Several Israeli politicians, analysts, some of them who served as personal advisors to Benjamin Netanyahu, have, in the open and in secret, called for the eviction of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, and sometimes, as far away as the mainland of Egypt.

This is not a new thing, in 2010, to be specific, October, an audio recording of Mubarak with his cabinet was leaked, most likely by the Egyptian state itself, where Mubarak detailed a meeting he had with Netanyahu, where Netanyahu vaguely suggested the idea of displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to “someplace else”, when Mubarak asked him where exactly, Netanyahu waved his hand over the Sinai without a comment, Mubarak then said he told him “It is not going to happen”, and proceeded to cut his meeting short.

◾️So we know this was discussed as far back as 2010.

In 2008, Hamas blew up several gaps in the Egyptian-Gaza border, and over 1.5 million Palestinians went to the Egyptian border, with at least 200-300 thousand intending to stay in Sinai, they were then properly hunted down and evicted back to Gaza, with coordination of Hamas, over three months, it seems Netanyahu got the idea of the 2010 meeting in 2008, as 300K Palestinians were a very sizeable part of the population.

Besides the obvious fact that the Palestinian cause was at danger at the time, the 2008 breach allowed for a massive upwards of smuggling, terrorism, and so on, but what most importantly irked Mubarak was the fact that the Egyptian economy took a devastating blow – tens of millions of fake US dollars were added into the circulation during that time from Gaza.

◾️So we know for a fact that Egypt will not allow the eviction of Palestinians from Gaza due to, 1) The Palestinian Cause requiring Palestinians to stay in their land, and this is agreed by all sides, 2) The potential political and economic repercussions of a massive ethnic cleansing from Gaza.

◾️On the other hand, the head of the Palestinian Authority, the current Egyptian President, and several European leaders stated that Morsi, the former Egyptian president who was overthrown in a revolution in 2013, stated that he was willing to house the Palestinians from Gaza and establish a Greater Gaza stretching from Al-Arish to Gaza proper, this plan was approved by Israel and Europe, however, it did not come to fruition.

◾️Finally, the president that came after him, Sisi, then made a complete ban on owning land from non-Egyptians in the Sinai, forced Hamas to purge itself from the Muslim Brotherhood. Cooperation between the two was established again at the full level after 2017, again, all sides agreed that an ethnic displacement of Palestinians into Sinai will never happen, this is why the PA and Hamas rejected Morsi’s proposal.

In Conclusion, The People of Gaza will live, grow old, and die on their Palestinian lands, and this reality will not change no matter what.

On a different note,

There are reports that Israel is proposing to write off a significant portion of Egypt’s international debts through the World Bank to entice Egypt to open the borders and allow the displacement of Palestinians to Sinai.

Genuine question, did Israel just admit that they, a Jewish state, control the International Financial System, a theory which was considered anti-Semitic for literally decades?

I mean, we all knew it, but I never expected them to be honest about it, they are REALLY desparate and are trying everything on Egypt.

Egypt, for the sake of its own morals, must NOT accept this deal.

@themediterraneanman

*****************************
There are also strong economic reasons why Israel wants to eliminate the Palestinians from Gaza – gas of course. 

But it is deeper than than that. Israel opens these gas concessions, some in disputed territory, to outside investors, and not just for financial and technical reasons, but to bind investors into its Zionist project and engage them as lobbyists. 

Here are some headlines (a bit older but still relevant):

Israel awards gas exploration licenses to ENI, BP and 4 others

The unrealized potential of Palestinian oil and gas reserves

Israel grants Golan Heights oil license

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

In the war at this stage, the Israeli-American force for genocidal killing and displacement of the Palestinians of Gaza appears to be winning. Not on the ground so much as in the consent of their western allies to supply the logistics, pay the bills, and endorse the morality of the crimes.

By the time William Shakespeare picked up the idea that force can compel consent, the maxim he made popular had already been expressed in English for two hundred years. In All’s Well That Ends Well, he has the Countess ask her clown why he wants to marry. He replies: “My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.” Usually left out of this famous exchange is that the jester explained he had “other holy reasons”. The Countess liked hearing them even less, so she sent him off stage.

In the Gaza operations so far, and in the ideology which Israeli officials and journalists are repeating to the western media, the devil aims to drive every Palestinian, the born and the as yet unborn, to death. In such a war the first need for Hamas and the Arabs is to survive in order to keep fighting. Nothing is more sure than the “holy reasons” Shakespeare put into the mouth of Lavatch the Clown, that surviving to fight the long war will defeat this devil’s needs in the end.

In practical politics, Israel and the US either win their genocidal war swiftly now, or else they will lose the long war. Russian military sources are reporting the US is resupplying the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at a rate of two US Air Force (USAF) transports every hour, moving from the continental US through bases in the UK, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus. US sources have acknowledged the logistical effort is too great to continue for long. Right now the US Navy and USAF cannot continue delivering on the promised resupply of the Ukrainian forces in their war against Russia, while at US bases in Syria and Iraq the Pentagon is privately evacuating troops while publicly striking at their Arab attackers.

The Arab, Iranian, and Russian media are reporting that in response, Hamas and Hezbollah are maintaining a frequent rate of fire against IDF and Israeli territorial targets. They are not yet attacking Israel’s offshore gas production platforms, which provide most of the fuel for the country’s electricity generating plants. They are not yet disabling Israel’s ports and airfields. The Russian military assessment is that for the time being the Hamas and Hezbollah capacity remains intact and in reserve. The Arab side is exercising restraint.

What then are the needs which must now be addressed by the allies of the Palestinians, the Arab states, Iran, and then Russia?

On Sunday, Russia officially called this war “the American project”. This followed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote last Friday, October 27, when the US and Israel led a tiny minority in favour of their short war, including a half-dozen island states sinking slowly into the Pacific Ocean.

A Moscow source confirms the US is the priority Russian target because the IDF cannot continue in Gaza as the US capabilities exhaust themselves. He believes that US over-exertion in the Middle East will accelerate the Russian military’s move on to the offensive on the Ukrainian battlefield, and shorten thereby that war. The public statements for mediation between the warring parties issued by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his ministry are not the full Russian story, the source believes. The first need in Lavrov’s mediation, he says, is between the General Staff and the Kremlin. The second priority is to let the Americans demonstrate their weakness across the region by conserving the Palestinians in place, deterring Egyptian and Jordanian concessions, and preventing a direct attack on Iran. “The real Russian position , not the public statements , ultimately comes down to what level of military cooperation the Ministry of Defense has with Teheran. The Syrian and Ukrainian wars have made this very deep. I expect the Foreign Ministry’s public line will change when the Palestinian casualties reach 20,000. As the official Israeli statements against the Russian government already make clear, they know what is going on behind the scenes. It’s not just the Caucasian Muslims now but most Russians feel there’s been enough crying support for Israel. Lavrov will catch up.”

“I would say the real work now in Moscow is on ensuring the Americans do not directly attack Iran. The rest is going to play out according to the General Staff’s road map Lavrov could and should have in front of him. Call it the long war for short.”

by Alistair Crooke via Strategic Culture Foundation

Tom Friedman uttered his dire warning in the New York Times on Thursday last:

“I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now [unilaterally] to destroy Hamas — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests”.
“It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the U.S. has built…I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
“Unfortunately, the senior U.S. official told [Friedman], Israeli military leaders are actually more hawkish than the prime minister now. They are red with rage and determined to deliver a blow to Hamas that the whole neighbourhood will never forget”.

