Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Saleh Al-Arouri, was assassinated as a result of being targeted by a drone in the southern suburb of Beirut, according to what Lebanese media reported this evening.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announced that Israel assassinated Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of its political bureau, and two leaders of the Al-Qassam Brigades, in an attack on a building in the southern suburb of Beirut on Tuesday evening.

The Lebanese News Agency reported, “Saleh Al-Arouri and 3 others were assassinated, and 11 people were wounded in the hostile raid on the Hamas office in the suburb.”

According to the Lebanese News Agency, a hostile Israeli drone targeted an office of the Hamas movement in Musharrafieh, south of Beirut.

Meanwhile, sources in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, reported today, Tuesday, that an explosion was heard in the southern suburb.

A member of the Hamas political bureau, Izzat al-Rishq, said, “The cowardly assassinations carried out by the Zionist occupation against the leaders and symbols of our Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine will not succeed in breaking the will and steadfastness of our people, or undermining the continuation of their valiant resistance, It proves once again the abject failure of this enemy to achieve any of its aggressive goals in the Gaza Strip.”

Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed newspaper quoted Hezbollah MP Hussein Jashi as saying, “Hezbollah will respond to the assassination, and this is settled, and matters remain to be determined.”

He pointed out that "The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, confirmed that any targeting of any figure in Lebanon, regardless of his nationality, will be responded to."

He stated, "Hezbollah is still trying to keep things within the rules of engagement, but the Israelis are working to expand (that) and the Americans are curbing it."

The government media office in the Gaza Strip said that Israel's assassination of Al-Arouri was "an expected crime that will not stop the resistance."

The Director-General of the Office, Ismail Al-Thawabta, added in a brief statement, “Al-Arouri is considered a great and lofty national figure, and has a solid reputation in serving the Palestinian cause, and we expected him to receive martyrdom because it befits him and his sacrifices.”

He pointed out that despite Al-Arouri's assassination, "the resistance continues and will not stop until the occupation ends."

In turn, Reuters said that it asked the Israeli army questions about the incident, but it responded that it “does not comment on foreign media reports.”

The Israeli government issued orders to its ministers, preventing them from giving press interviews about the assassination, while a member of the Knesset from the Likud Party headed by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Danny Danon, “blessed” the Israeli security services, wrote about the assassination, which he described as “successful.”

According to Reuters, Al-Arouri was a senior official in Hamas's political bureau, but he was known for his intense involvement in its military affairs.

Meanwhile, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted Israeli officials as saying that Al-Arouri's assassination was "a high-quality operation, and all Hamas leaders are doomed to death."

On the other hand, the Israeli Prime Minister's advisor told the American network MSNBC that Israel did not claim responsibility for the Beirut attack, indicating that the attack did not target the Lebanese government or Hezbollah.

The head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Ismail Haniyeh, said that none of the Israeli prisoners will be released except on the conditions of the resistance.

In his speech on Tuesday evening, Haniyeh said that the resistance is “the master of time and space” in Gaza and Palestine.

He added that the Israeli aggression will stop under the blows of the resistance and the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.

The head of the Political Bureau stressed that any arrangements regarding resolving the Palestinian issue without the Hamas movement and the resistance factions are “an illusion and a mirage,” as he put it.

Source: Al Jazeera

Since Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7 and the latter's ferocious response in Gaza, the Middle East has been on the brink of a regional war.

According to the British newspaper “The Guardian”, “Within hours of the outbreak of the Gaza war, Hezbollah in Lebanon began firing on towns and villages in northern Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians, which led to Israeli air strikes in response, and Houthi forces in Yemen attacked ships.” In the Red Sea with a connection to Israel. For its part, the United States transferred two aircraft carriers and their accompanying strike groups to the region, as American bases in Syria and Iraq were subjected to repeated attacks from groups linked to Iran, sparking rapid retaliation from Washington. At the same time, protests broke out in the West Bank continued to bomb civilians in Gaza, and extremist Jewish settlers quickly sought to ride the wave of Israeli anger by seizing Palestinian land and terrorizing its residents.

The newspaper continued, “All the events that preceded have the potential to ignite a major fire in the Middle East, and the past few days have shown how easy it is to escalate, and whether intended or not, it can push Israel into an open confrontation with Iran, and also attracts the United States. An Israeli air strike outside Damascus killed a prominent figure in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mr. Radhi Mousavi, who was responsible for military liaison between Syria and Iran. After Mousavi's death, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard issued a statement declaring that "the usurping and brutal Zionist regime will pay the price for this crime."

The newspaper added, “At the same time, Tehran’s Houthi allies fired on the US-led “Prosperity Guardian” naval task force that was assembled to protect shipping in the Red Sea. American warships shot down dozens of drones as well as a group of ballistic missiles. For their part, US Central Command issued a statement saying that Washington had "every reason to believe that these attacks were fully enhanced by Iran."

According to the newspaper, “If an American warship is attacked, US President Joe Biden will be under intense pressure to provide a decisive response.” On Thursday, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote a comment in an American newspaper expressing the view of many on the hard-line side of the establishment. The wish in both Israel and the United States is that they are doomed to fight Iran's proxies indefinitely until Iran is captured outright. “Iran's evil empire must be overthrown,” Bennett wrote in the Wall Street Journal. The United States and Israel must set a clear goal: toppling the evil Iranian regime. "This is not only possible, but it is vital for the safety and security of the Middle East and the entire civilized world."

The newspaper continued, “On Friday, the United Nations Security Council convened to discuss violence in the West Bank, but the session quickly descended into discussion of a regional war. Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan dismissed the issue of settler violence in the West Bank as a distraction from the threat posed by Hezbollah in Lebanon. “The situation in northern Israel is reaching the point of no return,” Erdan said, echoing an increasingly frequent warning from Israeli officials that their country would take matters into its own hands, perhaps by establishing a buffer zone in southern Lebanon. “If these attacks continue, I repeat, the situation will escalate and may lead to a full-scale war. Lebanon must be held accountable for the aggression carried out from its territory.”

The newspaper added, “Mohamed Khaled Al-Khayari, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, told members of the Security Council that although most of the exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel was around the border, some strikes went deep into the other party’s territory, which “raises the specter of A conflict that cannot be contained and has devastating consequences for the peoples of both countries.” Al-Khayari added, “The risk of miscalculation and further escalation is increasing as the conflict in Gaza continues.” Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE envoy, expressed the Arab world’s concern that in the absence of “resolutions Daring and perhaps uncomfortable” to stop the drift toward regional conflict, “the alternative is for the hellscape in Gaza to spill over into the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.” 

According to the newspaper, “ Khaled El-Guindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the disproportionate number of Palestinian deaths showed that Israeli forces were waging an exaggerated campaign in an attempt to deter an uprising in the West Bank in solidarity with Gaza. 

He added: "The Israeli mentality is that they believe they are preventing a third intifada. But I think the way they are operating is probably more like causing it to happen." 

He pointed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a particularly explosive element in the combustible situation in the region. 

The 

Khaled El-Guindy said: “Netanyahu, frankly, is the one who dictates the conditions on all fronts, in Gaza, on the borders of Lebanon, and throughout the region, for reasons related to him. This is his war. I believe that with every day that passes, we are getting closer to the regional expansion of this chaos.” "

On Tuesday evening, clashes broke out between young men and Israeli occupation forces in the town of Beita, south of Nablus.

The occupation forces stormed the town of Beita amidst the firing of poisonous tear gas bombs, stun grenades and live bullets, which led to the outbreak of confrontations.

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The Israeli Defense Minister stood in the Gaza Strip and revealed the next military plan in the war, within statements that were intended primarily to deny the cessation of operations, but revealed other details, while a report from the “Wall Street Journal” revealed the internal division in Israel over how to end the war. This war.

On Tuesday, Gallant entered the Gaza Strip, accompanied by the Deputy Chief of Staff, to conduct an assessment of the conditions of the Israeli forces there.

drain?

The first point that Gallant established was his categorical denial of the cessation of fighting on the Israeli side, refuting the recent news about the cessation of fighting, due to an Israeli official’s announcement of a “reduction in forces.”

Gallant said: "The feeling among some that we are on our way to stopping the fighting is wrong. Without a clear victory, we will not be able to live in the Middle East."

An Israeli official indicated a shift in plans on Monday, indicating that the army would reduce its forces in Gaza this month and move into a months-long phase of local “cleansing” operations.

The next military plan in Gaza

During his statements, Galant revealed, while describing, the Israeli army’s upcoming military plan to confront Hamas.

Galant said that what the Israeli army will do operationally is as follows:

Fire attacks.

Invasions.

special operations.

If necessary, we will control the land for the period we decide. The goal is to exhaust the enemy, kill him, and create a reality in which we impose our control over the land.

Thus, the Israeli Defense Minister may have revealed Israel's upcoming military plans during the confrontation with Hamas in Gaza.

Division within Israel

On the other hand, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir joined Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in promoting the idea of trying to force the largest possible number of Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip, an idea denounced by many parts of the world as a violation of international human rights laws.

On the other hand, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokeswoman, Tal Heinrich, refused to comment specifically on the ministers' statements, but said that the prime minister believes that "the future of the Palestinians from Gaza lies in Gaza."

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the two ministers' calls reflect internal divisions in the Israeli government over how best to end the war in Gaza and ensure that Hamas fighters are unable to carry out another deadly attack on Israel.

The plan to end the war...does not exist

Israel has not yet drawn up a plan for what should happen in Gaza when the war ends, according to the Wall Street Journal. Israeli officials are preparing for months of fighting in the Gaza Strip, while the world's parties disagree on how to end the conflict.

