,” as in the political organization, by stating that it would be futile. Palestinian liberation movements since 1948 have taken on the lacquer of Marxism-Leninism, secular nationalism, and now an Islam-centered ideology, but in the end, the yearning for a homeland guarantees that resistance will be eternal as long as the Palestinian people exist, regardless if Hamas survives the war or not.
This view is correct, and under normal circumstances, a negotiated settlement would’ve remedied this issue by now. What these critics miss, however, is that while many believe mass racial expulsions of native people are impossible in the 21st century due to supposed enlightened liberal norms and humanitarian laws, Israel and nations with ethnically Jewish elites are working to prove this assumption wrong.
The Jewish campaign to destroy the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aiding Palestinians is the first step in this ethnic cleansing campaign. This has long been an agenda item for the Israeli state, which has opposed UNRWA since its founding in 1949. This entity exists to serve Palestinians expelled by Jewish forces during the Nakba and subsequent assaults.
The Israeli state’s hostility towards UNRWA is centered around the legal protection Palestinians enjoy as refugees, primarily the promise of the Right of Return. This has been portrayed by Zionists as an extremist and anti-Semitic demand, but it is a right all refugees enjoy. UN protected refugees have a high rate of success when returning to their homelands, as recently seen with the case of Afghans, Somalis and others previously forced out of their countries of origin.
The second complaint from the Israelis is that the medical, food and educational services provided to Palestinians in and around Israeli occupied territories discourages them from emigrating and settling down somewhere else.
On the other hand, the counter-argument within the Jewish community on UNRWA was that Europe and America effectively financed Israel’s occupation of Palestinians. By offering humanitarian assistance, some Israelis believed this would fill a vacuum that would otherwise be met by services provided by groups like Hamas or nations like Iran. Under the terms of agreement with UNRWA, Israel was allowed to inspect everything without conditions and supervise the use of resources such as concrete. There was even a deliberate “DeNazification” angle to UNRWA’s work, as trans-national Jewry was even able to micromanage the textbooks Palestinian children in refugee camps were allowed to read, often threatening defunding if messages critical of Jews and Zionism were being taught.
Yet this was not enough to destroy the Palestinian people’s will to resist. On January 4th, Israeli policy wonk Noga Arbell — frustrated with lack of military success in combating Hamas — proposed to the Knesset that they could only “eliminate the terrorists” by destroying the “idea” of a Palestinian state, an idea she asserted was nurtured by UNRWA.
Weeks later, the United States and its subjects Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania announced without warning that they would be defunding UNRWA, causing the organization to suddenly teeter on brink of financial collapse. Arab, European Union and UN leadership have condemned the decision as “collective punishment,” but Washington has ignored these complaints.
The excuse presented for cutting off money for UNRWA in the midst of one of the most brutal wars on a civilian population in history was the circulation of Israeli intelligence claiming a dozen or so aid workers (over 100 who have been killed in the war so far) were secret Hamas agents.
This intelligence appears to be an unfounded hoax. The American head of UNRWA, William Deere, has stated that every single employee of the organization is subjected to a background check and vetted by the Israeli state itself. The Israeli government has long been given the right to order the firing of UNRWA workers at will, as seen with the dozen or so employees accused of being Hamas-sympathizers being fired (or killed) despite a lack of evidence behind the charges against them. Western leaders have been tight-lipped on declaring faith in the Israeli intelligence in question. Recently, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she doesn’t even know the real reason for why she voted to end Australia’s support for UNRWA.
How a desperate genocidal proposal travels from the Israeli parliament to become the consensus in all of the major capitals of the West in less than a month remains a mystery among those not familiar with how power is really brokered in the Washington-led liberal plutocracies.
Mass Expulsion Of All Arabs Is The End Goal
The core tenet of Zionism has always been to expel native Arabs. In 1940, Jewish National Fund leader Yosef Weitz privately plotted the subsequent ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948,
“The only solution is a Land of Israel devoid of Arabs. There is no room here for compromise. They all must be moved. Not one village can remain, and not one tribe. Only through this transfer of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel will redemption come.”
In 1969, the Israeli state brokered a deal with CIA-backed Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner to pay 60,000 Gazans to move to South America, though few appear to have taken the offer.
Following the October 7th incursion, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy released a white paper calling for the “final resettlement” of the Palestinians.