Friedman here is talking, of course, about an American alliance system, pivoted around the idea of Israel’s military prowess being invincible – the ‘Little NATO’ paradigm that acts as the essential substrata for the spread of the American-led Rules Order through West Asia.

It is analogous to the substrata of the NATO alliance, whose claimed ‘unchallengeability’ has underpinned U.S. interests in Europe (at least until the Ukraine war).

One Israeli Cabinet member put it to the veteran Israeli defence correspondent Ben Caspit that Israel just cannot permit its long-term deterrence being undermined:

“This is the most important point — ‘our deterrence’”, the senior war Cabinet source said. “The region must quickly understand that whoever harms Israel the way Hamas did, pays a disproportionate price. There is no other way to survive in our neighbourhood than to exact this price now, because many eyes are fixed on us and most of them do not have our best interests at heart”.

In other words, the Israeli ‘paradigm’ hinges on manifesting overwhelming, crushing force directed to any emerging challenge. This has had its origin in the U.S. insistence that Israel have both the political leading-edge (all strategic decisions lay with Israel uniquely under Oslo), and equally, that it has the military cutting leading-edge over all its neighbours too.

Despite being presented as such, this is not a formula by which to reach any sustainable, peaceful accord by which the 1947 UNGA Resolution 181 (the division of Mandate-era Palestine) into two states can be reached. Rather, Israel under the Netanyahu government has been moving closer and closer to an eschatological founding of Israel on the (Biblical) ‘Land of Israel’ – a move that expunges Palestine totally.

It is no coincidence that Netanyahu flourished a map of Israel during his General Assembly address last month in which Israel dominated from the River to the Sea – and Palestine (indeed any Palestinian territory) was non-existent.

Tom Friedman in his NYT reflections may fear that just as NATO’s impaired performance in Ukraine has ruptured ‘the NATO myth’, so too the 7 October Israeli military and intelligence collapse and what happens in its wake in Gaza ‘might explode the entire pro-American alliance structure’ in the Middle East.

The confluence of two such humiliations might break the spine of western primacy. This seems to be the gist to Friedman’s analysis. (He likely is correct).

Hamas has succeeded in smashing the Israel deterrence paradigm: They were not afraid, the IDF proved far from invincible, and the Arab street mobilised as never before (confounding western cynics who laugh at the very notion of there being an ‘Arab Street’).

Well, that is where we are – and the White House is rattled. The Axios CEO VandeHei and Mark Allen have taken to print to warn:

“Never have we talked to so many top government officials who, in private, are so worried … [that] a confluence of crises poses epic concern and historic danger. We don’t like to sound dire. But to sound a siren of clinical, clear-eyed realism: U.S. officials tell us that, inside the White House, this was the heaviest, most chilling week since Joe Biden took office just over 1,000 days ago … Former Defence Secretary Bob Gates tells us America is facing the most crises since World War II ended 78 years ago…
“Not one of the crises can be solved and checked off: All five could spiral into something much bigger … What scares officials is how all five threats could fuse into one”. (Spreading war as Israel enters into Gaza; the Putin-Xi “anti-American alliance”; a “malicious” Iran; “unhinged” Kim Jon Un and fake videos and news).

However, missing from Friedman’s NYT piece is the other side to the coin – for the Israeli paradigm has two sides: the internal sphere, which is separate to the external need to exact a disproportionate price from Israel’s adversaries.

The internal ‘myth’ holds that the Israeli State ‘has its citizens back’, wherever Jews live in Israel and the Occupied Territories – from the remotest settlements, to the alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City. This is more than a social contract; rather, it is a spiritual obligation owed to all Jews living in Israel.

This ‘social contract’ of safety however just collapsed. The Kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope are evacuated; twenty kibbuz have been evacuated from the north, and a total of 43 border towns have been evacuated.

Will these displaced families trust the State again? Will they return to the settlements one day? Confidence has been ruptured. Yet, it is not Hizbullah’s missiles that frighten the residents, but the pictures from last 7 October in the Gaza periphery communities – the fence that was breached in dozens of spots; the overrun military bases and posts there; the towns that were occupied by Hamas forces; the ensuing deaths; and the fact that approximately 200 Israelis were abducted to Gaza – has left nothing to the imagination. If Hamas succeeded so, what will stop Hezbollah?

As in the old nursery rhyme: Humpty-Dumpty had a big fall, yet all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

This is what worries the White House Team. They are deeply unconfident that an Israeli invasion of Gaza will put ‘Humpty’ together again. Rather, they fear that events may go badly for the IDF, and further, that the images relayed across the Middle East of Israel using overwhelming force in a civilian urban setting will revolt the Islamic sphere.

In spite of western scepticism, there are signs that this insurrection in the Arab sphere is different, and resembles more the 1916 Arab Revolt that overthrew the Ottoman Empire. It is taking on a distinct ‘edge’ as both Shi’a and Sunni religious authorities state the duty of Muslims to stand with Palestinians. In other words, as the Israeli polity becomes plainly ‘Prophetical’, so the Islamic mood is turning eschatological, in its turn.

That the White House should be floating kites about ‘moderate’ Arab leaders pressing ‘moderate’ Palestinians to form an Israeli-friendly government in Gaza that would displace Hamas and impose security and order shows just how severed is the West from reality. Recall that Mahmoud Abbas, General Sisi and the King of Jordan (some of the region’s most pliable leaders) pointedly refused even to meet with Biden after the latter’s Israel trip.

The anger across the region is real and threatens ‘moderate’ Arab leaders, whose room for manoeuvre is now circumscribed.

So hotspots are proliferating, as are attacks on U.S. deployments around the region. Some in Washington claim to perceive an Iranian hand, and are hoping to expand a window for war with Iran.

The panicked White House is over-reacting – sending huge convoys (100s) of heavy-lift cargo planes loaded with bombs, missiles and air defences (THAAD and Patriot) to Israel but also to the Gulf, Jordan and Cyprus. Special Forces and 2,000 marines are being deployed too. Plus two aircraft carriers and their attendant vessels.

The U.S. thus is sending a veritable full-scale war Armada. [Ed. Note: Not quite exactly. This is mostly a ground war. Just 2000 Marines are in the region (less than half are combat troops) so mean nothing. Our military sealift is half that of 1990 and most of the US Army is joke. Arabs and Turks will soon deny use of their airfields. It’s only a matter of time until local militias close down roads needed for resupply American occupation bases in Syria and Iraq. Then what?] This can only escalate tensions – and provoke counter-moves: Russia now is deploying on Black Sea patrol, MiG-31 aircraft equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles (that can reach the U.S. carrier force off Cyprus), and China reportedly has dispatched naval vessels to the area. China, Russia, Iran and Gulf States are engaged in a frenzy of diplomacy to contain the conflict, even were Hizbullah to enter deeper into the conflict.

For the moment, there is focus on hostage releases creating much (deliberate) noise and confusion. Perhaps some expect that hopes of hostage releases may delay, and finally bring to a stop the planned invasion into Gaza. However, the military command in Israel, and the public, are insistent that Hamas must be destroyed (as soon as the U.S. vessels and new air defences are positioned).