The United States, an ally of Israel, said it does not want the war to end with Israel regaining control of any part of Gaza, and it opposes any forced expulsion of residents.

After about 3 months of war on Gaza, Israel has become in a state of limbo, not knowing exactly what it is heading towards in the Strip. It seems that a war without a clear end or achieving tangible results is what Benjamin Netanyahu, the desperate Prime Minister, wants to prolong the war as much as possible in order to escape. From accountability and imprisonment, which will be the day after the war stops.

How did Netanyahu lose sight of the next day in the Strip?

After 3 months of battles, there are no good or clear options for the future of the Israeli war on Gaza, which has raised major goals since October 7, such as completely destroying the Hamas movement and liberating prisoners by military force.

But none of that was achieved. Hamas, as a military force, has not been defeated, and thousands of its fighters are still waging a war of attrition against the Israeli forces, and launching surprise operations from tunnels.

The Netanyahu government is still hesitant about what it will do regarding the future of its war on the Gaza Strip. Because it is unable to advance its declared goals in light of its heavy losses, and is still talking about unclear scenarios, such as reoccupying Gaza, which Washington rejects, or handing over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, or managing the Gaza Strip by an international force, or forming a tribal force from within. The sector is under the control of the occupying power.

Although none of these options have yet been officially presented, the Palestinians are treating them with categorical rejection, especially with Arab warnings about the possibility of displacing the Palestinians and imposing the “Greater Israel” project on the ground.

Last week, Netanyahu's national security advisor, Tzachi Hanegbi, published an opinion article on the London-based Arabic website Elaph, saying that there will be a need for a moderate Palestinian ruling body that enjoys broad support and popularity. He added: "In its current form, the (Palestinian) Authority finds it difficult to do this, and it will require great effort and assistance from the international community as well as from the countries of the region, and we are ready for this effort." Hanegbi would not have written this without his boss's approval.

The Israeli prime minister appears stuck: the far-right parties that keep him in power are threatening to topple the government if the scope of the war is reduced and the Palestinian Authority is allowed to return to Gaza. Netanyahu said in mid-December that he "will not allow Fatah or Hamas to rule the Gaza Strip." He said in his account on the “X” website: “I will not allow Hamastan to be replaced by Fatehistan,” as he put it.

Netanyahu added in his speech about “ruling the Gaza Strip after the end of the war”: “We will not repeat the mistake of Oslo, and we will not allow again an environment in which Palestinian children are raised in the culture of eliminating Israel, and we will not return extremist parties to Gaza. The debate between Fatah and Hamas is about how to eliminate On Israel,” as he described it.

Scenarios for the future of Gaza “post-war” from the Israeli point of view

Last week, the Hebrew Channel 12 said, “There are several proposed Israeli scenarios for governing Gaza after the war, all without the presence of Hamas. They are summarized in the scenarios that the channel said were placed on the table of the Israeli decision-maker, and many discussions and debates are still taking place about them with the American administration: It is to place Gaza in the custody of the Palestinian Authority, or to create a government different from the two parties of authority in Ramallah or Gaza.

Regarding the first scenario, which was recently circulated in several media outlets, which is that the rule of the Gaza Strip would be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, the channel said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out the return of the Authority, and stressed that he would not allow Israel to return to what he described as the “Oslo mistake.” Saying, "Gaza will not become Hamastan or Fatehistan."

The newspaper adds that, contrary to the positions in Israel, there are those who want the Palestinian Authority to replace Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said, at the end of the week, that “the Palestinian Authority has the ability to manage Gaza. Everyone knows its ability and strength to manage the West Bank.” “She did an amazing job – despite the challenges.”

Joe Biden stated that the "renewed" Palestinian Authority must eventually control the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. “The Palestinian Authority needs to be renewed,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said. “This will require a great deal of work that will start with Abu Mazen — and depend on the Palestinian people.”

Channel 12 quoted the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, Michael Milstein, as saying that he "did not notice a desire in the authority to rule Gaza, which means that it feels that it is not prepared and is afraid to enter into a difficult adventure."

The second scenario distances itself from the two parties of government, whether the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, and the channel says that it includes “the establishment of an alternative Palestinian authority to rule Gaza, relying on local tribal sources that do not belong to Hamas, and which are, for example, public figures, businessmen, tribal sheikhs, and mayors.”

It was estimated that this system would become responsible for providing services, while military control would remain in the hands of Israel. Milstein believes that it is possible that this local government system will also be subject to, or linked to, the Palestinian Authority, and external factors will support this step, including Egypt.

The channel also proposed a third alternative scenario, which is the establishment of a temporary regional regime led by the United States and with the participation of the countries of the region: Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, until its handover to the Palestinian Authority after a few years.

Given such a scenario, it is expected that Egypt will control the region with the cover of other countries, as the United Arab Emirates will provide assistance politically, Jordan will coordinate with the Palestinian Authority, and it is possible that Saudi Arabia will replace Qatar and help in the “peace process.”

The Hebrew channel adds that such a possibility is expected to face many obstacles and difficulty in coordinating the movement without creating gaps. Israel even insists that the IDF's security control over Gaza will continue after the war. The channel indicated that the proposed scenarios are still far from being resolved, as it quoted Milstein as saying that “there are no magic solutions for a quick settlement, and that there is a need for a clear strategy.”

According to Milstein, Gaza “is similar to Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the dismantling of the Baath Party and its structure by America,” and that Israel “realizes the difficulty of dismantling the structure of the Hamas movement.”

Milstein added: "This will also take a long time, will be exhausting and long-term, and it must also be taken into account that even if the Palestinian Authority returns to Gaza, Hamas will not disappear."

In the end, while Israel is lost in the maze of “the day after Gaza” and discusses it with the Americans or its Arab partners in the region, there is a certain understanding and acknowledgment on its part that Hamas is still managing the battle and fighting the Israeli army fiercely and inflicting heavy losses on it, and the idea of Hamas is deeply rooted in the Palestinian consciousness. It cannot be annihilated and destroyed.

Source: Arabic Post

The Supreme Authority of the Palestinian Tribes in the Gaza Strip denounced statements by Occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the possibility of strengthening the role of the tribes to control the Gaza Strip.

Akef Al-Masry, Commissioner-General of the Supreme Authority for Palestinian Tribes in the Gaza Strip, warned against such unacceptable and suspicious statements, through which the occupying state seeks to cover up its failure in Gaza and create confusion and strife in Palestinian society.

The Commissioner-General of the Palestinian Tribes saluted the legendary steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their valiant resistance, stressing that the Palestinian tribes and families represent the popular incubator for the Palestinian resistance that has pushed the occupation into the sands of Gaza.

Al-Masry called for a national decision that rises to the level and greatness of the sacrifices, accelerating the end of the division and forming a unified national leadership and a unified national government to strengthen the people’s steadfastness and to prevent opportunities for all the occupation’s plans.

Al-Masry called on all Palestinian, Arab and international parties to take urgent action to stop the war of genocide, ensure the flow of humanitarian aid and medical and relief supplies, and guarantee shelter for citizens until reconstruction and hold general elections that rebuild Palestinian institutions and ensure the continuation of the Palestinian national struggle until self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

The first session of the International Court of Justice to consider the claim that Israel committed genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip was scheduled for Thursday.

South Africa submitted a request to the International Court of Justice to take action against Israel due to the military operations it launched in the Gaza Strip.

In an unusual decision, Israel decided to appear before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, to demand the dismissal of the lawsuit filed against it by South Africa.

Today, Tuesday, settlers attacked farmers in Masafer Yatta, preventing them from plowing their lands.

Local sources said that a group of settlers attacked farmers from the Alyan, Abu Eid, Al-Shawahin, and Abu Hamid families, while plowing their lands threatened with seizure in the “Al-Thaala” area in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.

The occupation forces, which came to protect the settlers, closed the area and declared it “closed military,” and detained a number of farmers, including Ibrahim Abu Eid and Hussein Al-Shawaheen, and abused them and searched them in a humiliating manner.

The settlers, under the protection of the occupation forces, continue to pursue farmers in all communities in Al-Musafer, in order to impose their control over more lands for the benefit of settlement.

By Amos Harel

The latest surprising development in this war came, specifically from the United States, as a report published by the ABC network stated that the American aircraft carrier, Gerald Ford, will leave the Middle East within the next few days to return to its port in Virginia, with a task force that includes additional battleships, and this is how it will remain. There is one American aircraft carrier in the region, the Dwight Eisenhower. The two aircraft carriers were deployed in the Mediterranean, near the Arabian Gulf, after the “terrorist” attack carried out by the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip on October 7, under direct orders from US President Joe Biden.

This intensive naval deployment, which includes two aircraft carriers with more than 150 warplanes, took place close to the date of Biden’s warning to the Iranian regime in which he forbade it from participating in the war, saying: “Don’t.” The goal behind Biden's move, at a time when Israel was in a dire situation, was to deter the Iranians from directly joining the war, and it was possible that it was also aimed at deterring Hezbollah from trying to launch a comprehensive attack on Israel.

But Iran did not sit quietly; Since October 8, Hezbollah has been waging a battle against Israel, launching drones from Lebanon, along with rockets and anti-tank missiles towards Israeli towns and military sites in the Galilee. As for the Houthis in Yemen, they launched more than 50 missiles and drones towards the Eilat region, with the encouragement of Iran, and systematically obstructed navigation in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, while Shiite militias in both Iraq and Syria launched drones and missiles towards the Israeli border, Starting from the Golan in the far north, all the way to Wadi Araba in the far south.

There is a fruitful dialogue between the United States and Iran, including secret and public messages. Perhaps the reduction of the US naval presence in the region has now been accompanied by a secret hint to Iran not to try to escalate the already tense situation, with one of two aircraft carriers leaving the region. In parallel, this step could be a wrong American bet that Hezbollah may interpret as an opportunity to further expand the scope of danger.