Today, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and senior official Bezalel Smotrich openly tell the Jewish public (83% of which openly support ethnically cleansing Gaza) they are actively conspiring to send Palestinians to a different country and replace them with Jews, even as figures in Washington pretend to protest.
Netanyahu withholds comments on this matter in public, but Israeli media has reported that in late December, the Prime Minister told Likud Party members that their strategy of bombing civilians and man-made famine was a deliberate tactic to terrorize Arabs into “voluntary emigration.”
At the same meeting, Netanyahu promised that his people were privately working on convincing other nations to accept millions of displaced Palestinians. The obvious destination appears to be Egypt, since it is nearby, but we should not discount the prospect of Europe as a final destination.
In late October, the Financial Times reported that the Israeli government was using the European Union to pressure Egypt into taking expelled Palestinians. Egypt has continued to insist that it will not be a party to this arrangement, not because it is against refugees (the country already hosts millions from Syria and elsewhere), but because the Arab world will perceive them as collaborators in the final destruction of the Palestinian people.
Despite early reports that Egypt was considering military action over Israel’s brazen attacks in Rafah, Fattah al-Sisi is expected to cave. In an amazing coincidence, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — which previously ceased loaning money to Egypt — has recently “reconsidered” the offer, generically citing the Gaza war as the reason. The global finance organization has yet to make a final decision on whether to disperse the promised funds.
Arab media is pulling no punches on this development. Middle Eastern journalists have concluded that Jewish world finance is privately dangling up to $12 billion dollars in loan forgiveness from American and European banks in exchange for Egypt taking in the Palestinians Israel is pushing into Sinai. Once al-Sisi agrees to go along with the plan, the credit will flow.
If Egypt accepts “money” over “lead” in this scenario, there will likely be blowback for Europe. Prior to the conflict, the Israeli government was working with the Turkish consulate to enable Palestinians to travel to Southeastern Europe, where they became the top asylum-seeking population in Greece by mid 2023. Israel uses its bureaucracy strategically to ensure that once a Palestinian agrees to leave Israeli territory, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for them to return.
The EU has been offering to bribe the Egyptian regime since the beginning of hostilities between Israel and Palestine. The EU has gone out of its way to keep resettling potential Palestinian refugees to Europe on the table during these secret negotiations, even as it pays Arab leaders elsewhere to keep some immigrants away. The Financial Times reported on this glaring omission, stating that the arrangement, “will not specifically link EU cash to Egypt’s commitment to prevent any onward migration to Europe or a possible influx of Palestinians.”
Egyptian leadership has shown exasperation with Brussels, even declaring that they would send one million Palestinians to Europe if the aggressive lobbying continues.
The Israeli government is not so subtle. Danny Danon, the lead figure working closely with Netanyahu on the Gaza expulsion plan, took to the Wall Street Journal in November to declare, “The West Should Welcome Gaza Refugees.”
This plan has been endorsed by some of the West’s most prominent anti-Muslim Zionist voices. On the idea, Breitbart editor Joel Pollak wrote, “We [America] should give civilians from Gaza temporary refuge during the war, as long as they are not a threat, and encourage regional Arab states to do the same.”
Zionist hawk Nikki Haley has also hinted at support for this idea.
In other words, the people deemed too dangerous to live in their own homes are being welcomed by the same Zionists to the West.
But the Palestinians don’t want to leave. They are fighting to the last man to stay in their land.
Ultimately, the only check that could prevent this refugee catastrophe from going according to the Zionist plan is a victory by the Axis of Resistance.
Sources tell Al Mayadeen that the Palestinian Resistance has received a ceasefire proposal that does not go with its vision for ending the war and would enable “Israel” to continue its hostilities.
Negotiations are taking place over a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and a complete withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces, sources told Al Mayadeen on Sunday.
The stipulations of the agreement being drawn up include the issues of the ceasefire, withdrawal, prisoner exchange, reconstruction, displaced people, the entry of aid, and the lifting of the siege imposed on Gaza.
Intelligence obtained by Al Mayadeen indicates that the Paris Agreement touched on the prisoner exchange but completely neglected the ceasefire and the withdrawal from Gaza, whereas the Resistance’s agreement highlights those issues as pivotal.
