American real estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht is trying to spend up to $50 million on a media campaign aimed at describing Hamas as a “terrorist organization,” by obtaining donations from businessmen and a major Jewish foundation, according to a report by the American Fox Business network, Saturday, November 11. 2nd 2023.

The network's report indicated that Sternlicht began the campaign just days after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, according to an email seen by the Semafor online news site, and he initially sought donations worth $1 million from a group of the wealthiest Individuals in the business world, in order to make Hamas known to the American people as a terrorist organization.

In an email, Sternlicht wrote that he had a "great conversation" with the Warner Bros. CEO. Discovery's David Zaslav about the campaign, adding that Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel has agreed to coordinate it. However, according to the report, spokesmen for both men said they were no longer involved in the campaign.

The goal of the campaign, Sternlicht wrote in the email, would be “to distinguish between anti-Semitism and the Palestinian situation.”

Sternlicht said: “Public opinion will certainly change, because the scenes, whether real or fabricated by Hamas, depicting the suffering of Palestinian civilians will certainly erode existing sympathy (for Israel) in the international community. Therefore, we must move forward in telling the story.” What he said.

Sternlicht added that he is trying to define Hamas as "not just an enemy of Israel but of the United States," while seeking a matching donation of $50 million from a major Jewish charity.

According to Semafor, Sternlicht sent the email to 50 people, including media executive David Geffen, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.

So far, sources familiar with the matter have told Semafor that the effort has raised several million dollars, and has hired Josh Vlasto, a former aide to both Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and former New York Gov. Chris Cuomo, to advise the planned campaign.

Source: Arabic Post

Last night and Tuesday dawn, the Israeli occupation forces arrested 31 citizens from various parts of the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem.

Hundreds of academics from universities and institutions of higher learning across North America have signed on to a joint letter, calling on their governments to demand an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, where the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians since the start of October.

As of Sunday evening, the document has more than 1,200 signatures, available to view here. The signers, calling themselves “Educators for Palestine,” are Palestinian academics and their allies who denounce Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as governments complicit in the genocide, including the United States.

The letter calls for such governments to “stop funding the genocide and instead call for a ceasefire, an end to the blockade of humanitarian aid, and restoration of access to water, electricity, and medicine in Gaza.”

“We demand that all potential war crimes be investigated,” the academic letter-writers state. “We demand an end to Israel’s military occupation and regime of apartheid, and a long-term political solution led by the Palestinian people that is based on justice, equality, and responsibility for one another’s mutual well-being.”

“We believe education can be a powerful place for this work,” Educators for Palestine add.

The letter also expresses deep concern over the ways that students and staff of universities are being silenced by their own institutions. “Forced silence through repression of dissent and retribution by powerful institutions against students, staff, and faculty have been the norm and must be loudly rejected,” the letter states, describing the actions to suppress dissent as “McCarthyian” in nature.

“In this historical moment, we reaffirm our commitments to interrogating the ways in which systems such as racism, ableism, settler colonialism, and imperialism are fundamentally intertwined with one another, both at home and abroad,” the letter adds.

Organizers of the letter spoke to Truthout about why it is critical for academics in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and beyond to speak out against the genocide in Gaza and the widespread suppression of dissent in academia.

“We watched in horror as the attacks on Gaza unfolded and wanted to say unequivocally that we reject this collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” the signatories told Truthout.

Organizers also condemned international governments and mainstream media for downplaying Israel’s killing of Palestinian children while using the killing of Israeli children by Hamas as justification for war crimes. The IDF has killed more than 4,500 children in Gaza since October 7.

“As both Palestinian educators and non-Palestinian educators in solidarity, we were particularly concerned with the framing of only one group of children as innocent and using their innocence as justification for war crimes,” the organizers of the letter said.

The organizers explained two sets of goals: one in the short-term and one for the longer-term.

“Our immediate goal is to speak out and bear witness as educators to the horrors that the Israeli state’s assault on Gaza has unleashed, once again, on Palestinian children and their families — horrors that our politicians are actively supporting, and that the institutions where many of us work (universities and schools) are steadfastly refusing to acknowledge,” they said. “Our long term goal is to build a stronger base for solidarity with Palestinians, understanding how the movement for justice in Palestine is essentially interwoven with the movements for justice for racialized and colonized peoples across the globe.”

The organizers of the letter told Truthout that academia was being used to further apartheid and genocide.

“[The] bombs being dropped on homes and schools and hospitals and bakeries in Gaza are often devised within our STEM classrooms and university departments,” they said, adding that the “words used to distort reality within our media, as well as the forms of truth-telling and poetry that assert Palestinian dignity and self-determination, are birthed in the spaces where our students learn to write.”

Source: Truthout

By Tyler Walicek 

A new report released by Rutgers University shows how anti-Muslim bigotry pervades U.S. discourse on Palestine.

An incisive new report released by researchers affiliated with Rutgers University lays out in detail the many ways in which the U.S. political establishment has instrumentalized anti-Muslim bigotry and disingenuously redefined the idea of “antisemitism” in order to defuse criticisms of the Israeli government and justify dehumanizing policies toward Palestinians.Titled “Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse,” the 68-page report offers a thorough examination of how the domestic foreign policy establishment and the associated Israel lobby employ Islamophobia as a tool of ideological legitimation.Though the report’s origins predate the immediate crisis, its critique is a valuable intervention in the current political moment. While civilian deaths accrue in the course of Israel’s indiscriminate, genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip — more than 10,000 have been killed as of this writing — lopsided Western media prerogatives continuously deny the populace a clear view on the crisis. 

In the background, the anti-Muslim bigotry that is rampant in U.S. culture helps ensure that Palestinians of all faiths, Arab people in general and Muslims across the world do not earn the public’s sympathies.

The very day that the report was released, the U.S. House of Representatives took a noteworthy step that further underscored the truth of the authors’ claims: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) — the only Palestinian American in Congress — was formally censured by her congressional colleagues. 

The charges against her: She had referred to Israel as an apartheid system (as major human rights organizations concur) and posted a video taken of street demonstrators as they chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The vote to rebuke her for doing so was decidedly bipartisan.

Influence Networks

“Presumptively Antisemitic” was commissioned by the Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race and Rights. “It could not have come out at a more important time,” said report coauthor Mitchell Plitnick in an interview with Truthout about the project. 

The genesis of the report, said Plitnick, dates to two years ago, when the authors sought to confront “a long history of U.S. policy that really diminishes Palestinian rights.” As Plitnick explained it, other analyses often interrogate the question of “why we elevate Israel.” But in this report, he said, “We’re asking the other side: Why do we find it so easy to diminish the rights of Palestinians?” One answer is that Israel is a singularly important U.S. client state, and there are big incentives, chiefly strategic and economic, to launder its actions and forestall any threat to its power or legitimacy. Capitalist society evinces a deep need to justify policies advantageous to its material interests and sanitize any violence involved in the pursuit of those interests; this is central to its process of ideologically and materially reproducing itself. Cruel and disingenuous justificatory ideology is the inevitable structural product of this need. 

Key to disseminating such ideology is, of course, the media — which in the U.S. is constructed around a set of incentives and boundaries that work unconsciously to weed out dissenters and quash critical inquiry while serving up the preferred official narratives. 

These mechanisms are sufficient to produce both remarkable party-line conformity and the appearance of a free and critical press by allowing fervent debate and critique — within very strict bounds. In our era, those bounds are fortified by, among other things, tacit Islamophobia. 

