Gaza, April 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) At least three people were killed during an Israeli attack targeting a facility belonging to the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources said on Friday.

The medical sources told Xinhua news agency that "at least three bodies of people were transferred to a local hospital as an Israeli warplane attacked them while they were in a refuge facility belonging to the ICRC."

So far, the ICRC has not commented on the incident, Xinhua news agency reported.

Israel has been launching a large-scale offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on October 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage.

Source: IANS

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Tel Aviv, Dec 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in a statement said on Tuesday that the ‘Iron Dome’ air defence system has intercepted multiple rockets fired at Gaza border towns of Ashkelon and Sderot allegedly by the Hamas terror group.

However, there has been no immediate claim by the Hamas or any other group for the rockets fired at the southern Israel towns on Tuesday.

The Israel health department and the Magen David Adom ambulance services informed that no injuries had been reported from any of these places.

It is to be noted that the Israel army is engaged in a fierce battle with the Hamas terror group to take control of the Gaza Strip.

While there has been severe damage to the Hamas infrastructure, the firing of rockets into southern Israeli towns, is an indication that the militant outfit has ammunition left in its armoury.

—IANS

aal/rad

Source: IANS

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Tel Aviv , Dec 6 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued an apology to the Lebanse army after its missile attack hit a Lebanese military base killing one soldier and injuring few more.

IDF in a statement on late on Tuesday said that it regrets the death of a Lebanese soldier and injuring several other Lebanese soldiers in an attack directed towards Hezbollah linked targets in Lebanon.

The Lebanse army had earlier issued a statement which read: “ An army military position in Adaysseh area was bombarded by Israeli enemy army. One soldier of our army was martyred and three soldiers injured.”

It is to be noted that ever since the Hamas attack on October 7, Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in skirmishes with Hezbollah claiming that 79 of its soldiers were killed in Israeli bombardments. Israel has also said that six of its soldiers were killed in Hezbollah attacks in Northern Israel borders.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) Israel has no coherent roadmap for Gaza's future, with the return of the Palestinian Authority, an Arab/international military presence, or an Israeli re-occupation all creating new problems of their own, said Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics.

There has been some chatter about an Arab/international force managing post-war governance in Gaza. But Arab governments across the region have made it clear that they don’t want to touch the besieged enclave with a ten-foot pole, Cafiero wrote in The New Arab.

From their perspective, this is a crisis that Israel and its Western backers must own, and it is not the responsibility of Arab states to manage it, he said.

Moreover, any Arab military force put in charge of Gaza would be subject to grave dangers. Perceptions of Bahraini, Egyptian, Emirati, or Jordanian forces being Israel’s partners or allies against any Gaza-based resistance could put them in harm’s way.

While speaking earlier this month at the IISS Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain, Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi stressed that “there will be no Arab troops going to Gaza” and that the Arab states “are not going to be seen as the enemy”.

Amman’s chief diplomat emphasised that Arab governments were in agreement that this idea must be rejected. Entertaining that idea would send Israel’s government the wrong message about Arab states’ being willing to “clean up your mess”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government is vocal about Israel playing a direct role in the future of Gaza governance, presumably in a post-Hamas period that Tel Aviv believes it can initiate through more warfare at the enclave, the article said.

“Israel is already occupying the land, but a tactical occupation is a far cry from victory or, rather, peace, which frankly I see as a long way off at the moment. Israeli overreaction has opened Pandora’s box. It will be a long time before the situation stabilises,” explained Federica Saini Fasanotti, a Senior Associate Fellow at the Milan-based Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) said, in an interview with The New Arab.

Ultimately, it is safe to say that the Israeli leadership has failed to devise a clear, coherent, and realistic strategy for the post-war situation in Gaza. To say the least, this will prove extremely problematic for Tel Aviv.

“The Palestinians cannot return to a destroyed territory. They don't have the economic strength for such reconstruction. So, it’s a question of where they will be placed. But the point is another: the inhabitants of Gaza are not objects. The Israeli operation will come at a very high cost in terms of stability,” said Fasanotti.

Tragically, US and Israeli policymakers incorrectly assess Hamas as the cause of the conflict, not the conflict as the cause of Hamas. Without addressing the underlying issues that have caused Palestinians to resist Israel, there will be no peace in Gaza, nor in Israel any time soon, the article said.

“American and Israeli ruminations about the future of Gaza reflect an old colonialist mentality - that they would decide the future of the Palestinian people - ignoring the fact that this is precisely the root of the problem: occupation and denial of the right of self-determination to those living under occupation,” said Nabeel Khoury, the former deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Yemen, The New Arab reported.

Marco Carnelos, the former Italian ambassador to Iraq said “The dream of the current Israeli Government to accomplish a ‘Nakba in Gaza’ must be prevented. This will be the real litmus test to see if the ‘international community’ (i.e. the US and EU) care about the Palestinian question and the two-state solution. If the ‘Nakba in Gaza’ will be accomplished the US/EU credibility will be zeroed,”

Team Biden hints at the possibility of the PA led by President Mahmoud Abbas replacing Hamas in Gaza once this war is over.

Yet, this idea is extremely problematic. Only a small percentage of Palestinians in Gaza would see it as legitimate for the PA and Abbas to come into the enclave and take over from Hamas, the article said.

This decline in Fatah’s popularity has resulted from Abbas earning himself a reputation among Palestinians as a corrupt servant of the Israeli occupation who is propped up by the US and Israel.

“Mahmoud Abbas is totally ineffectual as a Palestinian leader, and [he accepts] any directive he gets from Israel and the US. He fell out of favour with Palestinian opinion a long time ago, especially in Gaza,” said Dr Nabeel Khoury, the former deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Yemen, in an interview with The New Arab.

Source: IANS

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New York, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) In its slow march towards realpolitik, India has come a long way from looking at Palestine through the prism of its independence struggle and the trauma of partition and rejecting Israel to supporting the two-state solution of sovereign Israel and Palestine nations living as neighbours.

In the latest iteration. Prime Minister Narendra Modi “emphasised India’s support for a two-state solution” – a policy of India for decades – when he met Israel’s President Isaac Herzog at the Climate Summit in Dubai on Friday, the Union External Affairs Ministry said.

That demonstrated the mantra of a two-state solution that has been invoked over and over again in Indian leader’s and diplomats’ speeches and statements for decades is alive and well.

India had initially refused to countenance the formation of Israel and voted against the original two-state proposal, the UN General Assembly resolution in November 1947 for the partitioning of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states (with an international setup for Jerusalem, the city sacred to the three Abrahamic religions).

The reality of Israel, when even Muslim majority nations Iran and Turkey recognised it, forced India to overcome its Nehruvian reservations and recognise the nation in 1950, thus nominally accepting the concept of a two-state solution to the Palestine problem.

Giving a firm foundation for its support for a two-nation solution, New Delhi also recognised the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestine people in 1974 and the Palestine State in 1988.

This followed the slow evolution of the Palestinian cause leading to the emergence of the PLO under its charismatic chairman as the internationally recognised voice of the Palestinians.

Now both Israel and Palestine had diplomatic footings in India, although it was only in 1992 under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao that India gave Israel full diplomatic status after having allowed a consulate in Mumbai since 1953.

Looking back, India’s initial opposition to Israel flowed from the pre-Independence Congress Party’s expressions of solidarity with the Arab cause in Palestine struggling against British rule and Mahatma Gandhi’s and Jawaharlal Nehru’s opposition to the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

A 1937 Congress Party resolution had opposed the proposal by a British Royal Commission for the creation of Israel by partitioning the Palestine territory that Britain came to control under a League of Nations mandate after the defeat of its ruler Turkey in World War I.

The Congress Party was guided by Gandhi, who had written that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French” and the Jewish people “can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs” and not under "the shadow of the British gun”.

And, Nehru had taken the position that “Palestine is essentially an Arab country” and “the two peoples could well cooperate together in a free Palestine, without encroaching on each other’s legitimate interests”.

But after the UN resolution partitioning Palestine and Israel declaring independence in May 1948, a war broke out with the Arab nations in which Israel prevailed taking more territory than had been set aside for it in the UN resolution.

And, during the 1967 war, Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan.

A 1967 Security Council resolution known as the “Land for Peace” resolution formed the basis for a revived two-state concept.

Under the 1969 peace treaty with Egypt that followed, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt dropped claims to Gaza, which had been captured by Israel in the war fought soon after its independence, so that the PLO can have it.

Subsequently, Jordan also gave up its claims on the territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River adding to the Palestinian territory.

The next big step came in the early 1990s following negotiations between Arafat and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The Oslo Accords that emerged from the negotiations between 1993 and 1996 led to Israel and the PLO recognising each other and agreed to the creation of the Palestine National Authority as the de facto government of Gaza and the West Bank -- creating in theory what could eventually become the sovereign Palestine nation.

Meanwhile, India’s overwhelming support for Palestine as the vociferous role as a leader of the nonaligned movement under Nehru and later his daughter Prime Minister Indira Gandhi overshadowed the relations with Israel, even though that country had helped India during the 1962 war with China, the 1965 war with Pakistan and the 1971 Bangladesh War.

In public, Israel hardly merited attention for India -- except as a target of criticism.

But as New Delhi's foreign policy evolved, Rao establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel brought better symmetry to India’s relations with both Israel and the Palestine Authority in time for the Oslo Accords that gave a firm form to what could be the two-state solution.

India joined the international calls for the two-state solution for the Palestine problem which is now entrenched in India’s diplomatic canons even if the idea seems far away.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) Gaza has been governed by Hamas since 2007, when the political arm of the militant outfit took charge of the coastal strip.

The administration from 2007 to February 2017 was headed by Ismail Haniyeh, who now heads Hamas's political bureau based out of Qatar (he's now believed to be in Iran). Following his departure, Haniyeh was replaced by Yahya Sinwar as the leader of the Gaza administration.

On January 25, 2006, Haniyeh was nominated as the prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority (PA) after Hamas won the legislative election. This event led to a Palestinian national unity government with Fatah, then as now headed by Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah had collapsed after a violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah.

Hamas eventually took control of the Gaza strip on June 14, 2007.

Although the Ramallah-based PA's authority was supposed to extend over both Gaza and West Bank, it has been limited only to the latter. Both administrations, Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, regard themselves as the legitimate PA government.

As matters have come to develop, the PA in the West Bank headed by Abbas is not seen as a credible authority by Palestinians, who consider Hamas to be their voice. In fact, pollsters believe that if an election was held today, Hamas will sweep it.

Internationally, though, Fatah, which the Palestinians see as weak and subservient to the Israelis, and not Hamas, is recognised as the legitimate government of the region. India, too, backs Abbas.

Egypt had mediated a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas in 2011. The terms of the agreement were supposed to be implemented by May 2012 by means of joint elections.

However, in January 2012, Palestinian sources were quoted as saying that the May joint elections "would not be possible".

In February 2012, the Hamas-Fatah Doha agreement was inked, under which a unified government was sworn in on June 2, 2014.

This government was expected to function in Gaza and West Bank and prepare for national elections which did not happen due to disagreements between the two entities. With the failure of this combination of government, PA continued to prevail in the West Bank while Hamas took control of the Gaza strip.

However, the Hamas-Fatah conflict began simmering after Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006.

Israel, along with the US, UN, European Union and Russia, demanded that the new Hamas government accept all previous agreements, recognise Israel's right to exist, and renounce violence. But when Hamas refused, the group severely hacked aid to the PA.

By December 2006, a massive conflict erupted in Gaza when Hamas tried to replace the Palestinian police as the primary authority in Gaza strip.

On February 8, 2007 Saudi Arabia-sponsored negotiations in Mecca concluded in an agreement on a unified Palestinian government between Hamas and Fatah.

By March 2007, the Palestinian Legislative Council approved the formation of a national unity government with a 83-3 vote. Government ministers were sworn in at ceremonies held in Gaza and Ramallah.

In June 2007, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip from the national unity government[ after driving out Fatah.

On 14 June 2007, the dissolution of the agreed-upon unified government was announced and a state of emergency was declared.

Hamas took over the Gaza Strip at this point and the PA had West Bank. The twin governments of Palestine, each claiming dominance, continued the struggle to assert itself over Gaza, not recognise the authority of the other, each accusing the other of a coup d’etat .

The Palestinian police authorities ordered their personnel in the Gaza Strip not to follow the orders of Hamas. Several Fatah members fled Gaza to the West Bank, and Fatah gunmen stormed Hamas-led institutions in the West Bank after the Battle of Gaza.

The PA’s rule in Gaza had ended in severe humiliation when Fatah members (some stripped to their underpants) fled Gaza strip to West Bank.

This has been an enduring impression of the collapse of the PA. The Hamas government is internationally not recognised, especially by Israel, the US and EU; instead, the PA is acknowledged.

However, after the split of the Palestinian parties, West Bank remained relatively quiet while Gaza witnessed constant conflict between Hamas and various other factions opposing Israel. The most prominent was the Gaza War in 2008.

In 2009, a radical Salafist cleric declared an Islamic Emirate in Gaza, and accused Hamas of failing to implement the Sharia law in its entirety.

The radicalisation of the Gaza Strip and attempts to undermine Hamas’ authority resulted in the Hamas crackdown on Jund Ansar Allah, an Al-Qaeda affiliate that year. The incident lasted two days and claimed 22 lives.

In March 2019, there were rampant protests in Gaza, against the severe living conditions which were marked by 70 per cent unemployment among youth. The scale and intensity of the protests were unprecedented since Hamas assumed control of Gaza in 2007.

Hamas responded by implementing harsh measures that included dozens of individuals -- activists, journalists, and human rights workers -- getting beaten, arrested and subjected to home raids.

As matters stand, Hamas believes international pressure on Israel could help end the siege. With mounting civilian casualties, a ceasefire, truce, and a stand for negotiation for exchange of thousands of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages lends credibility to Hamas’s leadership and authority in the current situation.

Hamas has thus transformed from a militant group to a political entity.

(Kavya Dubey may be reached at kavya.d@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) Installing the Palestinian Authority in Gaza would inevitably lead to the re-emergence of a terror state and any future autonomous entity in Gaza should meet conditions that ensure it will live in peace with the State of Israel and promote the prosperity of its residents, according to an expert.

Since the beginning of the war, some prominent figures in the US and the Israeli media and former establishment have raised the idea of installing the Palestinian Authority (PA) as the governing body for civilian affairs. However, such a course of action would inevitably result within a few years in the emergence of a new terrorist state hostile to Israel, possibly even under the control of a re-emerged Hamas, Raphael BenLevi writes in The National Interest.

BenLevi is a fellow at the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem, a reserve officer in the IDF intelligence branch, and director of the Churchill Program for National Security of Tikvah-Fund Israel.

If the IDF fights to eradicate Hamas rule and a similar entity rises in its place, this will constitute a historic failure, a fatal blow to Israel’s national resilience, and an existential threat to the future of the country, he wrote.

The most feasible alternative is an autonomous Arab civilian entity in Gaza, with Israel maintaining overall security responsibility for as long as required by the security situation and threat assessment.

In Gaza today lives an entire generation that has been indoctrinated into Hamas’ genocidal ideology, and there exists no organized opposition movement to speak of. As a result, if a new leadership would be established tomorrow based upon local or familial allegiances, it would almost certainly be comprised of Hamas sympathizers, if not supporters, opposed to coexistence with Israel, he said.