Be that (the invasion) as it may, the reality is that Hamas’ Qassam Brigades have shattered both the internal and external paradigms of Israel. Depending on the outcome of the war in Gaza/Israel, the Brigades may yet land a further contusion on the body-politic that “triggers a global conflagration – and explodes the entire pro-American alliance structure that the U.S. has built” (in Tom Friedman’s words).

Should Israel enter Gaza (and Israel may decide it has no choice but to launch a ground operation, given the domestic political dynamics and public sentiment), it is likely that Hizbullah will incrementally be drawn further in, leaving the U.S. with the binary option of seeing Israel defeated, or launching a major war in which all the hotspots become fused ‘as one’.

In a sense, the Israeli-Islamic conflict now may only be resolved in this kinetic way. All efforts since 1947 have seen the divide only deepen. The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.

(Republished from Strategic Culture Foundation)

via Moon of Albama

The U.S. government under Joe Biden had developed plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza by moving all of its 2.3 million people into Egypt:

Harry Sisson @harryjsisson – 2:44 UTC · Oct 11, 2023Amazing: President Biden is working on a plan with other countries that would allow civilians to safely leave Gaza and cross the border into Egypt. This is great news. President Biden is making sure that innocent people don’t die due to the actions of Hamas. That’s leadership.

The NSC spokesperson had confirmed that plan:

US ‘actively working’ to establish safe corridor for Gaza civilians: White House – Yeni Safak – Oct 12, 2023

The US is in active talks with Israel and Egypt to establish “safe passage” corridors for civilians in Gaza to flee ongoing Israeli airstrikes, the White House said Wednesday amid an expected ground offensive in the besieged enclave. “We’re actively discussing this with our Israeli and our Egyptian counterparts, we support safe passions for civilians. Civilians are not to blame for what Hamas has done. They didn’t do anything wrong,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House.

“We are actively working on this with Egyptian and our Israeli counterparts. Civilians are protected under the laws of armed conflict, and they should be given every opportunity to avoid the fighting,” he added.

This all was based on a plan originally developed by radical Zionist within the government of Israel:

Leaked: Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza – The Cradle – Oct 29, 2023

Israeli culture magazine Mekovit published on 28 October a leaked document issued by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence recommending the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.The document, issued on 13 October, identifies a plan to transfer all residents of the Gaza Strip to North Sinai as the preferred option among three alternatives regarding the future of the Palestinians in Gaza at the end of the current war between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance.

The document recommends that Israel evacuate the Gazan population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt. The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border.

Egypt of course rejected any such plans. As I had explained:

Netanyahoo’s Strategic Dilemma – Moon of Alabama – Oct 21, 2023

Israel, with the help of the U.S., has tried to push the population of Gaza into Egypt. From Egypt’s standpoint that would be a humanitarian solution, at least as long as others pay for it. But it would cause a serious strategic problem. Resistance by Hamas and others against Israel would continue indefinitely, but Egypt would be held responsible for it. It can not and will not take on that burden.

Despite that logic the White House continued to proceed with its plan. Its request to Congress to finance the wars in the Ukraine and Gaza with up to $106 billion included these lines (pg 40):

Letter regarding critical national security funding needs for FY 2024 – White House – Oct 20, 2023

These resources would support displaced and conflict-affected civilians, including Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and to address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries. This would include food and non- food items, healthcare, emergency shelter support, water and sanitation assistance, and emergency protection. This would also include potential critical humanitarian infrastructure costs needed for the refugee population to provide access to basic, life-sustaining support. This crisis could well result in displacement across the border and higher regional humanitarian needs, and funding may be used to meet evolving programming requirements outside of Gaza.

Russia had called out the plan for the nonsense it is:

Middle East and Central Asia. Lavrov on the interests of the USA and the West, parallels with Ukraine – Belta – Oct 28, 2023

“It is clear that such an approach is disastrous, because if the Gaza Strip is destroyed, if two million residents are driven out, as some politicians in Israel and abroad are implying, this will create a catastrophe that will last for many decades, if not centuries,” Sergey Lavrov noted.

Backed by Russia the Egyptian resistance against the plan continued. A phone call held yesterday finally buried it:

Sisi, Biden probe developments of Gaza escalation, reject displacement of Palestinians – Ahram Online – Oct 29, 2023

During the call, El-Sisi reiterated Egypt’s firm rejection of policies that collectively punish and displace the Palestinian people. Biden, for his part, affirmed to El-Sisi that the US likewise rejects the displacement of Palestinians outside their homeland, expressing his appreciation for the positive role played by Egypt in this crisis, said Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Ahmed Fahmy.

The call touched upon the importance of preventing the expansion of the conflict into the region, added Fahmy.

Biden was forced to publicly declare that his plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza were called off:

President Biden @POTUS – 21:23 UTC · Oct 29, 2023. I also spoke with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to share my appreciation for Egypt facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

We reaffirmed our commitment to work together and discussed the importance of protecting civilian lives, respect for international humanitarian law, and ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.

This is another failure of the dimwit policies cooked up by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and SecState Anthony Blinken as directed by their Zionist puppeteers.

I for one support all plans that would allow them to safely leave Washington DC. They can move to Antarctica or to wherever the climate is severe enough to cool their genocidal moods.

Gaza’s utter devastation and masses of civilians facing death from bombardment and deliberate starvation already presents the world with a spectacle of mass murder of unspeakable proportions, writes Gareth Porter.

Palestinians in the ruins after an Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza strip on Oct. 8. (Mahmoud Fareed, Palestinian News & Information Agency or Wafa, in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Gareth Porter
Special to Consortium News

Israel’s systematic and wanton destruction of Gaza has raised long-standing issues of its political and legal culpability over the treatment of Palestinians to a new level of seriousness.

It obviously poses familiar issues of Israeli war crimes, and Amnesty International had already clearly designated it as such after just the first week. The human rights organization also asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to “urgently expedite” its investigation of the aims of all parties.

But this Israeli campaign now poses the even graver issue of genocide of Palestinians as a nation. The utter devastation of Gaza and the vast numbers of civilians facing death from bombardment and from deliberately engineered starvation and sickness already presents the world with a spectacle of mass murder of unspeakable proportions.

The Israelis should face accountability for its crimes.

A panel of nine distinguished independent experts on human rights who investigated the Gaza emergency for the United Nations’ Human Rights Council has just warnedthat the Israeli campaign of destruction of Gaza poses “a risk of genocide against the Palestinian people.”

And there is a long history of genocidal thinking and action behind this “genocidal moment”. It should be recalled that during the previous Gaza crisis in 2014, an equally extremist Israeli government openly threatened genocide against the Palestinians.

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked declared on Facebook that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and said:

“All of them are enemy fighters and all of them are bleeding from the head. Now it also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow in the footsteps of their sons, there is nothing fair about that. They have to go, and so does the physical house where they raised the snake. Otherwise, more small snakes will grow there.”

That same year, the Likud deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Moshe Feiglin said:

“Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel.”

The present Israeli government — whose extremist right-wing politics resemble those of the 2014 government — has made no effort to hide its political, genocidal contempt for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

Nor has it hidden the proximate objective of the present campaign, which is to eliminate Palestinians entirely from Gaza.

