The representative of the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territories, Richard Peppercorn, confirmed that one child is killed on average every 10 minutes in the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to intense attacks by Israel since October 7.

“I believe we are close to the darkest moment in human history, so we need a permanent ceasefire in Gaza,” Peppercorn said.

In a related context, a World Health Organization official in Gaza said on Tuesday that the situation in the Strip is getting worse every hour as Israel intensifies its bombing of the south around the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah.

“The situation is getting worse every hour,” Richard Peppercorn, the organization’s representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, told reporters via video link from Gaza, according to Reuters news agency.

He added: “The bombardment is intensifying everywhere, including the southern areas of Khan Yunis and even Rafah.”

Pepperkorn also said that "very little" humanitarian aid is reaching Gaza and that the World Health Organization is deeply concerned about the weakness of the health system in the densely populated enclave as more people move south to escape the bombardment.

He said: “I want to make clear that we are facing a growing humanitarian catastrophe.”

He explained that the World Health Organization implemented an Israeli order to remove supplies from warehouses in Khan Yunis. He added that the organization was informed that the area “will likely become an active combat zone in the coming days.”

“We want to make sure that we are actually able to deliver essential medical supplies,” he said.

Yesterday, Monday, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, appealed to Israel to withdraw the order.

Israel denied that it had requested the warehouses be evacuated.

Today, Tuesday, Israeli occupation forces placed “caravans” on Ras Abu Jamra Mountain, east of Tulkarm.

One of the landowners, Maher Dridi, said that the landowners were “surprised by the occupation’s vehicles as they placed mobile caravans, ready for habitation, on the mountain, and their number has reached three so far.”

He added, "This action came after the occupation bulldozers began 10 days ago to bulldoze his land in the mountain and level it, without prior warning and without knowing the reasons, while not allowing its owners to approach it at all, even though the family has the identification papers proving its ownership of the land."

He pointed out that "the area of the land is 32 dunums and is owned by the Dridi family from the town of Beit Lid, and it is located on the eastern side of the Enab settlement, which was originally established on the lands of the villages and towns of Ramin, Beit Lied, and Kafr al-Labad, east of Tulkarm."

In turn, Beit Lid Municipal Council member Maan Rashid explained, “The occupation bulldozers bulldozed areas of land in the mountain and divided it into sections, then connected the area to an electricity network and cables, and today mobile caravans have been placed.”

He considered that this measure was aimed at establishing a new settlement outpost and linking it to the settlement of Enab, which is separated from it only by a road, thus further seizing the lands of the western town, which is also besieged from its northern side, in addition to the continuous closure of its entrances with dirt berms for about a month.

Today, Tuesday, the Israeli occupation army intensified its air strikes and artillery shelling of several areas in the Gaza Strip, especially the south of the Strip, which was exposed to violent fire belts in Khan Yunis, Jabalia, and Sheikh Radwan, leaving dozens of dead and hundreds wounded.

Israeli army continues to expand its ground operations in Khan Yunis to the south under air cover consisting of heavy raids and fire belts, at a time when the resistance factions continue to confront the occupation army’s attempts to penetrate into many areas, where several areas are witnessing fierce clashes.

Israel announced the start of the second phase of the ground invasion. “Our forces are working in the heart of Jabalia, Shujaiya, and Khan Yunis.”

For the 60th day, Israeli aircraft continue to bomb inhabited Palestinian homes, destroy residential areas, and commit massacres against civilians. The number of these massacres, according to the government media office in Gaza, has reached more than 1,456 massacres, claiming the lives of thousands of Palestinians.

Israeli aircraft and occupation army artillery continued to target populated areas and shelter centers for displaced people, as artillery bombed a school in Maan, east of Khan Yunis, where displaced people live.

For the fourth day, the vicinity of Kamal Adwan Hospital witnessed violent and continuous bombardment, and an Israeli raid targeted a house in the vicinity of the hospital, coinciding with clashes between the resistance and the occupation forces in the vicinity of the hospital.

The number of dead rose to 15,899, while the number of injured rose to 42,000 wounded since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, noting that 70% of them were children and women, according to what was announced by the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra.

Three citizens, including a woman, were seriously injured, Tuesday afternoon, when Israeli occupation forces stormed the Jenin camp.

Local sources said that the occupation forces, supported by more than 40 military vehicles, stormed the city and its camp from Jenin-Nazareth Street, amid heavy firing of bullets and smoke bombs, which led to the injury of two female citizens and a young man, the injury of one of whom was described as serious.

The occupation soldiers were deployed in the vicinity of Jenin Hospital, Al-Zahraa neighborhood, and the Interior Circle.

The Israeli occupation forces demolished a citizen's house in the town of Beit Hanina, north of occupied Jerusalem.

According to local sources, a large force of the occupation army stormed the house, which consisted of 3 apartments, and began the demolition process, without allowing its residents to remove any piece of furniture.

The sources added that the three demolished apartments, with an area of 280 square meters, and inhabited by 13 citizens, became homeless.

The occupation forces beat the residents of the house after they tried to prevent the demolition.

It added that the apartments were built nearly 12 years ago, and that the occupation imposed a fine on him twice, and several demolition orders were issued against him years ago, “and today they came to the house, took us out of it, and began demolishing it.”

It explained that his loss exceeds 400 thousand shekels.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that the so-called "safe" areas declared by Israel in Gaza are at risk of turning into "infested" places in the absence of shelter, water and sanitation.

This came during UNICEF spokesman James Elder's participation, remotely, on Tuesday, in the weekly press conference of the United Nations office in Geneva.

Elder stated that some of the so-called “safe” areas in Gaza do not “make sense” in the current situation.

He stressed that the areas to which people are evacuated must have sufficient resources to keep them alive, including medical facilities, water and food.

He pointed out that after Israel's request to evacuate areas in southern Gaza, it was pledged that "the level of death of women and children and the destruction of homes, as is the case in northern Gaza, will not be seen in the south," but this was definitely not the case.

A World Health Organization official in Gaza said on Tuesday that the situation in the Strip is getting worse every hour as Israel intensifies its bombing of the south around the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah.

“The situation is getting worse every hour,” Richard Peppercorn, the organization’s representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, told reporters via video link from Gaza, according to Reuters news agency.

He added: “The bombardment is intensifying everywhere, including the southern areas of Khan Yunis and even Rafah.”

Pepperkorn also said that "very little" humanitarian aid is reaching Gaza and that the World Health Organization is deeply concerned about the weakness of the health system in the densely populated enclave as more people move south to escape the bombardment.

He said: “I want to make clear that we are facing a growing humanitarian catastrophe.”

He explained that the World Health Organization had implemented an Israeli order to remove supplies from warehouses in Khan Yunis, and added that the organization had been informed that the area “will likely become an active combat zone in the coming days.”

“We want to make sure that we are actually able to deliver essential medical supplies,” he said.

Yesterday, Monday, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, appealed to Israel to withdraw the order. Israel denied that it had requested the warehouses be evacuated.

On Tuesday, an Israeli left-wing organization accused the authorities of exploiting the war in the Gaza Strip to build the first new settlement in East Jerusalem since 2012, warning of the repercussions of this on the political future of Jerusalem.

The "Ir Amim" organization (a non-governmental organization) stated in a statement that the "lower canal" will be the first completely new settlement established on the lands of East Jerusalem since 2012.

The past years have witnessed a massive expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem.

Ir Amim, which specializes in East Jerusalem issues, said: “The Israeli authorities announced on Monday their approval of the lower canal plan to build 1,792 housing units” on the lands of the town of Sur Baher in East Jerusalem.

It noted that this "constitutes the first large new settlement plan to be fully approved in East Jerusalem since the Givat Hamatos settlement in 2012."

According to the organization: “The plan calls for the construction of approximately 1,792 housing units on approximately 186 dunams of land adjacent to the Palestinian neighborhood of Umm Tuba, located between the current Har Homa settlement and the planned Givat Hamatos settlement south of East Jerusalem.”

It continued: "It is clear that the Israeli government is exploiting the ongoing war (in the Gaza Strip) to impose more facts on the ground."

"Ir Amim" considered that "this plan carries serious repercussions on the political future of Jerusalem, and if it is constructed, it will expand the wedge of Israeli settlement along the southern border of East Jerusalem, which will increase the effect of isolating East Jerusalem from the south of the West Bank."

“Beyond its geopolitical ramifications, the progress of this plan highlights the systemic discrimination embedded in Israeli planning and construction policy in Jerusalem,” it said.

It explained, "Since the beginning of 2023, more than 18,500 housing units have been provided to new or existing Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, while residential development for Palestinians has been neglected even though they constitute nearly 40 percent of Jerusalem's population."

The organization continued, "The year 2023 is scheduled to join 2022 to be the years that witness the largest number of settlement units provided in the past decade in East Jerusalem."

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, and the United Nations does not recognize its sovereignty over it, and demands that it withdraw from it, not to mention that the construction of Israeli settlements on its lands is considered illegal.