To venture beyond them in a mainstream venue — like, say, by acknowledging Israeli apartheid on CNN — is to go beyond the pale. (So much so that it’s newsworthy in itself when it happens.)To determine some origins of this type of Islamophobic narrative propaganda — the examples not traceable to U.S. government mouthpieces, that is — the Rutgers authors looked to pro-Israel organizations with more reactionary leanings, the kind that tend to make common cause with those farther on the right. 

These organizations often “spend a great deal of their time undermining and caricaturing Palestinians as inherently violent, inherently dishonest,” Plitnick told Truthout. Unsurprisingly, he said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a major faction. But members of the Israel lobby also include right-wing extremists like the erratic “Zionist Organization of America,” which, for a time, had the ear of the Trump administration. 

The evangelical right, meanwhile, has a well-funded network of Christian and right-wing Zionist organizations: dense warrens where reactionary backlash gestates and racial fears fester. 

There are the blandly conservative religious types like Christians United for Israel. Other groups appear deceptively innocuous, with names like “Middle East Forum” or the “Center for Security Policy.” (Others, like “Jihad Watch,” perhaps not so much.) 

These are joined by all manner of nationalist and militarist right-wing think tanks and advocacy organizations with interests that dovetail with those of the Israel lobby. Building on the ubiquitous anti-Muslim media coverage during the “global war on terror,” their bigotry, the report highlights, found legislative expression in so-called anti-Sharia laws (concerning, if absurd). Across the nation, per the report, right-wing money “supports a wide array of projects aimed at vilifying Muslims and politically penalizing advocacy for Palestinian human rights.”

The linkages between such groups and the media are so impossibly tangled as to be indistinguishable; conservative and liberal pundits alike can reliably be heard repeating the same logics, if not the same verbatim talking points. 

It appears on the vaunted New York Times opinion page, voiced by columnists like Bret Stephens. It is a cultural substrate — what passes for “common sense” in U.S. discourse.

Self-Appointed Legitimacy

The Rutgers authors then delve into analyzing examples of Islamophobia of the U.S. variety, which revels in general dehumanization. 

The most common reflex is to insist that all Muslim or Arab people are terrorists (and therefore valid targets), or to otherwise retread all the age-old tropes about aggression or deceitfulness.

The charge of antisemitism can inflict considerable damage, and disingenuously weaponizing it remains the most reliable weapon in the Israel lobby’s rhetorical arsenal. Domestically, the claim is weaponized against any critics of the Israeli government — often with accompanying career or personal consequences. Blacklisting, firing, doxing, or other ostracizations may well ensue. 

Yet, equating all criticism of Israel with antisemitism is ultimately an act of hubris. By diluting the term, as is noted by report authors, overreliance on the cynical smear only “blunts efforts against real antisemitism.” Caught in the pincer maneuver of dehumanization and antisemitism, advocacy for Palestinian human rights has long been discredited by default in the U.S. 

The Palestinian struggle is “depicted in the media and by American politicians as almost entirely violent,” the report states, “even though non-violent action has been far more prominent and consistent in their struggle.” The latter points speaks to an absurd double bind — violence is condemned, and yet “non-violent means of resistance, such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, are also discredited as antisemitic and illegitimate.” (As well as, in the case of BDS, literally criminalized, as Plitnick has detailed elsewhere.) 

It seems that, violent or peaceful, there’s no pleasing occupation apologists — Palestinians should be obliged to retreat to total passivity and inaction, mutely enduring any and all crimes committed against them. It’s instructive to contrast dominant narratives on Palestine with the establishment reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the report authors do in their introduction. 

That February, it suddenly dawned on the whole Western world that violent resistance to foreign occupation was self-evidently legitimate. But those hoping that this revelation might persist and bring an end to some hypocrisies — well, that proved far too much to hope for, certainly in the case of Palestine. (And among the U.S. public and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s blob alike, it didn’t even seem to spark much meaningful reflection on the most obvious comparison, i.e. Iraq.) 

This is the result we can expect, given that a blanket of propaganda has smothered the facts of the occupation and the long history of nonviolent Palestinian activism, along with the many Palestinian voices who advocate for peace and are clear that they take issue with state and military policy, not the Jewish people.“One of the key points of this report is this Islamophobic trope, this assumption, that all Muslims are antisemitic by default. They have to prove that they’re not,” Plitnick told Truthout. 

It has been a signature success of domestic propaganda, so effective that it produces outlier cases even among nominal leftists: the “progressive except Palestine” caveat. Nationwide, the notion has been implanted that, “at its core, standing up for Palestinian rights is motivated by antisemitism — not by wanting to protect human rights. Not by caring about the suffering of literally millions of people in the West Bank and Gaza,” Plitnick said. 

The bipartisan congressional censure of Representative Tlaib is a recent and precise example (among others) of this type of bad-faith conflation. This was also the case the last time she was scolded by both sides of the aisle — in 2021, as the report cites, she was rebuked for pointing out, again, the demonstrable fact that Human Rights Watch considers Israel an apartheid state. Time and again, as the report puts it, the “defense of the human rights of Palestinians” is “disingenuously turned … into an attack on Jewish people everywhere.”

Locating a Pressure Point

The coauthors, by the report’s conclusion, have identified three key realms of intervention: including Palestinian and other Muslim or Arab people in policy making and media, ensuring academic freedom and free speech at universities, and holding “Israel accountable for violating human rights.” 

As murderous bombing campaigns and a ground invasion roll through the Gaza Strip, many have to hold onto hope that such accountability may someday come. 

In the meantime, the Rutgers findings serve to corroborate the sense that the enforcement of the Israel consensus since October 7, by its reflexive recourse to both Islamophobia and/or charges of antisemitism, is starting to mimic vintage war on terror-era Islamophobia, old tropes dusted off and old hates recertified. After all, over 20 years, the U.S. has had a lot of practice at legitimizing the killing of innocent people in the Middle East. 

Perhaps that’s why, in a small but telling moment, the onetime Iraq War cheerleader President Joe Biden found it so easy to handwave the Gaza Health Ministry’s (proven accurate) death count.

Regardless, between refusing to pressure their client for a ceasefire and running cover for Israeli atrocities, it can indeed seem that, as the report puts it, “The U.S. government’s message is clear: Palestinian lives do not matter. 

Worse yet, Muslims and Arabs advocating to change this reality are defamed as antisemites and censored.” Yet it would be a grave mistake to overlook one fact: that solidarity between peoples is what subjugating powers most fear. From the report: “Discrediting any criticism of Israeli state practices violating Palestinian human rights as antisemitism overlooks the growing number of Jews and Muslims working together to promote Palestinian rights.” 

Further, Plitnick points out that, “We’ve seen, just in these past weeks, the tremendous effect that Jewish-Muslim unity has to oppose not only U.S. policy in Palestine, but also Islamophobia and antisemitism here at home.” As he notes, this is an extremely powerful force. “It removes from the right this argument that defense of Israel and these policies are somehow defending Jews, when really they’re doing harm towards Jews, and quite a bit of harm towards Jews,” Plitnick told Truthout. “We’re standing up, and our Muslims allies and brothers and sisters are standing with us, and that’s a really important piece of the whole.”

Source: Truthout

The Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip resulted in hundreds of demonstrations around the world, which began in the wake of Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” and continue until now in large waves, witnessed by dozens of Arab, European and American cities.