Without such a process of “de-Hamasification”, any Arab-led political entity that arises in postwar Gaza will be hostile to Israel and eventually lead to the re-emergence of the terrorist state. Transferring power to the PA would guarantee this outcome. The PA is itself already a political entity hostile to Israel’s existence.

The current model in Judea and Samaria—overall Israeli security responsibility alongside PA civilian rule—is highly unstable, and its future is uncertain even in the near term.

The PA is perceived by the public over which it rules as a deeply corrupt institution and holds dismal levels of support, he said.

According to a June 2023 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would defeat PA Chair Mahmoud Abbas by a large margin if Palestinian elections were held today.

In the 2006 elections for both Gaza and Judea and Samaria, Hamas won a decisive majority. It is widely recognized that the reason Abbas has not agreed to hold new elections since 2006 is because Hamas would almost certainly win again, he said.

“Even if some Palestinians also feel disillusionment towards Hamas as an organization, a vast majority (71 per cent) support the formation of new terrorist groups such as 'Lion’s Den' and the 'Jenin Battalion'.

"This demonstrates that the goal of murdering Jews and destroying Israel enjoys broad support in much of Palestinian society. The political debate centers around choosing which organization is best suited to attain these goals”, the article said.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Covid-19 pandemic, resurgence of inflation, high borrowing rates and the Russia-Ukraine war -- the global economy which has endured one shock after another since early 2020, couldn't have asked for more.

The continuing Israel-Hamas war coupled with a persistently-high inflation is expected to slow down the world economy, which proved more resilient in the first half of 2023, and recession may set in if more countries join the conflict.

Oil prices have already risen by about $5 a barrel since the start of the October 7 conflict, and according to the IMF, a 10 per cent increase in oil prices could weigh down global growth by 0.15 percentage point.

The economic fallout of the deadly conflict, which entered its 56th day on Saturday, can already be seen in the two nations embroiled in conflict, along with the war-battered territories of Gaza and West Bank, where people have lost lives, loved ones and livelihood.

The Jewish nation started its war on Gaza with deep pockets having more that $200 billion dollars in forex reserves and billions in military aid from the United States.

Its economy has grown at a fast rate since the global financial crisis of 2008-09 and its GDP crossed $500 billion in 2022. In addition, the country has a net external creditor position exceeding 30 per cent of GDP.

But, according to new forecasts by the Israeli central bank, the war with Hamas will cost the country about $53 billion between 2023 and 2025.

The central bank expects the war will be a three per cent hit to Israel's GDP by the end of next year as businesses struggle with labour shortages and consumer demand remains weak, a Wall Street Journal report said.

A recent Labour Ministry report says that more than 760,000 Israelis, which is nearly 18 per cent of the workforce, are not working due to the war.

A third of restaurants in major Israeli cities have downed shutters since October 7 due to lack of employees as well as customers, local media reports said.

The shortage in workers is costing the economy a staggering $600 million a week, according to the country's central bank estimates.

Israel has now borrowed more than $8 billion since the start of the war with Gaza, causing the budget deficit to balloon to $6 billion, according to a report by US-based news outlet Medialine.

Before October 7, Israel had issued work permits to around 18,500 Gazan workers, and three days later, it revoked all labour permits held by them, effectively rendering their presence in Israel illegal.

According to The New Arab news outlet, thousands of these workers were then arrested “secretly and illegally” by Israel and were moved to detention centres without any legal basis, and the jewish nation refrained from disclosing their names and whereabouts.

Further, it released thousands of workers who had been detained and sent them back to Gaza on foot, without their belongings, beginning November.

A UN Development Programme (UNDP) report released in November revealed that around 390,000 jobs have already been lost since the start of the war.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said the poverty rate in the Gaza Strip has reached 53 per cent, and a third of Gaza residents (33.7 per cent) are living in abject poverty.

Approximately 64 per cent of households in Gaza are without enough food, and unemployment is at 47 per cent – one of the highest rates in the world.

The UNDP report said at least 45 per cent of the housing stock in Gaza has been reportedly destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombardment.

Just weeks into the war, the Israeli army issued a new directive forbidding Palestinians from picking olives in the West Bank territory, harming their livelihood and self-sufficiency.

October and November are the main months for olive harvesting for the three million Palestinians on the West Bank.

Around 110,000 farmers directly profit from the olive harvest and another 50,000 people earn much of their livelihood from working with the trees and produce.

"The olive harvest season is usually a hugely special and joyful time for Palestinians, when families and friends come together to pick their olives and share food. But this year is very different," Riham Jafari, Coordinator of Advocacy and Communication for ActionAid Palestine, said.

"Farmers have been shot dead while harvesting their crops, while others have had their trees cut, uprooted, or set on fire. This is not just an attack in economic terms -- it is an attack on our very sense of national pride and identity as Palestinians," Jafari said.

Palestinians are reportedly boycotting products from Israeli companies, and almost 60 per cent of them have stopped going to work In West Bank.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) The US may reach out in hope of bringing some semblance of stability to the Palestinian regions but matters remain mired with uncertainty, given decades of the pervasive conditions there.

It was in 2006 that Palestinian legislative elections were held and the Hamas-backed Change and Reform Party emerged victorious and Palestinian Authority’s (PA) rule in Gaza was pushed to the brink of an end altogether.

While armed clashes followed in Gaza, the weak and incompetent PA rule made space for arming the rival clans. After a spate of intra-Palestine violence, Hamas drove out PA.

However, Gaza landing in the hands of Hamas came with its own share of problems: Palestinians widely see it as a method to induce some degree of stability in Gaza and West Bank at the behest of Israel.

Further, the involvement of the US and Europe in the rupture of Palestinian politics after the 2006 election resulted in withholding aid and channeling it to Fatah.

It is understood that Hamas is not particularly popular and Palestinians have not been allowed to choose their leader since 2006. Added to this is the involvement of various domestic and international actors to the dynamic that have prevented meaningful elections.

All said and done, PA would anyhow need Israel to first reverse its “longstanding policy to disconnect Gaza from the West Bank and to treat Gaza as a non-entity in political and governing terms”, and such a proposition seems unlikely.

PA’s ability to govern Gaza is heavily doubtful. The attempts to patch up PA with Hamas over the years have failed and in case Hamas leadership is toppled, wider splits and tensions in Palestinian society will come to the fore more glaringly. This would make it more difficult to negotiate the return of PA to power.

Further, PA will need an election to return to power and that seems unlikely given the possibility of violence.

PA’s rule in Gaza had ended in severe humiliation when Fatah members (some stripped to their underpants) fled Gaza strip for West Bank. This has been an enduring impression of the collapse of PA.

The massive unpopularity of PA in West Bank, which it controls, is because that is also understood to be at the behest of the Israeli population. As a matter of fact, PA also needs the Israeli Army’s security to survive.

PA was set up following the 1993 Oslo Accords with the purpose of serving as a temporary administration till the time an independent Palestinian state emerged. PA excludes Hamas.

PA is dominated by Fatah and has been run by the 88-year-old by President Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) . Fatah is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization and the second-largest party in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Abbas ensured that there are no elections since his Fatah faction lost a legislative ballot to Hamas in 2006. The previous year, he was elected president for what was supposed to be a four-year term.

Over the years, PA degraded into an authoritarian, corrupt and undemocratic administration operated by Israel.

Experts widely maintain that in order to restore PA’s credibility, Hamas and other Palestinian groups must be included in its base and elections must be held to unify Gaza and West Bank under a ‘two-state paradigm’ with Israel.

But the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas has decimated Israel’s trust in Palestinian governance, and in case elections happen, Hamas will likely emerge victorious.

However, despite the October 7 attack, Palestinians in the West Bank have generally hailed Hamas for demolishing the dominance of Israel and putting the cause of Palestinians on the forefront internationally.

Voices from ground zero clearly say that PA cannot run Gaza. For the middle class that has grown up in the relative stability of the West Bank, there is little respect for the authority owing to financial difficulties and a hacked budget.

People see the Palestinian leadership “negotiating for years for their own political survival, not for the sake of their national aspirations …and they achieved neither.”

(Kavya Dubey may be reached at kavya.d@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) Indian American lawmakers have been consistently calling cessation of hostilities, extended truce for smooth flow of aid, swift release of hostages, removal of Hamas and a lasting solution to the Israel-Hamas war, which entered its 56th day on Saturday.

At least 178 Palestinians were killed across Gaza after Israel’s army resumed its attacks on Friday, following a week-long humanitarian truce made possible with the efforts of Qatar.

Since the hostilities erupted on October 7, over 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in the besieged enclave, including 6,150 children and more than 4,000 women, making it the deadliest war for Gaza till date. The count does not include those still missing or buried under the rubble.

AS THE ATTACK BEGAN...

When Hamas launched the massive attack on southern Israel on October 7, the Indian-origin US Congressmen stood firmly with Israel condemning and calling the surprise attack "inhuman" and "appalling".

Congressman Shri Thanedar called for the elimination of Palestinian militant group Hamas "from the face of the earth", saying that they are just "barbaric terrorists".

"I condemn these violent attacks against the Jewish people and the state of Israel. The calculated aggression targeting innocent civilians is heartbreaking and cannot be tolerated. America stands firmly with Israel," Thanedar said.

He also urged the Congress to rally behind Israel until the threat is addressed and security is restored.

Congressman Ro Khanna called the crimes carried out by Hamas against Israeli women and children "inhuman" and "appalling".

"My heart breaks for the victims, and I stand in solidarity with the people of Israel at this dark moment," Khanna wrote on X.

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said that the images coming out of Israel after unprovoked attacks by Hamas has left him "horrified.

"The US unequivocally stands with the people of Israel against this gruesome terror attack, and strongly supports its right to defend itself,” he said.

In their condemnation of the attacks, the lawmakers were joined by Indian-American Republican presidential-hopefuls Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy with the former South Carolina Governor saying that "an attack on Israel is an attack on America".

Ramaswamy said that the US should use the attacks in Israel as a wake-up call and strengthen its borders.

A CALL FOR PAUSE...

As the war entered its 28th day, leaving thousands dead, wounded and lakhs displaced with many struggling for food, water and medicine supplies, Congressman Ami Bera shared a poignant message calling for an immediate pause on military operations.

Bera said that while he "firmly believes" that Israel has the right to exist and defend itself, so do "innocent Palestinians who have a right to a life of peace and dignity".

"We need an immediate pause in order to get needed humanitarian aid, food, water and medicine to struggling civilians; then we need to find a different path forward," Bera said, after speaking to the Palestinians and Jews in his constituency.

The Congressman said he hoped to see Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace, which can only happen if innocent Israelis and Palestinians are not killed.

He also led a team of 89 colleagues in demanding the US Congress to immediately pass the President's request for Fiscal Year 2024 emergency supplemental funding.

This included aid for the US Agency for International Development's International Disaster Assistance account to meet rising humanitarian needs around the world including those related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

THE WELCOME TRUCE...

The lawmakers hailed a temporary ceasefire, which came into effect on November 24 after nearly seven weeks of intense fighting.

The commencement of the truce saw the release of 86 Israelis, 24 foreign nationals and 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Thanedar said the recently announced temporary pause offers a glimmer of hope in the "complex landscape" of the Israel-Hamas war.

"The path to peace remains challenging, but this temporary cessation of hostilities represents possibility and hope. It is my sincere desire that the conflict ends soon with the removal of Hamas, and we are able to move forward to a place of stable coexistence," he said in a statement.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said that the temporary cessation of hostilities is a "much-needed signal of progress and an important step towards safety and security for all civilians".

The lawmakers hoped that the agreement will allow for much-needed food, water, fuel, and other humanitarian aid to enter strife-torn Gaza.

Bera hoped that President Joe Biden's administration would be able to leverage the momentary pause to advance negotiations towards a more promising future for the Israelis and the Palestinians.

THE WAY OUT...

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the United States has long tried to negotiate a resolution to the conflict, but several factors, including deep divisions between and within the parties and declining US interest in carrying out its traditional honest-broker role, have hurt the chances of a peace deal.

Jayapal called for building an international coalition that could eradicate Hamas and allow new legitimate leadership to emerge for the true governance of Palestinians.

The Biden administration has supported a two-state solution but instead of restarting negotiations, it has promoted Israeli-Arab normalisation and resumed aid for Palestinians, the CFR said.

Bera said his commitment to advocating for a two-state solution remains unwavering, where Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in peace.

"It may seem like an impossible dream, but the alternatives are simply untenable," he said.

While pushing for a two-state solution, Ro Khanna called for a "full ceasefire" instead of a temporary pause, stating that Israel has significantly ‘diminished’ Hamas' military prowess to carry out another October 7-like attack.

According to the New York Times, in theory, this would provide the Palestinians a state while giving Israel security and preserving its Jewish majority (allowing the nation to stay democratic and Jewish).

(Meenakshi Iyer can be reached at meenakshi.i@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) Qatar was instrumental in facilitating talks between the US and the Taliban that culminated in the 2020 Doha Accord and led to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Ongoing mediation efforts in Lebanon, Libya, Chad, Venezuela, and Palestine are also positioning the small Gulf nation as a diplomatic heavyweight with expanding geopolitical influence, as per a recent article published in Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

Mediation has long been a cornerstone of Qatar’s foreign policy - a key strategy by which the country garners outsize prestige within the international system, while hedging its bets and maintaining ties with a wide range of actors.

Doha has made itself indispensable to Washington as a go-between with various states and non-state parties, including Iran and the Taliban, the article said.

This strategy arguably took a hit in 2017 when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed a three-and-a-half-year blockade on Qatar, leading the country to temper its efforts abroad even after the blockade ended in 2021.

But its more recent engagements show that Doha can still punch above its weight by mediating conflicts and alleviating tensions in the Middle East and beyond, the article said.

Qatar's ability to speak to all sides in the current conflict seems to have paid off with the potential release of hostages in Gaza, DW reported.

The announcement of a possible "humanitarian pause" in the Gaza Strip can be considered a triumph for the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, the report said.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry put out a statement announcing a four day "pause" during which all sides — the Israeli military, the militant Hamas group and Hezbollah's armed wing in Lebanon — would agree to stop fighting.

Previously, even Israel's national security advisor Tzachi Hanegbi had praised Qatar's role, writing on social media that "Qatar's diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time".

But not everyone is so pleased with the small Gulf state. Some commentators said negotiators should have tried harder to secure the release of more hostages. Others argued that because Qatar has been home to Hamas' political leadership since 2012, it was somehow complicit in Hamas' attacks, DW reported.

Experts agree that Qatar is walking a fine line when it comes to its foreign policy, playing the "Switzerland of the Middle East" and keeping doors open to all comers.

"Qatar's role is particularly sensitive because the emirate has been relying on being an intermediary for well over two decades now," Guido Steinberg, a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said.

In the past, Qatar has also acted as an interlocutor between the international community and the Taliban in Afghanistan (who also have political offices in Doha), between the US and Iran, and even Russia and Ukraine.

It also hosts the largest US military headquarters in the Middle East, al-Udeid Air Base, which played a significant role in evacuations from Afghanistan in 2021. This led to Qatar being described as 'major non-NATO ally', DW reported.