On the first day of the aggression, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on all residents of the Gaza Strip to leave their cities, towns and camps outside the Strip in order to preserve their lives. On the second day, Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the occupation army, asked Palestinian citizens to go to Sinai. The Biden administration and countries from the European Union joined Israeli efforts to push the Egyptian government to open its borders and allow the establishment of refugee camps in Sinai. In this context, Israeli papers presented a set of options to get rid of the residents of the Gaza Strip under the pretext of preserving their safety, including: transferring the residents of the Gaza Strip to North Sinai with American-European support and Gulf Arab funding. This option includes establishing tent cities in North Sinai as a first stage, and building cities in The second stage is the displacement of some to Arab and European countries, in exchange for providing financial aid to the collapsed Egyptian economy.[1]

Knesset members Danny Danon (Likud) and Ben Barak (There is a Future) also presented a plan that would enable the mass transfer of refugees from the Gaza Strip to countries that agree to absorb them. The plan quickly gained the support of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.[2] There is a new proposal circulating in the corridors of the US Congress linking US aid to Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Yemen to these countries’ approval to settle the people of the Gaza Strip on their lands. The current project includes sending one million Palestinians to Egypt, half a million to Turkey, 250,000 to Iraq, and 250,000 to Yemen.[3] European presidents have previously offered the leadership of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to agree to transfer the largest number of citizens of the Gaza Strip on ships, and provide them with protection at sea, provided that they are returned after the end of the battle. All of these things indicate that the project of displacing citizens from the Gaza Strip abroad was and is still on the Israeli agenda and the countries supporting it, even if it has changed from the form of forced displacement to voluntary displacement, despite the clear and declared rejection of the states of Egypt and Jordan, in addition to the Palestinian rejection. As a result of Palestinian and Arab rejection, the momentum of the countries that agreed to displacement declined with the beginning of the aggression, and this decline came based on what were called the Tokyo Principles, the first clause of which stipulates: “No forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, neither now nor after the war.”[4] But this clause did not exist. He does not talk about voluntary displacement, which in reality is based on destroying the basics of survival, and opening an option that people, individuals and families, will respond to as a refuge out of the midst of destruction that has destroyed the basics of normal life. Can Israel get rid of the Palestinians or large parts of them in this war under the name of Israel’s right to eliminate the security threat and existential danger coming from the Gaza Strip?

Displacement root

Theodor Hirzl wrote in 1895: “The country that has been given to us must be taken gradually out of the hands of its owners. We will try to move the poor population without noise beyond the borders while securing work for them. But in our own country we must prevent them from any work.”[5] He meant The country given by God, according to the biblical text, and later granted by the colonial powers through the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, which considered Palestine a special homeland for the Jews that must be helped to achieve it. After that, the Zionist movement raised the slogan “A land without a people for a people without a land,” a slogan that ignores the existence of a people in form, but works to get rid of it in content.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Zionist thinkers, such as Israel Zangwill and Yaakov Tahun, also put forward proposals to transfer Palestinian Arabs to Transjordan. The most dangerous chapter in the displacement projects was the ethnic cleansing inside and outside Palestine in the period 1947-1949, accompanied by the destruction of hundreds of people. Villages and converting Palestinian cities into Israeli cities, with the exception of the city of Nazareth. [6] After the 1967 war, the Israeli government formed a secret committee to displace the Arabs of Gaza to Jordan and South America in exchange for money and facilities. In the 1980s, Meir Kahane proposed the idea of transfer, which was quickly adopted by Rehavam Ze'evi. He built a party for voluntary transfer on its basis, and became a member of the Knesset, then a minister in the Israeli government. Now, after half of Gaza's homes have been destroyed, serious thinking about transfer has begun.[7]

Internal transfer

Displacement is based on thought, policies, laws, programs, and educational curricula, and the two most important elements are the Nationality Law and the program of the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Smotrich government. The Nationality Law stipulates that the “Land of Israel,” meaning historic Palestine, is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established, and the exercise of the right to self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish people.[8] It is noted here that the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in their historic homeland, according to international definition, is denied, and this establishes a legal basis for the continuation of ethnic cleansing and displacement. As for the program of the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government, it stated: “The Jewish public has an exclusive and indisputable right in all areas of the Land of Israel,” and the government will work to promote and develop settlement throughout the Land of Israel. In the Galilee, the Negev, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Golan, this means the absence of Palestinian rights, their cancellation, and the delegitimization of their presence on land owned exclusively by the State of Israel.

During the era of the Netanyahu government and other governments, a policy is being followed of preventing the construction of housing units and schools in areas that have been annexed, such as Jerusalem and its surroundings, and in areas that Israel seeks to annex, such as the Jordan Valley and Mount Hebron. The target of this is a Palestinian society that is developing demographically at high rates, including preventing the construction of Schools, institutions, cultural and sports centers, and farms, which prompts citizens to search for housing and schools outside the city of Jerusalem and the targeted areas. The authorities are keen to infiltrate residential areas with settlement outposts that expel the Palestinian presence through Israeli control of homes by force, or by falsifying their ownership, or converting the lands of Bedouin communities into closed military zones. Also, confiscation and demolition procedures and curbing the development of civil society lead to population displacements outside Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. And Mount Hebron, where citizens move to the vicinity of Jerusalem - Al-Ram Qalandiya and Kafr Aqab, all the way to Rawabi northwest of Ramallah, and in the vicinity of the Old City in the city of Hebron, and thus the new areas become densely populated, and their infrastructure becomes unable to accommodate the increases. This is a form of transfer or internal displacement, and it is one of the most dangerous outcomes of the colonial apartheid system.

The most dangerous episode is the displacement of the Gaza Strip

By Muhannad Abdel Hamid

In the first round of the genocide war, thousands of citizens were killed, about 20,000 were dead or missing, and about twice that number were injured, and 45% of the infrastructure was destroyed, which included homes, shops, farms, markets, factories, bakeries, mosques, hospitals, schools, universities, communications, and the media. 

This destruction was accompanied by a ban on the arrival of food, medicine, electricity and fuel, in addition to harming communications and the media and killing journalists. Water was also cut off, sewerage was destroyed, movement was prohibited, and the historical and urban monuments of the place were demolished. Thus, they promised to return Gaza to the Stone Age, and they did so. The threat to the lives of citizens, the lack of the simplest means of protecting them, and the destruction of infrastructure and the basics of survival, all lead, if continued through a war of extermination, to the removal of the unifying components of civil society, and this in turn leads to the disintegration of the unity complex, civil society, and creates an environment and conditions conducive to expulsion and forced displacement. Now 1.7 million people are displaced inside the Gaza Strip under pain of death and massacres to places that lack the most basic conditions for protection and human life. In this context, there are forces and countries that deal with the project of displacing the citizens of the Gaza Strip, and with plans to assimilate them, under the guise of humanitarian motives, but they do so from a position of supporting the Israeli colonial goal.

The war of extermination that is destroying the northern Gaza Strip and pushing its citizens to migrate to the south has not ended, and to further advance the war to its goals, the aggression state called on citizens in parts of Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah, which are crowded with displaced people from the north, to leave towards a so-called safe area close to the sea. If the occupation army storms the southern region later, about 2.3 million people will be facing a fateful threat that is rare.

The risk of forced displacement has decreased, but it has not ended, due to the Egyptian position rejecting displacement. The risk of displacement to Jordan, which was posed by the settlers, remained at a low level, and was met with Jordanian rejection, reinforced by the deployment of the Jordanian army on the border with Palestine. 

There is a Palestinian, Arab and international rejection of forced displacement, but the danger remains as long as the occupying state continues to destroy the survival requirements for basic and vital parts of the Gaza Strip, in addition to the intention of the occupying state to cut off a security strip from the territory of the Gaza Strip for the benefit of the Israeli residents of the enclave, and the continuation of war and displacement.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs keeps the risk of displacement outside the Gaza Strip on the table. Stopping the aggression and supporting the conditions for the Palestinian people to remain in Gaza at a level that exceeds supply trucks, medicine and fuel, which are less than the minimum, constitutes real support for an afflicted and threatened people, and is the basic guarantee for thwarting the war of extermination and its goals, the first of which is the displacement of citizens from their country.

[1] Alian al-Hindi, “The Aggression on the Gaza Strip 2023” (report).

[2] Yossi Melman, “How Israel Remembered the Transfer,” Al-Ayyam, quoted from “Haaretz,” 11/20/2023.

[3] “American aid in exchange for receiving refugees,” Al Jazeera YouTube, 11/30/2023.

[4] “Blinken to the region carrying the Tokyo principles,” Asharq Al-Awsat, 11/28/2023.

[5] Yossi Melman, previously mentioned source

[6] https://www.aljazeera.net/politics/2022/6/5/%D8%A8%D9%8A%

[7] Yossi Melman, previously mentioned source.

[8] https://www.palquest.org/ar/highlight/33419/%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9 %82%D9%88%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9% 8A%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%8C-2018

Source: Institute of Palestine Studies

The British Guardian newspaper quoted the Israeli army as saying that Hamas had planned the October 7 attack for years, drawing detailed maps with the help of spies inside Israel.

An Israeli intelligence source told the newspaper that the compilation of this map was only possible with internal information that we believe was from a “Hamas spy.”

The Guardian added that the movement's fighters carried manuals on how to take "hostages" and interpret sentences from Arabic to Hebrew, noting that among the documents found with Hamas fighters was a comprehensive map of an Israeli military base.

Source: Aljazeera.Net

The task of leading Palestine following the war in Gaza is going to be more challenging than ever. The leader who rises to the task could be the person who brings peace to his people after 75 years of struggle, pain, losses and suffering. 

The person who becomes the leader of the Palestinian people will either be another link in a long chain of wrong decisions or the person who breaks the link and forges forward on a new untaken path. The same is true for whoever will rise to be the new generation leader of Israel. Both leaders will either continue the futile, painful and traumatic path of all of the previous generations or become the new leaders who will break from the past, not forgetting it, but stay mainly focused on the future. 

Who are those leaders who will stand up and say: everyone, Israeli and Palestinian, living on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has the same right to the same rights? Both peoples living on this land have the right to be on this land and they will remain on this land. The era of mutual non-recognition must come to an end. Now it is time for a new beginning. 

Dear Marwan Barghouthi, Marwan – this is written to you. For the past two decades you have been the most popular Palestinian leader.  All public opinion polls in Palestine over the last decades demonstrate that you win the popular vote against every other possible candidate. Your people seem to want you.  Are you the next Palestinian leader?  Are you the person who has the foresight and ability to break from the past? Will you seek revenge and preach hatred towards the Israeli Jewish people who share this land with you, or will you recognize the right of that people to live on this land? This is where it begins. 