According to the Armed Conflict Locations and Events Data Project, during the first three weeks of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, nearly 4,200 events related to the aggression were recorded in nearly 100 countries and regions, representing 38% of all events reported globally.

According to the institute's figures, the world has witnessed about 3,700 demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and 520 demonstrations in support of the Israeli occupation state, worldwide since October 7.

It is estimated that there were about 1,400 demonstrations in the Middle East and North Africa, and about 600 of them in the United States.

About 55% of the demonstrations took place in the region, while 90% of the demonstrations were in support of the Palestinian people, and 13% were supportive of Israel, as the number is calculated in a single event in which demonstrations take place simultaneously and repeatedly.

The countries with the highest demonstrations were the United States (600 demonstrations), then Yemen (490 demonstrations), then Turkey (357), and later Iran (276), and Morocco (267).

Germany witnessed about 160 demonstrations, while the British capital and the American capital, Washington, witnessed large demonstrations, in addition to the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

In October 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the Israeli organization B'Tselem, following its participation in an informal session of the United Nations Security Council, accusing it of joining what he called a "choir of defamation" against Israel.

Netanyahu wrote on Facebook at the time that B'Tselem's director "urged the Security Council to act against Israel."

He said: “What these organizations cannot achieve through democratic elections in Israel, they are trying to achieve through international coercion,” adding that these groups “recycle the false claim that the ‘occupation and settlements’ are the cause of the conflict.”

The matter did not stop there, as Netanyahu then threatened to take steps to remove “B’Tselem” from the list of organizations in which Israeli youth could perform their compulsory national service.

What is B'Tselem?

When you visit B'Tselem's website, you will find in large print: "Anyone who abandons the basic moral principle that all human beings are created in the image of God has lost his humanity."

It is the Israeli information center for human rights in the occupied territories. It was established through the efforts of a group of lawyers, thinkers, and journalists, along with members of the Israeli Knesset.

The organization was called B'Tselem, which was the name chosen for it by the late Israeli politician, Yossi Sarid, who was one of the organization's members.

B'Tselem is a Hebrew word meaning "in the image," and the founders took inspiration from Genesis 1:27: "And God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created them."

Sarid had parliamentary and political experience, and was one of the most important advocates of peace with the Palestinians. He was a member of the Israeli Knesset for several terms for the Meretz party.

He also served as Minister of Environmental Affairs in the government of Yitzhak Rabin between 1993 and 1996. And Minister of Education in the government of Ehud Barak, until 2000.

The organization says the name B'Tselem expresses "the universal and Jewish moral edict to respect and support the human rights of all people."

B'Tselem presents itself as an independent, non-partisan organization, and discloses that its funding sources are donations that come in the form of grants from European and North American foundations that support human rights activism around the world, and generous contributions from individuals in Israel and abroad.

What are B'Tselem's goals?

The organization says it is working to achieve a future that guarantees human rights, freedom and equality for all those “living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean,” meaning Palestinians and Jews alike.

The organization believes that achieving this future “will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime ends.”

She points out that "the essence of the apartheid system existing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is to strengthen and perpetuate the sovereignty of one group over another."

Accordingly, B'Tselem is working to "change this reality, realizing that this is the only way to achieve a future where human rights, freedom and equality are guaranteed for all human beings who live here, Palestinians and Jews alike."

What are B'Tselem's activities?

Since its founding in 1989, B'Tselem has been documenting, researching and publishing statistics, testimonies, videos, position papers and reports concerned with "human rights violations committed by Israel in the occupied territories."

The organization says on its official website, “The initial mandate we assumed focused on the occupation regime in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and in the Gaza Strip.”

It added, "Over the years, it has become clear that the concept of two parallel regimes operating between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River – permanent democracy west of the Green Line and temporary military occupation to its east – is disconnected from reality."

The organization believes that the entire area controlled by Israel is “governed by a single apartheid regime, which governs the lives of all the people living in it and operates according to a single organizing principle: to establish and sustain the control of one group of people - the Jews - over another group - the Palestinians - through laws, practices and state violence.” ".

Honoring B'Tselem

B'Tselem says that during more than 30 years of work, it has achieved a "prestigious position" in the local and international human rights community.

The organization has received several awards, the most important of which are: the Carter-Meynell Prize for Human Rights (1989, jointly with Al-Haq), the Human Rights Award from the Danish PL Foundation (2011, jointly with Al-Haq), the Stockholm Human Rights Prize (2014), and the Human Rights Award from the Danish PL Foundation (2011, jointly with Al-Haq). French Republic (2018, in partnership with Al-Haq). The B’Tselem video project also received awards including the One World British Media Award (2009) and the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum Award (2012).

Alhurra

The European Union's foreign policy official offers proposals for the situation in Gaza after the war.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell presented proposals on Monday related to the administration of the Gaza Strip in the post-war period between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement, and called on Arab countries to play a greater role in the Palestinian administration of the Strip in the future.

Borrell, who heads to Israel, the Palestinian territories and other neighboring countries this week, said we must think about what will happen after the war, even as the fighting rages.

He added that the international community had failed "politically and morally" to reach a lasting settlement to the long-standing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and that the time had come to strengthen efforts aimed at reaching a two-state solution.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Borrell presented his proposals of objecting to three things and agreeing to three others.

Borrell objected to any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the return of the Israeli army to permanently occupy the Strip or change its area, in addition to objection to the return of Hamas.

He said there should be a “Palestinian Authority,” which he suggested would be a “strengthened” version of the current Palestinian Authority that runs the West Bank, “with legitimacy defined and determined by the (UN) Security Council.”

Borrell called on the Arab countries to participate strongly in supporting this Palestinian Authority, and he also stressed the need for the European Union to participate more in the region, especially in establishing a Palestinian state.

“There will be no solution without a strong commitment from Arab countries, and it cannot be limited to money. They cannot just pay the costs of physical reconstruction,” Borrell said.

He continued, "There must be a political contribution to building a Palestinian state."

The European Union does not play a prominent diplomatic role in the current crisis, but it has some influence in the region, especially as the largest party granting aid to the Palestinians.

"We have been absent for a long time. We have delegated the solution of this problem to the United States but Europe must participate more," Borrell said.

Reuters

by Sanaa Al-Jak

The Arab and Islamic bet is growing on a change in international public opinion towards the war of extermination waged by the Israeli killing machine against the people of Gaza, and it is relying heavily on popular movements and demonstrations that denounce the killing of Palestinian civilians, perhaps leading to pressure on its countries to abandon absolute support for Israel, do justice to the Palestinian people, and reach an agreement. A fair solution to his case.

But to what extent can such a given be relied upon?

It is known that Israel will not stand idly by exposing its image in the media game that it has controlled globally since the establishment of its entity, and it is certainly preparing to regain continued sympathy for its project to uproot the Palestinians from their land as compensation for the historical European persecution of the Jews, even though the project predates Nazism and its Holocausts by about two decades, and call for “tolerance” for everything it has committed and is committing in Gaza. It has not and will not leave any stray or incoming thing unless it invests it to its advantage.

Perhaps its concern for the image is reflected in French President Emmanuel Macron’s haste to say that he “unequivocally supports Israel’s right and duty to defend itself and the war it is waging against Hamas.”

The official French confirmation came after an Israeli objection to a previous statement by Macron urging “Israel to stop the bombing that kills civilians in Gaza.” Benjamin Netanyahu’s government rejected the statement and considered it “causes pain and discomfort to Israel,” and contradicts “the facts and the moral position,” because “the responsibility to harm to civilians should not be attributed to Israel, but to Hamas.”