In the recent past, Qatar was spending an estimated $30 million a month on Gaza. But the arguments around this money are yet another example of how fraught Qatar's role is when it comes to Palestinians and Hamas.

Some have suggested Qatari money subsidizes Hamas' military wing and is used for nefarious purposes. Hamas has ruled the enclave since 2007 and also manages payments for the civil administration of Gaza, DW reported.

For many years the Qataris have served as a diplomatic bridge between various actors in the region, which, for political reasons, would not be able to easily engage each other in direct talks, The New Arab reported.

This has been evident in many instances, including the West’s engagement with the Taliban, which manifested in the Doha Agreement of 2020, the September 2023 Iran-US prisoner swap, as well as talks in Qatar between factions involved in conflicts in Lebanon and Sudan during the 2000s.

It is no secret that Hamas has a political office in Doha, with the group’s exiled leadership moved to Doha after leaving Damascus in 2012 following Hamas’ falling out with the Syrian regime at the Arab Spring’s outset, The New Arab reported.

Many neo-conservative voices in Washington have lashed out at Qatar for its relationship with the Palestinian group. Yet, an important fact to bear in mind is that it was the US which requested the opening of this Hamas office in the gas-rich emirate.

Qatar has long used Hamas’ status in Doha as a means to serve as an intermediary between the US and Israel, on one side, and Hamas, on the other, The New Arab reported.

Through Qatari backchannels, Hamas and Israel agreed to ceasefires which ended their previous armed conflicts in 2014, 2021, and 2022.

Many countries in the Middle East aspire to the role of mediators – Egypt, Oman and Kuwait among them – but Qatar presents itself as the region’s primary problem solver and advocate of dialogue. It has been active in Ukraine, Lebanon, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and Gaza, in the process hosting the leadership of the Taliban and the political wing of Hamas among others, The Guardian reported.

Observers say Qatar takes on this role since as a small but fabulously wealthy country built on vast supplies of liquid gas, it needs to make itself indispensable to the international community and be protected from unwelcome interventions by its larger neighbours, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The 2017-2021 boycott of Qatar led by Saudi Arabia showed it has good reasons to be fearful, The Guardian reported.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) India appears to have emerged as a minority of one in the BRICS group's stand on the Israel-Hamas war with South Africa as the chair taking the lead in mounting a vociferous attack on Israel.

South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, who hosted the BRICS summit on Tuesday, said that the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime.

“The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide,” South Africa President said.

South Africa has also referred Israel to the International Criminal Court while the country’s parliament voted to shut down the Israeli embassy. Israel, on its part, has recalled its ambassador from South Africa.

China, Russia and Brazil also voiced their criticism of Israel although they did not come out as strongly as South Africa.

India was the only country that did not jump on to the bandwagon and stuck to its balanced approach of also condemning terrorism that led to the war.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the BRICS “extraordinary meeting” and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar attended on his behalf, which perhaps was a signal that India would toe its own line on the issue.

India earlier abstained from a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, arguing that the text did not condemn Hamas.

In his speech at the conference, China’s President Xi Jinping called for a cease-fire and an end to what he called collective punishment by Israel to the people in Gaza. He said the international community should take steps to stop the war from spreading.

China had last month vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that stated that Israel had the right to defend itself.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in his address said there was a “humanitarian catastrophe” unfolding in Gaza and blamed the crisis on what he called the USA’s failed diplomacy.

He asserted that “all these events are a direct consequence of the U.S. desire to monopolise mediation functions in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement.”

Putin called for a cease-fire in Gaza, the freeing of hostages and the evacuation of civilians from the Gaza Strip.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called the war a “humanitarian catastrophe.” He said Hamas’s terrorist attacks, while “barbaric,” did not justify the use of “indiscriminate and disproportionate force against civilians.”

The BRICS group issued a joint statement after the meeting that called for the release of all civilians who are being illegally held captive, as well as a humanitarian truce that would lead to a cessation of hostilities.

“We condemned any kind of individual or mass forcible transfer and deportation of Palestinians from their own land,” the statement said.

Six countries -- Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates -- which have been invited to join the BRICS group next year, also attended the conference.

Source: IANS

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New York, Nov 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) When a contingent of Hamas hostages rode on white vans of the International Red Cross flags across the Rafa crossing to freedom in Egypt, it was a diplomatic triumph for Qatar, the odd nation out in the region with a prickly interaction with the US.

And with Washington tied down by its total support for Israel, China is trying to upstage it by raising its diplomatic profile in the region as a champion of the Muslim nations, building on the rapprochement it brokered between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Beijing is hoping to upstage Washington by taking advantage of the sympathy for Palestine shown in the backing by 121 countries of a General Assembly resolution calling for a truce in the Gaza conflict, which the US had opposed, but later allowed a truce resolution to pass in the Security Council.

China holds the presidency of the Council for this month and led the negotiations for the adoption of the truce resolution, which had been elusive for over a month.

Egypt is a key player in the Gaza crisis, having once administered the territory.

It controls the Rafah border through which humanitarian aid can go to the territory and hostages and other foreigners and those with severe medical needs can leave it, and a sizeable chunk of the international negotiations on Gaza has centred on the crossing.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani played a key role in working out the five-day truce in the Israel-Hamas conflict and the release of the hostages taken by Hamas last month and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, once again taking centre stage in the region’s muddy diplomacy.

The US and Israel had to reach out to the energy-rich Gulf emirate for the hostage release deal, whatever their misgivings over Qatar’s maverick international relations.

With its deft diplomacy of balancing its connections with all sides – it hosts US military bases as well as Taliban and Hamas political offices, and has close economic relations with Iran in defiance of US sanctions – Qatar has emerged as an honest broker between warring parties – or at the very least a post office for communications between those without direct contacts.

Shepherding the Gaza negotiations now is far cry from 2017 when US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution criticising Qatar for hosting Hamas leaders.

Various US politicians have attacked Doha for hosting Hamas, but Qatar’s Ambassador Meshal Hamad Al-Thani explained on X social media platform that the channel with Hamas was established at the request of the US to maintain open lines of communication.

And last month a bipartisan group of Senators led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin wrote to al-Thani asking for help to free hostages.

Leading up to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Qatar also played host to the negotiations between the Taliban and the US, and when the arrangements collapsed into chaos, Doha came to the rescue by facilitating the airlifts of US citizens and Afghan refugees, earning it a Senate “thank you” resolution.

Qatar also played the banker in the deal between the US and Iran for freeing five Americans held by Tehran, holding the $6 billion in Iranian funds that Washington unfroze as part of the agreement.

Qatar’s Al Jazeera cable news network, a rival to the Western channels, has helped it project its perspectives to a global audience, but that itself has put it at odds with its Gulf neighbours and several countries including the U.S and Israel.

In 2017, when its neighbours led by Saudi Arabia imposed sanctions on it and broke-off diplomatic relations, one of their demands was shutting down Al Jazeera. (The sanctions have been lifted and diplomatic relations restored.)

Doha has stood apart from the Gulf neighbours who entered the US-brokered Abraham Accords – the normalisation of relations with Israel that invoked Judaism’s and Islam’s shared heritage of the Prophet Abraham.

When the 7/10 Hamas attack in Israel blew up into a full-fledged war, the administration of President Joe Biden was trying to get Saudi Arabia to join the Accord as a counter to China’s coup in getting Riyadh and Tehran to restore diplomatic relations broken off in 2016.

Now with prospects of Israel-Saudi relations receding, Beijing is making a play for a role in the Gaza crisis.

It hosted the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and the Palestinian Authority, as well as the secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation for meeting on the Gaza conflict.

In a show of solidarity with Arab and Muslim nations, China had joined Russia to veto a US-sponsored resolution that did not call for a ceasefire.

South Africa is another wannabe player in the Gaza crisis.

It convened a virtual summit on Gaza of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) plus the six countries that will join the group next year, where President Cyril Ramaphosa turned the volume several decibels higher, accusing Israel of genocide.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi kept away from the summit, which adopted a statement condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza, but with less belligerence.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) The world's attention is on Gaza where there is finally a quantum of peace after seven weeks of indiscriminate and unrestrained bombardment that has killed thousands, levelled entire neighbourhoods and created a humanitarian disaster, but barely 100 km away, another conflict may be brewing amid heavy-handed Israeli repression.

In the occupied West Bank, life for Palestinians is virtually like being in a conflict zone, save for the absence of heavy artillery shelling and aerial attacks.

On one hand, the settlers freely don the mantle of the Israeli state, with the active support of its Army, to dispossess Palestinians of their land and livelihood, deprive them of resources and services, and sequester them into ghettos. On the other, the Israeli security forces have a free hand to conduct sweeping raids, widespread arrests, and destruction of public and private property with no bar on lethal force.

The death toll in battered Gaza has crossed 14,500 while there are 200 plus fatalities in the West Bank - where there is no similar conflict - and over 3,000 arrested, since October 7 when Hamas upended the uneasy situation in the Middle East with its unprecedented attack on Israel.

The police state-style repression in the West Bank, where Palestinians were even sternly warned against celebrating the release of the first batch of jailed women and children on Friday - the first day of the truce for release of the captives in Hamas' hands and Palestinians in Israeli prisons - and tear-gassed as the process was delayed on Saturday, bodes ominous for both Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the future.

It also has some disturbing implications.

Even if the pent-up anger and frustration in the West Bank - which must be remembered was the centre of the Intifada, which convinced a more perceptive Israeli leadership that its Palestinian issue could not be wished away by disregarding and subjugating it, is discounted, there are the political imperatives that cannot be ignored any longer.

Israel is doing itself no favour by hanging on to occupied territory and expanding its settlements there by forcible land grab - a step that has drawn condemnation from most of the world, including by its closest and invaluable ally, the US, and well as European countries, though it may just be lip service for them.

However, the bulk of the countries, especially those of the Global South may not be amenable to letting this state of affairs continue, given the emphasis they see the Western powers put on territorial integrity, or rights of civilian non-combatants when it comes to, say, Ukraine.

Additionally, the Israeli policy of suppressing the aspirations or the very lives of Palestinians by the random arrests, imprisonments, vandalisation, restrictions and sundry other daily humiliations is spurring creation of a populace that will not be amenable to negotiations for a settlement - that may be delayed but is inevitable - and rather, take recourse to violent counter-measures.

Hence, the support that Hamas and others like it enjoy.

This development will also impact the rather moribund Palestinian Authority, under President Mahmoud Abbas, which has shown itself powerless to forge towards statehood, or for that matter, deal with the security and rights of the people it is responsible for.

It was rather telling that the Palestinian Authority's offer to take over post-conflict Gaza - where it was trounced in the last-ever Palestinian elections held in 2006 - was met by outright rejection by hapless inhabitants of the enclave.

Furthermore, the truce led to release of Palestinian prisoners - significantly, all from West Bank and East Jerusalem, not Gaza, thus, shoring up the prowess of Hamas and showing the abject powerlessness of the Abbas administration.

Hamas does have a presence in West Bank too and this too, will earn its credits to the detriment of its PLO-led counterpart there. Thus, there was talk of including Hamas in the PLO, led by Abbas' Fatah.

Even, the sidelined and exiled ex-Fatah strongman Mohmmad Dahlan, who was a staunch and rather ruthless opponent of Hamas during his stint in Gaza, also acknowledged that Hamas would still have a role in future Palestinian politics - a prospect that will be most unpalatable to Israel and its prime supporters, but not so easily brushed away.

Finally, there remains the argument that how justified is Israel in terming itself as the sole "democracy" and "bastion of civilisation" in the region, if it continues to imprison teenagers - one of the women released on Friday was a 23-year-old, in jail since she was 16 - without trial or charges in the garb of the encompassing "administrative detention"?

And, if Israel did, belatedly, agree to a prisoner/hostage exchange - as Hamas was demanding from the beginning, did it have to kill over 14,500 people before this fructified?

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) Endless shifts with no food, water, working environment; having to choose between patients, do surgeries without anaesthesia, letting them die for want of medicines, with infection; constantly losing their own health, house, colleagues and family members -- these are some of the realities being faced by the doctors and healthcare staff in war-torn Gaza for over a month now.

The Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, is under siege by the Israeli military in response to Hamas' terror attack on October 7 that left 1,200 dead and 240 -- from babies to octogenarians -- taken hostage by Hamas.

While accidents, calamities, wars and deaths are not something unknown to doctors and other healthcare workers, the situation in Gaza is reportedly way beyond imagination. Yet amid a collapsing health system, limited painkillers, huge numbers of burns victims, amputations, the doctors are putting on a brave front.

“We are humbled by the heroic work of health workers in #Gaza,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, posted on X.

Since October 7, the WHO has verified more than 250 attacks on healthcare in Gaza -- at hospitals, clinics, ambulances and patients -- and the West Bank.

“Half of Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-third of its primary healthcare centres are not functioning at all. Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities,” the WHO chief said.

Many doctors and healthcare workers have lost their lives by choosing to stay back for their patients.

“We are being overwhelmed. There is nowhere to evacuate to… There is no escape route. We are probably one of the last lines of defence,” Paul Ley, a doctor at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

“We never leave the hospital. We work round the clock. We do operations with minimal anaesthesia. If we run out, we can’t operate, but there is no clear line. There are a lot of people crying, screaming with pain, but we don’t have enough analgesics. We keep them for the kids or very severe cases.

“Normally we would change dressings on patients with 40 per cent burns with them under sedation and minimise the time by using more attendants... Now it has to be done with a lot of pain. We try to keep our heads cool and steady, but for local staff this is their families, friends, their people,” Ley said.

Speaking to IANS, Dr Ishwar Singh Gilada, Health Expert and Secretary General, People's Health Organisation-India, said that in a normal scenario, a patient is surrounded by a team of expert doctors. But it is difficult in warzones.

“A general surgeon may have to do even cardiovascular surgery, plastic surgery or neurological surgery and sometimes even MBBS doctors will have to do some kind of minor surgery. So in that situation, it is not kind of more of a standard care. It is not optimal care."

Doctors cannot “get any emergency care; blood supply, or any kind of surgery done immediately to plug the holes”, and are likely to make “judgmental errors, and not make the proper decision; feel fatigued, overwhelmed and ultimately burnout”.

Even as there is no safe water, air and food, doctors in Gaza are also facing patients with waterborne and respiratory diseases, in addition to war victims.

"This brutal annihilation of an entire population’s health system stretches beyond what humanitarian aid can fix. Doctors can’t stop bombs," said Joe Belliveau, Executive Director for Doctors Without Borders, while calling for a sustained ceasefire in Gaza.

Source: IANS

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Washington, Nov 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) As hostages are released by Hamas, the US is waiting with bated breath for the release of Americans among them.

“We don't know when that will occur, but we're going to be -- expect it to occur,” President Joe Biden said Friday when asked at a news conference about the fate of American hostages.

“We don't know what the list of all the hostages are and when they'll be released, but we know the numbers that are going to be released. So, it is my hope and expectation it will be soon,” Biden added.

A total of 10 Americans are among the 240 hostages taken by Hamas in the terrorists attacks on Israel on October 7. None of them were among the first batch of hostages released on Friday in a deal brokered by Qatar in which Israel paused its military operations and released Palestinians in its custody. A second batch is due to be released on Saturday, if both sides hold up their ends of the deal.