It is true that the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, began the attacks in the north in response to the war in the Gaza Strip, but so far he has been wary of being drawn into an all-out war with Israel. The dilemma here is that both sides are walking on the edge, and that the confrontation now also includes Iranian targets, in attacks attributed to Israel (although Israel itself does not claim official responsibility for these attacks).

Meanwhile, the United States is showing an increasingly assertive stance toward the Houthis; On Sunday, a Houthi attempt to attack a ship in the Red Sea was thwarted, and American ships sank boats carrying 10 Yemeni fighters. The international coalition to protect navigation in the region is beginning to establish itself, and there are reports that both the United States and Britain are considering launching a more systematic air campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen.

Reducing the US naval presence in the region does not bode well for Israel. Although American support for Israel in its war effort is widespread, the Netanyahu government does not enjoy unlimited American war credit, far from it. Recently, tense phone conversations took place between Biden and Netanyahu, most of which revolved around the latter’s dealings with the Palestinian Authority. Also, the series of statements issued by the extreme right in the government, which promise to encourage the displacement of the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the re-establishment of settlements there, do not, of course, contribute to strengthening Washington’s confidence in Israel’s intentions.

Alain Gabon

Now in its third month, the leveling of Gaza, which has caused unprecedented destruction to people, infrastructure and habitats, seems unstoppable.

Neither genuine US pressure to limit civilian casualties, nor the rhetoric of Arab states - which could not even agree on joint actions, such as an oil embargo or the temporary severance of formal diplomatic relations - have managed to stop, or even moderate, Israel's savage assault on Gaza. UN resolutions and mass global protests have also proven ineffective.

Unbelievable as it sounds, it seems that the fate of millions of Palestinians will continue to be decided by just two men: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden.

Israel has declared that its campaign will last for many more months, possibly with no additional truce periods. Far from de-escalating the offensive or ensuring a significantly lower civilian death toll - as the US has pushed for, not so much out of concern for Palestinian lives as out of fears of a broader regional war and damage to international support for Washington and Tel Aviv - Israel has instead escalated its attacks since the brief November truce.

It is beyond doubt that Israel has already committed a series of war crimes. This is not surprising for a state that has, for decades, developed and cultivated that habit - and even less so when one remembers that Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing.

War crimes, discrimination against non-Jews, and contempt for international law have been major parts of Israel’s DNA since its creation in 1948, and even before, if one remembers Zionist paramilitaries such as Irgun and the Haganah. But there is now debate over whether Israel’s massacres have reached the level of genocide in the legal sense of the term.

There are many popular misconceptions about what constitutes genocide, the main one being that in order to qualify, atrocities must reach the scale and level of the Holocaust or exterminate almost an entire people or group. This is not the case.

Defining genocide

According to Article II of the Genocide Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing members of the group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions of life aiming to bring about the group’s deliberately destruction; imposing measures intended to prevent births; or forcibly transferring children to another group.

Israel's actions in Gaza and their horrific consequences on the entire civilian population, alongside the repeated declarations of Israeli state officials that strongly suggest deliberate intent to wipe out or at least harm as many Palestinians as possible, leave little doubt that the bar has been reached and long since surpassed. Many officials, journalists and members of civil society have publicly called this a genocide.

Despite some reservations, a consensus seems to be emerging among academics, legal scholars, and even former International Criminal Court prosecutors, who can certainly recognize a genocide when it is unfolding before their eyes.

History has taught us there are many ways to exterminate a group of people or deplete a population. But Israel’s campaign of genocide, ongoing since 1948, is defined by several characteristics: its permanent nature, the variation between “slow-motion” genocide and waves of brutal slaughter, and the rich array of techniques of mass death.

In the current moment, Israel is systematically and methodically combining all those methods of death, with horrific results. One can identify at least eight genocidal techniques that have converged in the state’s reaction to the 7 October attack by Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organization in the UK and other countries.

It appears that Israel seized this opportunity to take its slow-motion genocide to a whole new level of brutality.

The eight techniques

1. Kill them: Bomb Palestinians indiscriminately (here, media attention, pressure from allies such as the US, and international protests can have a certain effectiveness in restraining Israel). Despite Israel's assertions that it is taking measures to protect civilians, the realities on the ground show otherwise, with non-combatants forming the bulk of the casualties. Schools, hospitals and apartment buildings have been directly targeted.

2. Starve them: This is being done through blockades of food and water supplies. Again, this is nothing new; it has long been part of a concerted and organized Israeli policy to deprive Palestinians of even the most fundamental of all life-sustaining resources, water.

3. Strip them of medical care: Israel is maximizing the casualty count by destroying medical infrastructure, including hospitals, thus ensuring that many who might have been saved will instead die from untreated injuries.

4. Spread disease among them: The collapse of medical infrastructure, along with catastrophic living conditions, has guaranteed the spread of disease, risking another significant wave of deaths.

5. Exhaust them through forced evictions: Taking a page from the Armenian genocide, Israel is now using forced relocation, first from Gaza's north to the south, then within the south, to make exhausted and often injured people move from one supposedly “safe area ” to the next. A grid map published by Israel has divided southern Gaza into hundreds of tiny parcels, between which people are being forced to move at short notice to avoid bombs.

6. Destroy their environment: What is happening in Gaza is a real ecocide. The amount of environmental destruction, through everything from sustainable pollution to military ammunition, is enormous and could affect future generations.

7. Atomize their society: The systematic destruction of governmental and administrative structures under the pretext of fighting Hamas has upended Palestinian society. By displacing the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, Israel is severing their social links; it is unclear how they will be able to recreate a society in the future, especially as Israel has tried to tie all civilians to Hamas and intends to maintain control over the territory and its resources for the foreseeable future.

8. Break their spirit: For decades, Israel has used psychological warfare to foster a sense of despair and helplessness among the population. This has been terribly effective among the most vulnerable: Gaza’s children, many of whom suffered from severe depression and suicidal thoughts even before the current offensive. Given that Israel also makes it nearly impossible for them to be treated, most will suffer long-term trauma.

The above eight methods are all forms of collective punishment, with consequences bound to last for at least a generation, even if the war were to end today.

Source: Middle East Eye

By Ziad Majed

The use of the term “genocide” remains very limited in France, often put in quotation marks by the press, presented as excessive. However, returning to international law, the relevance of the term to describe the massacre underway since October 7 in Gaza is clear. The international office of the International Federation for Human Rights has also adopted a resolution recognizing Israel's actions against the Palestinian people as “an ongoing genocide”.

Since the start of the most brutal Israeli war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which followed the Hamas attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians on October 7, 20231, many media and governments have made international law and humanitarian law a point of view, or an opinion expressed on set by non-specialists.

Thus, terms and concepts each having a very precise meaning, such as "war crime", "crime against humanity", "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide" are used in an undifferentiated manner to qualify certain situations or, more often, to deny on the contrary the relevance of these uses. We endeavor here to recall the definitions of the crimes in question, in order to examine the applicability of these terms to the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip.

MOBILIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

International law and humanitarian law define war crimes in great detail. They divide them into three categories, listing all possible violations of the Geneva Conventions signed in 1949 that can occur during military operations, whether conflicts of an international or national nature.

It can thus be said that any intentional killing and targeting of civilians as such, or any intentional destruction of their property and their hospital, educational and religious establishments, or the fact of exposing them to violence are considered war crimes. famine and refusing them humanitarian aid; any large-scale attack on towns or villages for which there is no military justification, or any mistreatment or torture of prisoners, detainees, non-combatants, or even combatants if they lay down their arms ; any systematic and forced transfer or displacement of populations, or any unjustified attack against centers and representatives of international organizations, peacekeeping organizations, humanitarian organizations; and any use of internationally prohibited weapons.

Therefore, and taking into account Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)2, human rights organizations and international humanitarian organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Doctors Without Borders, Doctors of the World, or UN agencies such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have thus directly or indirectly denounced possible war crimes, including against their personnel.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for its part expressed its concern regarding Israeli military actions and measures prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the two additional protocols3. A rare public position on the part of the ICRC, which could be explained by the scale of the violations.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, INCLUDING APARTHEID

As for crimes against humanity, they can occur during military operations or outside them, that is to say outside the context of war. They include, according to Article 7 of the Rome Statute:

a) murder;

b) extermination;

(c) enslavement;

d) deportation or forced transfer of population;

(e) imprisonment or other form of serious deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental provisions of international law;

f) torture;

g) rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable severity;

(h) persecution of any identifiable group or community on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or sexist grounds within the meaning of paragraph 3, or on the basis of other criteria universally recognized as inadmissible under international law , in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime falling within the jurisdiction of the Court;

i) enforced disappearances of people;

j) crime of apartheid;

k) other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious harm to physical integrity or physical or mental health.

Here again, it can be said that there is evidence confirming the legitimacy of the allegations that Israel is committing and has committed crimes against humanity, whether in the current war on Gaza - especially in the attack “widespread or systematic attack launched against the civilian population and with knowledge of this attack” and inhumane acts “of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious harm to the physical integrity or physical or mental health of [civilians] ", or in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, under clauses that refer to apartheid.

POLITICIDE, URBICIDE AND DOMICIDE

Between war crimes, crimes against humanity on the one hand and the crime of genocide on the other, political science for its part has developed terms constructed from the suffix of Latin origin “cide”4 which refers to murder, to designate a criminal system practiced by a State or a powerful actor against its enemies in order to “execute” them politically or “erase” their public and private spheres.