The Israeli government does not hesitate to consider the mere reference to the killing of civilians in Gaza as anti-Semitism, according to its modern dictionary. Accordingly, yesterday, Sunday, more than 100,000 people came out in Paris and tens of thousands across France to participate in the “Great Civil March” against “anti-Semitism,” with a remarkable presence of the French political class.

Because the thing is mentioned, it is useful to return to the memoirs of former Jordanian Prime Minister Taher Al-Masry, in which he narrates that during his work as his country’s ambassador to France, the late President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing invited him to Jordan, and the latter accepted the invitation and visited a military site in the Umm Qais region on the Palestinian border. 

When the time came for the presidential elections in France a year after this visit, the Jewish community took action and used a picture of d'Estaing on the Umm Qais website looking through military binoculars at Israel, and underneath it was written that he had not visited Israel and looked at it through Arab military binoculars. The photo was widely distributed, and had a significant impact on his loss of the elections against François Mitterrand.

The task of “taming” the international community is a supreme Israeli interest, and a permanent duty that cannot be neglected, and today more than ever before, as if the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation came as a golden opportunity to enable Netanyahu to ride the propaganda wave required to escape from his crises into a war that he wants open, and he wants at any cost, we can achieve victories that erase these crises by implicating the international community in them.

Therefore, Netanyahu continues to insist that he will not stop the war on Gaza until he eliminates the last Palestinian under the pretext of eliminating “Hamas ISIS,” and he expects the international community to be lenient regarding his committing massacres that are classified as “war crimes,” as stated in the final statement of the Arab-Islamic summit. He does not care about embarrassing Western regimes with their slogans about attacking civilians, violating human rights, and violating international laws, as long as these regimes, to date, have not exerted actual pressure on him to stop the war.

The French newspaper Le Figaro revealed that a number of French ambassadors to the Middle East sent a letter expressing their regret for President Emmanuel Macron’s bias towards Israel.

The French newspaper stated that "the memorandum by the French ambassadors criticizing Macron's policy towards the Gaza war is tantamount to a diplomatic rebellion."

The French ambassadors considered Macron's bias towards Israel to constitute a break with Paris's historical balanced position towards the Israelis and Palestinians.

Le Figaro explained, "The French ambassadors' memorandum is an unprecedented step in France's modern diplomatic history with the Arab world."

It indicated that about 10 French ambassadors to the Middle East and some countries of the Maghreb collectively signed a memorandum expressing their regret over Macron’s fall into the Israeli camp during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, according to the information collected by the newspaper.

A diplomat in Paris, who saw the memorandum, explained that it was directed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in turn sent it to the Elysee Palace.

The source says the document could be viewed as a diplomatic rebellion.

The ambassadors affirm that "France's position in support of Israel from the beginning is not accepted in the Middle East and is considered a break with our position, which is historically characterized by balance between Israelis and Palestinians."

Sky News

The State of Qatar condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli occupation’s bombing of the headquarters of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, and considered it “a blatant violation of international law, and an extension of the occupation’s approach to targeting civilians and civilian objects, which also included hospitals, schools, population centers, and shelters for the displaced.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed - in a statement - that the bombing of the headquarters of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza is an extension of the policy of targeting people, especially since this committee worked, through its projects, to alleviate the suffering of the population in the Gaza Strip, which is in crisis due to the long siege and ongoing aggression.

The Ministry stressed the need for the international community to move urgently to hold Israel accountable for its repeated crimes against civilians and civilian objects, and to oblige it to comply with international laws.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry also called on the Israeli occupation to stop providing flimsy justifications for targeting civilian objects, health facilities and civilians, and to use misleading information, and stressed that this cannot be accepted, under any consideration, as an excuse to target the headquarters of the committee that has remained concerned with rebuilding what the occupation destroyed in its repeated wars. On the Gaza Strip.

Arab condemnations

For its part, the Gulf Cooperation Council condemned Israel's bombing of the headquarters of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, considering the targeting as further evidence of the brutality of the occupation forces.

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli occupation forces’ targeting of the headquarters of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, saying that “this targeting is an extension of Israel’s violation of international laws.”

The Omani Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed the Sultanate’s denunciation and condemnation of the Israeli occupation forces targeting the headquarters of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, and expressed its solidarity with the State of Qatar.

Kuwait expressed its condemnation of the bombing of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza by the occupation forces, considering the targeting a “heinous act” that perpetuates Israeli hostilities against the Palestinian people.

The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the Israeli occupation forces' bombing of the headquarters of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, describing it as a "heinous war crime" that Israel adds to its criminal record.

Source: Al Jazeera

As the Israeli aggression on Gaza enters its 39th day, fierce battles continue between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli occupation army in several areas in the Gaza Strip, while the occupation continues its clear incitement to continue targeting and blockading hospitals in clear violation of international humanitarian law.

31 killed due to Israeli bombing on Jabalia

A number of Palestinians were martyred and others were injured on Monday evening, and 12 homes were completely destroyed by bombing carried out by the Israeli occupation on the Jabalia Services Club area in the northern Gaza Strip.

The official Palestine TV said on the Telegram platform: “Dozens of bodies were recovered, and 12 homes were completely destroyed, in an (Israeli) occupation bombing that targeted the Jabalia Services Club area.”

Later, the television said that "31 bodies have been recovered so far."

Palestinian Red Crescent: An attempt to evacuate Al-Quds Hospital failed

The Palestinian Red Crescent announced the failure of an attempt to evacuate Al-Quds Hospital in the Tal Al-Hawa area in Gaza City, after the Israeli occupation army decided to return the convoy allocated for evacuation and return it to the Red Crescent branch in Khan Yunis, despite having previously obtained the green light, under the pretext of a security incident occurring in the area despite the inspections being carried out. For the caravan.

The Palestinian Red Crescent indicated, in a statement, that “yesterday, the displaced were evacuated via a route determined by the occupation forces, and according to special and difficult conditions,” adding that its medical teams, the sick, the wounded, and their companions were trapped inside the hospital without food, water, or electricity, numbering 300.

Government Media Office in Gaza: The occupation is paving the way for the destruction of hospitals

The government media office in the Gaza Strip said, in a statement, that the Israeli occupation army “promotes lies and practices misinformation and incitement in preparation for destroying hospitals and killing patients,” noting that this falls within “a failed attempt to justify the crimes it committed by bombing the Baptist, Shifa, Indonesian, Rantisi, Public Service, and Jerusalem hospitals.” And the Turkish and other hospitals, which claimed hundreds of martyrs and wounded civilians, children and women.”

He pointed out that the occupation's lies are "also in a failed attempt to justify its killing of the sick and wounded, its sniping of medical personnel, its firing of fire and shells at the displaced, and its targeting of ambulances," calling on the international community to "stop this farce and these open methods and lift the cover and green light it gave to the Israeli occupation army to commit more crimes." These crimes are against children, women, and civilians, and against hospitals and various health and relief institutions. We also call on them to stop the brutal war on the Gaza Strip.”

Medical sources announced at dawn today, Tuesday, the death of 5 Palestinian youths in Tulkarm camp, including 3 who were killed after being bombed by a missile fired by Israeli forces from a drone.

Israeli forces also stormed the town of Anabta, east of Tulkarm, set up a checkpoint at the junction of the neighboring town of Balaa, and sent military reinforcements towards the Tulkarm camp.