Two Americans were the first hostages released by Hamas, in late October.

Abigail Mor Ida, one of the American hostages, turned four on Friday. She was in her father’s arms when Hamas terrorists struck Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7.

Both her parents were shot. Abigail had “crawled out from under her father’s body… full of his blood," her great aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali told NBC News.

Abigail had run to a neighbour’s and had taken refuge with the rest of the family in their bomb shelter.

“The last thing we learned was that somebody saw (a) terrorist taking this mother, her three kids and Abigail out of the kibbutz,” she said. “That’s all we know.”

Biden spoke of her in remarks on the release of the first bath of hostages.

“We also remember all those who are still being held and renew our commitment to work for their release as well. Two American women and one four-year-old child, Abigail, who remains among those missing.”

Biden has vowed to bring all American hostages home and told reporters that he remains “in personal contact with the leaders of Qatar, Egypt, and Israel to make sure this stays on track and every aspect of the deal is implemented”.

Uncertainty about the fate of remaining hostages deepened on Saturday with Hamas delaying the scheduled release of a second batch accusing Israel of failure to implement their part of the agreement, allowing humanitarian aid and relief.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) Zionist parties may be dominating the political landscape of Israel, but Haaretz, a newspaper founded in 1919 and known for its liberal stance on Israel’s domestic and foreign affairs, has been consistently exposing the hypocrisy of the global Left with regard to the country at the eye of the international storm.

While voicing concern for the people of Gaza has been conspicuously delinked from the scale and intensity of the activities of Hamas and its accomplices, in the light of Israel's poor preparedness for surprises, failure in policy and deployment of defensive forces compounded by lack of relevant intel, its conception and hold over Gaza appear to have collapsed.

When Israel was deliberating over increasing permitted labourers from Gaza in its territory and claimed that Hamas is deterred by Israel given its presumed hold over it, thousands of Hamas fighters prepared for the October 7 surprise attack in silence and secrecy for months.

However, the devastating commemoration of October 7, when Hamas launched an attack and Israel declared war, appears to have fallen dim on the conscience of the world; but besides the massive humanitarian crisis that seems to have no end in sight, questions loom large about the political price of this situation that Israel will have to pay.

Experts believe that while the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) concentrated forces in the south, the possibility of a multi-arena war which will include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and even Hezbollah and extremist elements among Israeli Arabs is not out of the question, especially when Hezbollah is biding its time.

Haaretz senior columnist Anshel Pfeffer, who was among the first journalists to be embedded with forces in the Israeli army’s ground operation in Gaza, spoke of the “many convenient but very inaccurate comparisons” between the Israel-Gaza situation and the Russia-Ukraine war. Israel operates differently in Gaza, in the sense that IDF soldiers swung in more motivated than ever after October 7.

“Many of them know people who were killed, who were taken hostage, or wounded. Some of them are from families which have been forced to leave their homes because of the war. It’s very personal for everybody. There's no question about it,” he said.

Acknowledging that on-ground soldiers are “very focused on their mission,” Pfeffer pointed out that “when you go up the IDF hierarchy to the top, there is a growing sense of frustration that there is no clear strategic idea of the next stage” after Israel destroys Hamas’ military capabilities and topples the regime.

“There is no real guidance or strategic idea of any kind coming over from this government, because this government is dysfunctional and has too many radical, far-right elements in it that refuse to even contemplate some type of Palestinian control of Gaza. And that is both frustrating for the generals planning this war, and also very damaging to Israel,” Pfeffer said.

On the other hand, with respect to the mighty US, the stand of which is crucial in the compounding situation in the Israel region, “There does not appear to be a clear endgame from the Biden administration,” said Trita Parsi of Quincy Institute, a think tank promoting diplomacy.

“When it comes to this strategic image, it’s very difficult to be able to discern a clear strategy that actually would have the desired results,” he added.

However, Haaretz finds itself at the receiving end as Israel's Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi proposed to act against the daily by ending publication of government notices in it.

He said that Haaretz is "sabotaging Israel in wartime" and was an "inflammatory mouthpiece for Israel’s enemies."

This proposal was submitted without the due process of being vetted by the ministry's legal adviser, and it seeks to immediately halt all payments to Haaretz from state entities in his purview.

In response, Amos Schocken, CEO of Haaretz said: “If the government wants to close Haaretz, that’s the time to read Haaretz.”

(Kavya Dubey may be reached at kavya.d@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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Washington, Nov 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) US President Joe Biden has rejected the growing demands at home and abroad for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying it will be used by Hamas to regroup and rearm itself and perpetuate its dominance.

At the same time, he called for an end to violence by Jewish extremists against Palestinians in the West Bank and threatened that the US could sanction individuals responsible.

In an OpEd in The Washington Post on Saturday, the President likened the Israel-Hamas war to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and together they have brought the world to an inflection point.

He also addressed rising antisemitism and Islamophobia in the US, saying that in recent years “too much hate has been given too much oxygen”.

With the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of the continuing military operations by Israel in retaliation for the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, the President has faced mounting calls for ceasefire from within his own Democratic party, the administration and members of the 2020 presidential campaign staff.

Criticism of his unwavering support of Israel in this conflict has come also from allied countries and partners. Biden is not changing his mind.

“As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace,” he wrote. “To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.”

Biden has offered Israel unwavering support in its pursuit of Hamas although he himself and his officials have publicly called on Israel to not lose sight of international rules and laws. Actually, he had told them to not repeat the mistakes the US made in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.During the visit to Tel Aviv, he wrote, “I also counseled Israelis against letting their hurt and rage mislead them into making mistakes we ourselves have made in the past.”

While continuing his public embrace of Israel by rejecting demands for ceasefire, the president also reached out to the Palestinian civilians recommitting himself to the two-state solution of Israelis and Palestinians living in two separate states, side by side and in peace.

“In the months ahead, the United States will redouble our efforts to establish a more peaceful, integrated and prosperous Middle East - a region where a day like Oct. 7 is unthinkable,” he wrote.

And he proceeded to put the Israeli leadership on notice as well, for their support of promoting Israelis to live in the captured parts of West Bank, which would be part of Palestine in the final settlement of the dispute, when that happens.

“I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable,” Biden wrote. “The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank.”

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 18 (SocialNews.XYZ) Even as the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war in Palestine has now gone past 11,000 including 4,500 children, the Congress and other Opposition parties have slammed Israel's actions, describing them as genocide and demanding an immediate ceasefire.

The Congress, which is the main principal opposition party in India, was critical of the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, which left more than 1,200 dead and 242 being taken hostage.

In a post on X on October 19, just 12 days after the terror attack, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said: "The killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children in Gaza and the collective punishment of millions of people by cutting off their food, water and electricity are crimes against humanity."

He also slammed the terror attack by Hamas and said: "Hamas' killing of innocent Israelis and taking of hostages is a crime and must also be condemned."

"The cycle of violence between Israel and Palestine must be brought to an end," he had demanded.

On October 30, even Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi condemned India abstaining from the voting for a ceasefire in Gaza and said the grand old party's stand on the issue of Israel and Palestine has been consistent over the years.

In her article Sonia Gandhi wrote, "Contrary to some mischievous suggestions, the position of the Indian National Congress has been long-standing and principles: it is to support direct negotiations for a sovereign independent, viable and secure state of Palestine coexisting in peace with Israel."

"This is also the stand taken by the Ministry of External Affairs on October 12. It is noteworthy that the reiteration of India's historic position on Palestine came only after Israel began its assault on Gaza. The Prime Minister had made no mention of Palestinian rights in the initial statement expressing complete solidarity with Israel," Sonia wrote.

"The Indian National Congress is strongly opposed to India's abstention on the recent United Nations General Assembly Resolution calling for an 'immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities' between Israeli forces and Hamas in Gaza," Sonia wrote in a piece titled 'A war where humanity is on trial now'.

However, the BJP on the same day accused the Congress of being driven by petty, vote-bank politics in its stand on the Israel-Hamas conflict and asked when was the last time its senior most leader wrote in the media on an international conflict.

Hitting back at the Congress, BJP leader Sudhanshu Trivedi told a press conference that there can be no politics on terrorism and international issues.

There should be no scope for ifs and buts on terrorism and India's stand should be clear, categorical and unequivocal, Trivedi said.

When was the last time the senior most Congress leader wrote on an international conflict, he asked.

"It is sad that the Congress policy is not in line with India's prestige and dignity but is inspired by petty vote-bank politics. Whatever the Congress is doing is against India's policy," he claimed.

Even indirect support to terrorism is damaging to humanity and India's security and interests, he said, criticising the Congress.

Trivedi said it was during the Rajiv Gandhi government's time that the ground was laid for boosting diplomatic ties with Israel before the P. V. Narasimha Rao-led dispensation established full diplomatic relations between the two countries.

As the then leader of the opposition, Atal Bihar Vajpayee had travelled to the UN to articulate India's stand on a host of issues and spoke in one voice with the then government headed by Rao, Trivedi had noted.

He asserted that there has been “no change” in the government's policy on the Palestine issue as India stands for two-state solution through peaceful means.

The Congress on November 17 condemned the Israel’s action in Palestine saying that its attack on the civilians are “genocidal” and it is shocking that many influential countries, that choose to speak the language of human rights and justice when convenient, are lending their unstinting support to Israel’s actions which reflects double standards being applied in Ukraine and in Gaza.

The Congress also slammed the language of the Israeli ministers on Palestinians like the language that preceded the Holocaust and urged the Indian government to do all it can to pressurise the governments of the US, Israel, and the EU so that they may use their power to stop the violence being committed by Israel in Gaza.

In a statement on the Israel-Hamas war, Congress General Secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh said: “Israel’s actions following Hamas’ condemn able attack on their citizens are genocidal. The targeting of civilians, women and children, hospitals and shelters violate the values of humanity and every international norm of war.”

Hitting out at the Israeli leaders, the Congress leader said that all this while statements of “genocidal intent” from the top Israeli leadership are being made.

“Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu has himself called for turning parts of Gaza ‘to rubble’ and has called the wanton killing of men, women, and children ‘collateral damage’. The kind of dehumanising language used by some Israeli ministers on Palestinians is like the language that preceded the Holocaust,” the Congress Rajya Sabha MP said.

Expressing shock at the stand of the influential countries actions, the Congress leader said: “It is shocking that many influential countries, that choose to speak the language of human rights and justice when convenient, are lending their unstinting support to Israel’s actions. The double standards being applied in Ukraine and in Gaza is apparent.”

Jairam Ramesh said the Indian National Congress urges the Indian government to do all it can to pressurise the governments of the US, Israel, and the EU so that they may use their power to stop the violence being committed by Israel in Gaza.

The remarks from the Congress leader came in the wake of death of over 11,000 people, including over 4,500 children in Palestine in the retaliatory action by Israel after October 7 surprise terror attack by Hamas.

Even Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, addressed a press conference on October 19, reiterating the sentiments of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.

Bagchi had stated that India held its stance on condemning the terror attacks against Israel and that it was the international community's duty to stand against terrorism of all forms.

However, addressing the issue of Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza, Bagchi added that there needed to be a "two-state solution".

Earlier, Bagchi had also stated that India would support the formation of a "sovereign, independent and viable" state of Palestine.

The MEA spokesperson said: "We have strongly condemned the horrific terrorist attack on Israel. The international community must stand together in combating terrorism in all its forms and manifestations."

"There was also the issue of Palestine and on that, we have reiterated our position in favour of direct negotiations for establishing a two-state solution," Bagchi added.

Bagchi had earlier stated that India had always advocated the resumption of "direct negotiations" for a viable state of Palestine within "secure and recognised borders".

He also added that India's hope that the state of Palestine could exist "side by side at peace with Israel".

Besides the Congress, the Left parties have openly condemned the attack on civilians in Palestine.

The CPI and CPI-M on October 28 had expressed shock over India abstaining from the voting for a ceasefire in Gaza, and slammed the government at Centre saying it shows the extent to which Indian foreign policy is being shaped by being a subordinate ally of US imperialism and the Modi government's actions for consolidating the US-Israel-India nexus and negates India's longstanding support to the Palestinian cause.

In a joint statement, CPI leader D. Raja and CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said: “It is shocking that India abstained on a Resolution overwhelmingly adopted by the UN General Assembly calling for a humanitarian truce titled ‘Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations’ in the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza.”

“India's abstention on a resolution that was overwhelmingly adopted shows the extent to which Indian foreign policy is being shaped by being a subordinate ally of US imperialism and the Modi government's actions for consolidating the US-Israel-India nexus. This negates India's longstanding support to the Palestinian cause,” it said.

The joint statement said that as the United Nations General Assembly adopted this resolution, “Israel has stepped up its genocidal air and ground attacks in the Gaza strip."

The statement added: “Respecting the overwhelming mandate of the UN General Assembly there must be an immediate ceasefire. The United Nations must re-energise itself to implement the mandate of the Security Council for a two-state solution with pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of State of Palestine."

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 18 (SocialNews.XYZ) Healthcare system in Gaza is on "its knees" and on the verge of "near collapse", said the medical community while condemning attacks on hospitals, patients and healthcare workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by the Israeli military in response to the Hamas militants’ terror attack on Israel on October 7 that left 1,200 dead and 240 -- from babies to octogenarians -- taken hostage by Hamas.

In response, Israel launched a three-pronged attack -- via the air, imposing a siege and launching a ground invasion in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people. This included religious places, schools, relief camps and importantly hospitals and medical personnel -- specifically protected under International Humanitarian Law (IHL).

Even as Israel invited the ire of global leaders, organisations, with scores of people worldwide protesting, it maintains that Hamas is hiding weapons in tunnels under hospitals -- a charge denied by Hamas.

Since October 7, the WHO has verified more than 250 attacks on healthcare in Gaza -- hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and patients -- and the West Bank, while there had been 25 attacks on healthcare in Israel, said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while speaking at the Emergency meeting of the UN Security Council last week.

“Half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary health care centres are not functioning at all. Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities,” he said.

Besides the WHO, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other major UN organisations have unequivocally condemned the attacks on children, hospitals, patients and healthcare and have called for an immediate ceasefire.

The global organisations reported that even as the casualties are increasing rampantly, food, water and critical medicines and health supplies are running out in Gaza. Blood banks only have a week of supply left.

“The health system is on its knees…and the health system is near collapse,” said the WHO chief while calling for “attacks on healthcare to stop, and for patients, health facilities, health infrastructure and health workers -- as well as aid workers -- to be protected”.

He added that there are rising cases of respiratory and skin infections, and acute watery diarrhoea due to lack of sanitation, which could increase the risk of transmission.

Citing data from the Gazan Ministry of Health, UNRWA and WHO, he added that there had been 71,224 recorded cases of acute respiratory infections, 44,202 cases of diarrhoea (22,554 in children under five), 808 cases of chickenpox, and more than 14,195 skin rashes, 10,952 cases of scabies and lice.

Laila Baker, Regional Director for Arab States at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), termed the situation as “catastrophic” for women and girls in Gaza.

“At the moment, some 50,000 Palestinian pregnant women are in Gaza, every day approximately 180 women give birth there (…) and are facing appalling conditions during those deliveries,” she said, with the situation most critical for the women facing obstetric complications.