There is no clause confirming a ceasefire after the truce ends, and there are no regional or international guarantees that the Israeli occupation would not resume hostilities after it; there also are not enough details regarding the essential issues of the Resistance and Gaza in and of itself, the sources said.
The Paris Agreement also offered no guarantees about an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as Israeli officials claim that they want to establish a buffer zone within the blockaded Strip.
“The Resistance is concerned that Israel intends to remain in Gaza and complicate the reconstruction efforts in a bid to drive a wedge between the people of Gaza and the Resistance,” one source told Al Mayadeen.
Additionally, there are apparently no solid grounds for the reconstruction effort nor the provision of temporary housing for displaced peoples amid the concerns that the Israeli occupation might seek to impede said efforts.
“Hamas is engaging in consultations with Palestinian factions and its allies from parties and regional forces,” the sources said, revealing that the agreement was brought up for discussion within the movement’s upper echelons.
It was revealed to Al Mayadeen that there would be a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, within days, which would be attended by representatives from several other countries, including Qatar.
The meeting is said to include a deep and comprehensive discussion set to be followed by Hamas’ leadership before a final response is granted.
While regional parties attempted to assure Hamas that the agreement would practically lead to a ceasefire and that the Israeli occupation could not continue the war, the Resistance underlined that it wanted genuine guarantees and mechanisms that would effectively lead to a ceasefire and the occupation’s withdrawal from Gaza and prevent the Israeli occupation from resuming hostilities.
“The Resistance cannot hand over its trump card, the military captives, without a guaranteed ceasefire, a withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces, and an agreement on reconstruction and lifting the siege,” the sources underlined.
No agreement has been reached yet: Top Palestinian Resistance official
A leading figure from the Palestinian Resistance factions said earlier in the week that no agreement around a ceasefire deal had been reached yet.
The remarks come after news outlets reported that Hamas had approved in principle the most recent ceasefire proposal made by Qatari officials. The official described the statement made by the Qatari Foreign Ministry as rushed and inaccurate.
The official explained that the party he represents had “received a message from the Hamas leadership regarding the framework paper that was presented based on the Paris meeting.”
It is worth noting that the meeting came up with a momentary ceasefire proposal, which included a three-stage prisoner exchange deal. The meeting was attended by William Burns, the Central Intelligence Agency director, and top Egyptian, Israeli, and Qatari officials.
The leading figure said, “There is no agreement on the framework yet, and Hamas has important remarks (regarding the proposal).”
Hamas officials had announced earlier that its representatives would submit a unified response in Cario, Egypt, that represents all Palestinian Resistance factions.
“To date, no delegation from the Hamas leadership has traveled to Cairo, and no date has been set for meetings yet,” the top official noted.
As reiterated on previous occasions, the official said the Paris Document is currently being studied “based on the agreed-upon national constants.”
“The priority will be for a comprehensive cessation of aggression, a complete withdrawal of occupation forces from Gaza, securing shelters for the displaced, and completing a serious exchange process,” the official explained.
He further stressed that “Zionist media outlets are dissipating fabricated and false news to stir up public opinion about the negotiations.”
Finally, the official said Egypt and Qatar have unified mediation efforts.
A Qatari official had also told Reuters, “There is no deal yet. Hamas has received the proposal positively but we are waiting for their response.”
Meanwhile, the media advisor to the head of the Hamas political bureau told Reuters that the group received the Paris truce proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza, but “we haven’t given a response to the Gaza truce proposal,” adding, “It is still being studied.”
“We can’t say that the current stage of negotiation is zero and at the same time we cannot say that we have reached an agreement,” Taher al-Nono said.
A Palestinian waves the flag of Palestine during a demonstration in the occupied al-Naqab Desert in occupied Palestine, on the 40th anniversary of Land Day, on March 30, 2016. (AP)
A top Palestinian Resistance official has clarified the current situation on a mediated deal between “Israel” and the Palestinian Resistance.
A leading figure from the Palestinian Resistance factions revealed that no agreement around a ceasefire deal has been reached yet.
The remarks come after news outlets reported that Hamas had approved in principle the most recent ceasefire proposal made by Qatari officials. The official described the statement made by the Qatari Foreign Ministry as rushed and inaccurate.
The official explained that the party he represents had “received a message from the Hamas leadership regarding the framework paper that was presented based on the Paris meeting.”