TWO MOTIONS ARE to be brought before the Dáil next week regarding Israel. The Social Democrats will bring a motion forward on Wednesday calling on the Government to withdraw diplomatic status from the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich and push for the imposition of EU-wide economic sanctions on Israel. In the Dáil on Wednesday, there were fresh calls for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to expel the Israeli ambassador to Ireland. 

Varadkar insisted suspending the diplomatic credentials of the Israeli ambassador would hinder Ireland’s attempts to secure the release of eight-year-old Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand, believed to be held hostage by Hamas, and secure the safe passage of other Irish citizens from Gaza.

In a statement today, Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said: “Our motion calls on the Irish Government to lobby for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement on the grounds that the human rights clause in the trade deal has been seriously breached. “The EU should also suspend Israel’s access to the €95 billion Horizon Europe fund for research and innovation. “Given Israel’s failure to cease the deliberate targeting of civilians, journalists, UN staff and healthcare workers, the Government must withdraw the diplomatic status of the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland.”

The vote on the motion is expected to take place on Wednesday. It is not yet known if government will seek to amend the motion by introducing its own countermotion. International Criminal Court Sinn Féin will bring a motion forward which will call on the Government to refer to the Israeli attacks in Gaza to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation. 

On Wednesday, Varadkar said it was the Government’s understanding that a referral was not necessary for an investigation to begin as the ICC has jurisdiction over what goes on in Gaza, but that he would look into the matter and confirm that position.  Ireland has made such a referral recently, in March 2022, when it joined 37 other countries in referring a case against Russia to the court.

A referral would expedite the process of opening a case as it would let the court’s prosecutor proceed without needing the approval of ICC judges. G7 ministers on Wednesday called for Israel to defend itself “in accordance with international law”, while Taoiseach Leo Varadkar recently said that some of Israel’s actions in Gaza were “something more approaching revenge”.

On Thursday, Varadkar also said that there is an “insistence that humanitarian law should be observed.” “Failure to do so can’t be inconsequential forever,” said Varadkar. “Double standards will lead to no standards if not checked.” When asked about Varadkar’s comments at a screening of Hamas attacks at the Israeli Embassy in Dublin on Tuesday, Israeli ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich insisted to reporters that Israel’s actions in Gaza are in line with international law.

In a statement today, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Foreign Affairs Matt Carthy welcomed Varadkar’s remarks that failure of Israel to observe humanitarian law can’t be inconsequential. 

Israel rules out ceasefire as Gaza health officials say over 11,000 now killed in conflict

What is a war crime and is international law being broken in Israel and Gaza? “The first consequence should be the reiteration of our demand for immediate ceasefires, for the immediate release of all hostages, and for the unconditional adherence by all parties to their commitments under international law and the UN charter,” Carthy said. “Ireland should also exercise our right as a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to refer the actions in Palestine and Israel to the Prosecutor of the court for the purpose of requesting an investigation into any acts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide that have occurred in Gaza over the past month,” he said. “Sinn Féin will bring a resolution to the Dáil next week mandating the Irish government to make such a referral.” 

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett also welcomed the move from the Social Democrats and commended his oppositional colleagues. Barrett said: “It is now critical we put unbearable pressure on this government to support these calls, expel the ambassador, impose sanctions, and refer Israel to the ICC for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.” “I urge people to come in their thousands and tens of thousands to the Dáil this Wednesday at 6pm before the vote takes place to force the government finally take concrete steps to pressure Israel to stop this murderous slaughter.” His party also commended the Social Democrats for bringing the motion forward and using the time in its private member’s meetings to discuss the topic.

Egyptian and Western diplomatic sources in Cairo revealed, in an interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, “a Western and American shift regarding plans to dismantle the population density in the Gaza Strip, after the decline in the chances of a plan to displace the population of the Strip to the Egyptian North Sinai Governorate, in light of Cairo’s adherence to its position.” who rejects this plan.”

An Egyptian diplomatic source, who declined to be named, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, “The last few hours witnessed a new proposal for the stage after the cessation of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, which aims, through multiple steps, to dismantle the population density in the Strip and reduce the number of its residents away from the idea of displacement.” Or resettlement in neighboring countries.

The source explained, “The new proposal is based on providing broad facilities to residents of the Gaza Strip, through residency permits and job opportunities, in the United States of America, and a number of European countries that bless the proposal, in addition to some Arab countries, provided that priority, according to the proposal, is for residents of the northern regions of Gaza Strip”.

According to the source, the proposal comes “within the medium-term plans,” noting that “countries in the Arab region have shown a willingness to cooperate with the American administration in this framework, by receiving several thousand residents of the Gaza Strip, in various sectors.”

In parallel, the same source pointed out that “the chances of resettlement in Egypt have become weak, in light of the rejection of that idea by the Egyptian institutions that influence the decision.” He pointed out that "the Egyptian side stressed that if it insists on the plan to displace the population of the Gaza Strip to Egypt, this will open the door to major security disturbances that will harm Israel itself, and will not achieve security for it as the American administration and Western powers imagine."

For his part, a Western diplomat in Cairo, who requested to remain anonymous, said in an interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that “the proposal to provide facilities for the movement of residents of the Gaza Strip to work and reside outside Gaza has been accepted by some European capitals.” He pointed out that "this proposal will definitely have controls to prevent the infiltration of those with extremist ideas," as he put it.

The source indicated that the proposal had been presented to Arab countries, "but it is still in the discussion phase." He continued: "But it can be said that it is an acceptable proposal, especially since these Arab countries need large numbers of workers."

Concerning his estimates of the feasibility of implementing this proposal from a practical standpoint, the Western diplomat explained that “the opportunities may be great,” especially in light of the devastation in the Strip, especially in the northern regions, adding that this “makes life there impossible.” He continued: "The residents of those areas will be in need of stability," and therefore a number of Gazans will welcome the move "to live better for the sake of their children."

Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ambassador Rakha Ahmed Hassan, said in an interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that “the forced deportation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is, according to international law, a crime against humanity and a violation of international human rights law.” He added: "Therefore, Egypt always warns of the dangers of forced displacement in the Gaza Strip, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world."

He pointed out that the residents of Gaza are being deported to the open "without shelter, food, medicine, water or fuel," while the Israelis are pushing them "to walk long distances, while they are being bombed by Israeli aircraft."

In turn, the Vice President of the Arab Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Dr. Mukhtar Al-Ghobashi, said in an interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that “the displacement plan is not an international plan, but rather an American-Israeli-Western plan,” amid “unlimited” American support for Israel. He added that this "comes in light of the limitless inability of the Arab world, which has so far failed to bring diesel trucks into the Gaza Strip." He considered it "a shame that this is the case."

Al-Ghobashi warned that “what Israel is doing, with the deception of the four-hour truce, leads to more displacement from the north to the south (the Strip), which is the emptying of the north at the expense of the south.” He wondered: “Will Israel succeed in this or not?” adding: “We will watch this farce and this destruction in light of American-Israeli tyranny, and in light of Arab death.”

In this context, Mohamed Mahmoud Mahran, professor of public international law and expert in international conflicts, said in an interview with Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed that “opening the doors of immigration to the residents of Gaza towards the West and the Gulf states may be an attempt to consolidate the policy of forced displacement in other ways after Direct migration failure.