Their lives and the lives of their unborn children are at risk, due to severely limited access to healthcare and emergency obstetric care, Baker added, noting that with supplies running low, women are forced to undergo caesarean sections without anaesthesia, and as military strikes land near hospitals.

“We are being killed here, please do something," said one of MSF's nurses from the basement of Al-Shifa Hospital, where he and his family were sheltering from the incessant bombing in a text message to his seniors.

"We call on the Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system. Our staff and patients are inside Al-Shifa Hospital, where the heavy bombing has not stopped,” said Ann Taylor, MSF's Head of Mission in Palestine, in a statement.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the world’s largest humanitarian network, have also uniformly condemned the hospital blast.

“No patient should be killed in a hospital bed,” the International Committee of the Red Cross posted on X.

“No doctors should lose their lives while trying to save others. Hospitals must be protected under international humanitarian law.”

“Even war has rules!” Francesco Rocca, the president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies posted on X.

“Patients and people seeking refuge were killed. Hospitals must be sanctuaries for all.”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement on X that it is “appalled and horrified” by the hospital explosion and that it has repeatedly called on the international community to pressure Israel into rescinding evacuation orders for hospitals.

“This war crime comes despite frequent declarations and pleas by these hospitals that these orders are impossible to implement, and that they constitute a death sentence for patients,” the statement said.

“The silence of the international community only emboldens such acts and increases the danger to the lives of innocent civilians.”

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) A month after the large-scale attack by Hamas on Israel, resulting in the killing of some 1,400 civilians that evoked an armed offensive from Israel on Gaza, the conflict in the Middle East has predictably escalated with Israel preparing to militarily 'eliminate' Hamas overcoming the challenge posed by the extensive underground network of caves built by the group for use as bunkers in a military confrontation, Iran-backed Hezbollah declaring that it is fully prepared to join in the combat in support of Hamas and the US extending military support to Israel through its Sixth fleet in the Mediterranean.

The Arab states seemed to be watching the situation, divided as they are between the anti-US radical forces represented by Syria, Yemen, and Qatar and those like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain -- fundamentalist but deeply aligned with the US. This showed up on expected lines considering that Hamas has over the years of the US-led 'war on terror', become a front of Islamic radicals though it originated in the mould of anti-Left pro-Islamic State organisations like Muslim Brotherhood of Hasan Al-Banna in Egypt and Syria, and Jamaat-e-Islami of Maulana Maududi in undivided India, with no hostility towards the West.

The Arab Spring of 2011 marked a general shift in the Muslim world towards a hardline Islamic dispensation in replacement of personal dictatorships. In Egypt, it had the imprint of the Muslim Brotherhood and initially, the US welcomed the ouster of Hosni Mubarak for that reason. However, the forces behind the Arab Spring drifted towards the revivalist call of going back to the times of the Pious Caliphs and found no fault with radicalisation and the terrorist violence that went with it, causing discomfiture to the West.

The present regime in Egypt headed by President Abdul Fattah El Sisi favours Islam but not its radicalisation and is in the good books of the US.

Radicalisation incidentally finds acceptance in countries like Pakistan, Turkey, and Malaysia that rode two horses by trying to be on the right side of the US while supporting Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Developments in the Middle East revolving around the Israel-Hamas confrontation seemed to be accentuating these alignments within the Islamic world.

In his first open response since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Hassan Nasrallah, head of the powerful Hezbollah movement, told the press in Beirut that 'America was entirely responsible' for the ongoing war, termed Israel as a mere tool of execution of the US strategy and warned that 'all options' were open to respond 'decisively' to the extension of the conflict to Lebanon.

He was speaking in the background of some skirmishes on the Lebanese border. Nasrallah asked the Americans to immediately stop the aggression if they did not want 'a regional war', saying that the US fleet in the Mediterranean 'does not scare us' and that 'we are ready to face it'. Hassan repeatedly talked of the 'war in the region' that 'would make the US soldiers pay'.

Hezbollah along with the armed groups from Iraq, Syria and Yemen represents a regional Iran-led 'axis of resistance' against the US and Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again warned Hezbollah that if it joined the war 'that would be the mistake of life for it'.

Remarks of the Hezbollah chief appeared defensive in as much as they referred only to regional dimensions of the conflict and did not talk of any larger global threat. Iran already in conflict with the US would -- it seems -- not like to get directly involved in the Hamas-Israel military confrontation.

Meanwhile, it has taken a month for Israel Defense Forces to reach 'the heart of Gaza city' described by Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as the 'largest terrorist base ever built'. He repeated Israel's determination 'to destroy Hamas'.

Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated that there would be no ceasefire till hostages held by Hamas were released. Seen in the backdrop of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's statement at Ankara that the release of hostages was the 'prime concern of the US', it would appear that Hamas was expected to use hostages to leverage its position.

Netanyahu has talked of a 'tactical pause' to work out the release of hostages while the US President has struck a note of restraint by asking Israel not to 'reoccupy Gaza'. Israel is apparently planning to surround Gaza in a manner that Hamas militants may be compelled to release hostages in spite of the use of tunnels by them for 'guerilla' warfare.

A deterrence for anti-Israel forces in the Middle East is the clear message given by President Biden that the US was going to be fully behind Israel in the event of the conflict escalating into a regional war. His reference to the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and mention of Israel's stakes in it has elevated American involvement in the region to a level where it is a part of the geopolitical strategy of the US to counter the initiatives China had been advancing to enhance its foothold in the Middle East.

It is here that the Arab block led by Saudi Arabia has to play an effective role in checking the spread of radicalisation in the region. India's strategic interests leave little doubt about which side of the fence this country should be on, in the event of Islamic radicals advancing their hold in the Muslim world.

The challenge before Israel is to put down Hamas and its terror infrastructure without causing too much collateral damage and certainly without putting large sections of the civilian population in extreme distress. It is typically a challenge for any army that faces the adversary in an asymmetric war.

Permitting supplies and medical aid for displaced people in Palestine is important given the fact of this conflict in all likelihood getting protracted into a war of attrition.

The US and its allies must keep the prospect of a two-state solution in Palestine open and work for a significant number of Arab states recognising the existence of the state of Israel. The conflict of religions should be moderated into a political dispute that requires a different set of 'gives and takes'. India finds this kind of solution finding closer to its own interests and the interests of the world.

The success of its G20 Presidency should enable India to back a position that sat well with the principles of humanitarian good, no resort to 'wars' and terrorism and the promotion of world peace. The US is cognisant of the attempts of China to exploit the Israel-Hamas conflict to boost its influence in West Asia and draw in the radical forces there into its political orbit -- its new equation with the Taliban Emirate at Kabul illustrates this in ample measure.

American policymakers, however, need to become realistically aware of the role of the Sino-Pak axis in weakening the cause of the democratic world order. As already mentioned Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia seem to have developed a convergence on accommodating radicals and not toeing the US line on the Middle East.

The Israel-Hamas conflict like the earlier military confrontation between Ukraine and Russia is a development that India has to take into account while formulating its own strategy of safeguarding national interests.

It is significant that Russia is joining the universal effort to rush food and medical supplies to Gaza for the people there and that the US also wants neither Israel nor Hamas to create any impediment in the same.

Israel would surely expect the world to see that terrorism had to be defeated and not permitted to put the lives of innocent civilians in jeopardy.

The deeply religious angle in the Israel-Palestine conflict has to be sorted out through the path of inclusivity and respect for all faiths without bringing in notions of 'supremacism' of one religion.

The communal interpretations of Israel-Hamas confrontation has had a certain fallout in the Muslim world, including the subcontinent, where the historical memories of the anti-West Wahabbi Jehad of the 19th century, Khilafat movement of later times and the strong currents of pan-Islamism in the 80's promoted by the OIC under the chairmanship of Saudi Arabia, have all conditioned the thinking of Muslims guided by the Ulema and the communal-minded elite.

Indian democracy must continue to derive strength from nationalism, its built-in secularism and the Modi regime's vision of 'world is one family'. Intelligence updates on any adverse fallout of the Israel-Hamas conflict on our national security, including the situation in Kashmir are important.

The Hamas-Israel tussle in the Middle East and the earlier Ukraine-Russia military conflict in East Europe are leading to a new divide between the democratic world and the autocratic regimes -- ideological or faith-based.

Unlike in the Cold War, however, there is multipolarity at play and much greater freedom for the countries to choose sides. Today India and the US stand closer to each other than at any time in the past because of the mutuality of interests and a newfound convergence on what was good for the world.

In the 2-Plus 2-Dialogue held between the US and India last week -- the first major event after the success of the G20 summit at Delhi -- the two global powers pursued a mutually beneficial line notwithstanding the nuanced position India has taken on both Israel-Hamas and Ukraine-Russia confrontation.

Diplomacy today requires a lot of ideation and the capacity to evolve an assimilative approach to disparate geopolitical developments.

India is presently well-equipped on this front.

Both the US and India have expressed support for 'humanitarian pauses' agreed to by Israel and pledged to continue diplomatic coordination with key partners in the region to work for a durable political solution.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reaching out to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi demonstrates India's role as a global power working for world peace.

The conflict in Gaza is compelling the Muslim world to face the reality of choosing between a US-led dispensation and a Chinese-sponsored grouping.

Russian civilian aid to Gaza, Iran's stance of not directly becoming a party to the Israel-Hamas confrontation and the US advice to Israel not to 'cross a line' while chasing Hamas in Gaza, all lead to a possibility that this time around, the world may move towards finding a stable political outcome of the Palestinian issue based on rejection of terrorism as an instrument of politics and a non-sectarian solution in which states of Israel and Palestine lived as peaceful neighbours, with well-defined borders.

(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) If global peace and security necessitates adherence to "rules", the right to "self-defence" allows a free hand to deal with threats on a nation's border - and across, and coercive action against any transgressors, then it is difficult to understand why the same set of Western countries, which actively and widely sanctioned Russia, are overlooking Israel's actions in Gaza.

Over a month of relentless, indiscriminate bombing and then a ground invasion by Israeli forces following the October 7 Hamas terror attack has left over 11,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly women and children, dead in Gaza, and another 3,000 odd missing.

This is against 1,400 Israeli citizens killed in the attack, subsequently revised down to 1,200.

The comparable figures for Ukraine are 9,700 civilians killed between the commencement of hostilities in February 2022 and September this year, as per UN figures.

And then apart from the human toll, there is the wholesale destruction in Gaza, of housing complexes, schools, places of worship, markets, water and sewage plants, attacks on hospitals, bakeries, and people asked to evacuate the conflict zone, as well as on UN staff, doctors, ambulances, and journalists.

That is not counting the parallel activities in the occupied West Bank by the settlers, who are increasingly becoming a law to themselves - aided and abetted by the Israeli military, whose uniform they freely sport, as they dispossess local Palestinians of land and livelihood, subject them to restrictions, and demolish houses, monuments, and roads at will.

Yet, Russia - and Russians - are hit by a barrage of sanctions championed by the same set of Western leaders, who rush to unequivocally champion Israel's right to "self-defence", remaining oblivious to the humanitarian crisis being unleashed in Gaza and the repression in occupied West Bank, and going so far as to criminalise agitations in favour of Palestinians.

Any leader who even questions the context of the violence or raises the wholesale slaughter of civilians is subject to a hectoring attack by the Israeli leadership, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, be it UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, whose remark that the October 7 attacks "did not happen in a vacuum", led the Israelis to demand his resignation and announce it would stop visas to UN officials.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's belated criticism of the growing number of deaths of children went on to draw angry diatribes from Netanyahu, who, in a rather mind-boggling use of language, went on to call his country's army the "most humane" in the world.

Even, when a resolution finally adopted by the United Nations Security Council - after five tries - seeking a humanitarian pause and protection of non-combatants, especially women and children, was summarily rejected by Israel, there was no reaction from Western leaders, which had plenty to say when Russia scrapped the Black Sea Grain Initiative over non-fulfillment of commitments made to it.

Granted, international politics has a tenuous connection with morality or justice, apart from lip-service and expedience, with national interest always the key, but Israel seems to operate with a totally unbounded sense of entitlement.

But, Israel could not operate as it has, had it not been for the unqualified support of the veto-bearing superpower over the seas that makes Israeli leaders cook a snook to global sentiment, or UN resolutions. The US carte blanche also leads to most European countries behaving similarly.

While US leaders have been frequently exasperated by their Israeli counterparts - specially Netanyahu who caused Bill Clinton to lose his temper over his obfuscations following a botched assassination bid in a friendly Arab country, left Barack Obama simmering by casually sidestepping him to address the US Congress and interfering in the Iranian nuclear deal, and embarrassed then Vice President Joe Biden, during a visit by announcing an expansion of settlements, none of this has materially affected its support.

On Israel, both the Democrats (except a few) and Republicans are one. And it is not only the political class, the unqualified support for Israel right or wrong is also present among the academic and business elites.

Top universities cracked down on pro-Palestinian protests, and the few who did allow these had influential alumni demanding the protesters' names - implying dark omens for their professional futures.

However, support for Palestinians is not entirely absent in the US. There is a sizable ethnic Arab populace, especially in the swing states that no presidential candidate, whatever their party, can ignore.

These states played a key role in denying Hillary Clinton the White House in 2016 and Donald Trump a second term in 2020, and the community has already warned Biden not to expect their support.

But, the elections are still far-off and till then the bombs will rain down and innocents will continue to die.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) As social media platforms, especially Elon Musk-run X (formerly Twitter) face intense scrutiny over promoting antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate, Gaza’s Gen-Z social warriors are fighting on their own to disseminate pro-Palestinian voices to their followers despite mounting challenges.

One such digital platform for Gen-Z and millennial Muslims -- called Muslim and founded by Palestinian Ameer Al-Khatahtbeh -- is charting a new path for his community amid the disinformation around the Israel-Gaza war.

The Muslim brand consists of its main site, Muslim.co, where articles on news, opinions, lifestyle and culture are regularly posted; its Instagram page @Muslim and its TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter handles to stop the flow of misinformation.

"I couldn't find a Muslim community on Instagram so I created it," Al-Khatahtbeh told Insider a couple of years back. "For me, the content is for Gen Z Muslims, and who knows the best way to cater to them than a Gen Z Muslim themselves?"

Years later, Al-Khatahtbeh, 25, has amassed more than 2 million followers on TikTok and more than 5.3 million on Instagram, where posts to his account, @Muslim gives the latest news from the Israel-Gaza war.

“There are a lot of people that had their posts taken down or were restricted from using Instagram’s live video feature for posts supporting Palestinians,” he told The Washington Post.

The Israel-Gaza war has again placed TikTok at the centre. On TikTok, both the #Israel and #Palestine hashtags have attracted tens of billions of views as young people turn to the platform for news and perspectives on the conflict.

A pro-Palestinian hashtag, #freepalestine, had around 770 million views in the US, according to TikTok data.

TikTok, like Facebook and YouTube, bans videos or comments promoting Hamas under its rules against extremist groups.

According to Al-Khatahtbeh, he has seen some Palestinian creators get bullied and threatened.

He was quoted as saying in the report that some videos had been made mocking Palestinians who had been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Noor Tagouri, a pro-Palestinian creator and the founder of At Your Service, was quoted as saying that “sharing of pro-Palestinian content on TikTok suggests that Gen Z viewers are not just mimicking what they see on their feeds”.