After the unspeakable atrocities committed by Hamas and other Palestinians factions on October 7 and the support that those horrendous actions received from too many Palestinian people, Israelis are more suspicious, more fearful and feel more hate towards Palestinians than ever before. 

I am quite sure that Palestinians witnessing the atrocities against the people of Gaza, the massive killings and destruction are more suspicious of Israelis, more fearful, are angrier and feel more hate towards Israelis than ever before. Marwan, are you going to put fuel on the rage that your people feel or will you stand up and reach out towards the Israeli leader who will reach out to you to put out the flames? 

Your people and the Israeli people need a Palestinian leader with the moral compass of Nelson Mandela. It should come from the stronger side, I agree, but it will not. There is no humiliation in being the bigger man standing on the higher moral ground and reaching out to those who have oppressed you. Your people need a leader who sees beyond yesterday to a brighter tomorrow of promise and hope. Your people have suffered enough, you have suffered enough. You have paid the price for the armed struggle against Israel. There is no promise in the armed struggle. The Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation, and occupation must end, but the armed struggle has only brought death and destruction and no honor. 

The Israelis have believed for too long that they can occupy the Palestinian people and have peace   - October 7 changed that. On October 7 and perhaps even on October 8, Palestinians may have celebrated, they may have thought that they were on the road to liberate Palestine. When the extent of the atrocities committed by Hamas became clear, along with the abduction of hundreds of Israeli citizens from the homes, the Israeli resolve to remove Hamas from ever being able to control Gaza or any part of Palestine became completely justified. That Israeli resolve is now being demonstrated by too much death and destruction in Gaza. 

Whole families are being wiped out, tens of thousands of children have become orphans. What will rise from the ashes of these horrors? Will it be another generation willing to die for Palestine and for Israel or will it be a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians who say it is time to live for Palestine and for Israel. It is time to put an end to the killing and the dying. 

Marwan, if you are really a leader then you will understand the challenge before you. Palestine does not need another hero willing to be a martyr for the cause. Palestine needs a leader who will liberate through the morality and the justice of the cause and by the way that is chosen by that leader to embrace the enemy with a full commitment to make peace. Peace is not surrender. Peace is embracing the limitation of power, force and violence and choosing life, dignity and compassion. The Palestinian leader who will embrace the enemy and dispel their fears which have grown stronger, will be the Palestinian leader who will achieve freedom and liberation and dignity for his people.

Marwan, I knew you well 22 years ago before you went to prison. We have communicated indirectly over the years. I know that you still support the two states solution and you want peace for your people. I know that you will not tolerate to live under occupation any longer. Are you the leader I described above? Are you that person who will write the new chapter of our shared destinies? If you are, don’t remain silent – we all need to hear your voice.

A group of former Israeli occupation army soldiers criticized the Israeli government for its killing policy in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian civilians, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “correct the course.”

According to what was reported by the American website The Daily Beast, Uri Givati, director of support for this group called Breaking the Silence, believes that Israel has the right to respond to the October 7 attacks, but this response should not be extremely cruel.

"We have no right to do what we want"

Givati told The Daily Beast: “This war is different from all other operations because of the Hamas attack... but that does not mean that we have the right to do whatever we want.”

Givati added: “The leadership now, and the way they are talking...some of them are talking about re-settlement of Gaza. Some of them are talking out of revenge, that we have to level Gaza to the ground and things like that. But these positions are disturbing for two reasons; the first is that they are, of course, immoral and inhumane.” The second is that it is necessary for operations to be shaped according to a vision that pave the way towards peace in the future, and not a path that returns the region to the usual situation of continuous fighting and hatred.”

“We have to understand where we are going from here,” Givati said, noting that the Israeli government should not do anything just for revenge, but for the purpose of reaching a political solution.

Givati expressed his fear that the way Israel is carrying out its operations against Hamas, with unlimited bloodshed and killing of innocent residents, will not help in achieving any progress on the path to peace. This is likely to anger and entrench division between Palestinians and Israelis, and this will make peace much more difficult.

Givati added: “Will this make me or us Israelis safer, or will it prolong the occupation longer and longer and leave us in this vicious cycle of bloodshed? This is clearly not working. If we kill tens of thousands of civilians, or destroy a lot of infrastructure, "It will not bring back our families and friends who were killed or our hostages. Revenge is not a war plan."

“There are no civilians. If you identify someone, kill him.”

Givati said that team members at Breaking the Silence are working to collect testimonies from former Israeli soldiers who participated in previous operations in Gaza to evaluate how to change the strategy.

Testimonies from past wars showed that the Israeli army gave the green light to launch operations as quickly as possible after warning civilians.

“The prevailing perception is that anyone you see is a terrorist,” says one testimony given by a former IDF soldier who participated in previous operations. Another said: “They told us: There are no civilians. If you spot someone, kill him.”

Breaking the Silence seeks to completely change the assumptions for waging war on Gaza. So that the army adopts a strategy aimed at reaching a real solution, and not just the blind use of old tactics.

Nadav Wyman, a member of Breaking the Silence, wrote on GroundUp: “The lessons learned from past conflicts have always been about the proper application of these principles, not the validity of the principles themselves. We must question our principles: The lesson we must draw from past conflicts is that only strength "It cannot provide us Israelis with the security we deserve."

It is essential that the Israeli government's plan now includes a solution that addresses the conflict from its roots and a realistic assessment of what should happen after the end of the war, according to Breaking the Silence.

Givati said: “What is the point of sacrificing so many soldiers and killing so many innocent people, if in the end we will return to... where we were before?”

source: Arabic Post

Egyptian and other Arab diplomatic sources revealed movements taking place within the corridors of the Arab League, to call for an emergency meeting at the level of Arab foreign ministers, to urge the international community to recognize a Palestinian state, and to approach the UN Security Council through the Arab group for that step.

An Egyptian diplomat at one of the Egyptian embassies abroad told Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed, requesting that his name not be mentioned, that Cairo “held discussions with officials in the American administration in order to take a step to stabilize the situation in the region, through recognition of a Palestinian state, provided that the discussion takes place in A later stage, regarding the borders and shape of that state.” He explained that "prominent officials in the American administration realize that resolving the current conflict and providing security for the Israelis will only come through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state."

Extensive discussions and an Arab welcome

For his part, an Arab diplomat in the Arab League, who requested to remain anonymous, told Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed that “the proposal to recognize a Palestinian state is being widely discussed in the corridors of the League,” pointing out that “the issue of calling for an emergency meeting of the League at the level of foreign ministers, It is still under discussion in a number of influential Arab capitals,” noting at the same time that “about 5 member states of the League have so far expressed their approval for holding the meeting and welcomed the proposal.”

A meeting of Arab foreign ministers is being discussed to discuss activating the outcomes of the Arab-Islamic Summit, including breaking the siege imposed on Gaza.

The Arab diplomat explained that “talking about recognizing the Palestinian state does not contradict the two-state solution, but it is a step that can move the stagnant waters, if it is agreed upon among the Arab leaders, and then the international community is invited to recognize the Palestinian state,” noting that “the current circumstances of international community may support such a step, with the force of blood that has brought the Palestinian issue back to the forefront of the scene again.”

The source pointed out that "there are movements at the present time, on more than one level, some diplomatic and the other relief, in order to ensure the continued access of relief aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip, despite the collapse of the temporary truce, in addition to contacts with various levels in Washington, in order to push the American administration to put pressure on the Israeli occupation government to cease fire and end the war on the Gaza Strip.”

The Arab diplomat explained that "the meeting of Arab foreign ministers being discussed will include within its agenda a discussion of activating the outcomes of the Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh, which included breaking the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip."

The American veto obstacle to recognizing a Palestinian state

Commenting on this, the former Assistant to the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ambassador Rakha Ahmed Hassan, told Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed, “The issue of completing recognition of a Palestinian state, especially among European countries and countries that have not yet recognized it, takes some time, as 138 countries have recognized the state.” The Palestinian Authority accepted it as an observer member in the United Nations in 2012,” adding, “As for its acceptance as a working member of the United Nations, it depends on not using the American veto, which is very unlikely at the current stage, given the compatibility of the American position with the Israeli position in continuing the war on Gaza, as no American official uttered the term a complete ceasefire.”

Rakha Ahmed Hassan: A distinction must be made between the very urgent demand, which is a ceasefire, and the next priority demand, which is recognition of the Palestinian state.

Hassan added: “Hence, a distinction must be made between the very urgent demand, which is a complete ceasefire, which is what the Arab and Islamic countries must focus on and work to implement immediately, and the next priority demand, which is recognition of the Palestinian state, and the request to include it as a working member of United Nations Organization".

In this context, the Palestinian politician and former leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Zulfikar Swerjo, said in an interview with Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed, “Everything that is being talked about now depends on the situation on the ground and the resistance’s ability to impose field equations that cannot be bypassed.” He added: "We are talking about a few weeks, during which the resistance was able to achieve very painful military results for the occupation army, and they are likely to escalate if the occupation army carries out its threats to cross the southern regions."

Swerjo continued: “Politics is the mirror of field results and surprises. It is too early to talk about what will happen after the battle, as it has not yet been decided and may continue for many months. However, this does not exempt the Palestinians from arranging their internal situation and forming a comprehensive leadership based on the right of the Palestinians to defend themselves, their lands, and their rights and in determining their fate, away from all the old formations that were tried and were a malleable tool in the hands of donors.”

Swerjo stressed, "What can be discussed is how we can implement the resolutions of international legitimacy in granting the Palestinians their right to establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and not negotiating rights and the return of the Oslo process. As for who leads the Palestinian people, this is a matter that concerns the Palestinians alone."

Israeli media revealed more details and internal discussions that took place in the Israeli army in the last months, days and hours before the Hamas attack on October 7.

In the latest evidence of information and assessments that should have enabled the Israeli military command to prevent a large-scale operation by Hamas, Channel 12 reported on Monday evening that an intelligence officer in the Gaza Division prepared a presentation in July 2022 outlining “Hamas’ plan for a comprehensive attack.”