He added, "Any attempt to displace the residents of Gaza under the pressure of the siege and repeated bombardment violates international humanitarian law," calling on "the international community to put pressure on Israel to lift the siege on Gaza completely, and to stop its inhumane policies that aim to empty Gaza of its population."

Sama News

Some informed sources in the Palestinian resistance reveal that Lebanese channels informed the leaders of the Hamas movement, in the name of the United States and its official institutions, that any forces belonging to the American army and present in the occupied territories of Palestine or even in the vicinity “will not participate” under any circumstances in field operations accompanied by the Israeli army in Gaza strip.

Media and other field reports and testimonies of some people in the Gaza Strip spoke of monitoring soldiers placing the American flag inside the Gaza Strip during the course of Israeli operations, and speaking English, but sources in the Pentagon denied this completely.

It seems that the American side was interested in clarifying the matter with some parties in the axis of resistance, on the basis that the only military force that was sent into the occupied Palestinian territories by the US Department of Defense and the Central Command of the US Army was the one that was made up of about 2,000 fighters, most of whom were advisors and not men of direct military action, and among them were The profound message in this direction is that this force arrived in occupied Palestine, or what is called Israel, and its strength is about 2,000 armed American soldiers, advisors, and technicians on the afternoon of last October 8.

The goal of this force is not to participate in field operations of the Israeli army, neither on the Gaza front nor on the front of occupied northern Palestine, but rather to secure and protect two nuclear reactors located in Israel, the first in the Dimona region and the second in the Tubnah desert region.

The American explanations here indicated that the goal of the American Central Command in securing the two reactors has nothing to do with the course of the Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip. Rather, this insurance’s primary goal, according to the explanations sent to the resistance factions, is to seize control of those nuclear reactors as they are very sensitive strategic and security installations.

What is intended is after the Central Command receives quick directives regarding these facilities to isolate and protect them from mutual bombardment and any operations, whether from the Israeli army or even resistance factions, and then prevent the Prime Minister and the Israeli right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu from using these reactors by exploiting the current conditions or using them either at the tactical level. Small or large regional level against the Republic of Iran.

The most important thing is to surround two American nuclear facilities to prevent any party in the axis of resistance from targeting them, while providing them with the latest air defense technologies.

These clarifications reached the resistance leadership exclusively through a Lebanese channel trusted by all parties and are believed to be linked to the former Director of Lebanese Public Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, who is a pivotal figure in transmitting messages and exchanging notes between the Americans and the Hamas movement on the one hand and between them and Hezbollah on the other hand.

The Gaza Strip possesses wealth and natural resources worth billions of dollars, which may be the reason behind the rush of great powers, the first of which is the United States, to support Israel in destroying Gaza and displacing its population.

Oil and gas reserves in the Palestinian territories are estimated at about 1.5 billion barrels of crude and 1.4 trillion cubic feet of blue fuel, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), while Israel deprives the Palestinians of exploiting them and benefiting from their revenues.

The conference said in its report: “Geologists and economists in the field of natural resources have confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory lies above large reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth, in Area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip.”

The report noted that “the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources, including oil and natural gas, by the occupying Authority imposes huge costs on the Palestinian people that continue to escalate as the occupation continues. This not only contravenes international law, but also violates natural justice and moral law.” “So far, the real costs and opportunity costs of occupation exclusively in oil and natural gas have accumulated to tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The "Gaza Marine" field, located about 30 kilometers from the coast of Gaza between the giant "Luthian" and "Zahr" gas fields, is one of the important energy fields in the eastern Mediterranean region.

The field contains more than one trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and in the past the task of exploring the field was entrusted to British Gas, but the company’s work stopped due to political disputes and Israeli interference, especially since Tel Aviv deliberately thwarted any attempt to develop it, to make Palestine its subsidiary. Entirely in the field of energy.

The Gaza Marine field remained undeveloped, while Israel has been producing natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean for years. Israel exports some gas to its neighbors, and seeks to direct more shipments to Europe, which is in dire need of blue fuel, which is the reason behind the great Western support for Tel Aviv.

In an indication of the importance of the Gaza Strip's location, UNCTAD indicated that oil and natural gas discoveries in the Levant Basin, amounting to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, are valued at approximately $453 billion.

According to international laws and agreements, the Palestinians have the right to exploit their natural and underground resources, but the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip may turn these hopes into a mirage.

The American website "Mondoweiss" published a report in which it confirmed that the only solution that would stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza is for the Israeli army to suffer a defeat, as happened to it when it invaded southern Lebanon.

  The website said in its report that the Gaza Strip is being subjected to the most intense bombing in the history of the Middle East, which has already been torn by conflicts, and the mass killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces are being committed on a daily basis. On the other hand, there is a growing belief that there is a level of death, destruction and suffering beyond which Western governments will stop or It significantly reduces its participation in the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, as well as its support for its actions.

But this assumption - according to the site - reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how such governments set their policies. Until the present moment, Israel has imposed a comprehensive blockade on the Gaza Strip, depriving an entire community of all basic supplies except oxygen. Entire towns and neighborhoods were destroyed. Within one month, more than 10,000 people were killed and perhaps three times that number injured, more than a third of them children.

  The website added that the Israeli bombing campaign has no legitimate military purpose or goal, but rather its clear goal is terrorism, revenge, physical destruction, and punishment of the entire society. The bombing campaign did not weaken the military capabilities of the Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip in any way. According to its own statistics, Israel has killed more UN employees than Palestinian military commanders.

If the scale of Palestinian death, destruction and suffering had actually played a role in Western governments' calculations, it would have made a difference. While Israeli forces directly and repeatedly bomb schools, hospitals, refugee queues, UN facilities, self-declared safe zones, and all forms of civilian infrastructure, most Western governments proudly continue to support the Israeli government. Pope Francis is almost the only Western leader who did not visit Netanyahu.

The site stated that during the siege of Beirut in 1982, the previous Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, and almost all other Israeli campaigns against the Palestinians since 1948 and especially after 1967, the policies of Western governments revolved around “Israel’s right to defend itself,” which is considered a duty and obligation, and it is the right The same thing that these governments have not granted to the Palestinian people on a single occasion since 1917.

For example, in 2023 US and European Union officials began referring for the first time to specific massacres of settlers in the West Bank as “terrorism.” However, they conspicuously refrained from stating that Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against terrorism. Instead, they called on the state that armed the settlers, deployed them as auxiliary militias to implement its policies, and ensured impunity for their actions, to exercise restraint. When governments cite Israel's right to self-defense against an occupied people, they are, in effect, supporting Israel's right to dispossess an entire people and seize their lands.

The website emphasized that what will bring about a change in the essence of Western policy is the Israeli military failure. For this reason, the Biden administration has devoted more energy to forcing Israel to formulate achievable goals. To give a prominent recent example in this regard, in 2006 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cheerfully welcomed Israel's war against Lebanon as "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." Confident that Israel would crush Hezbollah, the United States strongly rejected efforts to achieve a cessation of hostilities. 

But once Israeli armored columns and ground forces faced carnage when they attempted to advance into southern Lebanon, the United States immediately changed its tune and pleaded with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a ceasefire resolution.

In 1982, the United States gave Israel the green light to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon. Once it became clear that it lacked the capacity to occupy West Beirut, the Reagan administration sent Philip Habib to negotiate an agreement to protect the PLO. In other words, as long as the United States and other Western governments reject the truce in Gaza and focus on meaningless phrases such as “humanitarian truces,” it means that they still believe that Israel will or can succeed. If they reversed their position, this would mean that they concluded that Israel had failed.