“People are just witnessing what’s happening and choosing to stand up for humanity and life,” Tagouri said.

Earlier, as pro-Hamas accounts flooded various social media platforms amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Big Tech companies like Meta, X (formerly Twitter), Telegram and others had to fix their content moderation algorithms to stop the flow of misinformation.

X, though, continues to host the overwhelming majority of a sample of posts that breach platform rules for promoting antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian hate and other hateful rhetoric in the wake of the Israel-Gaza crisis, the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found.

Imran Ahmed, CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), said that X has sought to reassure advertisers and the public that they have a handle on hate speech, “but our research indicates that these are nothing but empty words.”

Researchers collected a total of 200 hateful posts that were published after Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7 -- all of which either directly addressed the ongoing conflict, or appeared to be informed by it.

Despite having a full week to process the reports, researchers found that X continued to host 98 per cent (196) of the 200 posts. In total, the posts that remained up have accrued 24,043,693 views.

Out of the 101 accounts in the study, only one was suspended and a further two “locked”.

“Our ‘mystery shopper’ test of X’s content moderation systems -- to see whether they have the capacity or will to take down 200 instances of clear, unambiguous hate speech -- reveals that hate actors appear to have free rein to post viciously antisemitic and hateful rhetoric on Musk’s platform,” said Ahmed.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) The similarities between Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and its operations in Gaza go beyond just the choice of tactics. Then, as now, the invasion began after a shocking Palestinian attack. Then, as now, Israel’s hawkish leaders opted for a maximalist response.

Then, as now, much of the fighting took place in densely populated urban areas, with militants often interspersed among civilians. And then, as now, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used disproportionate force, Sarah E. Parkinson, Aronson Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Johns Hopkins University wrote in Foreign Affairs.

“This parallel is not heartening. If Lebanon is any guide, Israel’s war in Gaza will end poorly for both Palestinians and Israelis. Despite its military superiority, Israel never succeeded in eradicating the PLO.

"Instead, the IDF’s primary accomplishments were killing tens of thousands of civilians; fragmenting Palestinian groups into smaller cells that spent years conducting hit-and-run operations; inspiring the rise of a new Lebanese militant party, Hezbollah; and losing over 1,000 of its own citizens in an occupation that stretched until 2000,” Parkinson wrote.

It is a pattern that is already playing out again. Lebanon is referred to as “Israel’s Vietnam” for good reason, the article said.

“And when all is said and done, it is unlikely that Israel will knock out Hamas or Islamic Jihad. It may significantly weaken them, as the IDF did to the PLO and many guerrilla factions in 1982. But the groups will remake themselves, and other organizations will emerge to fill any void—just as Islamist groups did in the late 1980s. Instead, what Israeli decision-makers will discover is something they ought to have already understood and that regional experts have known for years: there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"But the military and humanitarian lessons of Lebanon strongly suggest that the current catastrophic conditions in Gaza will grow only more acute and that there will be long-term, disastrous consequences for all parties," Parkinson said.

Israel’s long-standing approach to urban warfare, its plans for occupation (Netanyahu has said that Israel will assume “overall security responsibility” for Gaza for an “indefinite period of time”, its alliances with nonstate militias, and its use of mass imprisonment all echo what happened in Lebanon. It is therefore hard to imagine the outcome will be substantively different, the article said.

Five weeks into the Israel-Hamas war, the US faces a brewing crisis of confidence among some of its closest partners in the Middle East, says Brian Katulis, Vice President of Policy of Middle East Institute.

Since the early stages of this conflict, the US has seen a divergence between its stated goal of supporting Israel’s effort to eliminate Hamas and the goal of an immediate ceasefire supported by some of its closest partners in the Middle East.

Without a different diplomatic and policy approach, the US risks becoming more isolated in the region, Katulis said.

At an extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, criticised “double standards” in the global response to the Gaza war and spotlighted allegations of Israeli violations of international law., he added.

Widespread protest marches have been held around the world calling for a ceasefire since the war in Gaza began. South Africans themselves have staged demonstrations almost weekly by the US Consulate in Johannesburg and Israeli embassies in Pretoria and Cape Town, New Arab reported.

The rising death toll in the besieged Palestinian territory and increasing unease in Washington have significantly strained the US' posture amid mounting pressure domestically and abroad. There are concerns in the White House about the potential for further diplomatic backlash overseas in response to Israel’s military aggression, New Arab reported.

US allies in the Arab world have also clearly voiced anger at the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, rejecting Israel’s claims of self-defence. But Arab nations, notwithstanding their outcry over the war, don’t seem willing to make serious moves vis-a-vis Israel as they rejected a proposal to cut diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv during a recent Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh.

Jordan is one key regional player whose diplomatic gestures could have an impact. With close to half of its population being of Palestinian descent, sharing a long border with the West Bank and Israel, and serving as the custodian of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, for the Hashemite Kingdom the Israeli onslaught on Gaza is a matter of national security, New Arab reported.

Former leader Ehud Barak fears Israel has only weeks left to eliminate Hamas, as public opinion -- most significantly in the US -- rapidly swings against its attacks on Gaza, Politico reported in a recent interview.

Barak, who led Israel between 1999 and 2001, observed the rhetoric of US officials had shifted in recent days with a mounting chorus of calls for a humanitarian pause in the fighting.

The sympathy generated toward Israel in the immediate wake of October 7, when Hamas launched the deadliest terrorist attacjk on Israel in the Jewish state’s 75-year history, was now diminishing, he worried, Politico reported.

Barak added it would take months or even a year to extirpate the Islamist militant group Hamas -- the main war aim set by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his war cabinet -- but noted Western support was weakening because of the civilian death toll in Gaza and fears of Israel’s campaign sparking a much broader and even more catastrophic war in the region.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 18 (SocialNews.XYZ) The "precise and targeted operation" by the Israeli special forces inside Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital has again drawn criticism from many corners of the world for violating the International Humanitarian Law.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that it found weapons and Hamas assets inside the premises while it interrogated people at the enclave's largest hospital.

The Israeli military has repeatedly alleged that Palestinian armed groups operate a military compound within and underneath the Shifa Hospital.

Operation by IDF special forces

Israel believes that the Hamas militant group operates a subterranean network of tunnels and IDF special forces backed by additional troops conducted an 18 hour-long operation – which lasted until November 15 evening – against Hamas terror infrastructure at the site.

According to a report, at least five Hamas gunmen were killed by IDF troops during a gun battle outside the hospital and no casualties were reported by Israeli soldiers.

What did Israel find?

The Jewish nation said that it found weapons and Hamas assets inside the hospital and it will share "more and more material" found during the military's search operation.

It added that the possibility of Hamas terrorists hiding in some areas in the facility cannot be ruled out.

What is International Humanitarian Law?

The International Humanitarian Law (IHL), also known as ‘law of war’, is a set of rules governing conduct of parties involved in armed conflict.

IHL regulates the behaviour of parties once armed conflict has commenced and does not go into question of legitimacy of such a conflict.

Many articles under the Geneva Conventions provide for protection of civilian hospitals and their staff, and call for establishment of hospital and safety zones for groups such as the injured, sick and pregnant women.

“Medical units shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack,” states one of the additional protocols framed under the Geneva Conventions.

“Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected” falls under “war crimes” as per Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, subjected “they are not military objectives”.

Similarly, under the public international law, as per the UN Charter, a state may lawfully resort to armed force against another state only and only under self defence or when authorised by the UN Security Council.

UN Resolution

The UN Security Council has finally adopted a resolution calling for an extended humanitarian pause in the war in Gaza.

The symbolic resolution - as it does not include any penalties for ignoring it - was adopted on Thursday in fifth attempt after the US under growing international dismay at the inaction over the tragedy in the territory withheld its veto.

Russia and the UK joined the US in abstaining from voting on the resolution allowing it to be adopted with the support of the other 12 Council members, including France and China, the other permanent members.

The resolution demands that “all parties comply with their obligations under international law, notably with regard to the protection of civilians, especially children”.

What did Israel say?

Recently, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Regev, told the BBC that "international law specifically says that the minute your enemy uses a humanitarian site like a hospital for its military machine then you can target that site".

The Israeli army said that the troops conducted a "focused" operation "in a defined area" of the hospital and the military was "not overrunning" the hospital.

It believes that the operation may bring intelligence information about the Jewish captives as some of the 240 hostages captured by Gaza terrorists were housed at the hospital at one time.

What did Palestine and Hamas say?

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza and the hospital’s management have strongly denied Israeli allegations and have called for an independent investigation.

Before the military raid in Al-Shifa, bombardments by the IDF had hit the hospital and damaged parts of it, including the specialised surgeries department, coronary care division and a warehouse.

Senior Hamas member Bassem Naim called the operation "ridiculous and worthless" and told a media house that he could not rule out that the Israeli military "brought weapons and put them in the Al-Shifa complex."

How did this conflict begin?

On October 7, Hamas attacked Israel that killed about 1,200 people and took about 240 people as hostages.

Israel began its continuing retaliation the next day through relentless bombing and started a ground invasion later.

Source: IANS

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United Nations, Nov 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) It took 46 days for the UN Security Council to call for a humanitarian pause in the Israel-Hamas conflict that has claimed over 12,000 lives, most of them civilians, many of them children, but in a resolution without teeth.

A day later on Thursday, a UN effort with real-life implications for the people of Gaza was undone when the relief supplies it was sending to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt after days of intense diplomacy came to a halt as it ran out of fuel and because of a communication shutdown.

Although the resolution represented a hard-won victory for the Council members wanting to signal themworld that the paralysed body had finally moved to act, it was merely symbolic – a pathetic plea – despite the Council having enforcement powers.

The resolution carried no threats of penalties – and even if it had, it would be impossible to enforce them given the reluctance of the US in agreeing to a call for a pause in the fighting.

The US, which had vetoed an earlier resolution on Gaza, agreed to let this one pass by abstaining from voting even though it did not meet its demand for a condemnation of Hamas, which started it all with a horrendous attack of Israel on October 7, or an affirmation of Israel’s right to self-defence.

About 1,200 people had been killed in Israel – many of them children – and about 240 people, including kids, had been taken hostage.

In Israel’s retaliation, which started with aerial bombardment and was joined later by a ground invasion, some 11,078 people have been killed in the Hamas-controlled enclave, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.

What had changed in the 28 days since the US veto was the ferocity of Israel’s counterattack, the tide of international opinion reflected in the 121 votes that a General Assembly resolution demanding a humanitarian truce received, and growing demands across the US for a ceasefire.

Russia, which had been isolated because of its invasion of Ukraine and under constant criticism for 21 months since, was taking advantage of the sentiments directed against the US over Gaza.

President Joe Biden’s administration took notice and decided to allow the Council resolution to pass, also knowing fully well that it has no teeth, disregarding Israel’s total opposition to any stopping in the fighting.

Britain also sat out the vote with the US rather than veto it – or support it.

While the membership-driven side of the UN – the Assembly and the Council – may appear to be all talk, the action of the UN as an institution is on its flag which fluttered at the headquarters campus at half-mast honouring the more than 100 of its relief workers killed in Gaza from the Israeli attacks.

Gaza is an impoverished strip with few natural resources where 2.2 million people are crammed into 362 square kilometres.

About 13,000 workers of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the largest UN humanitarian organisation, work in Gaza providing everything from food and medicine to schools.

Gaza depends on food, water and fuel coming in from outside. It needs electricity from elsewhere and fuel to operate the desalination plants that provide water.

The Israeli counterattack shut down avenues for the crucial supplies to come in.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched a relentless campaign to get at least one of the border crossings open to avert a hunger crisis there, going right up to the Rafah crossing to make his point, while convoys of trucks loaded with relief supplies idled.

Finally on October 21, Israel under US pressure allowed a limited number of vehicles – far below the actual requirements – to cross over.

But Israel did not allow fuel to be sent to Gaza fearing that it could be hijacked by Hamas and used for its attacks on Israel.

And because of that the relief operations came to a halt on Thursday.

Within Gaza, UNRWA says it has run out of fuel for the vehicles and machinery to distribute the relief.

The telecommunications operators in Gaza have run out of fuel to power their equipment and shut them down.

The operations at the Rafah crossing ground to a halt because there could be no cross-border communications for logistics.

Against this backdrop, the Assembly met on Friday to hear briefings on the scale of devastation in Gaza from eight senior officials of the UN and its agencies covering health, food, human rights, development and women’s and children’s issues.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said: “A conflagration of violence has been unleashed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory – both in Gaza and the West Bank – as well as in Israel.

“One in every 57 people living in the Gaza Strip has been killed or wounded in the past five weeks. The killing of civilians is not acceptable collateral damage.

"It is not and must never become a deliberate weapon of war. Not in a refugee camp. Not in a kibbutz. And not in a hospital. Not anywhere”.

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said: “In many respects, international humanitarian law appears to have been turned on its head”.

With the fighting now in and around the Shifa Hospital, he said that under international humanitarian law, “hospitals have specific protection”.

In a warning directed at Hamas, he said: “This means they must not be used to shield military objectives from attack."

And for Israel, he said: “It also means that even if hospitals lose their protection, warnings and other precautions must be implemented to avoid civilian harm, and, of course, disproportionate attacks are strictly prohibited."

“Nearly 240 hostages, from babies to octogenarians, face their 41st day of captivity. They must be released immediately and without condition” and meanwhile they should be allowed visits from the International Red Cross.

tHE World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “There are no words to describe the horror. Premature babies dying as life-support systems shut down; more than 2,000 patients with cancer, 1,000 with kidney disease, 50,000 with cardiovascular disease and 60,000 with diabetes, all at risk as their treatment is interrupted."

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 19 (SocialNews.XYZ) Proclaiming itself the only "democracy" and "outpost of civilisation" in the region, this country counted on its sophisticated military capabilities (including a covert nuclear programme), conscript army, and influential Western friends to make itself feel secure, while repressing the dispossessed natives of the land with institutionalised mistreatment, enforced segregation, and violence.

Israel?

No, it is actually South Africa, under the erstwhile apartheid regime.

And yet, it is South Africa - just around three decades down the line - which has joined a widening group of nations, spanning South and Central America, Middle East, and Africa, that have snapped or scaled back diplomatic ties with Israel over its unrestrained and indiscriminate Gaza campaign.

After pulling back its diplomats from Israel, South Africa’s ruling African National Conference - which had long-time relations with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians - also said it will support a motion in Parliament to sever diplomatic relations with Israel and shut down its embassy in Pretoria, saying it "cannot sit back and watch the genocidal actions of the Israeli regime".

For good measure, President Cyril Ramaphosa had on Wednesday announced that he had referred Israel for a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), noting that the recommendation was brought "together with many other countries", though he did not name them.

While South Africa, under White minority rule, had always discriminated against other sections of residents - Indians (as one M.K. Gandhi learned to his cost), the Coloureds, and especially, the Blacks, piecemeal from the 18th century onwards, it only introduced the stringent apartheid system in 1948. This happened the same year that Israel achieved statehood and control over most of mandatory Palestine and overtly and covertly ensured expulsion of most of the Palestinians.

Like the Palestinians pushed into Gaza and West Bank, millions of black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, and most of these targeted removals aimed at restricting them to ten designated "tribal homelands", the infamous "Bantustans".