One graphic from the presentation showed about 20 groups of Hamas' "elite forces" invading southern Israel from Gaza. The presentation warned that "terrorist cells will be accompanied by engineering teams to penetrate the border fence and defenses in multiple places." According to the report, the document included the following sentence: “This invasion constitutes the most serious threat facing the IDF forces in defending (Israel).”

Channel 12 also reported that the Israeli Army’s Military Intelligence Directorate held a discussion three months before October 7, in which an officer with the rank of brigadier general, whose name was not revealed, participated. He concluded his speech by saying: “We tried, but we did not succeed. We cannot now know how (the Hamas president) will act.” In Gaza, Yahya Al-Sinwar, and therefore commanders in the field must take the necessary precautions.”

The report stated that the results of the discussion were referred to the head of the Israeli Defense Intelligence Department, Aharon Haliva, who ordered the intensification of intelligence gathering, adding that this actually happened.

On October 1, the Gaza Division Commander ordered an assessment of the situation, which revealed a “sharp increase in elite force training.” The report on this assessment said that six Hamas brigades, a number of them in northern Gaza and one in Khan Yunis in its south, were carrying out digging operations once or twice a week.

However, according to Channel 12, the author of the report concluded that “in light of the contradiction between the economic benefits of Hamas and the ongoing unrest (on the Gaza border), things currently seem to be moving towards (settlement) arrangements and calming the unrest.”

The last hours before the attack

On the night between October 6 and 7, hours before the early morning attack, an email was sent from an Israeli army base on the Gaza border talking about “certain signals coming from Gaza” about an imminent attack. At the same time, the Shin Bet security service also saw signs that something was happening.

At approximately 1:30 a.m. on October 7, the director of the office of the Israeli Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, was informed of this matter, by the Shin Bet and then by the IDF general in charge of the Southern Command. At approximately 3:30 a.m., Halevy was awakened, who requested to arrange a telephone consultation in order to assess the situation, and that session was held approximately 90 minutes later.

The IDF Operations Commander organized his own consultation before Halevy's consultation, finding the same signs of an imminent attack, and asked for clarification as to whether the talk was about training or a strategic operation against Israel in the coming hours. That consultation concluded that no final explanation could be reached, and requested additional intelligence from the IDF's 8200 Signal Intelligence Unit.

After the consultation ended, Halevy and the head of operations of the IDF and the General Southern Command were briefed on the indicators of an imminent attack. Halevy requested more information and ordered the Israeli Air Force to be informed. He also ordered an examination of intelligence, including from a skeptical perspective on the widespread assumption that Hamas is not interested in war.

According to Channel 12, this may have been the first crack in the concept that Hamas had been deterred, but it was not enough to order Halevy to prepare for a major incident. Only three drones and a combat helicopter were mobilized.

Haliva, head of the Intelligence Department, did not participate in these consultations that took place on October 6 and 7, as he was on vacation in Eilat. He was briefed around 3 a.m. on the worrying signs from Gaza, but he did not participate in the consultations and was not available to them by phone.

In addition to Israel having multiple sources of information about Hamas training and other preparations for an attack in the weeks leading up to October 7, Channel 12 also drew attention Monday to the television series entitled “The Fist of Free men” which Hamas channel broadcast during the month of Ramadan in late spring 2022. Which showed the infiltration of Palestinian fighters into Israel.

The series depicted an attack on Israel that included the use of white pickup trucks, disrupting Israeli communications, and targeting kibbutzim and Israeli army bases, including the Ra'im base, where the Israeli army's Gaza Division is stationed. The series also showed the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, and the establishment of a Palestinian base on an Israeli army base.

The head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, publicly praised this series, saying that it “has a very great impact on the struggle of our people,” and that it is “an important pillar of the liberation and return project,” stressing that it is “absolutely inseparable from our very great preparation and the work of Our brothers in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and their manufacturing and intelligence workshops.”

Israeli media also reported that two divisions of the Israeli army's commando brigade, which were deployed on the Gaza border during the Jewish holiday season in October, were sent to the West Bank just two days before the Hamas attack on October 7.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation "Kan" reported that about 100 soldiers from the two companies were deployed in the town of Huwwara in the West Bank, following a shooting attack on settlers there.

The Israeli army pledged on Monday to conduct an investigation into the decision to transfer forces from the Gaza border in early October.

Research conducted at New York and Columbia Universities said that some investors in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange “may have had prior knowledge” of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation carried out by Hamas on October 7 and “benefited from it.”

The research, conducted by law professors at New York and Columbia University, Robert Jackson Jr. and Joshua Metts, and titled “Trafficking in Terrorism?”, which has not been peer-reviewed, stated that there was a “large and unusual” rise five days before the attack in Short selling in the most popular MSCI fund in Israel.

The research revealed that sales “far exceeded” those that occurred during the Corona pandemic, and the war between Israel and Gaza in 2014 and 2008, and continued: “Our findings indicate that investors benefited from these tragic events.”

The research found that on October 2, just 5 days before the attack, “short selling represented nearly 100% of MSCI fund OTC trading volume,” and “days before the attack, investors appeared to be anticipating the coming events.” 

The researchers stressed that their findings are “preliminary” and that they are unable to link specific traders to these transactions, as well as identify their underlying sources of information. However, they stated that US regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), has access to non-public data that can help investigators understand why and how markets behaved before October 7.

The research said that in the days leading up to the attack, bets on Israeli securities traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange “increased dramatically.” For example, between September 14 and October 5, 4.4 million new shares were sold short in Bank Leumi, the research said. One of the largest banks in Israel, the bank's share prices fell by 23% between October 4 and 23.

However, there was no corresponding increase in short selling in Israeli companies traded on US exchanges, although the researchers noted that this may be because some Israeli defense companies would benefit from higher demand in the wake of the attacks and some have a large international presence.

The research found an increase in short-term contracts on shares of Israeli companies traded on the US stock exchange, and the researchers said that this was linked to many trades, “suggesting that a small number of actors may have been behind these trades.”

The research found that the "significant" increase in short selling on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange before the October 7 attack did not exist before the decline in the market that occurred in the wake of the judiciary reform law in July that led to protests.

“Taken together, our evidence is consistent with some well-informed investors anticipating and benefiting from the Hamas attack,” the researchers wrote.

The Israeli regulatory authority told Reuters: “The matter is known to the authority and is subject to investigation by all parties concerned.”

Source: Sama news

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings, warned of an “imminent terrifying scenario” in Gaza, in which humanitarian activities will be of no use.

Hastings indicated in a written statement on Tuesday that there is no safe place in Gaza and there is no longer a place to turn to.

She stressed that Israel's start of attacks after the "humanitarian truce" pushed tens of thousands of people into areas facing increasing pressure in order to find food, water, shelter, and safe spaces.

She stated that shelters are lacking in capabilities in Gaza, and the health system is collapsed, in addition to the lack of clean drinking water, and malnutrition among mentally and physically exhausted people, which can lead to epidemics that pose a threat to public health.

She pointed out that the space for humanitarian aid activities in Gaza is “constantly shrinking” and that UN staff cannot fully perform their duties.

She continued: "The United Nations and civil society organizations alone cannot support a population of 2.2 million people. The commercial and public sectors must be allowed to bring supplies to Gaza, and this must include fuel in a way that guarantees Israel's security."

She added: "There is an even more terrifying scenario about to emerge (in Gaza), to which humanitarian aid activities will not be able to respond."

The Israeli occupation forces arrested 38 citizens from the West Bank governorates, including two women and workers from the Gaza Strip, at dawn on Tuesday.

From Bethlehem, the occupation forces arrested 13 citizens, including journalist .

From Hebron, the occupation forces arrested 11 citizens: 

From Jerusalem, the occupation forces arrested Saeed Mustafa Daoud and Abdullah Ali Daoud from the town of Beit Daqu, northwest of occupied Jerusalem, and Abdullah Yousef Hassan Manasra, whose brother Muhammad was martyred after blowing up the door of his house in the Qalandiya camp in the north.

From Nablus, they arrested: Faisal Abu Sariya, Muhammad Abu Sariya from Askar camp to the east, and Haitham Muslim from the popular housing area to the east.

This Tuesday morning, dozens of Israeli settlers stormed the courtyards of the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, protected by the occupation police.

Sources in the Islamic Endowments at the mosque said: The settlers stormed the mosque from the Mughrabi Gate, carried out provocative tours of its courtyards, and performed Talmudic rituals in the vicinity of the Mercy Chapel.

In the same context, the occupation police tightened its military measures around Al-Aqsa Mosque, preventing most citizens from accessing it for two months.

The Israeli emergency government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, resumed its aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip from the same point where it stopped before reaching a truce that lasted seven days. That is, it resorted to a war of extermination, displacement, and collective punishment, ignoring the advice of its partner, the American administration, which gave it the green light for several weeks, but while reducing the number of civilian deaths.

Just as the aggression government did not adhere to these advices, it may not adhere to the period of weeks proposed by Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, and follow the plan of Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense, which includes continuing the war for several months, and perhaps up to a year, if the occupying forces are able to achieve its goals.

During the three days after the truce, more than a thousand persons died, and many times more were wounded, and the war government continued the process of comprehensive destruction, but this time with greater claims not to target civilians, declaring safe areas that it did not exclude from bombing. Because it targets civilians who constitute the popular incubator of the resistance in an attempt to create strife between the resistance and its people, and in order to push the largest number of Palestinians to emigrate. Displacement was and still is one of the goals that are declared at times and hidden at other times. It has been an accompaniment to the thought and policy of the Zionist movement from the beginning, and it rears its head. Whenever the circumstance is appropriate.