Thus, the term "politicide" appeared in the 1970s to refer to the destruction of groups of people sharing a common political identity (and not necessarily an ethnic or "racial" identity). It then evolved to describe actions aimed at destroying the material elements that allow a political entity to exist. The term was used, for example, to describe Israeli policy towards the Palestinians on the eve of and during the Second Intifada in 2000, when Israel's clear goal was to destroy the conditions for the very existence of Palestinians. a Palestinian state. This policy of course continues today.

Years ago, the term "urbicide" was widely used to refer to the targeting of urban spaces with the aim of destroying them or rendering them uninhabitable for long periods of time. It has been suggested to describe Russian attacks in Grozny in 2001, during the Second Chechen War, Israeli attacks on one of the southern suburbs of Beirut in 2006 during the war with Hezbollah, and attacks of the regime of Bashar Al-Assad then of Russia in Homs and east of Aleppo in Syria between 2012 and 2017. Of course, this term is today mentioned again in the Israeli war against Gaza.

More recently, some scholars have adopted the term "domicide" to refer to an even harsher Israeli policy towards Palestinians, which targets their intimate places of residence (homes), in order to prevent them from having a stable existence in a space defined by its geographical and emotional characteristics and its public and private symbols, and to make the temporary (by constantly moving them) an integral part of their lives.

All this, of course, gradually leads us to talk about the most controversial question among politicians and avoided - for fear of reprisals - among some jurists and academics, namely: does the definition of the crime of genocide, with all its meanings loaded with history and memories, currently applies to the situation in the Gaza Strip?

PROVE INTENTION

Genocide is defined in the first international convention against genocide, adopted in 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations and entered into force in 1951, then in several UN texts and in the Rome Statute (article 6) as such. :

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, such as:

a) killing of members of the group;

b) serious harm to the physical or mental integrity of members of the group;

(c) intentional subjection of the group to conditions of existence calculated to bring about its total or partial physical destruction;

d) measures aimed at preventing births within the group;

e) forced transfer of children from the group to another group.

Furthermore, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified by 153 States) specifies that “genocide can be committed against only part of a group, provided that it is identifiable (including to 'inside a geographically limited area)'5.

Based on what has been documented and reported, and looking back at the scale of the destructive bombings filmed and the direct targeting of Palestinians in a specific area through killings, besieges and collective physical, psychological and torture mental, the annihilation of living conditions due to the total or partial cutoff of water, electricity, fuel and communications; by the siege and the total or partial prevention of the entry of humanitarian aid — food and medical — and by the attacks on hospitals and ambulances and the deaths of patients and children due to the impossibility to treat them, it is possible to evoke several elements concluding with the implementation by Israel of a genocide in Gaza.

According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the toll of Israeli attacks as of December 11, 2023 shows 18,205 dead, including more than 7,000 children and 5,000 women, more than 7,000 missing under the rubble or isolated or displaced without means of contact, and more than 49,000 injured. According to estimates by the Gazan government, 60% of the strip's homes are destroyed or damaged, 262 mosques and 3 churches have been targeted. Finally, 27 hospitals and 55 healthcare facilities, as well as 55 ambulances, were bombed and often put out of service. UN organizations and humanitarian organizations have lost more than 100 employees, doctors and civil servants, killed by Israeli bombs. Eighty-six journalists were also killed, sometimes directly targeted by Israeli fire.

However, for genocide to be recognized as such, the intention to commit it must be proven. It is often this element which is the most difficult to establish, because it will be necessary to demonstrate that the perpetrators of the acts in question intended to physically destroy a group or part of the group (national, ethnic, racial or religious). Case law therefore associates this intention with the existence of a plan or policy desired by a State or entity.

Some jurists consider that official Israeli statements and explicit calls for revenge and murder against Palestinians — as Palestinians — are clear decisions to strengthen the siege of Gaza by listing materials banned from entry, as said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on October 9, 2023, knowing that no life is possible without these materials (water, electricity, fuel, etc.), as well as the implementation of all this by the Israeli army, prove the desire for annihilation and to move from declaration to execution. We can add to this the presence of a repetitive “genocidal tendency” in the official speeches of the government of Benyamin Netanyahu and certain deputies of his majority – all speeches filmed and transcribed in the press. For example: invoking a "war against the forces of evil and barbarism", dehumanizing Palestinians and calling them animals, claiming that there are no civilians in the strip, or declaring that there are no a that "Hamas terrorists" and "Hamas sympathizers", call to use nuclear weapons against Gazans if necessary and deport survivors to Egypt (and other countries), destroy Gaza and turn it into " large football field”, etc.

Recalling the clear presence of this intention to commit genocide on the Israeli side and "the passage to action", the Israeli historian Raz Segev, specialist in the Holocaust, was the first to emphasize that we were facing "a textbook case of genocide”6.

The director of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York, the lawyer Craig Mokhiber, resigned from his position to protest against the silence regarding "a typical case of genocide in Gaza.” In the same vein, nine UN experts have warned that Israeli military violence and the intentions of certain officials in Tel Aviv constitute “a genocidal threat towards the Palestinian population”7.

For his part, former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo confirmed that the crimes committed by Israel could constitute a case of genocide8.

Dozens of Palestinian and Arab, African, Asian, American and European academics have also published op-eds and press releases in recent weeks evoking similar positions. In addition to the requests that some of them have addressed to the ICC prosecutor to investigate these crimes, five States (South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti) have officially seized the Court to “ demand an investigation into possible Israeli crimes in Gaza and the Palestinian territories”9.

It should be added that most States and political leaders prefer to avoid the use of the term "genocide", so as not to have to act, in accordance with the Convention they have signed, to "prevent" it or to "put an end to it". end immediately.” Which, of course, is not on the agenda for them.

Finally, it is possible to say that no previous documented conflict has concentrated so many crimes, violations and atrocities in such a restricted geographical area, of approximately 360 km², and over such a short period. This further reveals the “genocidal nature” of this war, and in itself merits further reflection. This can be seen as a sign of increasing possibilities for escalation of brutality, and large-scale violations of international humanitarian law in future wars. A risk which seems to contradict what one might have expected due to the evolution of legislation, but also the “abundance” of live reporting and visual documentation of the facts.

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1. This war is the fifth since Israel imposed the siege on the Gaza Strip in 2007. The wars of 2008-2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021 caused the deaths of more than 4,500 Palestinians.

2. See the definition of war crimes in the Rome Statute

3. See the ICRC press release on the situation in Gaza of November 12, 2023

4. Editor’s note. From the Latin caedere: to kill, to massacre.

5. The text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

6. Raz Segal, “A textbook case of Genocide,” The Jewish Currents, October 13, 2023. See also his interview on Democracy Now, October 16, 2023.

7. “Gaza: UN experts decry bombing of hospitals and schools as crimes against humanity, call for prevention of genocide”, press release from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, October 19, 2023.

8. “El jurista Luis Moreno Ocampo: “Israel no puede convert Gaza en un campo de exterminio”, El País, October 23, 2023. Ocampo considers that the Hamas attacks of October 7 are also genocidal in nature.

9. “Statement by ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan from Cairo on the situation in the State of Palestine and Israel,” ICC, October 30, 2023.

On Tuesday, Israeli data revealed that at least 1,600 soldiers had developed symptoms of “battle shock” since the start of the ground war in Gaza on October 27.

The Hebrew Walla news website said: “Symptoms of battle shock have appeared on at least 1,600 Israeli soldiers since the start of ground maneuvers in the Gaza Strip about two months ago.”

It added: "According to the data, 76 percent of the soldiers returned to combat after initial treatment by soldiers in the field or by mental health officers attached to the units and constantly present near the combat areas."

It pointed out, "Symptoms of combat shock can appear during or after an activity, and the soldier who suffers from it may feel, among other things, a rapid pulse, increased sweating, a sudden rise in blood pressure, uncontrollable body shaking, confusion, and an inability to concentrate." .

It added: "Battle trauma also carries long-term mental effects, such as anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, insomnia, sudden bouts of anger, and weak emotional capacity."

The website noted, "There is an initial treatment for battle trauma that restores the soldier's functions and relieves him of the feeling of helplessness that may lead to worsening of the symptoms. If it continues for more than 4 weeks, the soldier's condition may deteriorate into severe post-traumatic stress disorder, which requires more in-depth therapeutic intervention."

It added: “Indeed, according to data obtained by the site, about 250 soldiers were discharged from service due to continuing symptoms of battle shock in the War of the Iron Swords,” the Israeli name for the war on Gaza.

The website noted that "data show that during the war, between 900 and 1,000 soldiers arrived at the Home Front Rehabilitation Center in the Israeli army. Their psychological condition did not improve in the field and they needed additional treatment."

In addition to "soldiers suffering from symptoms not resulting from the fighting itself, but rather from the 'massacre' at Israeli army bases on October 7," referring to the Hamas attack on military bases surrounding the Gaza Strip.

It pointed out that "soldiers who need physical, mental, or financial assistance after the end of their service are transferred to the Rehabilitation Department of the Ministry of Defense."

It said: "Since the beginning of the fighting until today, about 3,475 wounded men and women with different degrees of injury, most of them physical, have been treated in the rehabilitation ward."

It added: “Since the beginning of the war, about 760 requests for assistance have been submitted for mental reasons, but not all applicants will necessarily be diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, given the short period of time that passed between the injury incident and the date of submitting the request, as professional diagnosis "It may change later."

It pointed out that "the rehabilitation ward treats a total of more than 64,000 disabled soldiers in the Israeli army, including 8,640 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder."

The Israeli website added: “Since the beginning of 2023, 2,301 requests for assistance have been received for mental reasons, including 1,911 on a post-traumatic stress basis, and the rest for other mental injuries.”