While four even became nominally independent states, the South African state kept a pretty tight leash in them, and for good measure, the relocated persons lost their South African citizenship, become virtually stateless.

The parallels with the plight of Palestinians could not be less glaring.

Yet, three plus decades of this enforced eviction, deprivation, and downright brutal repression by the military and police did not leave the Whites feeling any lasting sense of safety, or cow down the Black "terrorists", whose mass resistance never flagged.

South Africa was long a 'pariah' state for most of the world, though for the US, and some other Western nations, support to this "outpost of civilisation" continued, following their usual fears of communist influence expanding in Africa. However, the end of the last specimens of colonial rule in Africa in the mid 1970s and the early 1980s - Mozambique, Angola (Portuguese), and South Rhodesia (another example of minority White rule), South Africa found itself further isolated.

It was then more perceptive White politicians realised that there was no alternative to "the terrorists" who once was termed their existential enemy. While dyed-in-wool apartheid backer Prime Minister-turned-President P.W. Botha was sounded on the plan in 1987 and agreed but soon recanted, it was left to his successor F.W. De Klerk, who took over in 1989, to launch the process, which culminated in the release of Nelson Mandela the next year, the dismantling of apartheid, and finally, a united country with equal citizenship for all on residency, not race, religion, or ethnicity.

South Africa is still far from a perfect society but it had at least people who knew the current system was faulty and could break anytime into chaos - despite their vaunted security system.

The same occurred in Israel on October 7 where the Israeli policy of managing its Palestinian problem through intrusive monitoring and regulation by military and intelligence means, urban design, and a system of walls and barriers, while eschewing any peace talks or even a token acknowledgment of the two-state solution, came crashing down.

Will the Israeli strategy of delivering unrestrained and indiscriminate retribution to their own Palestinian 'Bantustan' by decimating its people and levelling its infrastructure work? Maybe, for the present rage-filled moment, but long-term?

Israel may differ from South Africa in having the unqualified backing of the US, and several European countries. But, even this support is ebbing, especially in Europe. Norway, Belgium, Spain, and Ireland, where the Sinn Fein - another old friend of Arafat and the PLO, due to shared history in opposing colonial rule, oppression, and division - have called for a ceasefire and action on the two-state solution.

But will Israel listen, despite the South African example?

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 18 (SocialNews.XYZ) The UK House of Commons saw dozens of British lawmakers voting this week to call for a ceasefire in the war-ravaged Gaza, defying the government and the main opposition party's stance that instead pledges for humanitarian pauses to the fighting.

A major fallout of the Humza Yousaf-led Scottish National Party's (SNP) amendment vote for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza -- which was defeated by 125 votes to 294 -- was seen among the Labour party MPs, including many of South Asian-origin.

More than a third of 198 Labour MPs went against their party line to vote in favour of the amendment, including 10 front benchers, eight of whom are shadow cabinet members and two are parliamentary aides.

“Too many parents have had to bury their children in Gaza. Too many children have become orphaned. Too many have suffered. And for far too long. A ceasefire would enable a humanitarian corridor and the crucial delivery of immediate aid to those in desperate need," SNP's Pakistan-origin leader, Yousaf, said in a statement.

The death toll from an ongoing Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 12,000, including over 5,000 children and 3,000 women, according to latest figures by the Palestinian government media office in the besieged enclave.

Some 3,750 other people remain unaccounted for, including 1,800 children, according to the statement, and according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) statistic, a child has been killed every 10 minutes.

"I will continue to raise my voice to demand an immediate ceasefire. “We cannot allow this humanitarian catastrophe to go on for a second longer,” Yousaf said.

Speaking at the House of Commons, Nadia Whittome, British-Indian Labour MP for Nottingham East, asked: "How many more must die before the government joins calls for a ceasefire?"

"In the past month, one in every 200 residents of Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces. More than 40 per cent were children. This doesn't include everyone who may have died due to lack of clean water, or the collapse of the healthcare system after fuel was cut off," Whittome spoke, addressing the Deputy Speaker.

"How many more people must die before the government joins the UN Secretary-General, WHO, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and the UN General Assembly in calling for an immediate ceasefire?"

Toeing in her party's line, Indian-origin Liberal Democrat MP, Munira Wilson, called for an immediate bilateral ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict to get aid in, get the hostages out, and provide space to realise a political solution.

After the SNP vote, eight shadow ministers stepped down from the frontbench, including Pakistan-origin MP from Manchester Gorton, Afzal Khan who said that it is "extremely painful" to watch the sheer scale of displacement due to the war.

"We need a full and immediate ceasefire. Now, my constituents have demanded this and I will not refuse them. supporting a ceasefire is the very least we can do," Khan, who stepped down as Shadow Minister for Exports this week, said.

In her letter of resignation to Labour leader Keir Starmer, MP Yasmin Qureshi wrote that anything short of a ceasefire will lead to the loss of more lives.

"The situation in Gaza desperately requires an immediate ceasefire to address the humanitarian catastrophe and to advance moves towards a political solution that brings freedom, prosperity, and security. Only through a humanitarian ceasefire can aid be reliably delivered into Gaza," Qureshi, who stepped down as Shadow Women and Equalities Minister, wrote.

"Today, I voted for an immediate ceasefire. For the people of Palestine, every minute, every hour, every day we wait is another orphan, another grieving mother and another family wiped out! We must act now to protect civilian life," Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, wrote on X.

Shah, who stepped down as the Shadow Minister for Crime Reduction, told Sky News that her email inbox is full of messages from constituents who agree with her position.

Ahead of the vote, Labour had told its members that they stood at the risk of being fired for defying the party's leadership by voting in favour of the SNP motion.

Party leader Keir Starmer refused to back a ceasefire, and instead called for a Labour vote on the Gaza conflict, which called for an immediate humanitarian pause but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.

According to the UN, a “humanitarian pause” is a “temporary cessation of hostilities purely for humanitarian purposes”. Such a pause would allow Israel to continue its combat against Hamas after a brief period.

Last month, senior Labour figures -- London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar -- called for an immediate ceasefire, saying that while Israel “has a right to defend itself”, it does not have a right to break international law.

“We need to see the immediate release of hostages, immediate access to humanitarian supplies … and the immediate cessation of violence with an end to rocket fire into and out of Gaza,” Sarwar said in a video message posted on X.

“Let me be clear: that means a ceasefire right now,” he added.

According to Canary, a UK-based news website, more than 125 000 people had contacted their MPs in the last three days to demand they vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.

(Meenakshi Iyer can be reached at meenakshi.i@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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United Nations, Nov 12 (SocialNews.XYZ) Taking over the presidency of the UN Security Council for this month, China’s Permanent Representative Zhang Jun presented its members with an ancient toy from his country as a symbol of the need for unanimity.

“Let’s take this as peace; once it’s broken, it can’t be fixed easily and one piece alone can’t do anything,” he said holding up the toy known as the 'Lu Ban Lock' with six interlocking pieces of wood that collapses if one is removed.

He could well be speaking of the veto powers of the permanent members of the Security Council of which China is one and has vetoed a resolution on a humanitarian pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, although he deflected any link to veto powers.

The Council, which alone has the powers to enforce its decisions-- though as a practical matter it cannot effectively impose sanctions on or take military action against Israel -- could not even agree on asking for a humanitarian pause or a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

It failed to pass any of the four resolutions brought before it, two because of the veto powers, one by the US and the other by China and Russia, and the other two because it could not get the majority of eight needed to pass.

China and Russia opposed the resolution they vetoed because it did not call for a ceasefire, and the US because the resolution did not affirm Israel’s right to self-defence.

Zhang spoke of the moral and legal duties of the Council in dealing with the conflict and “our general belief among council members that we have to take action”, he was candid enough to admit to the difficulties.

Finding solidarity and cooperation of the members “is not an easy job”, he said.

“I'm not in a position to tell you that I can get all the things done, but what I can tell you is that we will spare no effort in facilitating the cooperation of council members in fulfilling our tasks and our responsibilities,” he said.

And that is where the Council stands.

It’s more than a month after the vicious October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that killed 1,200 people and took more than 240 as hostages, and the brutal reprisals by Israel against Hamas in Gaza that has claimed 10,000 lives according to the territory’s health ministry controlled by Hamas.

The General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian truce with 120 for it in the 193-member body, 14 against and 45 abstentions (including that of India). 

But it has only a symbolic value. 

Elsewhere, the UN has achieved some practical results.

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, bristles at the often-made claim that the UN is a failure and he points to the successes in areas where it can act.

“I think the question is which UN you are talking about, right? I can only speak for a part of that, and that's the Secretary-General's,” he told a reporter who spoke of the UN’s ineffectiveness.

“There are other parts, legislative parts in the UN that could be doing more to ensure an end to this conflict," he said in a criticism of the deadlocked Council.

The UN’s diplomacy -- that is of the machinery under Guterres and not a Council fiat -- contributed to the opening of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza to vehicles ferrying relief supplies including food, medicine and water, giving a lifeline to Palestinians in Gaza staring at starvation.

Most of the relief is from UN agencies, which also arrange the transportation.

Guterres went right up to the border to make his case for breaking through Israel’s stranglehold against relief to the 2 million people trapped in Gaza.

The UN has been demanding that at least 100 trucks be allowed in everyday, but Israel has permitted far less than that, yet a win for its diplomacy and organisation.

The biggest symbol of UN’s effectiveness in Gaza is tragically the more than 100 staffers in its relief operation there who have been killed since October 7.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 11 IANS)

The spectacle of widespread protests erupting across the Arab world paints a vivid picture of the chasm that exists between the choices of regimes and the sentiments of their populations, according to Tariq Dana, Associate Professor of Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

From the streets of Cairo to the squares of Amman, in Morocco and beyond, people have gathered en masse to voice their opposition to their governments' realignment with Israel, Dana writes in the New Arab.

This groundswell of public activism not only underlines the dissonance between Arab regimes and Arab people, but also signals a resurgent grassroots commitment to the Palestinian cause, challenging the top-down narrative that has sought to marginalise it, the article said.

For over a decade, mainstream commentators and policymakers have relegated the Palestinian cause to the periphery of Middle East geopolitics. As regional power competition among players like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey rise in prominence, and as issues like civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya dominated headlines, the Palestinian struggle has often been viewed as an anachronistic sideshow – important for symbolic reasons, perhaps, but less so for practical geopolitical calculations, Dana wrote.

This false perception has been reinforced by the deliberate actions of some Arab regimes to distance themselves from the Palestinian struggle. The United Arab Emirates in particular, along with other signatories of the Abraham Accords, stands as a stark example. By normalising relations with Israel, these regimes conveyed a political message that Palestine was no longer central to the Arab agenda or to peace in the Middle East, the article said.

Add to that the complicity of the Palestinian Authority; a corrupt body that often serves to enforce Israel's agenda. Its passivity and governance failures have inadvertently fortified the myth of the irrelevance of the Palestinian struggle, cementing its status as an institutional obstacle rather than a representative body.

The Al-Aqsa Flood operation radically upends this conventional wisdom. It demonstrated that Palestinian resistance could substantially challenge Israeli military capabilities, compelling a re-evaluation of regional geopolitics, the article said.

Italian Institute for International Political Studies said in a recent paper that over the last few days, thousands of citizens across Arab countries have taken to the streets to express their support for the Palestinians and outrage over the blast at Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital on October 17, triggering a cycle of violence and hatred. If there is one thing that the recent wave of demonstrations in the region has proven, is the enduring sympathy most Arabs still hold for the Palestinian cause.

The mass mobilisations have, in some cases, displayed a disconnect between the Arab countries’ leadership and the general public regarding ongoing normalisation processes with Israel. This is especially true for Bahrain and Morocco, where widespread protests, in solidarity with Palestine and against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, have also called for an end of the normalisation of relations with the Jewish state, the research said.

The leaders of Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab countries with the longest-lasting diplomatic ties with Israel, have become increasingly aware of the difficulties in balancing relations with Tel Aviv (and the traditional Western allies), on the one hand, and the domestic popular support for the Palestinians, on the other, as per the paper.

Besides, both Cairo and Amman are apprehensive about the destabilising effects of the war, particularly in terms of the potential influx of new refugees. By capitalising on the popular anti-Israel sentiments in Tunisia and lashing out against the country’s Western partners, President Kais Saied is seeking to cement his popularity and legitimacy even further.

Unlike much of the Arab world, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have not thus far been rocked by the anger of their citizens: the limited space for dissent and an increasingly less cold popular perception towards Israel in recent years appear to explain, at least in part, the absence of mass mobilisations in these countries.

While Hamas’s deadly attack is being dealt within the Arab governments’ palaces, the people in the squares of the Arab world want their voices to be heard, the paper said. 

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New York, Nov 11 (SocialNews.XYZ) As the searing images of Israel’s fury unleashed through the aerial bombing of Gaza roiled the world and even sections of the US, Washington cajoled Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to a daily four-hour “humanitarian” pause in the fighting.

US President Joe Biden admitted that he had asked for a three-day pause in the fighting – but four hours daily was all that he got.

He said he had asked for an “even a longer pause”, and getting the pause was "taking a little longer than I had hoped”.

Biden’s request for the pause was motivated by an equally important reason, getting the release of the 240 or so people taken prisoner by Hamas, some of them Americans.

“Far too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered these past weeks,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in New Delhi on Friday, and “we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximise the assistance that gets to them.”

According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Health Ministry, the fatality toll in Gaza since the start of the hostilities on October 7 stands at 11,078, of whom 4,506 are said to be children and 3,027 women.

Visiting the Indian capital for the US-India defence and foreign affairs ministerial meeting after a whirlwind diplomacy in the Middle East, Blinken said: “We’ll be continuing to discuss with Israel the concrete steps to be taken to advance these objectives."

But his leverage is limited.

For all its status as a superpower – if not the sole superpower the US cannot bend Israel – or Netanyahu – to its will.

As several US officials have said, it is a sovereign country – and it does what it does.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Netanyahu “speaks for a sovereign nation and for a sovereign people” and Israel’s defence forces are “a sovereign military”.

Biden’s leverage with Israel is blunted by a variety of reasons.

Bound by their democratic values and broad strategic outlook, he US needs Israel as a reliable partner in a troubled region.

They share close people-to-people ties, not just among Jews but among a broad swath of the people, with conservative Christians showing greater affinity than even some Jews.

During his visit to Israel after the deadly October 7 Hamas massacre of about 1,200 people in the Jewish nation, Biden mirrored those sentiments saying: “As long as the US stands -- and we will stand forever -- we will not let you ever be alone."

Although the US sent $3.3 billion in defence aid to Israel in the 2022 fiscal year, it is equally dependent on Israel for some of its own defence technology.

The country's strong sentiment for supporting Israel was reflected earlier this month in the Republican-majority House of Representatives passing a bill to provide it with an assistance package of $14.3 billion although it has been held up because the Biden administration and the Senate want to tie it to aid for Ukraine.

Despite qualms about the impact of the civilian toll from Israel’s attacks on Gaza, Biden also shares Netanyahu’s desire for the complete annihilation of Iran-aligned Hamas, which the US has declared an international terrorist organisation.

The leaders in most of the Arab nations in the region also share the sentiment.

Netanyahu’s personality and the conditions he is trapped in are factors in how the situation plays out and how far he is amenable to suggestions.