It is noted that the American administration opposes forced displacement, and this implies that it does not oppose “voluntary displacement.” Indeed, at the beginning of the aggression, more than one American official had previously demanded that the Rafah crossing be opened for foreigners and those who wish to travel. There is also a project circulating in the US Congress that includes the displacement of our people in the Gaza Strip (one million for Egypt, half a million for Turkey, and half a million for Iraq and Jordan).

I warn that the situation will remain as it is in terms of gathering most of the people of the Gaza Strip in the south of the Strip and targeting them, while continuing the false talk about safe areas, without infrastructure and public services, nor enabling the displaced people of the north to return to their homes that are still habitable, and displacing more. As Israeli publications demand, they are without work, study, food, water, or medicine, and in the absence of humanitarian aid being allowed to flow or enter by train; It will lead to forced migration called “voluntary” sooner or later, especially since there are large areas in the Gaza Strip that are no longer suitable for human use, and will not be suitable even if the aggression stops and reconstruction begins for years to come.

Achieving Israeli goals is impossible

Although the leaders of the war, led by Netanyahu, repeated the same goals after the resumption of the war, they realize more and more that the ability of the occupation army to achieve them in the available time is non-existent, due to popular steadfastness and valiant resistance and the opening of the northern front and the Yemeni, Iraqi and Syrian fronts that target the Israeli forces, and keep the door open to a regional war that no one wants except Netanyahu, Gallant, and the Pentagon hawks, and because of the pressure exerted on Israel from the United States, Europe, and Canada as a result of the global popular uprising and an attempt to save Israel from itself and from remaining a prisoner of unachievable goals.

Therefore, the Netanyahu government is in a race against time in a hopeless attempt to achieve a victory, even if it is a semblance of victory, through the assassination of some of the leaders of the political and military resistance, or achieving a qualitative achievement by destroying large areas of the tunnel city and taking actual, not claimed, control over large areas, and killing a large number of resistance men in order to stop or limit the launching of rockets and the implementation of resistance operations that inflict the heaviest losses on the occupation forces.

Political war is more dangerous than military

The invading forces continue to commit the largest possible number of massacres, and destroy as many homes, public, private institutions and infrastructure as possible, until they make many areas of the Gaza Strip unlivable, and until the burdens of rebuilding what can be reconstructed, and building what was completely demolished, become an expensive process. It will be very, very long, and it will only take place under conditions that allow the continued pursuit of war goals through politics, economics, internal strife, the spread of chaos, insecurity, and multiple authorities and decision-making centers, until Israel achieves through politics what it was unable to achieve through war, aggression, and massacres.

In this context, we place Netanyahu's focus now on establishing buffer zones more than anything else, as he has realized that eliminating the resistance, specifically the Hamas movement, is impossible, as French President Emmanuel Macron said, who had previously called for the establishment of an international coalition against Hamas, similar to the coalition established against ISIS. Macron added that eliminating Hamas will take ten years, and Israel cannot wage a war for that long.

Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, also made a statement that seemed striking, stating that the US administration would not allow the victory of “Hamas” and that Israel would be strategically defeated if it continued to fight in this blind manner. Of course, the statement was contradictory to itself, but it is noticeable that after the administration the White House is seeking a victory. Israel is working to prevent a Hamas victory. This means the beginning of the fall from the top of the tree, and the lessons of the war before the truce revealed the impossibility of defeating the resistance, or at least that it is very costly and very difficult. What is now required is to prevent Hamas' victory.

Barnea: Israel will not win if Sinwar surrenders himself

In order to understand the significance of Austin’s statement, we cite what Nahum Barnea, the famous Israeli analyst and writer close to the Israeli security services, wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, with the text: “One of the right-wing ministers told me that even if Yahya Sinwar came out of the tunnel with his hands raised, and all the kidnapped people walked behind him in a row... "This war will not end in victory."

Ben Dror Yemini, a right-wing Israeli writer, wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper an article titled “The Failure of the Hammer Strategy,” which stated: “It is better to admit, Israel has not achieved much, and certainly has not achieved a transformation. It is possible that 5,000 “terrorists” were killed. Only a portion of the tunnels were discovered and neutralized. Most of the tunnels are still under Hamas control. About 10% of Gaza’s buildings were destroyed, and perhaps more. It is not clear if this in itself is an achievement, but Hamas and Jihad are alive and present, and they are still the rulers of the sector.”

What can be concluded from what Barnea wrote is that what happened on October 7 caused damage to Israel’s strategic position and its deterrent power, and it cannot be remedied regardless of the outcome of the war. As for what Ben Dror wrote, it confirms that the conduct of the war, specifically the hammer strategy, which means launching violent, deadly raids, it creates great devastation, but achieves very few results. He added: “Israel failed because it does not control the northern Gaza Strip or Gaza City. Rather, it only controls part of the northern Gaza Strip, and it is far from controlling the tunnel city, which is still under the control of terrorist organizations.” He continues: “The ceasefire has barely ended. Until Hamas began firing rockets on Friday morning, not from the south of the Gaza Strip, but from the north.”

The dilemma that the Israeli government is suffering from is evident from the increase in demands for Netanyahu’s resignation and accountability, and the differences between the pillars of war, as was evident in the failure of Netanyahu and his Minister of War to appear in a joint press conference, even though Netanyahu asked Gallant - as he said - to hold a joint press conference, but the latter refused and held a conference alone. This is despite the fact that the two are in the same boat. Together they bear more responsibility for the strategic failure that occurred on October 7th than others. However, they are looking to escape the results of the investigation by placing responsibility on each other.

It is in the interest of Netanyahu and Gallant to prolong the war in search of a victory that will not be achieved, despite the great Palestinian pain, as a result of all these human losses. The war left about 65 thousand dead, wounded, and missing people under the rubble, in addition to more than a million displaced people outside their homes, without safe shelter, food, water, or treatment, and no guarantee that they would not be bombed and die at any moment.

In such a war, everyone emerges a loser, or in an equation with neither victor nor loser, and this is calculated in favor of the weak party that held out and did not enable the strong party to achieve its goals. Israel did not achieve any of its goals. It did not eliminate the resistance, nor did it release the prisoners. It does not guarantee that the Gaza Strip will not pose a threat to it in the future, and it has so far lost about 1,400 dead, including 401 soldiers and officers, including 77 since the ground war, and thousands of wounded, hundreds of them seriously injured and weakened, and more than 240 prisoners, a number of whom were released in a deal and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from their homes around the Gaza Strip and the northern border settlements, in addition to Israel losing more than 50 billion dollars at the lowest estimates, in addition to the travel of more than half a million Israelis during the war, with the intention of obtaining safety or seeking immigration.

Israelis are also now more concerned about their fate and the fate of their state and its future in the region, especially after the Palestinian issue has become more present than before, after it had been marginalized and forgotten before October 7, and it was imagined and promoted that it could be avoided and a new Middle East created at its expense. .

As for Palestine, it has not achieved, despite the importance of what has been achieved and in light of the humanitarian catastrophe that is open to more and the enormous suffering, the goals of the resistance declared so far, namely liberating the prisoners, lifting the siege, and stopping the attacks on Al-Aqsa, but it has made many people, both friends and enemies, convinced that Israel is not a country that is neither invincible nor defeated, but it can be defeated, and without absolute American support to the point of partnership, it was defeated to a defeat that it will never stand on its feet again.

The final word remains with the field, which will determine who is victorious and who is defeated. If the resistance remains standing on its feet, this is sufficient to continue the struggle round after round until victory is achieved. In light of the outcome of the current battle, the features of the new Middle East will be drawn, and it will be determined who rules the proud Gaza, who exploits its gas, and who wins or loses from the success or failure of the Ben Gurion Canal project, the Indian Economic Corridor project, and others.

By Manuel Hassassian

Regrettably, most western European nations have aligned with an American-led imperialism that suppresses liberation movements and stifles global dissent 

There is a prevalent belief in the dominance of western civilization, predominantly materialistic in its composition, despite its contradictory stance toward Islam. This western civilization emphasizes material wealth over spirituality and morals, often driven by the ambition to assert hegemony and control over both people and their economic and natural resources. This has shaped an imperial system driven solely by the pursuit of power, surpassing moral and ethical considerations. The values it embodies disregard international norms and legal boundaries, operating under a principle that seemingly allows any means to achieve its objectives.

Today, the new world order is epitomized by a barbaric regime that transcends all human norms and conventions to achieve absolute control over people’s capabilities. It imposes apartheid-like laws and fosters a view of non-white-Anglo-Saxons as inferior, aiming to humiliate them. Regrettably, most western European nations align with this American-led imperialism, which tramples human values, suppresses all liberation movements, and stifles global dissent. A large gap exists between governments and peoples who oppose this hegemony, which is symbolized by multinational corporations, the military-industrial complex, targeted media, Zionist lobbies and similar entities. Free societies comprehend the nature of this system and its goals, yet they struggle to confront it directly, lacking the courage to resist and safeguard the natural and economic capabilities of the oppressed.

The relentless brutality of this racist regime stems from its bankruptcy of values, the complete dissolution of moral systems, and the erosion of beliefs. It exhibits an unfettered approach towards any culture or civilisation opposing its dominance, resorting primarily to forceful measures. Amid these arrogant policies, the western world appears stagnant, surrendering to the law of the jungle, devoid of any glimmer of hope for meaningful opposition. Freedom of speech is suppressed, and criticism is muffled. 

Strategic ally

The dominant political forces in western regimes implement repressive policies without accountability or oversight, while intellectual or military challenges against this global dominance are notably absent.

Within this intricate international structure, with its economic, political and military might, we witness the Palestinian people enduring massacres perpetrated by the Zionist comprador regime, bolstered by the latest military technology, and with boundless economic and political support. Anyone who believes that Tel Aviv dominates American decision-making is wrong. On the contrary, Israel historically enjoyed European support and is presently under US leadership, which in turn uses Israel as a strategic ally in the Middle East to pursue its security, economic and political interests. 