It is worth noting that the meeting came up with a momentary ceasefire proposal, which included a three-stage prisoner exchange deal. The meeting was attended by William Burns, the Central Intelligence Agency director, and top Egyptian, Israeli, and Qatari officials.
The leading figure said, “There is no agreement on the framework yet, and Hamas has important remarks (regarding the proposal).”
Hamas officials had announced earlier that its representatives would submit a unified response in Cario, Egypt that represents all Palestinian Resistance factions.
“The priority will be for a comprehensive cessation of aggression, a complete withdrawal of occupation forces from Gaza, securing shelters for the displaced, and completing a serious exchange process,” the official explained.
He further stressed that “Zionist media outlets are dissipating fabricated and false news to stir up public opinion about the negotiations.”
Finally, the official said Egypt and Qatar have unified mediation efforts.
A Qatari official had also told Reuters, “There is no deal yet. Hamas has received the proposal positively but we are waiting for their response.”
Meanwhile, the media advisor to the head of the Hamas political bureau told Reuters that the group received the Paris truce proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza, but “we haven’t given a response to the Gaza truce proposal,” adding, “It is still being studied.”
“We can’t say that the current stage of negotiation is zero and at the same time we cannot say that we have reached an agreement,” Taher al-Nono said.
Military members of the Palestinian Resistance hold a press conference in response to restrictive Israeli measures against worshippers heading to al-Aqsa Mosque, in Gaza City, the Gaza Strip, Palestine, on July 18, 2017. (AP)
Top representatives of Hamas and the PIJ disclose information regarding ongoing mediated talks for a ceasefire to Al Mayadeen in a live interview.
Top officials from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) spoke to Al Mayadeen in a live televised interview to address the latest development regarding a mediated ceasefire deal with “Israel”.
Ali Baraka, the head of Hamas’ Department of National Relations Abroad, said the movement is conducting internal and external consultations with other Resistance factions regarding an anticipated deal.
The official said Hamas’ response to a deal recently submitted by mediators will require time for formulation and finalization
Shedding light on the Palestinian Resistance’s demands, Baraka said, “Our conditions include a ceasefire, opening the Rafah crossing, international Arab commitment to rebuilding [the Gaza Strip], and releasing prisoners on the basis of all for all.”
It is worth noting that the term “all for all” refers to the release of Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons, in exchange for the release of Israeli captives held by the Resistance in Gaza.
He also said the response, which will be presented to Egyptian mediators by the head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, will represent all Palestinian Resistance factions and not just Hamas.
Revealing some of the details of the submitted proposal, Baraka said, “The proposed plan consists of three stages for prisoners; the first stage is 45 days for civilians, the second stage for military personnel without specifying a time frame, and the third stage is for the exchange of bodies between the two sides, also without specifying a time frame.”
Expanding on this point, Baraka stated that Hamas was notified “that the ceasefire period could be extended, but we want Arab and international guarantees for a ceasefire.”
“In addition to our demand for guarantees, we have demands for reconstruction, withdrawal from the sector, and providing urgent housing for citizens,” adding that “the Resistance did not lose the battle to have [Israeli] conditions imposed on it.”
Commenting on plots for governments that manage Gaza’s civilian affairs, which include those developed by the US and “Israel”, Baraka said that no one will “dictate to us how to manage the Gaza Strip.”
Importantly, Baraka said Fatah, whose officials head the Palestinian Authority, “has not sent an official response to the factions’ document regarding the unified national leadership [plan].”
International actors have ‘Israel’s’ best interest at heart
On his part, Ali Abu Shahin, a member of the PIJ’s Political Bureau, stressed that the movement’s position on the “Paris document” comes in line with its position on the Egyptian proposal.
Abu Shahin pointed out that “there is no new talk about a ceasefire in the Paris document,” adding that “there is Palestinian consensus on managing internal affairs and the formula for managing the sector without external interference.”
According to Abu Shahin, “The observations on the proposals presented are that they do not lead to a ceasefire, and we want guarantees in the face of the genocide war against us.”
He emphasized that “the main driver” for international actors “is Israel’s interest, and the criterion for them is Israeli prisoners,” stressing that “Resistance is not weak to have conditions imposed on it.”
West Asian exports to Israel have skyrocketed since 2020. These are the Arab and Muslim governments that put goods on Israeli shelves, despite their public stances supporting Gaza.