In response to "daily Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people and their sanctities, especially Al-Aqsa Mosque," on October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the "Al-Aqsa Flood" attack against Israeli military bases and settlements in the vicinity of Gaza.

In the attack, Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis and captured about 240. It exchanged about 110 of them with Israel, which holds more than 7,800 Palestinians in its prisons, during a truce that lasted a week until last December 1, with Qatari-Egyptian-American mediation.

The number of Palestinian prisoners detained from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by the Israeli occupation forces has risen to record numbers since the start of the aggression on Gaza on October 7.

Today, Tuesday, Israeli data showed that the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons has risen to 8,600, including those who have been arrested since the outbreak of the war on the Gaza Strip about 3 months ago.

According to the Israeli HaMoked Human Rights Defense Center, by January 2024, Israel is holding 2,114 sentenced prisoners and 2,534 pretrial detainees.

The center explained that among the detainees in Israeli prisons are 3,291 administrative detainees without trial, and Israel is also detaining 661 people as illegal combatants, who were arrested by Israel as of October 7 last year around the Gaza Strip and inside the Strip.

The Center indicated that it bases its data on the Israeli Prison Service.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the number of detainees from the Gaza Strip in Israeli prisons rose by 150% over last month.

In the middle of last month, Rami Abdo, founder of the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights, based in Geneva, reported that Israeli forces arrested at least 900 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip. The Observatory stated that Israel is holding most of the detainees from Gaza at the Zikim military base.

The Observatory indicated that there is no accurate count of the number of detainees from Gaza yet due to the policy of enforced disappearance pursued by Israel, and the difficulty of receiving reports in the Gaza Strip due to the dispersal of the population and the almost permanent interruption of communications and the Internet. However, preliminary estimates indicate that more than 3,000 arrests have been recorded. Among them are at least 200 women and girls.

A terrifying campaign

The Associated Press reported in a report about the "terrifying" arrest campaigns carried out by the occupation army against Palestinians in northern Gaza, and revealed that men were forced to take off their underwear before transferring some of them to the Beach Detention Camp, where they spent hours, and in some cases days, they are exposed to hunger and cold.

The report stated that the Israeli army arrested hundreds of Palestinians throughout the northern Gaza Strip, separating families, according to human rights activists, stunned relatives, and the released detainees themselves.

It stated that Palestinians detained in the destroyed town of Beit Lahia, the Jabalia urban refugee camp, and the neighborhoods of Gaza City had been tied, blindfolded, and gathered on the backs of trucks. Some of them said they were taken to the camp in an undisclosed location, almost naked, with little water.

In the same context, the number of Palestinian detainees in the occupied West Bank has risen to 4,695 since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, according to human rights reports.

For its part, the National Campaign to Recover the Bodies of killed (unofficial) explained that the Israeli authorities are detaining 450 Palestinian bodies in occupation cemeteries and morgues, including 256 martyrs in the Numbers Cemetery, and 194 dead since the return of the detention policy in 2015.

The campaign indicated that 18 of the detained bodies belong to prisoners who died inside occupation prisons, 21 children under the age of 18 and 5 women, and 52 bodies from the Gaza Strip, before October 7, 2023, in reference to the start of the war on Gaza.

Since the outbreak of its devastating war on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation army has intensified its operations in the West Bank, resulting in hundreds of deaths and thousands of detainees, in addition to the destruction of infrastructure in many areas.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs considered the kidnapping of an infant by the Israeli occupation army from the Gaza Strip as evidence of the commission of the most heinous crimes, demanding the immediate handover of the infant.

The ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that the Israeli army’s kidnapping of an infant from the Gaza Strip is evidence of the most heinous crimes being committed against civilians without oversight or accountability.

It added that this matter deepens our conviction that the occupation army is committing the most horrific crimes of genocide, abuse, direct killing and kidnapping against defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip without accountability or oversight, part of which has been revealed and many other parts remain unknown until this moment.

The ministry added that there are a number of questions related to this painful crime and others, especially in light of confirmations that it is not the first and may not be the last to occur in the Gaza Strip.

It wondered, "What was the method by which the baby was transported from the Gaza Strip to inside Israel? How was she smuggled or transported openly by the knowledge of several soldiers, officers, and commanders responsible for this soldier? What was the fate of the baby and her family? Where is she now? Why was this crime not announced publicly?" Before the official Israeli institutions?

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the Israeli authorities to immediately hand over the baby to the Palestinian National Authority.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor called on Israel to hand over Palestinian children who were forcibly transferred by the Israeli occupation army out of the Gaza Strip in another form of the crime of genocide that has been continuing since the seventh of last October.

In a statement on Tuesday, Euro-Med urged the international community to shoulder its responsibilities regarding the horrific crime of kidnapping children, which comes at a time when the Israeli authorities continue to forcibly disappear hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip under mysterious circumstances.

The Observatory said that it views with great seriousness what was reported by Israeli Army Radio on January 1, 2024, about an Israeli officer named “Harel Itah” - who holds the position of division commander in the army’s Givati Brigade - kidnapping a Palestinian infant from inside her home in the Gaza Strip, after her family members were killed in an Israeli raid, without specifying the date of the incident.

It pointed out that the kidnapping incident was revealed by a friend of the Israeli officer after it was announced that the officer was killed as a result of his injury on 12/22/2023 during clashes in Gaza, while the fate and whereabouts of the infant girl are still unknown.

Euro-Med expressed its deep fear and concern that the incident of the officer and the Palestinian girl would not be an isolated case. It stressed that many of the testimonies he received indicated that the Israeli occupation army repeatedly detained and transferred Palestinian children without knowing their later fate.

It also referred to the repeated reports he follows and receives from Palestinian families who have lost contact with their children, especially in areas witnessing Israeli ground incursions.

Euro-Med stressed that the risk of the Israeli army committing the crime of forcibly transferring and disappearing children increases with the presence of more than 7,000 missing Palestinians, the difficulty of removing rubble, and the inability of communications and the Internet in most of the Gaza Strip, in addition to the dispersal of families due to forced displacement, and hundreds of Palestinian families reporting the loss of their children with the difficulty of verifying their fate due to the continued Israeli incursion.

In this context, the Observatory highlighted the testimony of the released detainee Rushdi Al-Zhaza, who was arrested by the Israeli army and his family a month ago from his home in the “Zaytoun” neighborhood south of Gaza City. He was released a few days ago to the Gaza Strip, while the fate of his wife and two children remained unknown.

Al-Zhaza reported that the Israeli army arrested him, his wife, Hadeel Youssef Al-Dahdouh, and their two children, one of whom was “Zain,” 6 months old, and the other, “Mohammed,” 4 years old, from inside their house.

He stated that the soldiers snatched the two children from their mother’s arms, and when she objected, they tied her up and took her after removing her hijab, while they were separated from each other, and later, weeks later, they released him without knowing anything about the fate of his wife and two children.

Al-Zhaza added that when the Israeli army kidnapped his two children, he claimed that it would conduct an analysis on the two children, claiming that they were likely to be among the Israelis detained in the Gaza Strip.

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory stressed that committing this crime is prohibited under international law in all cases and circumstances, regardless of its motives or reasons.

Euro-Med reported that it had received another testimony from a Palestinian woman that during her exodus from Gaza to the south of the valley, through the Netzarim checkpoint a few weeks ago, Israeli soldiers stopped a 12-year-old girl with blonde hair, and that her parents tried to intercept the matter, and she heard the soldiers telling them that this child would be taken away on the grounds that she is one of the Israeli detainees, even though she was speaking in Arabic and her parents were with her, adding that she continued walking and did not know what happened with the child or her parents.

Euro-Med confirmed that it is constantly monitoring reports and announcements published by people displaced from northern Gaza, or the incursion areas in Khan Yunis, about the loss of their children, during the displacement process or after their homes were bombed, and these reports are being published on social media sites and in WhatsApp groups for activists and journalists, in the hope to find them.

Euro-Med said: About 7,000 are missing, including several thousand children and women, whose fate is still unknown, and it is believed that the majority of them were killed under the rubble of homes destroyed by Israeli bombing, or in the streets, or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, in neighborhoods witnessing incursions by the Israeli army.

Euro-Med indicated that there is no accurate count of the number of Palestinian detainees from Gaza yet, given the crimes of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance committed by Israel, and the difficulty of receiving reports in the Gaza Strip due to the dispersal of the population and the almost permanent interruption of communications and the Internet. However, preliminary estimates indicate that more than 3,000 cases of arrest, including at least 200 women and children. There is no official information about their detention sites, conditions or charges against them, in flagrant violation of the principles of international law.

Euro-Med called on the international community to oblige Israel to hand over the child whom the Israeli officer admitted to kidnapping, and whose fate or whereabouts are not yet known, and to reveal all cases of kidnapping and forcible transfer committed against Palestinian children, and to hand them over immediately.

The Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that “forcibly transferring the group’s children to another group” - as Israeli soldiers do - is considered a form of the crime of genocide, in accordance with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which Israel is a party, and under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the arbitrary and unlawful deportation and transfer of children, as part of the population, also constitutes a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime under the Rome Statute.

Euro-Med called for immediate action to end the arbitrary detention and forced disappearance of hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip so that residents can know their fate.

It pointed out that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2006, which entered into force starting in 2010, obligates states to consider enforced disappearance a crime punishable by law with appropriate penalties that take into account its extreme seriousness.

The agreement affirms that enforced disappearance is a crime that rises to the level of “crimes against humanity,” if it is practiced on a large scale or in a systematic manner, which is what the Israeli occupation army forces are currently doing in the areas they are penetrating in the Gaza Strip, where they have arrested thousands and continue to detain some. At least 3 thousand people whose fate is unknown and there is no information about them.