Today, the struggle isn’t solely against the Zionist occupier, but involves the world’s most powerful nations, led by the US. It is crucial to approach this conflict rationally, avoiding premature conclusions about victory, as facing its dire consequences can be disheartening. Understanding that natural and human laws are in a state of flux is key within the realms of development and change.

One cannot ignore the clear fact that there is a vicious disconnect between the Arab intellectual and political discourse. This raises a crucial question: where is the Arab awakening envisioned by George Antonius in the 1930s, emphasizing an intellectual and political renaissance? A definitive stance from the US and Europe supporting the two-state solution, along with a well-outlined roadmap for its implementation, is crucial.

The absence of this awakening on the ground results in a fragmented civil society incapable of producing progressive ideas to foster better societies under such predicaments. One of the striking ironies of fate lies in the financial wealth of Arab and Islamic states, contrasted with their consumerist nature and complete dependence on western goods. The investments of these countries primarily lie in the West rather than within the Arab world, leading to economic, political and intellectual dependency. Consequently, they fail to use oil revenues in production for the benefit of their peoples, lacking a guiding direction for sustainable development and remaining subservient to western dominance.

In light of the objective developments in this new world order, there is blatant support for the Israeli occupation, oppressing a defenseless population whose only “crime” is their quest for self-determination and the right of return. It has become evident that the ongoing war on Gaza is aimed at undermining the Palestinian cause under the pretext of eliminating Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist organization in the UK and other countries. 

This conflict seeks to annex the occupied West Bank, isolate northern Gaza to serve as a buffer zone for Israel’s security, seize and then develop a multibillion-dollar offshore natural gas field in Gaza, and take the “Ben Gurion Canal Project” through Gaza, instead of building it around the territory. This canal would connect the Gulf of Aqaba to the Mediterranean Sea, rivalling the Suez Canal that runs through Egypt.

Two-state solution

Under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, there is no recognition of the two-state solution, the Oslo Accords or agreements with the Palestinian leadership. His government’s agenda has become clear: annexation and displacement to end the Palestinian issue. In light of this heinous crime against the Palestinian people, we expect a shift in Europe’s stance, urging support for Palestinian demands for an immediate ceasefire and the revival of international agreements within the framework of the two-state solution. 

The impressive demonstrations across European capitals are effectively pressuring their governments to reconsider their positions and bear responsibility for Israel’s crimes. The magnitude of these protests will inevitably influence the outcomes of upcoming elections in the West. Our Palestinian leaderships must pragmatically acknowledge this difficult reality and adhere to the basic principles of national aspirations. We do not want to speculate about future scenarios or slip into guessing as to the repercussions of this genocide. There is no viable alternative to a two-state solution, supported by both American and European endorsement.

The Israeli position is clear: one apartheid state and complete subordination to its racist regime. The triumvirate of Netanyahu and far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, along with their extremist government, fundamentally opposes the notion of a two-state solution, leaning instead towards annexation and displacement. 

A definitive stance from the US and Europe supporting the two-state solution, along with a well-outlined roadmap for its implementation, is crucial. 

Equally important is fostering a consensus among the Palestinian leadership and the people in accepting the two-state solution.

The struggle that has gone on for 75 years must materialize into the establishment of a unified Palestinian state, rejecting any possibility of its fragmentation, regardless of the cost. The unyielding resilience and heroism displayed by our people have been pivotal in this regard.

Western civilization is in the midst of a collapse in its structure, ideologies and moral framework, which has become explicit in its failure to lead the modern world. There must be a profound and dynamic shift towards a civilization that accommodates inclusivity based on equitable justice, fundamental human values and free democratic principles. History is not written by the victor; rather, it is inscribed by the people through their revolutions and achievements. This future vision is inevitable, as exemplified by British historian Arnold Toynbee, who observed that civilizations are subject to collapse and that history has a clear inevitability in the process of development and the reconciling of major contradictions.

Undeniably, the international community is increasingly acknowledging the prospect and practicality of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, particularly in the aftermath of the devastating events of destruction, displacement and loss of life among defenseless Palestinians in Gaza.

The sacrifices made are significant and heart-wrenching, emblematic of a people standing up against a brutal occupation.

By Karem Yahya

Prior to the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack and during the first half of 2023, developments in demographic geography brought bad news to Tel Aviv, even though most of it had been expected for years, and we take two of them:

First: The numbers of the Palestinian people in all of historic Palestine exceed the numbers of Jews there. Thus, for the first time since the founding of Israel in 1948 as a “Jewish state,” the people of Palestine return to a majority over their entire occupied land. According to the results of the census announced by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics from Ramallah on December 30, 2022, the total number of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza reached about 5.5 million people, and in Palestine occupied in 1948, about 1.7 million, with a total of 7.2 million people, and these constitute slightly less than half of the Palestinian people who have the right to return to their land, homes and property in accordance with international resolutions.

On the other hand, at the same time, the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel announced that the number of Jews had reached 7.1 million people, including 700,000 in 151 colonies/settlements in the West Bank, and this after it had increased 29 times during the 30 years of the American “Oslo peace,” and the repeated, boring, and unintelligible talk. The product is about the “two-state solution.”

Multiple annoyances

Tel Aviv is worried

As for the second worrying development for Tel Aviv, it came with the sharp decline in the numbers of Zionist immigration, called in Hebrew “aliyah,” and translated into Arabic “ascension,” in the first half of 2023, by 20% compared to the same period in the previous year, according to data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Israeli immigration and assimilation.

In the summer of this year, multiple opinion polls published in the Hebrew press reported an increase in the percentages of those considering reverse migration, “lereda,” the Hebrew word meaning “descending or descending” in Arabic. For example, it was stated in a poll published by “TV Channel 13” that 28% of adults in Israel (over the age of 18) are considering leaving it permanently, that is, joining what is estimated at between 700 and 800 thousand who have practiced reverse immigration since 1948. All of this is added to Estimates have begun to appear since 2016 that half of the Jews in Israel also hold non-Israeli passports.

There are other additional problems for Israel as it is a project to attract immigrants and colonialism/settlement that works to preserve the “Jewishness of the state” with the help of its allies, especially successive American administrations, along with those Arab governments and elites who accept Zionism and ignore it, who signed “peace” agreements and recognized Israel as a “natural state.” Contrary to her reality, so I became accustomed to it.

Among these annoyances are facts that continue to be confirmed regarding the youthful nature of Palestinian society on its land, with a rate of 65% under the age of 29 years, while the percentage of the elderly over the age of sixty-five does not exceed only 4%, compared to 13% among Israeli Jews. According to the latest data from the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, the fertility rate in the West Bank and Gaza, respectively, is 3.8 and 3.9%, compared to 3.1% for Jews in occupied Palestine.

What does it mean “Al-Aqsa Flood” demographically?

The October 7 attack, unprecedented in the history of popular resistance, Palestinian and Arab, and even throughout the history of modern-day colonialism with the region, had repercussions that occurred immediately and with potential repercussions on the demographic front of the conflict with the replacement Zionist settler colonialism.

The Zionist “state” had a more specific and historical problem with the Gaza Strip, from which the attack was launched. It is no secret to anyone who follows the famous phrase of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he wished that the sea would swallow Gaza. The sector has an important role in armed resistance in various forms of legitimate violence in the face of the occupation, the episodes of which continued throughout the conflict, and before Hamas. He also had an influential contribution to what is called the “Palestinian demographic bomb” that Israel fears. This is in terms of the highest fertility and fertility rates, until the population of the Gaza Strip reached about 2.3 million Palestinians, and with the highest percentage of forcibly displaced refugees from occupied Palestine 48 among its population (about two-thirds). Also, because it has the highest rates of unemployment and poverty, and the lowest in services, including health, and all of this even compared to the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The situation did not change much regarding the demographic/resistance dialectic after the occupation maneuver to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005 while continuing its siege. Gaza remained a threat to Israel on these two open fronts: demographics and resistance. Anyone who follows the ideas of the Zionist elites between the left and the right since the first intifada (1987-1990) notices the “Labor” Party’s promotion of the “separation” solution between the Jewish and Arab populations and the “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip. Then the right, led by former Prime Minister Sharon, adopted these ideas and developed them with the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, leading to the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2006 with its siege and suffocation.

Always emerging in the background and consistent with these racist ideas with dimensions and motives derived from racist demographics are the claims of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement, “transfer,” which initially targeted the Palestinians of the Galilee and Negev, north and south, within the occupied territory in 1948, as well as what was called even by Israeli historians and analysts, “creeping transfer.” “In the West Bank, through the settlement blocs, the separation wall, and the security barriers that turn the lives of the Palestinians into an unbearable hell, and for Israel to replace them with new Zionist immigrants brought from abroad.

A major blow to Aman

Settlement, settlers and migration

But the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack came to deal the most intense blow, in the shortest period of time, not exceeding half a day, to the security and safety of the settlement and the settlers. This is in light of the history of the Zionist project’s targeting of Palestine from the beginnings of this settlement: the colonies of “Rishon Lezion,” “Rosh Pinah,” “Zakhrof Yaakov,” and “Petah Tikva,” and with the first wave of Zionist immigration between 1882 and 1919. The October 7 attack simply struck the motivators and living motives driving this migration with a devastating blow to the level of safety and well-being. For the first time, there were Zionist Jewish immigrants in Israel who were forced to leave the places of settler colonialism (the colonies), with everything that was distinct and superior in terms of construction, services, and luxury to the overall livelihood of Palestinians on their occupied land, especially in the Gaza Strip.

In this context, a lot can be said about the comparison between the engineering, architecture, and services of the Zionist colony/settlement and the Palestinian refugee camp. Here there is fertile material suitable for scientific studies that reveal tangible racial/class/cultural discrimination. Originally in his book “The Jewish State,” published in 1896 in German, “Theodor Herzl” elaborates on how the Zionist immigration of nineteenth-century European Jews represented a social movement toward the better and more secure, and why it included economic recovery and the opening of attractive new markets for products. This Zionist immigration, in the book’s words, is “a rise in the class ladder,” which is consistent with the moral significance of the word “ascension.”