Israeli import data reveals that a number of Arab countries play a significant role in buoying the occupation state’s trade volume, despite attempts by other regional nations to weaken Israel’s economy.
Since this decade’s onset, Israeli ports have been teeming with the arrival of goods from across the region. Each shipment not only boosts the occupation state’s economy, but also weaves a narrative that goes beyond trade statistics as these economic interactions carry a hidden stream of political significance.
Although not an Arab country, Turkiye was the first Muslim state to establish diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, and today leads the pack of West Asian states boosting Israeli imports. In 2020 alone, the value of Turkish exports spiked to $5.7 billion, constituting 6.2 percent of total Israeli imports that year.
Iron and steel ($1.06 billion), plastics ($464.67 million), electrical and electronic equipment ($346.83 million), vehicles ($331.48 million), machinery ($298.89 million), metals ($261.66 million), and building materials ($188.39 million) form the cornerstone of Turkish exports to the Zionist entity.
In second place is the UAE, which normalized ties with Tel Aviv as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, and was the first Arab state to sign a free-trade agreement (2022) with Israel as part of a plan to boost mutual trade to $10 billion annually. The Persian Gulf state’s exports were valued at $1.89 billion in 2022, accounting for 2.1 percent of all Israeli imports.
Particularly intriguing is the 1543 percent surge in the value of Emirati exports to Israel since the normalization agreement. Noteworthy export categories include precious metals and stones ($525.32 million), iron and steel ($483.95 million), electrical and electronic equipment ($210.71 million), and oil ($94.55 million).
Business as usual
Taking third place is Jordan, whose exports to Israel in 2022 reached $469.25 million, a massive 489 percent increase from 2018. Key export categories from the Hashemite Kingdom include plastics ($135.2 million), electrical and electronic equipment ($127.93 million), and iron and steel ($74.35 million).
As for Egypt, the first Arab state to make peace with and recognize Israel, its 2022 exports to the occupation state amounted to $179.31 million. Notable export categories include inorganic chemicals, precious metals compounds ($61.15 million), building materials ($14.26 million), foodstuffs ($12.78 million), and plastics ($11.32 million).
Surprisingly, in fifth place is Algeria, with Israel-bound exports reaching $21.38 million in 2022, the majority of which are inorganic chemicals, precious metals compounds, and isotopes. The revelation of trade relations between Algeria and Israel by the UN database raises questions about Algeria’s long-held stance against normalization, including its criminalization two years ago.
Morocco stands in sixth place, with exports to Israel amounting to $17.92 million in 2022, predominantly composed of foodstuffs. Rabat resumed diplomatic and trade relations with Israel as part of the 2020 accords.
Finally, Bahrain’s exports to Israel in 2022 reached $10.58 million, reflecting an astounding 12,083 percent increase from 2020, the year of the normalization agreement between Manama and Tel Aviv. Key exports include aluminum ($8.78 million) and iron and steel ($2.62 million).
As such, the combined exports of West Asian countries to Israel surged by $4,359.530,000 between 2020 and 2022, marking an increase of almost 111 percent.
Israeli Energy Imports
Israel depends heavily on oil and natural gas for its power generation, with these sources constituting 80 percent of its total energy supply. It is a net exporter of natural gas, having sent 9.4 billion cubic meters abroad in 2022, with 6.5 billion cubic meters going to Egypt and 2.9 billion cubic meters to Jordan.
In contrast, Israel imports all its oil supply, and consumes approximately 220 thousand barrels per day. Of this, 62 percent comes from two Muslim-majority countries, namely Kazakhstan (93 thousand barrels) and Azerbaijan (45 thousand barrels). The remainder is sourced from West African countries, including Gabon, Nigeria, and Angola, in addition to Brazil, and an undisclosed amount is transported illegally from Iraqi Kurdistan.
To facilitate the import of most of Israel’s oil, the Turkish port of Ceyhan in southeastern Turkiye plays a crucial role. It serves as a loading point for oil tankers carrying crude from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan through the Caspian Sea via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Tankers also transport oil from Iraqi Kurdistan along the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the ports of Haifa and Ashkelon.
Oil tankers arrive in the occupied state via two main seaports: the aforementioned Ashkelon, equipped with 22 tanks holding 11 million barrels, and Eilat in the south, with 16 large oil tanks capable of holding about 1.4 million cubic meters of oil. The latter has seen an 85 percent fall in activity amid increased naval operations executed by Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned forces in the Red Sea against vessels bound for Israel.