Al Aqsa Flood

Interior view of the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. (Aseel zm, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The official reason for the murderous new Israeli campaign against Gaza Palestinians was Hamas’s “Al Aqsa Flood” operation of Oct. 7, in which Palestinian commandos invaded kibbutzim near Gaza for the first time, taking the Israeli security system completely by surprise and inflicting a humiliating defeat on the government in the eyes of its own citizens.

Hamas said it was retaliating for hundreds of Israeli settlers who three days earlier had stormed the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem/al-Quds, the third holiest site in Islam. Ultranationalist Jews want to rebuild the Roman-era Jewish temple, destroyed around 70 AD, on the mosque’s site.

The Hamas operation clearly resulted in the deliberate killing of innocent civilians by Hamas. But surviving residents say it was the police — not the Hamas raiders — who destroyed many houses to ensure that everyone inside, both Hamas gunmen and hostages, would be killed, according to a standard Israeli procedure.

So the Israeli claim that Hamas killed more than 1,400 civilians in the operation must now be regarded with skepticism as part of the preparation for the massive murder to be inflicted on innocent Palestinian civilians in the weeks that followed.

The Israeli initial strategy for accomplishing its objective in Gaza appeared to be to carry out such heavy bombing on civilian targets throughout Gaza that the Palestinian population would be forced to leave Gaza for Egypt through the Rafah exit.

But that plan quickly ran into a serious obstacle that the Israelis apparently had not anticipated: the Egyptians have adamantly refused to open the exit for a Palestinian exodus.

The primary reason for this Egyptian resistance to the Israeli plan is that appearing to collaborate with an Israeli policy of pushing the entire Palestinian population out of Gaza would be extremely unpopular with the Egyptian public, which passionately supports the Palestinian cause.

Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was extremely harsh in his denunciation of the Israeli Gaza strategy in his joint press appearance with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Oct. 15, declaring that the Israeli air war “went beyond the right to self-defence, turning into collective punishment for 2.3 million people in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, el-Sisi was insisting that the Israelis allow the trucks containing international assistance for displaced Palestinian families to enter the war zone, while Israel continued to delayed approval for any humanitarian assistance day after day and to allow only a trickle to enter Gaza.

At the same time, the Israeli government took the position that Palestinian civilians have no legal right to protection whatsoever, on the ground that Hamas is a terrorist organization. That was the import of remarks by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in an interview with Britain’s Sky News Oct. 12.

When asked by a journalist what Israel planned to do about the Palestinian civilians in Gaza hospitals after it had cut off all fuel supplies on which the hospitals depended for power, Bennet shouted angrily, “Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? Have you not seen what’s happened? We’re fighting Nazis.”

No Legal Limits

By reducing the issue to Israel vs. “Nazis”, the Israeli government has sought to reject its legal and moral responsibility for humane treatment of civilians, or to abide by international law regarding its conduct of a war.

Seizing on the Hamas raid on the kibbutzim, the Israelis hoped to convince their key foreign allies — the United States and the major European states — that the Palestinian civilian population has forfeited all right to protection from Israeli bombing.

Thus it has made no commitment whatever to any such legal or ethical limits on its war in Gaza, which should have been recognized immediately as a threat to the entire civilian population there.

The Israeli government has not uttered the phrase “collective punishment” in this phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless Israel has carried out systematic punitive home demolitions as a means of punishing entire communities because of individuals who were involved in resistance activities.

That has long been the central Israeli method for dealing with Palestinian resistance activities, as Human Rights Watch concluded last February.

Israeli leaders have presented their current war of destruction as a further application of the same principle, aimed at punishing the Palestinian population in Gaza for the military operation by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Blaming that operation on the entire Palestinian population on Oct. 12, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, declared,

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. … They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

When a reporter asked Herzog if he was arguing that the failure of the civilian population to overthrow the Hamas government made them “legitimate targets”, he answered, “No, I didn’t say that.” But then he clearly contradicted the denial by arguing, “When you have a missile in your goddam kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”

There has never been any evidence, of course, that Hamas missiles have been hidden in civilian dwellings, nor would it make any military sense for Hamas to do so under the present circumstances.

The constant Israeli invocation of “the right to defend ourselves” is obviously paired silently with the unspoken belief in the right to inflict suffering and even genocide on the Palestinians. Israel has also been dropping leaflets in the northern Gaza Strip warning the population.

“Whoever chooses not to leave north Gaza to the south of Wadi Gaza might be identified as an accomplice in a terrorist organization” clearly implies that they are indeed being treated as legitimate targets for bombing as punishment for the actions of Hamas.

No less than the former attorney general of Israel has declared unequivocally that in order to destroy Hamas, “you have to destroy Gaza, because almost every building there, is a stronghold of Hamas.”

Targeting hospitals in Gaza poses additional political risks of provoking media and even potentially U.S. government censure, so Israel has turned to an obvious disinformation operation to smooth the way.

When a missile struck the parking lot of the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, causing casualties among some of the more than 3,000 people who had sought refuge in that area, the IDF quickly blamed the explosion on a Hamas rocket that it claimed had misfired.

The IDF cited a video supposedly showing the misfired rocket exploding at the Baptist hospital, as well as what it called an intercepted conversation between a “former Hamas operative” and a Gaza resident that acknowledging that a misfired Hamas rocket had landed on the hospital grounds.

Counting on the US

Joe Biden as vice president visiting Israel March 2016. (U.S. Embassy, Tel Aviv)

The U.S. National Security Council announced its official position that Israel was innocent of the rocket attack, and the intelligence community obliged by expressing “high confidence” that it was an errant Palestinian rocket that had caused the blast.

But then the Israeli case began to fall apart. BBC reported they could find no cemetery anywhere near the location from which the IDF claimed the errant rocket had been fired.

And The New York Times reported that its own more thorough study of the relevant videos did not support the U.S.-Israeli case. Instead it showed that the Palestinian rocket that misfired was “most likely not what caused the explosion at the hospital,” because it had “actually detonated in the sky roughly two miles away.”

Nevertheless, Israel could count on the backing of the Biden administration, which has provided political-diplomatic cover for Israel to carry out its scorched earth policy in Gaza since before the visit of President Joe Biden in mid-October.

Biden and Blinken were reduced to the role of virtual appendages to the Israel government mouthing the Israeli propaganda slogan that Israel has “the right to defend itself”, while adding a reference to the “laws of war” to which the visitors from Washington should have known perfectly well the Israelis were not paying the least attention.

That Biden administration’s craven support for the Israeli destruction of Gaza makes the U.S. complicit not only in Israeli crimes in Gaza but in the crime of genocide.

Although the genocide issue has not surfaced yet in the international politics of the Palestine issue, there is now good reason to expect that it will be raised both by Arab governments and by human rights organizations in the coming months.

This is certainly the historical moment to press the case against Israel genocide as called for by the Genocide Convention itself. The legal requirement for such an accusation is not proof of the mass murder of millions as was carried out by Hitler.

It is sufficient to prove that a state has the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…” and that it is

“[d]eliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The war imposed on the Gaza population by Israel obviously qualifies under those two crucial provisions of the convention.

The Genocide Convention also provides for finding that a state is guilty of the crime of “complicity” in genocide, which accurately describes the behavior of the U.S. government under the Biden administration.