The site noted that the alternative scenario is that Western governments have concluded that their behavior and Israel's behavior constitute a major threat to their own interests, and that the time has come to end the war. This could come in the form of growing instability in the region, threats facing puppet regimes within it, and the possibility of an expanded war that would require direct intervention, which the United States prefers to avoid, not to mention concerns about domestic economic or security repercussions, or partisan political possibilities or electoral calculations. .

In the absence of accountability or any opportunity for Israel to bear any consequences for its behavior - there has never been an example in which Israel has faced significant and sustained repercussions for its policies since 1948, so Israel knows it can move forward undeterred.

Arabic21

The majority of Jews in Israel support implementing measures against Gaza, which have received international criticism, such as preventing food and medicine supplies to the Strip; Respondents also showed a willingness to accept damage to democratic values through the adoption of emergency regulations during a period of war.

An opinion poll, the results of which were published on Monday, revealed that the majority of the Israeli public, 66%, largely supports holding elections in the country at the end of the war on Gaza, which continues for the thirty-eighth day.

The poll conducted by the Institute for Freedom and Responsibility at Reichmann University in Herzliya, in cooperation with iPanel, showed that the majority of Jews in Israel support implementing measures against Gaza that have received international criticism, such as preventing food and medicine supplies to the Strip; Survey participants also showed a willingness to accept harm to democratic values by adopting emergency regulations during a period of war, according to what the Walla website reported.

The results of the survey show a feeling of distrust among citizens in the state and its ability to help in times of need. Only 19% of the public confirmed that they feel to a large extent that they can rely on state assistance when needed, while 36% reported that they feel this to some extent, while 44% indicated that their confidence in the state’s ability to provide assistance is less than that.

According to the poll, the Jewish public supports the various measures that the Israeli army is using or may use in the Gaza Strip, and they have already received strong international criticism. For example, on the “legitimacy” scale, which ranges from 1 to 7, the Jewish respondents answered that preventing the entry of food into Gaza is legitimate at a level of 5.7, according to them, and the percentage was also similar in the case of preventing the entry of medicines into Gaza.

Regarding cutting off electricity and fuel from Gaza, the Jews supported this at a level of 6.3, while support rose to 6.6 in the case of bombing residential neighborhoods in which the Israeli army claims that Hamas was present, and it reached a level of 6 in the case of bombing hospitals in which fighters are present.

The poll showed the Israeli public's willingness to accept significant damage to democratic values, after the government exercised its authority several times to pass emergency regulations, without public discussion and Knesset approval since the beginning of the war.

While the government's judicial advisor, Gali Bharav Meara, explained that emergency regulations do not constitute a legitimate legislative tool in general, and must be used in very exceptional cases; The poll showed that the majority of the public, 52%, largely supports imposing emergency regulations, while 26% supports it to some extent.

In this regard, the poll showed that support for emergency regulations is higher among coalition voters (74%) than among opposition voters (39%).

The poll also revealed widespread support for restricting freedom of expression, which affects Arab citizens the most, as 69% of participants responded that they largely support banning demonstrations “out of sympathy with the residents of Gaza.”

On the other hand, the public is more hesitant about banning demonstrations demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; In the sample polled, the percentage of those who strongly support banning this is 42%.

Ministers and members of Likud are considering dismissing Netanyahu with a vote of no confidence

In a related context, ministers and Knesset members in Likud are considering the dismissal of party leader Netanyahu, in a vote of no confidence in him, in light of “the situation in Gaza being discussed the day after the war, and the political system (in Israel) being discussed the next day.” According to what Israeli Channel 13 reported in a report on Monday evening.

According to the report, until the past few days, this was not the case in the statements of Likud politicians, even if they were high-ranking, in not revealing their positions regarding the day following the end of the war. But "in recent days, the matter seems a little more serious, whether because of the number of Knesset members and ministers participating in the consultations, or because opposition party leaders have begun to participate" in this regard.

The report stated, “The rationale of Likud Knesset members is that if Netanyahu remains at the head of the party and Israel heads to elections, and in the event of Likud’s possible defeat, many of them will no longer form an important part of the political system.” Therefore, “a large group (of Likud), based on this background, began to examine the possibility that after completing the important ground step, that is, even after Minister Benny Gantz leaves the emergency government, they will move to a step of no confidence” against Netanyahu.

If such a step is taken, “the government will be headed by a senior Likud leader, who will commit not to run in the next elections.”

Confrontations broke out between citizens and Israeli occupation forces, Monday evening, in the town of Ya'bad and the village of Jalboun, in Jenin Governorate.

According to local sources, the occupation forces stormed the town of Ya'bad, leading to confrontations during which soldiers fired rubber-coated metal bullets, stun grenades and tear gas, but no injuries were reported.

In the same context, the occupation forces stormed the village of Jalboun, leading to the outbreak of confrontations.

The Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip, Thomas White, warned on Monday that the agency’s humanitarian operations would be halted within 48 hours because fuel would not be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip, against which the Israeli occupation forces have launched an aggression since the 7th of last month.

According to European Euronews, White said, “Two of the agency’s main contractors stopped working this morning because they ran out of fuel,” indicating that this would deprive 200,000 people of drinking water in the besieged Strip.

Introduction

Two days after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” on October 7, 2023, targeting Israeli military sites and settlements in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli security mini-ministerial “cabinet” declared a state of war, and prevented the arrival of water and electricity supplies. And fuel and food supplies to the already besieged sector. 

The Israeli government took advantage of the strongly supportive American position to launch a fierce military operation with an open horizon in the hope of bringing about a radical change in the Gaza Strip, and through it the Palestinian issue and the entire region, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But with the change in the international “mood” as a result of the policies of collective punishment practiced by Israel against civilians, and the targeting of hospitals and schools, the question becomes more urgent about the extent to which the Netanyahu government can continue its aggression against Gaza in light of its inability to achieve some or all of the goals it set for the war. In fact, there is a group of factors that lead to prolonging the war, while another group may contribute to shortening its duration.

Factors that lead to prolonging the war

1. Difficulty in achieving war goals: 

Israel has set itself a number of difficult goals, namely eliminating the military power of Hamas and its rule in the Gaza Strip. Then it added two other goals: returning the Israeli prisoners and abductees and achieving victory in an unequivocal manner. The difficulty of achieving these goals stems from the fact that this requires the Israeli army to completely occupy the Gaza Strip, in light of the presence of about 2.3 million Palestinians, which means committing widespread massacres and crimes against humanity without this necessarily leading to achieving the goals of the war.

Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the Israeli army has not fought an urban war, and its readiness and the capabilities of its ground forces have not been tested, with there being a widespread belief within Israel that they are unprepared. The Israeli army uses three divisions in its war on Gaza City and the areas north of the Gaza Strip. His forces are advancing there very slowly to avoid causing major losses among their ranks, which would prolong the war. Despite the Israeli army’s superiority in numbers and equipment, its use of road-clearing bulldozers for tanks, tracked vehicles, and other military vehicles, and its support and advice from American military experts in urban warfare, it finds it extremely difficult to advance in Gaza City due to the stubborn resistance it faces. The Palestinian resistance fighters know the area well, and are trained in urban warfare. 