Migration crisis

Zionism is deepening

Tracking annual statistical data on Zionist immigration from its primary sources (the Jewish Agency and the Israel Yearbook in addition to the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption) indicates that the curve of this immigration is linked up and down to the seriousness of the resistance challenge and to the economic conditions inside Israel, which is what is extracted as a governing law, documented and analyzed in detail by the book. “The Seventh Million Bet: Jews and Zionist Immigration until 2020,” issued by the author of this article from Cairo 2002 and Damascus 2006. It is also clear that the first factor (resistance, especially armed resistance) has an impact on the second, no matter how much global colonialism and its components provide support for Israel. The first factor confirms the importance of voluntary action, not fatal surrender, while the second reveals the falsity of the ideological doctrinal aspect of Zionism and its migration.

Based on this, the latest data from the Jewish Agency confirms the decrease in Zionist immigration for the entirety of October 2023, the month of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack, to 700 immigrants, while it was 5773 for the same month of the year 2022, which indicates a downward trend in the curve, according to the law. The previously mentioned ruler.

Despite the absence of statistical data to date on the effect of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” on the reverse migration “Yerida,” the results can be expected in light of the rule that a decline in the Zionist immigration curve is accompanied by an increase in the number of Jews leaving for Israel, according to the conclusion of the book “The Seventh Million Bet” itself, Likewise, by comparison with Israeli data after the 2006 to 2009 Lebanon War, which documented a reverse migration of about 120,000, and shortly after the 2015 Gaza War, which lasted 52 days, when these sources recorded the departure of 16,700, of whom only 8,500 returned in subsequent years.

Of course, the October 1973 war had caused a shift in Zionist immigration from an increase since the 1967 war to a decline, and plunged it into a crisis extending for about 15 years, which was exacerbated by the first Palestinian Intifada. This is until the collapse of the Soviet Union brought the opportunity for massive Russian immigration starting in 1989, which was immediately followed by the transition to the “settlement path” of the 1990 Madrid Conference and the 1993 Oslo Accords, and the abandonment of the armed resistance by the Palestine Liberation Organization - and rather its leadership and its main factions - from armed resistance. No less dangerous and influential is the acceptance of Zionism and coexistence with it among its victims, and more precisely those who represent them politically and nationally.

I believe that identifying the previous demographic dimensions and their developments puts into doubt the claim that the great, exceptional act of resistance on October 7, 2023 alone necessitated the war of extermination, ethnic cleansing, and mass displacement, “transfer,” and brought all this calamity and destruction upon the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza. Clearly, reading this demographic indicates that these racist, Zionist, terrorist solutions were and are still in place and ready to be translated on the ground, regardless of the pretexts and justifications, the gravity of the events, and the order of their sequence. Therefore, it seems illogical or scientific to practice “flagellation of the armed resistance” or attempt to push it into “self-flagellation,” and hold it responsible for fueling and provoking Zionist aggression.

It is true to say that the October 7 attack came to deepen the contradictions of demographics and its crisis in Israel, but it did not summon this Zionist terrorism out of nowhere, or cause its invention. Rather, it can be assumed that this exaggeration in terrorism and its madness goes beyond the mere response to the resistance attack and its current and potential repercussions to the fact that it is essentially latent. It is at the heart of the demographic dilemma, and the racist Zionist responses proposed and practiced to address it, and it is usual for it to be called upon from time to time.

Source: Al Jazeera Live

The official spokesman for the US State Department, Matthew Miller, said that his government does not see any evidence that Israel is intentionally killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, despite the overwhelming evidence that the world is witnessing closely and documented by international organizations concerned with documenting Israeli war crimes.

Miller said in his response to a question asked by Al-Quds.com correspondent in his press conference at the US State Department on Monday, regarding whether he considered the killing of 700 Palestinian civilians, half of them children, within 24 hours, as evidence of “improvement in the severity of attacks, and evidence Israel listens to the American desire to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians: “I have not seen evidence that they are deliberately killing civilians. Although we believe that a very large number of civilians have been killed. But again, this goes back to the fundamental problem of this entire situation, which is that Hamas " has planted itself inside civilians - inside civilian homes, inside its mosques, in schools, and in churches. It is Hamas that is putting these civilians in danger."

Miller said that it is too early to make a final assessment of the ongoing Israeli bombing, “as the Secretary (Anthony Blinken) is very clear about how we want to judge this matter on the basis of results, not on the basis of intentions.”

Miller insisted: “In the first few days of the renewed military campaign against the South, we saw some things that did not look like the operation that took place in the North. For example, in the North, when operations began, you saw them requesting or ordering more than a million people to move. We've seen a more targeted order for evacuations here, where the IDF has identified specific neighborhoods in which it plans to conduct military operations and urged residents in those neighborhoods in advance to move, rather than telling an entire city or an entire region to evacuate their homes. This is an improvement on what happened before. They ordered them "Moving to areas that we know are de-escalation areas. It's one of the things we discussed with them last week. So UN-supported facilities where people can be out of harm's way. So that's an improvement."

Miller added: “What the minister made clear in our meetings with the Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) and other Israeli government officials on Thursday is that we do not want to see a military campaign in the south that resembles the military campaign in the north. What we mean by that is: We do not want to see the same level of civilian casualties; we don't want to see the same level of mass displacement. They showed us very detailed plans that they said were aimed at avoiding mass displacement and civilian casualties. But as the Minister made clear, it's not just the intention that matters; it's the results. And we're watching closely "We will continue to monitor closely before we make any final assessments."

Miller insisted: "We have seen an improvement in their (the Israelis') plans for Khan Yunis, and their plans for the south. We have seen them evacuate specific neighborhoods -- rather than entire neighborhoods, so we hope that the numbers of displaced people will be lower in southern Gaza than they were in the north. But when it comes to... "As for the results, we will monitor them closely."

Miller added: “People should go to the locations identified by the United Nations and listed on the Israeli lists as deconfliction zones that should not be the target of military campaigns. There are already people taking shelter in these people. As the campaign moves to the south and Israel evacuates certain neighborhoods or issues orders to evacuate certain neighborhoods, that's where people should go.”

It is noteworthy that since October 7, more than 15,800 people have been killed due to Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians. More than 7,000 of the dead were children.

With the end of the temporary truce in Gaza, American officials once again called on Israel to limit civilian casualties in its brutal attack on the besieged Palestinian territories, which are exposed to continuous indiscriminate bombing.

Israel said its brutal bombing was aimed at eliminating Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza and which launched a large-scale attack on Israeli territory on October 7, killing about 1,200 people.

It claimed that Hamas fighters are integrating themselves into the general population, so civilian deaths cannot be avoided.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said yesterday evening, Monday, that the transfer of commando forces from the Gaza Strip border to the northern West Bank two days before the war will be investigated.

This came during Hagari's press conference, against the backdrop of the continuation of the Israeli ground operation, which is accompanied by violent air and artillery bombardment, and is facing fierce resistance in the Gaza Strip from Palestinian factions.

The spokesman confirmed that the transfer of commando forces whose mission was to reinforce the “Gaza Division” two days before the war to the northern West Bank would be investigated.

Earlier Monday, the official Hebrew Broadcasting Corporation revealed the transfer of two teams from the Commando Brigade, which reinforces the “Gaza Division” deployed on the borders of the Gaza Strip, to the Huwwara area in the northern West Bank, just two days before the attack launched by the Hamas movement on southern Israel on last October 7.

“The issue was not hidden from the public,” Hagari said. “The deployment of forces did not change in the months leading up to October 7, but the forces moved according to estimates, as happens every weekend.”

He added: "The full story of what happened on October 7, and everything will be discussed in the in-depth investigation that we will conduct."

On the other hand, Haaretz newspaper reported that the night before the Hamas attack, a warning was received about the possibility that the organization would attempt to infiltrate Israel.

It indicated that a drone was launched and army forces were presented, but no military official informed the participants in the concert in Kibbutz Re'im - in which hundreds were killed - of the existence of a danger.

The organizers of the concert said: If we had received a warning, everyone would have been evacuated.

The newspaper adds that, however, although it was the Northern Brigade in the Gaza Division that allowed the ceremony to take place and was responsible for its security, and although the brigade commander was aware of the warnings he received, thousands of revelers and organizers of the ceremony were not informed of a security incident. .

Early today, Tuesday, the Israeli occupation forces carried out massive new incursions into the West Bank, including arrests and clashes with Palestinian resistance fighters.

In Jenin, the Israeli occupation forces stormed tonight the city of Jenin and the outskirts of its camp, wounding a young man with bullets and arresting another in Silat al-Harithiya to the west.

Local sources reported that more than 50 Israeli military vehicles, accompanied by four bulldozers, stormed the city from Jenin-Nazareth Street, amid gunfire, which led to the outbreak of confrontations.

He added that the storming coincided with the flight of a reconnaissance plane over the city, while occupation snipers were deployed on the roofs of a number of houses and buildings, noting that there was a power outage in a number of neighborhoods in the city of Jenin and its camp.

He stated that the occupation forces were also deployed in the vicinity of Jenin Hospital, Al-Zahraa neighborhood, Al-Dakhiliya roundabout, and the outskirts of the camp.

Immediately after the raid, the occupation bulldozers began destroying the infrastructure in the vicinity of the Tawalba Mosque, the Al-Zahraa neighborhood, and the roads leading to the camp, amid the outbreak of confrontations described as “violent” in the vicinity of the cinema roundabout, the interior, Nazareth Street, and the Al-Basateen neighborhood.

In Ramallah, the Israeli occupation forces stormed, at dawn on Tuesday, the town of Beit Liqya, west of Ramallah, leading to the outbreak of confrontations with citizens.