Again it is not necessary to show that the complicity was motivated by the desire for the genocide in question but only that genocide could be a foreseeable result of the actions in question.

The legal question of genocide will ultimately be decided by the International Criminal Court or a national court with universal jurisdiction, such as Spanish courts have assumed in the past. The ICC would no doubt also investigate Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7. The Observer State of Palestine is a member of the ICC and the prosecutor of that court has an open file on Israel and Palestine.

Both the United States and Israel are parties to the Genocide Convention, which makes a campaign to hold them accountable for their respective roles in the present genocide even more of an urgent moral obligation for people and organizations of good will.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on US national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: @GarethPorter.

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

The Palestinian strategy against Israel is aimed at destroying Israel’s capacity to survive in its present state in a long war.

This means attacking the invincibility of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their so-called Iron Dome defence; this began with the cross-border offensive on October 7, and continues with daily drone and artillery attacks on targets inside Israel, as well as resistance to IDF incursions in Gaza.

The plan also means exposing the weakness of the state’s infrastructure and economy; extending the battlefield across all of Israel’s territory – the ports, power plants and electricity grid, communications, and financial markets — making the cost of occupation of the Arab territories unendurable. In a long war, two of Israel’s leading exports earning more than 40% of the state’s trade — diamonds and tourism — face ruin.*

“The Israelis cannot withstand one year of fighting in a war,” Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein told his general staff in 1983 during a discussion of planning for a regional war of the Arabs against Israel.** In the forty years since then, the evolution of military technology and tactics has expanded the power of small national liberation armies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, of proxy principals like Iran, and of the strategic balancing role of Russia and China. Their combination now has shortened the Zionist state’s endurance in a long war, and that of its proxy principal, the US.

The Israelis and the Jewish diaspora comprehend this reluctantly. For them, the short war must be correspondingly shorter. This means the genocide of at least a million Palestinians in lives and displacement.

The war to do that has now become an international war – and this is a war the US cannot sustain. As a Pentagon insider said publicly this week, “because there are so many draws on the logistics and support infrastructure of the Pentagon, we’re not prepared to go in in a concerted way. What we are seeing right now is death by a thousand cuts. Our adversaries know we are stretched so they are going to make us stretch even more, so we can respond even less.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, acknowledged the point in Moscow on Thursday: US naval, air force, and marine reinforcements deployed around Israel and Gaza are “American tactics to strengthen their own security (this is how it should be interpreted) at someone else’s expense.” They are backfiring on Washington’s capacity to defend US forces in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and in land bases in Syria, Iraq and Jordan. “On the contrary,” Zakharova added, the US military deployment “will further rock the situation in the Middle East, create additional tension that can spill out beyond the region.”

Zakharova’s warning came in the Moscow afternoon. By then Russian Foreign Ministry officials had held meetings with a Hamas delegation, and officials from Iran, Egypt, and Kuwait. Across the city at the same time, President Vladimir Putin held telephone talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Kremlin communiqué reported: “Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions.”

Israeli and US-led media censorship and propaganda are concealing the breadth of impact of the Palestine warfighting plan, and the deepening military and economic weaknesses of the Israeli state.

The longer the war continues, the plainer the evidence is on the battlefield that the single-state scheme of Israel and the US is no longer possible. Whether Israel and the US can be compelled to withdraw to the 1967 borders and a new Palestinian state created with partition, demilitarisation, and international security guarantees – the basis of the Russian position announced again on Thursday in Moscow — remains to be fought over.

In this long war, the gods do not favour the Chosen People.

Following with precision the battlefield action is impossible in the Israeli and Anglo-American press. Reporting of operations, and of Israeli and US casualties, is being suppressed entirely or delayed for days, if not weeks.

According to this NBC television report, broadcast on October 24, there were at least 24 US combat casualties following drone attacks on or about October 18 at the Al-Tanf base in Syria and the Al-Asad base in Iraq. Reporting of naval action in the Red Sea, when the USS Carney reportedly engaged Houthi missiles over several hours, has been changing since the initial news flashes of October 19. Read more here. In a new report of October 24, Israeli and US casualties in a joint raid inside Gaza were revealed: “in the last 24 hours or so, some of our Special Ops forces and Israeli Special Ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact, and they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it. I think that is where we are headed and I don’t see that as a win for Israel in any way, shape, or form. And I certainly think it is very dangerous for us”. In current reporting by Al Mayadeen, daily strikes against US bases in Iraq and northeastern Syria are documented.

Tracking the electric war and infrastructure strikes by Hamas and Hezbollah is also difficult. They commenced with cyber attacks on Israel’s electricity generation plants and power grids; these have been followed by missile and drone strikes. “The ground has been laid for attacks on the Israeli grid,” a US military source claims. “I believe drones will come first, then missiles. We may even see commando raids.”

Israel’s seaports are also under constant attack. Ashkelon, which is closest in range to Gaza, has been closed. Eilat may have been the target of the Houthi missile strike which was engaged last week by the USS Carney. Ashdod, which accounts for about 40% of incoming and outgoing Israeli seaborne trade, and Tel Aviv port have been targeted. The result is a tenfold surge in war risk insurance for vessels and cargoes, and the curtailment of international vessel movement in and out of the Israeli ports; there are reports that shipping is down 30% in Ashdod compared to the pre-war volume. Evergreen, the Taiwanese container shipping company, declared force majeure for Ashdod on October 17, diverted one vessel to Haifa, and halted future shipping into both ports. “We advise evaluating each port visit in Israel on a case by case basis and implementing appropriate precautions in ship contingency plans,” recommends a maritime industry alert bulletin.

Chevron’s offshore Tamar gas field has been shut down. The source produces 70% of the gas required to fuel Israel’s electricity generation needs. Not a single Anglo-American media source has noticed that Israel is at risk of losing its principal energy source to drone or missile attack. “After what the Americans and Germans did to blow up the Nordstream pipelines,” comments a Moscow industry source, “what is holding Hamas back from hitting Tamar, or Hezbollah from the other Israeli gas fields?”

Left: Chevron’s Tamar gas production platform is located at sea 24 kilometres west of Ashkelon. Right: click to enlarge map of Israel’s offshore gas sources.

A Moscow source comments that “in Israel, the US and the UK will be able to bring in supplies without a very big risk of US ships being attacked. The risk is to the ports and bases, not to supplies from the Med[iterranean]. The Greek and Cyprus bases will come in very useful. Israel will not face severe logistical issues as long as it is on the offensive. If its settlements start getting cut off, encircled or penetrated then it is a different matter.”

The indirect economic impacts of the war have also not been calculated or discussed in the mainstream media or international business newspapers. The leading export revenue earners are diamonds at above $9 billion per annum, and tourism which had been peaking at $8.5 billion in 2019. Counted together, diamonds and tourism amount to more than 40% of the state’s export earnings.

The Covid-19 pandemic and worldwide travel restrictions cut Israel’s tourism revenue fourfold, and this had been recovering over 2022 and the tourist season this year. This has now stopped, although for the time being Hamas rocket launches on Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv have been intercepted.

October 12, 2023 — source: https://www.youtube.com

 

ISRAEL TOURISM REVENUE TRAJECTORY, 1999-2022

Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/

Israel’s high-tech machine exports and pharmaceuticals may also be affected if electricity supply, internet networks, and transportation are damaged.