In a related context, Euro-Med called on the international community to oblige Israel to enable civil defense crews to recover bodies from under the rubble and from the streets in Gaza, and to expedite the provision of the necessary machinery and equipment for this, in order to count the number of missing persons who are suspected to have been detained and hidden by Israeli forces, in order to demand the disclosure of their fate.

Today, Tuesday, dozens of settlers stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, amid heavy protection from the occupation police.

The settlers made provocative tours inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and performed Talmudic rituals.

Groups of settlers storm Al-Aqsa on a daily basis except Friday and Saturday.

The Ministry of Education said that 4,156 students were killed and 7,818 were injured since the start of the Israeli aggression on October 7 on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Education explained in a statement, today, Tuesday, that the number of students who were killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the aggression reached more than 4,119 and 7,536 wounded, while in the West Bank 37 students were killed and 282 others were injured, in addition to 85 arrests.

It indicated that 221 teachers and administrators were killed and 703 were injured in the Gaza Strip, five were injured, and more than 71 were arrested in the West Bank.

It pointed out that 278 government schools and 65 affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) were bombed and vandalized in the Gaza Strip, which led to 83 of them being severely damaged and 7 completely destroyed, and 38 schools in the West Bank were stormed and vandalized.

The Ministry of Education confirmed that the Israeli targeting of schools affected 90% of government school and education buildings, which were subjected to direct and indirect damage, in addition to 29% of school buildings that could not be operated due to being completely demolished or severely damaged, and that 133 government schools were used as shelter centers in the Gaza Strip.

At dawn on Tuesday, the Israeli occupation forces launched an arrest campaign in various parts of the West Bank, including attacks and confrontations.

The tone of the Israeli statements calling for the voluntary and self-displacement of the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip to other countries has increased in light of the deliberations being discussed the day after the war on the Strip, especially what was presented by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said that it is in Israel’s interest for them to emigrate a large number of Gaza Strip citizens abroad.

These statements coincide with what was revealed by Channel 12 of Israeli television, that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was assigned to work to displace the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and that he met secretly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leader of the National Camp, Benny Gantz, for this purpose, despite the denial of a close source to Blair reported this news in statements to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, but the response of the Palestinian presidency was firm when it announced its rejection of such suspicious attempts to displace the citizens of the Gaza Strip. The presidency stated that this matter is considered a "condemnable and rejected act."

This attempt aims for Blair to be the mediator regarding "Israeli desires regarding 'the next day', and he will also examine again the possibility of receiving refugees from Gaza in countries around the world."

What is required from Palestine is to urgently and very urgently convey this rejection to the British government and demand that it not allow this tampering with the fate and future of the Palestinian people and demand that the United Nations do what it can, in order not to allow such actions that violate international law and international legitimacy.”

As the Palestinian presidency says that Blair’s participation in the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza “represents an intervention and an action that only serves Israel’s interests, and harms the Palestinian people and their rights, and pushes them to abandon their land.” This appears as if Tony Blair will complete the Balfour Declaration issued by the British government with the participation of American (1917), which paved the way for a historical tragedy for the Palestinian people.

We also appeal to the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which announced yesterday that it will continue to follow up on this dangerous issue in partnership with Arab, Islamic and friendly countries to confront it at all popular, partisan and official levels, and at the level of the national courts in the countries concerned, hoping that it will succeed in its efforts to stop the Israeli government’s plans to deepen genocide and forced displacement among the Palestinians, emphasizing that this attempt to tamper with the fate, history and future of the Palestinian people is rejected and condemned at all levels...

At a time when acts of violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank reached a record high in 2023, the Israeli Ministers of Finance and National Security considered that “the war is an opportunity to encourage the residents of the Gaza Strip to emigrate.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich considered that "the correct solution in the Gaza Strip is to encourage the migration of its residents to countries that agree to receive them."

He said in statements reported by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that "the army will permanently control Gaza to ensure security."

Smotrich continued, during a meeting with his party, saying that they should establish a new settlement in the Gaza Strip, noting that “future solutions will not be similar to their predecessors in Gaza.”

Israeli Channel 12 quoted Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir as saying that the war is an opportunity to encourage the project of migrating Gaza residents to other countries, and “an opportunity for the Israelis to return to the settlements in the Strip.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his intention to push the residents of the Gaza Strip to what he called “voluntary migration,” but the United States refused to reoccupy Gaza or displace its residents despite its continued support for Israel.

Settler violence escalated

On the other hand, acts of violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank set a record high in 2023, and resulted in the martyrdom of at least 10 people, according to the Israeli non-governmental human rights organization Yesh Din.

The organization stressed, in a statement, that “settler violence is the policy of the Israeli government,” noting that the number of incidents, their seriousness, the number of Israelis involved, and the outcome of acts of violence reached record numbers in 2023, especially since last October 7.

Yesh Din reported that the past two months “were the most violent” with 242 violent incidents.

Dozens of Palestinian homes and vehicles were damaged by settlers in 2023, according to the organization, which has been tracking these acts of violence since 2006.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded 1,225 settler attacks on Palestinians during 2023.

Among these attacks, Yesh Din reported two very violent incidents committed by “a large number of Israeli settlers,” the first in Huwwara in February, and the second in Turmus Ayya in June, which are two Palestinian towns located between Nablus (north) and Ramallah (centre).

The organization explained that hundreds of Israelis attacked Palestinian towns and set fire to dozens of homes and vehicles.

In the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, 490,000 settlers live among 3 million Palestinians. These settlements are illegal under international law.

Yesh Din expressed its doubts about the latest data published by the Israeli police, which indicate that this violence declined in 2023, compared to 2022.

The organization explains this by saying that the police are only counting the number of complaints submitted, which is decreasing due to the Palestinians’ lack of confidence in the Israeli authorities, especially since the formation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in December 2022, a government considered the most extremist in the history of the Hebrew state.

The West Bank has witnessed an escalation in violence since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7, which resulted in the death of at least 317 Palestinians by bullets from occupation soldiers and settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

TRT Arabic - Agencies

Prolonging the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip without taking action for the future of the Palestinian issue constitutes a suicide strategy for Israel and for the West as well, which holds every opportunity to increase the popularity of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) among the Palestinian population in particular and all Islamic countries in general.

This is how the newspaper "Liberation" opened journalist Renaud Girard's column, which he begins by asking: If what the Israeli government repeats that the residents of the Gaza Strip are hostages of Hamas is true, could it be a justification for systematically destroying infrastructure and residential buildings in this land, which has an area of 365 square kilometers? Square, which is inhabited by two million Palestinians and occupied by Israel since 1967?

The writer pointed out that the human and material damage (22 thousand dead) is so great in Gaza, that the life of the Palestinian population, who have nowhere to go, has become so fraught with danger that it is right to question whether the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched, consciously or Unconsciously, she unleashes her desire for revenge on residents locked inside an automated fence.

Collective punishment

And with the strategy that the Israeli government worked on ended in a miserable security failure on October 7, 2023, the politically frustrated Israeli government, which felt that it was close to the exit door, allowed itself to inflict collective punishment on the Palestinians, and when did collective punishment succeed in the post-World War II world? ? The writer wonders.

If Netanyahu's three goals - to destroy Hamas, demilitarize the Gaza Strip, and eradicate "extremism" among the residents of the Gaza Strip - appear legitimate after the Hamas attack, a careful examination shows that only the second goal can be achieved, because the Israeli army is militarily capable. To turn the sector into a field of ruin, it will be demilitarized for at least a while.

As for Hamas, it embodies an ideology that the power of bombs cannot confront, and “removing extremism” from the residents of the Gaza Strip is not self-evident - as the writer says - who would believe that the thousands of orphans left behind by the Israeli army’s bombings will stop avenging their fathers who died under the rubble?

Renaud Girard concluded that this Zionist invasion constitutes suicide for Israel and for the West that supports it, because true security comes from the state’s harmony with all its neighbors. As for the strategy of forced expulsion of the population who have lived for centuries in Palestine, it will not gain the acceptance of the neighbors and is the ideal recipe for eternal war.

Prolonging the war is also considered suicidal for the West because it offers Russian President Vladimir Putin, on a silver platter, a double gift that he had never dreamed of, which is evidence of double standards in Western moral lessons, thus rallying the “South” towards the “axis of tyranny” that it constitutes. Russia, Iran and China.

Source: Le Figaro +Aljazeera

An American official hinted at the beginning of a gradual shift in Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, as they will be less intense, while Israel warned that the war in Gaza will continue “throughout” 2024, as it will continue its bombing of the besieged Strip and missile attacks on Tel Aviv.

A US official said on Monday that Israel's decision to withdraw some of its forces from Gaza appears to be the beginning of a gradual shift to less intense operations in the northern Palestinian enclave, despite the continuing fighting there.

The official added to Reuters: “This appears to be the beginning of a gradual shift towards less intense operations in the north, which we were encouraging, which reflects the success achieved by the Israeli army in dismantling Hamas’ military capabilities there. However, I would like to warn against the continuation of fighting in the north, and this is not the case.” “It reflects any change (of the situation) in the south.”

Residents said that Israel withdrew its tanks from some neighborhoods of Gaza City today while announcing plans to change its methods and reduce the number of its soldiers, but fighting raged in other places in the Strip amid intense bombardment.

For its part, Israel warned that the war with Hamas in Gaza would continue “throughout” 2024 after New Year’s Eve witnessed continuous bombing operations on the besieged Strip and rocket attacks on Tel Aviv.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Sunday evening that some reserve soldiers will take a break from the war to prepare for “prolonged combat operations.”