Local sources reported that confrontations broke out after the occupation forces stormed the town, during which soldiers fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades at the young men, without causing any casualties.

The Israeli occupation forces detained 13 citizens from the village of Budrus, west of Ramallah, and conducted field investigations with them.

Local sources said that the occupation forces detained several Palestinians.

In Bethlehem, at dawn on Tuesday, 4 citizens were injured by live bullets during confrontations with the occupation forces in the Dheisheh camp, south of Bethlehem, while 12 others, including workers from Gaza, were arrested during raids in the towns of Doha, Artas, and Wadi Al-Nis.

A security source reported that confrontations broke out after the occupation forces stormed the Dheisheh camp, where those forces fired live bullets, poison gas bombs, and sound bombs randomly, which led to the injury of three citizens (17, 44, and 42 years old) with live bullets, in the pelvis, hand, and face, and they were transferred to a hospital in Bethlehem to receive treatment.

The source pointed out that the occupation forces arrested the director of the Al-Khulafa Al-Rashidun School in the town, Mahmoud Jawabreh, in his fifties, in the town of Doha, in the west, while they raided the Traffic Department building and a number of printing presses and tampered with their contents.

In Hebron, a child and two young men were injured by Israeli occupation forces’ bullets, tonight, during confrontations that broke out in the town of Bani Naim, east of Hebron.

Security and local sources reported to our correspondent that confrontations broke out near the entrance to the town in the Wadi al-Joz area, during which the occupation soldiers fired live bullets at the citizens, causing the injury of a 14-year-old child with live bullets in the chest and hand. His injury was described as serious, and two young men whose injuries were described as moderate. They were subsequently transferred to Hebron hospitals.

Dozens of citizens, including children and women, were killed and injured at dawn on Tuesday, as a result of the Israeli occupation targeting a residential building for the Al-Yazji family, south of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza.

Later, an Israeli bombing targeted a house in the Khan Yunis camp in the southern Gaza Strip, resulting in many dead and wounded.

Various areas of the northern and southern Gaza Strip witnessed violent night bombardment and fire belts that struck many homes, residential buildings, and the vicinity of hospitals.

Doctors and patients at Dar Al Salam Hospital in Khan Yunis launched appeals to rescue them after heavy Israeli bombing in the vicinity of the hospital.

Large numbers of displaced people also gathered inside Kamal Adwan Hospital (northern Gaza Strip), coinciding with the occupation's escalation of bombing of the area.

At least fifty citizens were killed, and hundreds were injured, yesterday evening, Monday, in several raids carried out by Israeli occupation aircraft on two schools housing displaced people in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City.

The Ministry of Communications announced the deliberate interruption of communications services (fixed, cellular, and Internet) in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip for the fourth time in light of the continued Israeli aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip.

In the latest census of the victims of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, health sources announced that the number of dead since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip had risen to 15,899 martyrs, while the number of injured reached about 42,000.

The American Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday that Israel is considering a plan to flood the tunnels in the Gaza Strip with water from the Mediterranean, in an attempt to push Hamas fighters out of them.

While the newspaper reported that the Israeli army completed in the middle of last month the installation of large seawater pumps north of the Beach camp in Gaza, it pointed to American concerns conveyed by an unnamed American official regarding water supplies in Gaza.

The newspaper also said that Israeli pumps are capable of pumping thousands of cubic meters of water into the Gaza tunnels every hour, and that they are capable of flooding the tunnels with water within weeks, according to what was reported by the Arab World News Agency.

According to the newspaper, American officials confirm that Israel informed America of the plan early last month and discussions took place about the military feasibility of the plan and its impact on the environment, but officials also say that they do not know how close the Israeli government is to implementing the plan.

The newspaper added that Israel “has not decided on the plan.” It stated that some American officials expressed their concern about the Israeli plan, while others support it and say that there is not necessarily any American opposition to the plan.

The newspaper continued, quoting a source familiar with the Israeli plan, that the process of flooding the tunnels will force Hamas fighters to leave with the Israeli prisoners, but it is not yet clear whether Israel will consider using pumps before releasing all the prisoners.

Ben Gvir appointed people close to him to issue licenses to carry weapons to citizens, without qualifying them to work in this field, but they issued thousands of licenses to people who did not meet the conditions for carrying weapons, and Ben Gvir says that “Israel is at war.”

The head of the Firearms Division in the Israeli Ministry of National Security, Yisrael Avisar, submitted his resignation from his position, following the approval of aides and close associates of the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, to issue licenses to carry weapons to citizens without them being legally authorized to do so, according to what was reported by Israeli media.

Avisar had spoken about the role of those close to Ben Gvir in issuing these licenses during deliberations that took place in the Knesset last week. He said that these close associates had set up an “operations room” in the minister’s office, and that he feared that they had tried to give preference to some of the applications for obtaining licenses to carry weapons.

There were 82 people in the “operations room” from Ben Gvir’s office, the Knesset, and female recruits for the national service. They were described as “temporary licensing employees,” and their training period lasted only one day, while the official training period lasts for a month.

Licensing officers must examine candidates for a license to carry a weapon, ensure their health condition and mental capacity to carry a weapon, in addition to checking all required qualifications.

Security sources said that in recent weeks, these "temporary employees" had approved between hundreds and thousands of licenses to carry weapons for citizens, while a monitoring process showed that licenses were granted to those who did not meet the criteria for obtaining these licenses, according to what the Haaretz newspaper reported about them.

A security official told the newspaper, "This performance is a recipe for disaster. They are distributing weapons as if they were distributing candy, but a license to carry a weapon is not children's toys. There is almost no oversight in the ministry." The sources directed their main criticism at Avisar, accusing him of giving in to Ben Gvir's demands and allowing this "problematic performance."

It is noteworthy that Ben Gvir has sought, since taking office, to facilitate the conditions for issuing licenses to carry weapons, and has sought to ease the conditions further since the start of the current war on Gaza, as the number of applications reached 255,000, and about 20,000 of them were approved. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports Ben Gvir's plan and encourages citizens to own weapons.

Ben Gvir claimed in his comment that “the minister’s policy of distributing weapons to citizens of Israel who meet the conditions is clear and continuous. And whoever does not continue to implement this policy in accordance with the minister’s instructions and is stressed by attacks from the left in a committee like this or that in the Knesset, cannot continue in his position as head of the Firearms Division.” Israel is at war and we must get out of the usual perception.”

The American newspaper "Politico" reported that officials in the White House, State Department, and other agencies, led by the White House coordinator for Middle East affairs, spent weeks formulating this plan, which includes increasing Washington's security aid to the Palestinian Authority.

High-level American officials unveiled the plan of the administration of US President Joe Biden for the post-war period in the Gaza Strip, as the plan was drawn up by a special team led by the White House coordinator for Middle East affairs.

The American newspaper "Politico" reported that officials in the White House, State Department, and other agencies, led by the White House Coordinator for Middle East Affairs, spent weeks formulating this plan, which includes increasing Washington's security aid to the Palestinian Authority and granting a greater role to the American security coordinator in the region.

According to the American plan, there is a need for an international force to achieve stability immediately after the fighting stops, followed by the assumption of “renewed” Palestinian authority in the long term.

Politico quoted a US State Department official as saying that the Palestinian Authority faces great challenges in terms of “legitimacy and capabilities,” as he put it.

According to a senior American official, what remains unknown is the size of the Hamas movement that will remain in Gaza after the war.

He pointed out that despite the efforts made, the US administration was unable to push Israeli leaders towards a meaningful discussion of the shape of Gaza after the war, stressing that there is no talk of restricting US military aid as a means of pressure on Israel.

Politico noted that although Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and others in the Biden administration announced that the “revitalized” Palestinian Authority should manage the sector, they did not reveal the details of how this would be accomplished, and Tel Aviv expressed its opposition and ruled out the matter.

The American newspaper quoted a senior official in the Biden administration as saying, “In the end, we want to have a Palestinian security structure in Gaza after the conflict.”

The White House did not issue official confirmation of the plan, the features and details of which were revealed.

Although the Biden administration faces mounting internal opposition due to its support for the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, the US President has confirmed more than once his willingness to send more military resources to Israel.

Biden said in his statements that Washington stands by and supports Israel, and is ready to meet all of Tel Aviv’s needs necessary to “defend itself,” as he put it.

The Israeli occupation escalates its aggression against the Gaza Strip on the 59th day of the war, in which the number of victims reached more than 15,899 dead, at a time when negotiations to extend the humanitarian truce have reached a “dead end,” despite increasing international calls for calm in the face of the humanitarian catastrophe that the residents of the Strip are experiencing.

The Islamic Resistance Movement "Hamas" confirmed that the occupation's resumption of its war and aggression will not achieve any of its goals, as the leader of the movement, Osama Hamdan, stressed that "what the occupation did not achieve in more than 50 days before the temporary truce, it will not achieve afterward, no matter how long this war lasts." 

In a recording broadcast by the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, the head of the Israeli Internal Security Agency, Shin Bet, Ranen Bar, threatened that Israel would pursue the leaders of the Hamas movement in Lebanon, Turkey, and Qatar, even if it took years, as he put it.

Khan Yunis was subjected to dozens of airstrikes and fire belts, especially in the eastern area in the center of the city, which led to the death of at least 70 citizens and the wounding of hundreds, the majority of whom were children and women.

The occupation army announced that it had launched about ten thousand air strikes since the beginning of its aggression against Gaza, and claimed that it had destroyed about 500 tunnels since the start of the attack, out of more than “800 tunnel openings” that had been discovered in Gaza, according to its claim.

On Monday evening, the Israeli occupation forces arrested a girl from the village of Sur Baher, south of occupied Jerusalem.

Local sources in the town reported that the occupation forces arrested the girl, Wafa Yasser Abed Rabbo (26 years old), from her home.