The cumulative effect will be the outcome which the international ratings agencies have been warning the international banks and financial markets to prepare for. “In our view,” Fitch reported to clients on October 17, “the combination of Israel’s dynamic, high-value added economy, the record of resilience to regional conflict, [and] preparedness for military confrontations…make it unlikely a relatively short conflict largely confined to Gaza will affect Israel’s rating…. the risk that other actors hostile to Israel, such as Iran and Hezbollah, could join the conflict at scale has risen significantly…a major escalation could result in negative rating action. This could take the form of a wider and longer conflict, resulting in a sustained fiscal drain, both from higher spending and lower tax collection, as well as loss of human and material capital and severe economic disruption.”

How short, and also how long, Israel’s warfighting plan will take depends on American and international acceptance, not only of the genocide intended for the Palestinians of Gaza, but of the Novichok-type chemical warfare planned by the IDF and the Pentagon for the Hamas tunnel system in Gaza City. After several years in which the US and UK have fabricated claims that Syria and Russia were using prohibited gas warfare weapons, the Israelis have reportedly persuaded the US to participate in the tunnel attack operation. The Pentagon is denying the reports.

Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net

Russian and US military sources are already confirming the logistical supply problems facing Israeli and US forces at present, when the war is just three weeks long. Greek sources are reporting the Souda Bay, Crete, base has already reached its capacity for incoming US navy and air force supply and support operations; the spillover is facing growing Greek protest at the Elefsina air base near Athens.

A Cyprus source says the movement of US and British aircraft into and out of the Dekhelia and Akrotiri airbases is accelerating, and there is an air and seaborne shuttle between the Cypriot ports of Larnaca and Limassol and the USS Gerald Ford carrier group at sea to the southwest of the island.

The lengthening of the supply lines required to support the USS Eisenhower carrier group in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and the shore bases needed to support it are politically sensitive already; and the risks of Houthi and other attacks, along with domestic Arab crowd protests, will intensify for these bases in the Arab sheikhdoms the longer the war against Israel reveals Arab and Iranian warfighting skill and resistance.

Converting these gains into a negotiating framework for Israeli-American retreat is the task Russian officials are attempting in silent coordination with the Chinese, and in semi-open negotiations in Moscow this week. In its first move outside the region since the war began, Hamas has visited Moscow for negotiations, led by US-educated Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq.

Left: Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq; centre: Husam Badran; right, Ali Bagheri Kyani.

 

 

Zakharova confirmed the start of the talks with Hamas on Thursday. She said: “I can also say and confirm that representatives of the relevant Palestinian movement are in Moscow. As for contacts, we will inform you additionally.” She has also disclosed that since the war began, nine thousand Russian passport holders have returned to Russia from Israel; and that at least fifteen Russian passport holders among the Hamas hostages have been killed in the IDF airstrikes.

At the same time as Marzouq’s meetings, Husam Badran issued a statement to the Russian state news medium, Sputnik. “Russia,” Badran said, “is able to play an important role in ending the war between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and delivering aid to the Palestinian exclave. Hamas values Russia’s role on the international stage, especially use of veto in the UN Security Council against the United States. But Russia can play a greater role in ending the aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip and applying international pressure to deliver urgent aid to our people in the Gaza Strip.”

What Hamas means by “greater role” for Russia has not been disclosed publicly yet. It is known that Hamas is willing to negotiate the release of “non-military” hostages, including Israelis holding Russian passports, through Iran. This is conditional on the IDF lifting its siege on Gaza and allowing sufficient supplies into all parts of the territory.

The “military hostages” are being held in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. There are more than 6,000 of the latter; there may be fewer than 200 hostages in Gaza, as up to 50 have been killed by Israeli bombing.

The Russian Foreign Ministry statement on the talks with Hamas is less revealing. According to the Sputnik release, “Russia has discussed release of hostages and evacuation of Russians from the Gaza Strip during a meeting with a delegation of Hamas in Moscow on Thursday.” A member of the political office of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, Abu Marzouq, is in Moscow. Contacts took place with him in continuation of the Russian line for the immediate release of foreign hostages located in the Gaza Strip, and issues related to ensuring the evacuation of Russian and other foreign citizens from the territory of the Palestinian enclave were also discussed.”

At the same time on Thursday – unnoticed and unreported by the western media – Russian officials held several negotiating sessions with an Iranian emissary, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kyani. In three separate Foreign Ministry releases, meeting communiqués were issued for Kyani’s meetings with deputy ministers Mikhail Bogdanov, Sergei Ryabkov, and Mikhail Galuzin. “The need for the cessation of hostilities in and around the Gaza Strip and the prompt provision of humanitarian assistance to the affected Palestinian population was confirmed,” Bogdanov’s communiqué said. “It was stated that Moscow and Tehran are determined to continue close coordination of efforts in the interests of stabilizing the situation in the Middle East.”

It is unclear if the talks also included the Hamas officials in a three-party format. During the day there were also Foreign Ministry negotiations in Moscow with Kuwaiti and Egyptian officials.

At the Kremlin it has been announced that President Putin spoke with Turkish President Erdogan to discuss the war. According to the Kremlin release, “the presidents reviewed the active efforts undertaken by Russia at the UN Security Council, as well as the corresponding political and diplomatic steps taken by Turkiye to stop the bloodshed and ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need. It was emphasised that Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions, focused on implementing the well-known two-state solution, which provides for the creation of an independent Palestine coexisting with Israel in peace and security.”

In her briefing for the press, Zakharova dismissed the US moves so far. “We do not consider the US presence in the Middle East as contributing to the stability of the situation in the region. Exactly the opposite. Washington’s earlier attempts to monopolise the Middle East settlement process, ignoring the true causes of the protracted conflict, have largely led to the current catastrophic consequences…This situation has an absolutely clear and understandable road, a ‘road map’ for settlement. It is not simple, but complex, painful, but leading to the solution of the issue, not its aggravation.”

“Of course, no air defence systems, arms supplies, materiel injections into some ‘security complexes’ will help resolve this situation. Today’s lesson must be learned. How many Americans have deployed there (their bases, experts, satellites), nothing has worked to prevent a bloody scenario, of which both Palestinians and Israelis are victims.”

[*] With support from Israel and influential Jewish diamantaires in New York and Tel Aviv, a scheme of sanctions is being prepared by the US Government to stop Russian rough diamonds, produced by Alrosa, from being sold into the Belgian, Israeli, and US markets. The Russian goods are to be tagged “blood diamonds” because of the war in the Ukraine. However, now that Israel is destroying the Palestinian population of Gaza, the “blood” tag can be applied to the Israeli diamond cutting industry and to the Jewish diamond trade abroad. Support for the anti-Russian sanction, and also for the IDF operations against the Palestinians can be found in Rapaport.com news reports. “Rapaport stands with Israel”, the publication and its owner Martin Rapaport declared on October 26, “and has undertaken all the necessary effort and costs for the October Single Stone Auction to help the Israeli market continue to conduct business as best as possible during this difficult time. Rapaport believes that continuing to do business in Israel during the war is a victory over the brutal Hamas terrorists, and will help Israel win the war.” In another editorial for the diamond trade, Rapaport proposes “to boycott Iran and all other supporters of the Hamas terrorist organization.” Rapaport also cites religious authority for liquidation. “In the words of G-d (Exodus 17:14): ‘I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’May the words of G-d be done, here and now.” Quietly, Russia’s state diamond interests dictate a strategy for protecting against this double-edged Israeli policy.