He added: "The Israeli army must make its plans in advance because we will be asked to carry out additional missions and battles throughout this year."

The Israeli air strikes have not subsided, nor have the ground battles in the Gaza Strip stopped, while despair prevails among the residents of the besieged Strip who suffer from the daily repercussions of the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Saturday that the war would continue for “several months,” renewing his pledge to eliminate the Palestinian movement.

In its attack on the Gaza Strip settlements on October 7, Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis, wounded about 5,431, and captured at least 239. It exchanged dozens of them with Israel during a temporary humanitarian truce that lasted seven days and ended in early December. .

Since then, the Israeli army has been waging a war on Gaza, which, as of Monday, has left 21,978 killed and 57,697 injured, massive infrastructure destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.

At dawn on Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force carried out an air attack on a number of points in the countryside of the capital, Damascus, where the raids resulted in some material damage.

The Israeli occupation carried out an air attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of points in the Damascus countryside, and the aggression resulted in some material damage.

Last Saturday, the Syrian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that Israel targeted the city of Aleppo with an air strike, causing some “material losses” there.

The statement said that Israel carried out "an air attack from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, west of Latakia, targeting a number of points south of the city of Aleppo."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 6 Israeli missiles targeted farms between the villages of Al-Dhahabiya and Sheikh Saeed in the area of Al-Nairab Military Airport, which contains warehouses and headquarters for Iranian militias. A missile also landed in the area of Aleppo International Airport and Al-Nayrab Military Airport. No damage to the airport.

Last week, a prominent commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was killed in Syria as a result of an Israeli air strike near Damascus.

Tasnim Agency reported, “Sayyed Radhi Mousavi, one of the senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria, was killed following the Israeli occupation that targeted the Sayyida Zeinab area on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.”

Israel usually launches air strikes on areas in Syria, claiming to target Iranian sites, but it does not claim responsibility for those attacks.

Recently, the Israeli army began to claim responsibility for some attacks since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.

The ceasefire borders between Israel, Syria and Lebanon have witnessed increasing tension since the start of the escalation in the Gaza Strip, as the areas of the Upper Galilee are subjected to repeated bombardment from Lebanese and Syrian territory, and Israel responds with counter-bombardment.

Gaza - The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip continued on the 88th day, killing dozens and hundreds of wounded.

Israeli occupation forces committed 13 massacres against families in Gaza, claiming 156 dead and 246 injuries during the past 24 hours, bringing the toll of the Israeli aggression to 21,978 dead and 56,697 injuries since the 7th of last October.

Khan Younes

Air and artillery strikes continued on various parts of Khan Yunis, as the occupation army carried out a fire belt south of the city.

4 citizens were injured as a result of the Israeli occupation targeting a house in Jourat Al-Aqqad, west of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.

In Rafah, occupation aircraft raided a security site near the border with Egypt, without causing any casualties

The middle of the sector

The occupation army destroyed a house in the center of Nuseirat camp.

The number of killed rose to 15 and a number of wounded. As a result of the occupation bombing of a house for the Matar family on Abu Arif Street in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

It also rose to 15 killed and injured as a result of Israeli bombing on citizens' homes in the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Gaza and the north

The occupation artillery and aircraft carried out raids on various parts of Gaza and the north, leaving numbers of killed and wounded.

The occupation forces withdrew from the northern Gaza neighborhoods after an incursion of several hours.

Arrests and executions

After citizens talked about field executions taking place in the Gaza Strip, the occupation army spokesman acknowledged that last night a prisoner from the Gaza Strip was arrested and, at the end of his investigation, he was transferred to the custody of a soldier who shot him to death. An investigation was opened by the military police into the matter. Shooting conditions.

Israeli historian Moshe Zimmerman said on Saturday that the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation launched by the Hamas movement against Israel on October 7 last year "revealed the failure of the Zionist ideology."

Zimmerman stated, in an interview with the Hebrew newspaper "Haaretz", that "Hamas destroyed the Israelis' sense of security" on October 7.

He explained that the goal “behind the establishment of the Zionist state was to rid the Jews in the diaspora of the situation they were in (the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews).”

He pointed out that the Hamas attack on October 7 marked a turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that the attack “revealed the failure of Zionist ideology.”

The Israeli historian considered that Zionism is not the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "and that we are going to a situation in which the Jewish people live in a state of complete insecurity, and this is not the first time this has happened."

He added, "Israel caused a decline in the security level of diaspora Jews (after its attacks on Gaza), and therefore this Zionist solution is incomplete."

Zimmerman defended the necessity of implementing the two-state solution, which is supported by the international community and is not accepted by the Tel Aviv government.

He said, "Although it may seem hopeless and completely ridiculous at the moment, it is clear that a two-state solution must be the logical outcome."

He continued, "The alternative is either we take Nazi-like measures against the Palestinians (genocide) or the Palestinians do it (to us)."

Zimmerman pointed out that Israel is "foolishly" trying to portray itself as a representative of the Jewish people, and that the government describes all criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitic."

He stressed, "This is the essence of the matter. Israel takes advantage of this by interpreting every criticism as anti-Semitism."

He explained that to understand where Israel is headed, "we have to look at the 1930s, when the Nazis appeared in Germany."

Zimmerman pointed out that the Israeli authorities opened investigations against him, because he drew attention to the similarities between the events that took place in Nazi Germany and those taking place in Israel, in general, his criticism of Israeli right-wing extremists.

4 young Palestinians were killed this Tuesday morning by bullets from the Israeli occupation forces, in the Al-Fajah area, west of the town of Azzun, east of the city of Qalqilya, in the northern West Bank.

Activists reported that the occupation soldiers assassinated the young men after besieging them in a house, after the area witnessed clashes between resistance fighters and the occupation forces during the last hours, while the Israeli army announced that an officer was moderately injured during the clashes.

A young Palestinian man was wounded by bullets from the Israeli occupation army in Qalqilya, and pictures published by activists and local news sites on social networks showed that the occupation soldiers dragged the wounded young man and assaulted him by beating him.

Local sources said that a large military force stormed the town from several fronts, and violent clashes and confrontations took place. They added that the occupation forces carried out a campaign of raids and searches of homes and shops.

This morning, Israeli occupation forces also stormed the Jalazoun camps, north of Ramallah, and Ain al-Sultan in Jericho in the West Bank.

By Muhammad Qawwas

It is said about disagreements between the administration of US President Joe Biden and the Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the management of the war in Gaza. It is also said about the loss of personal chemistry between Biden and Netanyahu since the former was serving as US Vice President under Barack Obama. During that era, Netanyahu's relations with the American President worsened to the point that the Israeli Prime Minister was lecturing in Congress and the lawmakers stood applauding for him, without passing through the White House.

It is also said that Washington's envoys, including the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Director of the CIA, and others, clashed with Israeli stubbornness, especially by Netanyahu, who was supported by extremist ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, for not submitting to what was said to be American pressure to lessen the impact of the war on the Gazans. There were even reports of a “difficult call” made recently by Biden and Netanyahu regarding Israel’s obstruction of financial transfers to the Palestinian Authority.

What is being said is supposed to expose an important aversion between Washington and Tel Aviv, but no one in this administration raises, even a hint, the possibility of resorting to sanctions, the first of which is stopping or even obstructing the supply of ammunition and weapons to Israel, which are used in a war of extermination (according to the complaint that Submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice) it inflicts a “catastrophe” on the civilians of the Gaza Strip, which American accounts claim that Washington is making an effort to stop.

It is said about disagreements between the administration of US President Joe Biden and the Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the management of the war in Gaza.

"The tough call"... and bypassing Congress

Only hours after the “difficult call” story, the US administration decided to bypass Congress, as permitted by the laws, for the second time within a month, in order to approve sending military equipment to Israel worth $147.5 million. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken only had to inform Congress that the issue was “urgent,” for the ministry’s spokesman to return to explain that the minister had made a hasty decision based on “the urgent need for Israeli defense.”

It is assumed in theory, and according to the classic ABCs that we repeat, that the pro-Israel Jewish lobby, especially AIPAC, has a fundamental influence in deciding the results of any elections in the United States. According to this premise, the Biden administration arguably has an interest in satisfying the “lobby” by continuing to support Israel without hesitation and not undertaking any policies or actions that would conflict with Israel’s interests. However, the theory of this “influence”, by the way, also applies to the Republican Party regarding its electoral interests in the 2024 presidential elections, while this party, in particular, is the one that is opposing the Democratic administration in Congress and obstructing Biden’s efforts to pass funding laws for Israel (and Ukraine) due to domestic disputes between Bipartisanship.

Israel is a “tool” for America

The relationship between the United States and Israel resides in a complex, complex, and multi-layered equation that cannot be hastily simplified. According to this complexity, it is permissible to argue about whether Washington is “managed” by the Israeli interests lobby in a way that did not and does not allow for a conflict between administrations and governments in Tel Aviv to the point of erecting military air bridges to support Israel when necessary. It may also be recognized that Israel is also a strategic tool of Washington's foreign policy and the strategic security of the United States, and therefore its protection and defense are an American interest par excellence.

We will not worry too much about finding an accurate final solution to this puzzle. But it is most likely that the American position (since the United States inherited leadership of the Western world from the two major colonial powers, France and Britain, and forced them, with a position from President Dwight Eisenhower to stop the 1956 war against Egypt), is based on the issue of “instinctive” support for Israel on ideological bases related to the societal cultural structure. The political interest of the United States on the one hand, and on the bases of strategic interest that make Israel an asset and not a branch of American foreign policy.

The most accurate assessment of the American position is that Washington hoped, just like Israel, to quickly resolve the Gaza war, eliminate Hamas, its “Qassams” and its tunnels, and impose an Israeli fait accompli.