Approximately 180,000 barrels per day reach Ashkelon, from where internal pipelines transport the oil to the ports of Ashdod and Haifa. Both ports have oil refineries with capacities of 100,000 and 197,000 barrels per day, respectively. Additionally, a pipeline connects Ashkelon and Eilat, traversing the Negev desert with a capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day.
Despite the growing tensions and sharp rhetoric by some regional states toward Israel since its military assault on the Gaza Strip commenced, trade activity remains largely uninterrupted. Turkiye, despite calling Israel a “terrorist” state, contributes heavily to Israel’s economic well-being by helping Tel Aviv circumvent the Yemeni blockade, increasing its overall exports to Israel, and playing a pivotal role in oil transportation.
Despite the war on Gaza, Turkish exports grew from 319.5 million dollars in November 2023 to 430.6 million dollars in December — higher even than the 408.3 million dollars exported in July, prior to the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood operation.
Exports to Israel from the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco are hardly surprising: these are the Arab states most vested in championing regional policies that serve the interests of the occupation state. The more surprising connection, however, is the trade relations — however minimal — between Algeria and Israel.
To understand the true positions of states means to skip over the official rhetoric and examine the economic ties that politics often conceals.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Top representatives of Hamas and the PIJ disclose information regarding ongoing mediated talks for a ceasefire to Al Mayadeen in a live interview.
Military members of the Palestinian Resistance hold a press conference in response to restrictive Israeli measures against worshippers heading to al-Aqsa Mosque, in Gaza City, the Gaza Strip, Palestine, on July 18, 2017
Top officials from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) spoke to Al Mayadeen in a live televised interview to address the latest development regarding a mediated ceasefire deal with “Israel”.
Ali Baraka, the head of Hamas’ Department of National Relations Abroad, said the movement is conducting internal and external consultations with other Resistance factions regarding an anticipated deal.
The official said Hamas’ response to a deal recently submitted by mediators will require time for formulation and finalization
Shedding light on the Palestinian Resistance’s demands, Baraka said, “Our conditions include a ceasefire, opening the Rafah crossing, international Arab commitment to rebuilding [the Gaza Strip], and releasing prisoners on the basis of all for all.”
It is worth noting that the term “all for all” refers to the release of Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons, in exchange for the release of Israeli captives held by the Resistance in Gaza.
He also said the response, which will be presented to Egyptian mediators by the head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, will represent all Palestinian Resistance factions and not just Hamas.
Revealing some of the details of the submitted proposal, Baraka said, “The proposed plan consists of three stages for prisoners; the first stage is 45 days for civilians, the second stage for military personnel without specifying a time frame, and the third stage is for the exchange of bodies between the two sides, also without specifying a time frame.”
Expanding on this point, Baraka stated that Hamas was notified “that the ceasefire period could be extended, but we want Arab and international guarantees for a ceasefire.”
“In addition to our demand for guarantees, we have demands for reconstruction, withdrawal from the sector, and providing urgent housing for citizens,” adding that “the Resistance did not lose the battle to have [Israeli] conditions imposed on it.”
Commenting on plots for governments that manage Gaza’s civilian affairs, which include those developed by the US and “Israel”, Baraka said that no one will “dictate to us how to manage the Gaza Strip.”
Importantly, Baraka said Fatah, whose officials head the Palestinian Authority, “has not sent an official response to the factions’ document regarding the unified national leadership [plan].”
International actors have ‘Israel’s’ best interest at heart
On his part, Ali Abu Shahin, a member of the PIJ’s Political Bureau, stressed that the movement’s position on the “Paris document” comes in line with its position on the Egyptian proposal.
Abu Shahin pointed out that “there is no new talk about a ceasefire in the Paris document,” adding that “there is Palestinian consensus on managing internal affairs and the formula for managing the sector without external interference.”
According to Abu Shahin, “The observations on the proposals presented are that they do not lead to a ceasefire, and we want guarantees in the face of the genocide war against us.”
He emphasized that “the main driver” for international actors “is Israel’s interest, and the criterion for them is Israeli prisoners,” stressing that “Resistance is not weak to have conditions imposed on it.”
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 