[**] Saddam Hussein is quoted in the chapter on US plots against him in Iraq – see The Jackals’ Wedding: American Power, Arab Revolt, Ch. 6.

Now, in connection with the events in Gaza, someone is cursing Hamas, someone is cursing Israel. However, it is necessary to look at this problem more broadly. By and large, many countries in the region are to blame for what is happening, including Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, Europe is to blame and the United States of America is to blame.

The author of the Telegram channel @golosmordora — especially for “360”.

They say that the root of the problem is the creation of an independent Palestinian State. This has been talked about for decades, but words remain words. Meanwhile, terrorism is growing among the Palestinians, and Israel continues to bite off a piece of the land on which a Palestinian state should be created.

It’s no secret that Hamas is Turkey’s main proxy in this region. This is the Muslim Brotherhood, the same organization that is in power in Turkey. Turkey has its own interest in these territories. She doesn’t see Israel, Palestine, or Syria on them. She sees the Ottoman Empire on these lands. And systematically does everything so that the conflict does not end, hoping in the end for a major regional war in which all the states of the region will participate. And then Turkey will simply come to the ready-made, to the ruins and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of corpses, and establish some kind of protectorate of its own, in fact, restoring part of the Ottoman Empire. The plan is as bloody as it is long-lasting.

Instability in the region is vital for the United States to justify its presence in the region by “protecting allies.” But in fact, the United States needs constant chaos in the region, but one that could be controlled. All the loud statements about readiness to fight with Iran are just statements. It seems to me that the Americans have a different plan about Iran — to destroy it from the inside with the help of some kind of color revolution. The United States is afraid and does not want an open military confrontation. It suits them only at the level of proxy forces. Yes, and it is extremely dangerous.

The Arab countries of the region also do not really want an independent Palestine. This applies only to the authorities of these countries, but the street is configured differently. But the street does not solve anything, no matter how large-scale protests and demonstrations are. By and large, Arab countries could have helped create an independent Palestine for a long time, but their authorities are playing various political and corruption games with Israel and the United States.

Europe does not care about Palestine at all, especially in the last decade, when it finally realized itself as a colony of the United States. Europe is not subject, no matter what Scholz, Macrons and Ursuls come to the Middle East. They don’t solve anything at all. As ordered in the White House, so it will be.

As a result, the Palestinians remain hostages. And now they are becoming the object of a real genocide. And there is no excuse at all for this. All the words of the Arabs, Turks and Westerners about the need to create a Palestinian state are lies and hypocrisy. Israel’s attempt to pacify Gaza through the economy, trying to bribe the Palestinians, give jobs, raise living standards, is also a failure. Because at the same time, Israel benefits from the existence of the same Hamas, which is an obstacle to the creation of an independent Palestine.

And if you look at the map, you will see that soon there will be nothing left of the territories on which Palestine was to be created. Israeli settlers bite off piece by piece, and no one stops them. As a result, if an independent Palestine is created, it can become a city-state with absolutely formal independence. And the price of this will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Palestinian lives.

via Moon of Alabama

Press Briefing with the NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby – October 24, 2023

And as I think you’ve heard us say, a ceasefire right now really only benefits Hamas. That’s where we are right now.

A ceasefire would of course benefit ALL people living in Gaza and all Israelis under threat of Hamas missile fire.

The UN Secretary General António Guterres took a much saner position:

Secretary-General’s remarks to the Security Council – on the Middle East – October 24, 2023

It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.

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

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

Excellencies, Even war has rules.

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

The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming.
…
The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict.

Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields.

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

I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.

Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.
…
Today is United Nations Day, marking 78 years since the UN Charter entered into force.

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

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

I find this unprecedented. The UN SecGen is clearly pointing to the U.S. which had vetoed last week’s ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council.

Should the U.S. call for a ceasefire, Israel will have to end its bombing. It should anyway immediately do so because its opponents are ready for the next phase of the fight.

Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders discuss how to achieve ‘victory’

The meeting involved Hezbollah’s Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri and Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala, Hezbollah said in a statement. It did not say when the meeting took place. “An assessment was made of the international positions being taken and what the parties of the Axis of Resistance must do … to realise a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine and to halt the brutal aggression,” Hezbollah said.

If Hizbullah unleashes its missile force against Israel’s infrastructure and industrial areas, the Zionist entity is done.

via https://t.me/colonel_cassad/117106

A resident of the Gaza Strip on the situation in the besieged enclave.

Nur Alsalibi, a resident of Gaza, on the situation in the city and the Israeli Air Force strikes—especially for the @voenkorKotenok TG channel:

“The situation in the city is very difficult. The intensity of the strikes is growing every day. Rockets can fly anywhere at any time. Even if they don’t hit your house, but the neighbouring one, blast fragments will fly into your house. Basically, they bomb the north and the “centre” (“Al Rimal”) [the Al Rimal neighbourhood is 3km from Gaza’s city centre –ed.]. Al Karama residential area [in Gaza’s north –ed.] has been completely destroyed. In Al Zahraa [in the central Gaza Strip –ed.], 24 residential buildings were destroyed.

Israel says Hamas was there, but that’s a lie—they weren’t there. Hamas fighters have gone into the tunnels under the city; Israeli missiles cannot even reach them. More than 90% of the dead were civilians. The figure of 4,385 dead is only those who could be found under the rubble. The real death toll is many times higher. A lot of children are dying who don’t know what Hamas and the IDF are.

The humanitarian situation is also getting worse. There has been no electricity for about two weeks. My family uses solar panels, so we have internet and at least some electricity. Most don’t have this. People charge their phones in hospitals where there are diesel generators, but there is less and less diesel for them. Pharmacies are closed, medicines are only available in hospitals, but they are also running out.

The water in the taps is provided for two hours a day—it’s dirty, but you have to drink it, there is no other water. No food. Large supermarkets closed in the first days of the war, because… people swept away everything that was there, but there were no new products. We mainly eat bread and canned food. Even animals suffer. I have three kittens in my house, and give them just a little food, because there’s nowhere to get more.

The fact that the population is allegedly leaving Gaza is an Israeli lie. Most remained in their homes. People are not leaving even under the threat of death. At the same time, phones are constantly receiving threatening messages from Israeli numbers. You may also receive a notification that “your house will be bombed” so that people feel in danger every minute.

We know that Russia opposes the West and does not support Israeli crimes. In Gaza they love Russia and the Russian people very much. Among the Arab countries, there is a very good attitude towards Qatar, Algeria, and Yemen. Among non-Arab ones—towards Iran. We believe that Iran and Hezbollah will intervene and prevent the genocide of Gaza.

But the attitude towards the governments of Egypt, the UAE and Jordan is very bad. Here, they are considered traitors who caved in to the USA and Israel. The final straw was the Jordanian king’s announcement to provide air bases to the American Air Force. And in general, the Jordanian government’s attitude towards the Palestinians has always been bad. If you have a Palestinian passport, the Jordanian security forces treat you like shit—they could detain you at the airport, or on the street, or raid you with a search.