No rational person can help but conclude that the United States is waging war in Gaza. It is true that reports spoke of the presence of American forces from the Pentagon to provide a form of advisory aid to Israel only, but Washington is waging the war with absolute support to provide strength to Israel’s immunity, just as it did in the 1973 war, and the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was forced to accept a ceasefire because “there is no He wants to fight the United States,” he said. In the Gaza war, the United States not only provided weapons and ammunition without conditions (which Senator Bernie Sanders, leader of the left wing of the Biden Democratic Party demanded), but also moved its strategic naval vessels and pushed military reinforcements towards the region to provide an incubating military environment for Israel.

Israel is “part of the map” of America

The matter must also be placed in a broader global context.

Historically, Israel is part of American supremacy in the world and one of its most important strategic bases in the world. If China, Russia, India and other countries have developed their relations with Israel in recent decades, it has been based on and because of this fact. In American calculations, Israel is an integral part of the United States’ maps in its geostrategic transformations against China since the Obama era. Of course, Israel falls within the American balance of power in the current conflict with Russia, and Israel manages its relations with Moscow and Beijing in balance.

America is waging the war in Gaza as if it were its own war, because Israel’s superiority provides the United States with superiority in the Middle East as well and the dominance of its forces in repelling the worrying advance attempts of China first and Russia second in this region. Just as the United States strikes Iran's arms in Iraq, for example, Israel strikes those arms in Syria as another example, in a way that reveals the distribution of roles in curbing Iranian expansion, from which more severe dangers emanate from China and Russia.

Netanyahu will not yield to pressure

A few days ago, American diplomat Dennis Ross came out with a theory that explains the relative aspect of the United States’ ability to pressure Israel. The man, who in the 1990s always played roles in negotiations in the backrooms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, believes that “the threat to withhold American aid will only make the Israelis continue what they are doing on their own,” as he claims, and he has long been accused of favoring Israel. It is true that Israel is still afraid of undertaking major adventures without American and Western support, but a political and intellectual current in Israel, and even in the United States, believes that Washington will be forced, in accordance with American security theory and beliefs, to intervene to support Israel even if it goes it alone.

The most accurate assessment of the American position is that Washington hoped, just like Israel, to quickly resolve the Gaza war, eliminate Hamas, its “Qassams” and its tunnels, and impose an Israeli fait accompli. While the matter is more difficult than planned, especially because of the international moral scandal imposed by the massacres in Gaza, the administration in Washington is keeping pace with the Israeli effort so that all American delegates emerge from their meetings with their Israeli counterparts “understanding” the Israeli position and “agreeing” to prolong the stages of the war and “Satisfied” with promises that the battles would provide “euthanasia” for civilians. In parallel, the Washington administration is going to sell us in the region, with Secretary Blinken’s withered eyes, discovering the two-state solution, while Biden is trying, through “difficult calls,” to mediate with Netanyahu to release its money to the Ramallah Authority, so that Washington becomes the difficult necessary figure for all parties and, of course, for peace in the region and in the world.

A term that is widely circulated, not only at the level of the media dedicated to covering the war on Gaza, but also at the political level, where this “trend” is not absent from its activities related to the war.

In attempts to answer it, scenarios are being circulated, most of which, if not all, are imaginary, or deduced without certainty. Perhaps the most important reason for this is that the war, from its stark beginning on the seventh of October (October), to this day has been and continues to produce a series of recurring surprises. It was impossible for its direct and indirect parties to grasp its strings and determine its paths, including its results. Let us look at the positions and visions of the three direct parties that are waging the war, which are America, the funder, Israel, which is involved in an almost impossible agenda, and Hamas, which is resisting fiercely under the pressure of Israeli destruction and the resulting disastrous popular situation that it cannot close its eyes to.

The Americans are pressing Israel to answer the question of the day after the war, and they are talking about it with extreme caution, fearing that the clear position will affect the Israeli agenda, making the Americans responsible for stopping the war. This means a certain defeat for the Israeli agenda and a valuable victory for Hamas, which is sufficient for it to remain alive after everything that happened, to show off its strength in the streets of Gaza, a victory for its steadfastness and thwarting the enemy’s goals.

“Hamas”... which was forced to fight a fateful battle, and to fight at the maximum capacity of the men, equipment and tunnels it has, realizes that its war falls under the saying “oh killer...oh murdered.” If it relaxes and begins to think about survival at any cost, then that is... This means not only the loss of its rule over Gaza, but its exit as an influential figure in the Palestinian, Israeli, and regional equations, as what comes after the rule of Gaza is... asylum, displacement, and dispersion.

As for the third side of the war triangle, Israel, its position on the next day is distributed among all parties of the internal equation, the first of which is, of course, Netanyahu, who is waging the war as if he is waging an electoral battle that determines his political fate. He sees or speaks about the next day in the language of the victor, which will not only expel Hamas from Gaza, but will expel Gaza itself with a comprehensive change, geographically, demographically, and security-wise. This is why he is addressing his remaining voters in a way that keeps the bet on him, even if it is at its minimum.

Like the most extreme extremists of the extreme right in Israel, he adheres to an equation that seems illogical to his internal opponents. He wants it to be an open war for years, or at least until his last day in leadership of Israel. As for others, like Lapid, who is fighting Netanyahu relentlessly, he does not demand that he stop the war, but rather he holds him accountable for his negligence on October 7th, and for the floundering of his leadership, which brings certain disasters to Israel.

Between the two stands the biggest lurker, Gantz, who embraces the war as a general, and deals with its repercussions as a politician, preparing himself to head the government. His position has proven effective in providing a broad constituency that guarantees him a comfortable majority in the Knesset, if elections are held in this climate. General Gantz praises the IDF while remaining in the heart of the battle, and as a politician he strengthened his cards with the Americans, who saw in him the appropriate and inevitable leader.

Regarding this American, Hamas, and Israeli situation, who can determine the shape of the day after the war? How can it be? If this crazy war ends today, tomorrow, or the day after, who will deal with its effects, even to the minimum? Whoever proposes to govern Palestinians, regionally or internationally, how can he undertake such a task, without having in his hands a double-digit number of the billions needed to transform the Strip from a destroyed graveyard into a livable place?

Who would accept to go to Gaza as a director, governor, or even a paramedic, and his mission is to control the security of two and a half million Palestinians, all of whom live in an exceptional state, and on top of that, guarantee the security of Israel?

This is what is visible from the day or days following the war, so everyone avoids specifying conclusive answers for several reasons, the most important of which is that the next day is determined by the days that precede it, and this particular point no one knows.

On Monday, January 1, 2024, an official Hebrew channel revealed what it said was a plan by the Israeli occupation army for the post-war period in Gaza, “which includes dividing the Strip into areas governed by tribes, which are responsible for distributing humanitarian aid.”

The Kan channel, affiliated with the official Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, said on Monday evening that according to the plan drawn up by the Israeli occupation army and presented on Tuesday, in the mini-cabinet meeting, “the Gaza Strip will be divided into regions and sub-districts, where each clan will control a district, and it will be Responsible for distributing humanitarian aid.

It explained that these "tribes known to the Israeli occupation army and the General Security Service (Shin Bet) will administer civil life in Gaza for a temporary period (without specifying the duration)."

Netanyahu once again rejects the presence of the Authority in Gaza

The channel said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset (Parliament) Security and Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday that “there is no point in talking about the Palestinian Authority as part of the administration of Gaza, as long as it does not undergo a fundamental change process.”

Netanyahu added: “If they are serious about change, let them prove it first in Judea and Samaria (the biblical name for the West Bank).”

According to the same source, these statements came “after meetings between Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer in the United States, with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in which he spoke about a Palestinian body controlling the Gaza Strip, without going into details.”

The channel added: “Blinken, who will arrive in Israel this week, will ask the political level for clarification on this matter.”

It pointed out that "American fears are that the Israeli refusal to agree on a Palestinian entity that is supposed to manage the Gaza Strip the next day will lead to an actual Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip."

As of 19:30 (UTG), the Hamas movement, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, had not commented on what was reported by the Israeli channel.

On more than one occasion since the beginning of the war, Netanyahu has confirmed his refusal to return the Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip, stressing that Israel will handle the security file in the Strip, despite Washington’s support for the Palestinian Authority’s rule there.

Calls for the displacement of the people of Gaza

In a related context, the Israeli Ministers of National Security and Finance, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, announced earlier Monday their support for the “voluntary displacement of Palestinians” from the Gaza Strip.

Minister of National Security and leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, Itamar Ben Gvir, said in a tweet on the “X” platform: “We must strengthen the solution to encourage the migration of the people of Gaza, as this is the correct, just, moral and humane solution.”

He added: "We have partners around the world that we can help (accommodate immigrants)," without mentioning the names of these countries. Ben Gvir continued: “Encouraging the migration of Gazans will allow us to return the residents of the Gaza Strip envelope and the residents of the Gush Katif settlement to their homeland.”

Israel withdrew its forces and expelled its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, including the "Gush Katif" settlement that existed in Gaza.

Israeli Army Radio quoted Smotrich as saying: “The correct solution for the Gaza Strip is to encourage voluntary migration to countries that agree to receive refugees.”

The leader of the far-right "Religious Zionism" party added: "Israel will be governed permanently, to ensure security through the permanent presence of army forces on the ground, and the establishment of Jewish settlements."

The United States of America announced its rejection of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip or resettlement there. In recent weeks, Israeli calls have emerged to voluntarily displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

It is worth noting that since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a war on Gaza that, as of Monday, left “21,978 killed, 57,697 injured, massive infrastructure destruction, and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.