While he is the prime Minister, he is also a defendant facing several corruption charges in a criminal trial that began in 2020.

For all his attempts to project a tough guy image, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust took place under his watch.

Blindly hitting out at the people of Gaza, even if the victims include women and children, is his way of getting even with Hamas and he has the backing of many in his country who are shaken by the viciousness of the Hamas attacks that also victimised women and children.

But there is one difference: Civilian victims of Israel's bombarments are collateral to the hunt for the Hamas cadres, but the Hamas storm-troopers deliberately targeted women and children.

A measure of the temperature of Iraeli sentiments is one of his ministers, Amichay Eliahu, suggesting nuclear bombing Gaza, which Netanyahu, to his credit, quickly condemned and suspended him from the cabinet.

Any strong movement against the impact of the bombings in Gaza has not emerged in Israel so far.

Emerging victorious in the battle against Hamas, whatever the cost, Netanyahu would see as vindication whie he faces the trial and Hamas breaking through during his watch.

Although Biden had pledged solidarity with Israel declaring, “you are not alone”, he is also facing a changed domestic and international scenario that makes him reconsider the blank check he gave Netanyahu but finds it not entirely in his powers.

Vocal Arab and Muslim constituencies joining hands with a radicalised student body that links the Palestine cause to their domestic agenda of the “oppressed” have emerged, bringing tens of thousands to the streets across the country and right up to the periphery of the White House.

Last week, 24 senators, all but two from his party, raised with Biden getting assurances that Israel was “taking all possible measures to protect civilians in Gaza”.

The world is different too. 

While the threat of an oil embargo will not affect the US as it did in 1973 after the Yom Kippur War because it is now a net exporter of petroleum, Washington has to contend with the quest for influence by China, Russia and Iran in an unstable region and with numerous hotspots that could export terror and further destabilise the neighbourhood and beyond.

The images of children killed in Israeli bombardments and the toll on civilians is angering people across the Arab world and beyond, and this could lead to challenges from the Arab street to the leaders who stabilise the region and empower radical Islamists.

All these make Biden seek moderation from Netanyahu, which he can seek, but not command.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)

Source: IANS

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Washington, Nov 11 (SocialNews.XYZ) When the smoke and dust settle after the war is over, Gaza won’t be under the rule of Hamas, the group that carried out the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. But it’s not clear yet who will be in power instead.

Israel is likely to remain in Gaza for some time, but not too long.

The US, which is the principal backer of Israel, has laid down certain broad parameters.

“The US believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza – not now, not after the war,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after a meeting of G7 Foreign Ministers in Tokyo on Wednesday.

“No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza. We must also ensure no terrorist threats can emanate from the West Bank.

“We must also work on the affirmative elements to get to a sustained peace. These must include the Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza. It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority," he added.

The last sentence had been noted widely that the US would like the future governance structure to be a unified West Bank and Gaza under the Palestinian Authority.

Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, is reported to have expressed interest in taking control of Gaza but only in an independent Palestinian state that includes the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza.

For years, the Authority’s writ has been confined to the West Bank as Hamas-ruled Gaza.

“We will fully assume our responsibilities within the framework of a comprehensive political solution that includes all of the [occupied] West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip,” Abbas was quoted as telling Blinken at a recent meeting, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Here is the immediate future, in short: Hamas can’t continue to rule Gaza and Israel can’t occupy Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked up a storm saying Monday that Israel will have the overall security responsibility in Gaza for an “indefinite period”.

Asked about this comment, Blinken said that few things are clear now. “One, Gaza cannot continue to be run by Hamas. That simply invites a repetition of October 7 and Gaza being used as a place from which to launch terrorist attacks. It’s also clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza.”

The top US diplomat did concede, however, of the need for a “transition period” after the conflict during which time, Israel could remain involved.

But, he insisted, “it is imperative that the Palestinian people be central to governance in Gaza and in the West Bank as well, and that, again, we don’t see a reoccupation". 

"And what I’ve heard from Israeli leaders is that they have no intent to reoccupy Gaza and retake control of Gaza."

Israel took the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War, the West Bank from Jordan and Golan Heights from Syria.

It returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1979 and absorbed Golan Heights, a move that was gained US recognition under President Donald Trump.

Israel retains parts of the West Bank -- other parts are with the Palestinian Authority -- and it ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005.

Two year later Hamas won control of Gaza after a war with Fatah, the party in power in the Palestinian Authority.

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 11 (SocialNews.XYZ) If any nationwide political consensus now exists in Israel, it is that by the time the war is over, the premiership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should end, according to Yossi Mekelberg, Associate Fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.

“There is a very powerful argument that he should have been ousted immediately after his government’s colossal failure to prevent the Hamas attack. Besides an immeasurable cost in terms of lives lost, the attacks damaged the country’s deterrence and its complex relations with other countries in the region. It has also caused a profound trauma to Israeli society, delivered a huge hit to the economy, and undermined faith in the security services”, Mekelberg said.

Netanyahu was the godfather of the misperception that the risk from Hamas in Gaza had subsided. It was his wishful thinking that some limited improvement in Gaza’s economic conditions would pacify Hamas, or satisfy the territory’s 2.3 million residents, most of them refugees living in the world’s biggest open-air prison, he added in the article.

“While the offensive against Hamas is being pressed, Netanyahu’s position is unlikely to be challenged. But once Israel believes the threat has been neutralized, he stands little chance of surviving calls for his removal."

The weeks that have elapsed since October 7 now feel like an eternity, making it easy to forget: since the sixth Netanyahu government was formed, Israel has been deeply divided by the Prime Minister’s assault on the judiciary’s independence – an assault motivated by his personal legal interests, he said.

For months, thousands of Israeli reservists in key military positions had been telling the government in no uncertain terms that they would refuse any call to duty as long as the Netanyahu government continued to take the country down the path to authoritarianism.

But instead of entering into a nation-wide dialogue on judicial reform and heeding these warnings, Netanyahu and his allies activated what became known as the ‘Poison Machine’, accusing these reservists, not to mention their political rivals, of treason, the article said.

Netanyahu’s coalition is therefore sidelined and his personal power diminished. Change is unlikely while the war is in its most pressing stages, but beyond that his position looks fatally undermined.

Evidently, most Israelis are hurting from what has happened and worrying about the future. They also see the current government, and Netanyahu personally, as responsible for this debacle – and incapable of leading Israel beyond the immediate conflict, the article said.

Israelis see a government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that unconscionably and catastrophically underestimated Hamas before October 7, and has failed to govern ever since, David Horowitz wrote in Times of Israel.

“It mainly sees a collection of self-interested nobodies most of whom refused to honestly acknowledge how badly they misjudged the terrorist threat; have sought to minimize contact with the bereaved, eschewing funerals and shiva calls; and have failed to swiftly allocate the financial resources to provide for our refugees and their broken communities, their agriculture and industry,” the article said.

Dozens of ministers who failed to so much as help the nation mourn at memorial events on Tuesday that marked a month since the catastrophe, leaving even that obligation to the spontaneous organization of our abandoned citizenry. A government that isn’t there, in an Israel fighting back despite its elected leadership”, it said.

“For one thing, this Hamas terror group that our politicians and our security chiefs allowed to flourish across the useless border fence turns out to be an army,” Horowitz wrote.

Retired general Yisrael Ziv puts the number of trained Hamas gunmen at 30,000; others cite a higher figure.

Every day, the IDF Spokesman relays details of weapon warehouses destroyed, tunnel infrastructure smashed, and “battalion” commanders eliminated. Relief at the destruction of such substantive enemy resources, and the killing of such dangerous terror-army chiefs, is offset by the mounting bafflement that they were allowed to take root in the first place, the article said.

Netanyahu’s most recent address on Tuesday, a month into the war, stood out not for emotive language, powerful imagery, or strong metaphor, but rather for a heavy use of the first-person pronoun, writes Herb Keinon in Jerusalem Post.

In a speech of 684 words, Netanyahu used “I” some 26 times. The repeated use of “I” in this type of wartime speech can convey any number of messages.

First, it could be a way of signaling leadership to the population, to show the nation that Netanyahu is actively involved in prosecuting this war, and not – as some of his fiercest critics maintain – largely sitting on the sidelines as the defense minister and top military brass direct all the operations, the article said.

The constant emphasis on what he is doing or has done is a way of signaling leadership and decision-making capabilities, casting him in the role of a resolute and active leader.

Second, the frequent use of “I” could be a way of conveying a sense of responsibility, and of taking ownership of various actions, statements, and decisions.

This would be somewhat ironic, however, since Netanyahu has come under a barrage of criticism for not owning up to his responsibility for the October 7 catastrophe, as some fellow politicians and the top military brass have done, the article said.

In Netanyahu’s press conference last month, when he was asked about taking responsibility, he said that after the war, everyone will have to “give answers about the debacle, including me.”

“I am responsible for securing the future of the country.”

The future, not necessarily the past. The frequent use of ‘I’ on Tuesday signals he is taking responsibility going forward, but not when looking back, the article said.

These explanations might work well for those who hold a favorable view of the prime minister.

“However, those with a less charitable perspective may argue that his constant use of “I” – “I did this”, “I directed that”, “I convened here”, “I went there” – reflects a lack of teamwork and a desire to take center stage, even when many others are involved in the effort.

"An even less charitable explanation might see the excessive use of 'I' as a sign of egocentricity, making it appear that what concerns Netanyahu most of all is Netanyahu – that even in a time of war, for Netanyahu, it’s all about Netanyahu," the article said.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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New Delhi, Nov 11 (SocialNews.XYZ) Once seen as the Palestinian Authority's (PA) rising star for his suave image, power, and ability to get along with the Americans and Israelis, he soon saw his fortunes diminish as rivals overran his area of operations, corruption and other serious allegations against him surfaced and was eventually expelled from the Fatah.

Yet, earlier this year -- much before the unprecedented, indiscriminate Israeli backlash against Gaza following Hamas's October 7 terror attack deep inside Israel -- Mohammad Dahlan, who was largely out of the public eye for over a decade after being forced into exile, resurfaced to weigh in on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio and take potshots against his political foes.

The UAE-based Dahlan, in an interview with an Arabian newspaper in March, called his Palestinian compatriots to realise that the two-state solution "is no longer feasible on the ground" as "Israeli intransigence" and the expansion of settlements on West Bank has left "no contiguous lands on which a viable Palestinian state can be established".

He, instead, called for Palestinians to demand a "one-state solution for two peoples with equal rights, and let Israel face its responsibilities as a government".

Two weeks after the raging conflict in Gaza, Dahlan again spoke out - in a rare interaction with a Western media outlet, as per reports.

Like all seasoned politicians, Dahlan, who hails from Gaza himself, first sought to rule himself out of any role thrust on him there, and instead, pitched for a technocratic government in the beleaguered, battled enclave for at least two years before elections for a Palestinian parliament to replace the PA presidency - held by his one-time benefactor-turned-sworn foe Mahmoud Abbas.

This, he said, should have sway over both the West Bank and Gaza.

More significantly, Dahlan insisted that the new system should include his one-time fervent foe Hamas, rejecting the suggestion that Israel would be able to eliminate the group completely.

Dahlan's re-emergence and forthright views, especially on elections, which have not been held in Palestinian areas since 2006 when Hamas swept them, may not bring much cheer to Abbas, as well as Israel and the Western powers to seek to uproot Hamas entirely and seek to bring Gaza under the existing PA's rule.

However, the inability of the PA to move forward for a Palestinian state, to check the Israeli intransigence, insolence, and increasing settlements on the West Bank, and the relentless harassment, dispossession, and worse of the local Palestinians, make it an unlikely contender to widespread support of the Palestinians.

There were reports that Abbas's statements on the PA returning to Gaza after the conflict abates met vehement opposition from the local people. They cited its lack of accomplishments in its own fief, let alone in blockaded Gaza, described for long as the world's largest open-air prison and now, amid the current indiscriminate bombing. tellingly by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, no less, as a "graveyard for children".

But, is Dahlan, who earned his name as Gaza's stern security chief before being chased out by Hamas in 2007 and out of Palestinian territory itself by his own Fatah under charges including "murdering Yasser Arafat", now a spent force, using the current situation to vent his spleen at those who accomplished his downfall or does he count for something in the current configurations of the Middle East's tortuous politics.

It would be the latter. 

Dahlan, in his exile in the Gulf, struck up close relations with Abu Dhabi's ruling family, and emerged as a sort of a negotiator for them in global circles, cashing on his influence earned and contacts made in his heyday as a leading Palestinian interlocutor.

He arranged Gulf investment in the Balkans, and in the process, enabled Serbian and Montenegrin citizenship for himself.

On the other hand, he is perceived to be a key player in paving the way to the UAE and Bahrain's accession to the Donald Trump-backed Abraham Accords, which saw them striking up relations with Israel. This, however, did not earn him much popularity among the Palestinians.

Then, he even made up with Hamas - whom he had dealt with quite ruthlessly during his period as Gaza's security chief in the early 2000s, united against their common foe - Abbas and his moribund PA.

He also sought to revive his influence in Gaza by channeling aid from the Gulf monarchies and while he could enter, his wife often visited it to oversee charitable work.

It would be too early to say if Dahlan will emerge as a key player in the post-October 7 scenario but given his spadework, his contacts, and his approach - both in inclusiveness and content, it would not be very wise to rule him out, given the Middle East's propensity to spring surprises.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Source: IANS

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Washington, Nov 11 (SocialNews.XYZ) Iran has called for Muslim countries to impose all kinds of sanctions on Israel for the ongoing assault on Gaza and expel its diplomats. Turkey has called for a “fair solution” to the Israel-Palestine dispute offering itself as a mediator.

The 57 Muslim countries that will meet this weekend in Riyadh as members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) could choose Iran’s near-term response or Turkey’s shot at the larger problem or opt for something else, depending largely on their own internal dynamics and relations with each other, and, for Saudi Arabia, ongoing normalization of ties with Israel.

Saudi Arabia, the current OIC chair, has called the meet that has been labelled an extraordinary summit.

Will it back a hardline response to Israel given its ongoing US-backed normalisation talks with Israel remains on the table.

“This matter was on the table, and it is still on the table, and it is clear that the recent withdrawal (from the talks) explains why Saudi Arabia is so determined to make a solution to the Palestinian conflict part of broader normalization in the Middle East,” Saudi Minister of Investment Khalid bin Abdulaziz al-Falih said in Singapore earlier this week.

The Riyadh meet will be marked by another reconciliation involving the Saudis, this one with Iran.

The two countries restored diplomatic ties in April after a even-year-rift in talks brokered by the Chinese, marking their first major foray into the region’s Byzantine politics.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s participation in the summit will mark the first visit of this level after the April detente.

As a key backer of Hamas, Iran may not accept easily a post-Hamas Gaza, the establishment of which is the key objective of the ongoing Israeli military operations, as endorsed by the US.

Teheran stands to lose a key ally from the network of regional allies it has created, supported and sustained, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah to fight Israel.

These regional players of the OIC — other members such as Pakistan are on the periphery on this issue — could be jockeying for a place at the table in anticipation of the international community taking another stab at the Israel-Palestine dispute that has defied resolution for seven decades now.

Turkey has already projected itself as a mediator, although neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have shown any interest in the offer.

Source: IANS

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