As for the ground operation, I do not believe that Israel will launch it. The last time they carried out a limited ground operation was in 2014, when Hamas did not have the weapons it has today. And even then, Israel suffered great losses. Now they will be hundreds of times higher. If they enter Gaza, they will all remain here. People believe that Hamas will win. Support for the movement has only grown. Israel will achieve nothing by bombing.”

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,Photo Credit: The Cradle

Is it possible that the philo-Semitic Russian President Vladimir Putin is slowly but surely re-evaluating his geopolitical assessment of Israel? To call this the key riddle in Moscow’s corridors of power is actually an understatement.

There are no outward signs of such a seismic shift – at least when it comes to the officially “neutral” Russian position on the intractable Israel-Palestine drama.

Except for one stunning statement last Friday at the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Summit in Bishkek, when Putin blasted Israel’s “cruel methods” employed to blockade Gaza, and compared it with “the siege of Leningrad during World War Two.”

“That’s unacceptable,” declared the Russian president, and warned that when all of Gaza’s 2.2 million civilians “have to suffer, including women and children, it’s hard for anyone to agree with this.”

Putin’s comments may have been one hint at the changes underway in the frustratingly opaque Russia-Israel relationship. A close second is this very important article published last Friday on Vzglyad, a security strategy website close to the Kremlin, diplomatically titled “Why Russia remains neutral in the conflict in the Middle East.”

It’s crucial to note that only six months ago and mirroring a near consensus among Russia’s intelligence community, Vzglyad editors were calling for Moscow to shift its considerable political weight toward supporting the number one issue for the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The article noted the key points Putin voiced in Bishkek: there’s no alternative to negotiations; Tel Aviv was subjected to a brutal attack and has the right to defend itself; a real settlement is possible only via an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.

The Russian president favors the UN’s original “two states” solution and believes that a Palestinian state should be established “by peaceful means.” But, as much as the conflict was “a direct result of the failed policy of the United States in the Middle East,” Putin rejects Tel Aviv’s plans to launch a ground operation in Gaza.

This qualified hedging is certainly not evidence of Putin swinging to what is a near consensus among the General Staff, the siloviki in several intel agencies, and his ministry of defense: They consider that Israel may be a de facto enemy of the Russian Federation, allied with Ukraine, the US and NATO.

Follow the money

Tel Aviv has been extremely cautious not to frontally antagonize Russia in Ukraine, and this may be a direct consequence of the notoriously cordial relations between Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yet way more consequential than Israel on the geopolitical chessboard are Moscow’s evolving relations with Arab states today, especially OPEC+ partner Saudi Arabia which has helped thwart western efforts to control oil prices.

Also highly central to Russia’s regional policymaking is its strategic partnership with Iran, which has reaped dividends in Syria and the Caucasus, and which helps contain US expansionism. Finally, Moscow’s complex, multi-layered, back-and-forth with Ankara is crucial to Russian economic and geopolitical ambitions in Eurasia.

All three West Asian powers are Muslim-majority states, important affiliations for a multipolar Russia that hosts its own sizable Muslim population.

And for these three regional actors, without distinction, the current collective punishment of Gaza transgresses any possible red line.

Israel is also not that significant anymore in Moscow’s financial considerations. Since the 1990s, immense quantities of Russian funds have been transiting to Israel, but now, a substantial portion is returning right back to Russia.

The notorious case of billionaire Mikhail Friedman illustrates this new reality well. The oligarch quit his home in the UK and moved to Israel a week before the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood – which in turn had him hastily grab his Russian passport and head to Moscow for safety.

Friedman, who leads the Alfa Group with major interests in telecom, banking, retail, and insurance, and is a wealthy survivor of the 1998 financial crisis, is suspected by the Russians of “contributing” as much as $150 million to the enemy regime in Kiev.

The reaction by Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin could not have been sharper – or less concerned about Israel’s sentiments on the matter:

“Anyone who left the country and engaged in reprehensible acts, celebrating gunfire on Russian territory and wishing victory to the Nazi Kiev regime, should realize they are not only unwelcome here, but if they do return, Magadan (a notorious transit port to the gulag in the Stalin era) is waiting for them.”

Russophobia meets collective punishment

As the collective west resorted to a monomaniacal “We are all Israelis now,” the Kremlin’s strategy is to visibly position itself as the mediator of choice in this conflict – not only for the Arab and Muslim worlds but also for the Global South/Global Majority.

That was the purpose of this week’s Russian draft resolution at the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which was predictably shot down by the usual suspects.

Three permanent Security Council members – US, UK and France, plus their neo-colony Japan – voted against it. To the rest of the world, this looked like exactly what it was: irrational western Russophobia and US puppet states validating Israel’s genocidal bombardment of civilian-dense Gaza.

Off the record, intelligence analysts point to how the Russian General Staff, the intel apparatus, and the ministry of defense seem to be organically aligning with global sentiments on Israel’s excessive aggressions.

The problem is that official and public Russian criticism of Netanyahu’s serial, psychotic incitation to violence, alongside his rightwing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has been non-existent.

Moscow insiders insist that the Kremlin’s official “neutral” position is frontally clashing with its defense and security agencies – especially GRU and SVR – which will never forget that Israel was directly involved in the killing of Russians in Syria.

That view has strengthened since September 2018 when Israel’s Air Force used an Ilyushin-20M electronic reconnaissance plane as cover against Syrian missiles, causing it to be shot down and killing all 15 Russians on board.

This silence in the corridors of power is mirrored by silence in the public sphere. There has been no debate in the Duma about the Russian position on Israel-Palestine. And no debate at the Security Council since early October.

Yet a subtle hint was offered by Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who stressed that “peaceful coexistence” has a “religious dimension” and requires “just peace.” This does not exactly align with the announced ethnic cleansing of “human animals” (copyright Israeli Defense Ministry) in Gaza.

Along some corridors close to power, there’s an alarming rumor of an intricate shadow play between Moscow and Washington, wherein the Americans will deal with Israel in exchange for the Russians dealing with Ukraine.

While this would seal the west’s already ongoing process of throwing the sweaty sweatshirt actor in Kiev under the bus, the Kremlin is highly unlikely to trust any American deal, and certainly not one that would marginalize Russian influence in strategic West Asia.

This two-state solution is dead

Russia’s “neutrality” ballet will continue. Moscow is impressing on Tel Aviv the notion that even within the framework of its strategic partnership with Iran, weapons that could threaten Israel – as in, ending up with Hezbollah and Hamas – will not be exported. The quid pro quo of this arrangement would be that Israel also not sell anything Russian-threatening to Kiev either.

But unlike the US and the UK, Russia will not designate Hamas as a terrorist organization. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has been very forthright on this issue: Moscow keeps its contacts with both sides; its “number one priority” is “the interest of the country’s (Russian) citizens who live both in Palestine and Israel”; and Russia will remain “a party that has the potential to participate in the settlement processes.”

Neutrality, of course, may reach a dead end. Overwhelmingly, for the Arab and Muslim states actively courted by the Kremlin, the dismantlement of Zionist-led settler-colonialism should be the “number one priority.”

This implies that the two-state solution, for all practical purposes, is fully dead and buried. Yet there’s no evidence anyone, not least Moscow, is ready to admit it.