They suddenly appear from tunnels, trenches, from among the rubble, or from the buildings that are still standing, and direct their anti-tank missiles and light weapons against its tanks, vehicles, and soldiers, and then quickly disappear. Therefore, the Israeli army finds it very difficult to occupy Gaza City and eliminate the resistance there. Israeli Security Minister Yoav Galant and Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy believe that the army needs many weeks, or months, to occupy Gaza City and the entire northern Gaza Strip and eliminate resistance there.

Even if the Israeli army is able to occupy Gaza City and the northern region of the Strip, this does not mean that Israel has achieved the goals of the war, because Hamas may nevertheless maintain at least part of its military capabilities, which means that Israel will then go, if the powers cannot Regional and international, from stopping its aggression against the Gaza Strip, to occupying its center and south; This will require additional months, according to what Israeli military commanders say. Even if the Israeli army is able to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, this does not mean the end of military operations there, as resistance may continue in the form of commando operations against the Israeli army forces in the Strip.

2. The Israeli leadership has set achieving decisive victory as a primary goal of the war on the Gaza Strip, along with eliminating Hamas and its rule. 

The concept of victory here includes rebuilding the deterrence capacity and restoring the prestige of the army and security institutions that collapsed on October 7, and this matter takes a long time to achieve. Israeli leaders realize that it is difficult to erase the defeat inflicted on Israel by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and its strategy, perceptions and assumptions towards the Gaza Strip, at a time when various forms of Israeli strategic, military and intelligence failure are still clearly visible. 

What increases the bitterness of the defeat on October 7 is that the party that directed the strike against Israel was not a large country to be reckoned with, but rather a resistance movement in the small Gaza Strip that has been besieged since 2007, killing more than 1,400 soldiers in Israel in one day. And civilians, and several thousand wounded, and about 240 others captured, some of whom were taken from their military bases, including the headquarters of the “Gaza Division” in the Israeli army and the “Yarkon” base of Military Intelligence (Aman), which is considered one of the most important military intelligence bases in Israel.[ 1], Palestinian resistance members also occupied about 20 Israeli kibbutzim and continued “fighting there for about two full days”[2].

For the Israeli leadership, achieving victory does not only mean eliminating Hamas and its rule in the Gaza Strip, but it also means, to a greater extent, teaching the Palestinians an unforgettable lesson for daring to resist and humiliate Israel by inflicting the greatest possible number of losses of life and property, and committing massacres. Successive attacks against civilians, within the framework of what has become known in Israeli literature as “cauterization of consciousness.” Committing successive massacres against Palestinian civilians is not necessary to eliminate Hamas and its rule in the Gaza Strip, nor does it come only to satisfy the instinct for revenge, but rather, according to the concept of “causing consciousness,” it is part of the equation for achieving victory, in which the Palestinian losses in lives and property must not be proportional in any way to Israeli losses. 

The victory equation is an important part of the process of restoring deterrence and prestige to the Israeli army locally, regionally and internationally. It means, as the Israeli Minister of Agriculture and member of the Political Security Cabinet, Avi Dichter, stated, committing a second Nakba against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, greater than the first Nakba in terms of the number of deaths and displacement.

The statements of Israel's political and military leaders come, such as Netanyahu's statement about the "extermination of Amalek", Halevy's speech to his soldiers, clips of which were broadcast on Israeli television, stating the need to annihilate the enemy, the statements of many Israeli leaders and analysts about the need to erase Gaza from the map, and the statement of Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu from the Judaism Power Party, regarding the use of nuclear weapons against the Gaza Strip as one of the possible possibilities[3], in the context of achieving the equation of victory over the Palestinians.

3. Prolonging the war serves Netanyahu, Gallant, and the leaders of the military and security establishment, especially the Chief of General Staff, the head of Military Intelligence (Aman), the head of General Intelligence (Shin Bet), the head of Mossad, the commander of the Air Force, and the commander of the southern region in the Israeli army, as they are responsible for the “disaster” of October 7. 

With the exception of Netanyahu, the leaders of the Israeli military and security establishment announced that they bear responsibility for the failure that occurred that day. Netanyahu, Gallant, and the leaders of the military and security establishment believe that prolonging the war and moving away from October 7 may reduce the burden of criticism and calls to hold them accountable for failure and negligence, and that achieving the goals of the war, or some of them, including committing massacres against Palestinian civilians and demonstrating the destruction. The massive inflict by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip may satisfy the Israelis’ instinct for revenge and alleviate their resentment towards those responsible for the negligence and failure, and may score positive points for the leaders of the political and security establishment in the official investigation committee that is certain to be formed upon the completion of the war on Gaza.

4. The differences, tensions, and mistrust that exist between Netanyahu on the one hand and Gallant and the leaders of the military and security establishment on the other hand contribute to prolonging the war, as each of them seeks to appear as the party most committed to the war’s goals, within the framework of continuous bidding aimed at winning over Israeli public opinion.

5. The military support that the United States provides to Israel contributes to prolonging the war, because it now has enough ammunition to continue it for a long period.

Factors that affect stopping aggression

There are a number of factors that may push Israel to reconsider its calculations and stop the aggression against the Gaza Strip, the most important of which are:

1. The position of the American administration is one of the most important factors that can influence Israel’s decision to stop the aggression against the Gaza Strip. The US administration so far supports Israel's goal of eliminating Hamas rule in Gaza, but American support for Israel is not open-ended, and may change if Israel fails to achieve its goals during the next few weeks, especially if opposition increases within the United States to the policy of supporting Israel's war on Gaza. And it has begun to seriously affect the chances of Joe Biden being re-elected to the US presidency, if it also becomes clear that its continued support for the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip may harm American interests in the region, or weaken its position in the face of a global public opinion whose opposition to Israeli crimes and violations in Gaza is growing.

2. Israeli society is extremely sensitive to the losses that the army can suffer during military confrontations. So far, Israeli public opinion seems ready to bear losses at the current rates, considering that the price is acceptable for restoring what happened on October 7, but if the losses increase significantly, this will affect public opinion’s position on the war, and it may begin to exert pressure to finish it.

3. The Israeli army relies heavily on reserve forces, thousands of whom were called up for duty in the early days of the war. Although it is not known precisely how many reserve forces have been called up and are actually serving in the Israeli army currently, and even if the number of reserve forces serving in the Israeli army is less than 360,000 as some Israeli media reports stated, keeping them in service causes great harm to the Israeli economy, which constitutes a pressure factor to shorten the war, even if it requires changing its objectives.

4. It is expected that pressure will increase to quickly end the war from about 125,000 displaced Israelis who were evacuated from the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip and the area adjacent to the Lebanese-Israeli border, to inside Israel. They want to return to their areas and live their lives normally.

5. Large sectors of the Israeli economy are exposed to significant losses due to the continued aggression against Gaza. There is conflicting data about the extent of the losses to the Israeli economy, but it is clear that the continuation of the war for a long period will inflict huge losses on the Israeli economy and may cause a severe economic crisis.

Conclusion

The chances of forcing Israel to stop its aggressive war on the Gaza Strip remain weak. The factors driving its continuation seem more likely at this stage, especially in light of the failure to achieve any of its goals so far. Retreat at this stage will be seen as a new defeat, the consequences of which Israel cannot bear at the level of deterrence. In addition, the continuation of the war benefits Israel's political and military leaders on a personal level, because it strengthens their position if they achieve some of the war's goals before the investigation committees that will be formed to hold those responsible for the negligence and failure that occurred on October 7 accountable. Without a stronger Arab position and great pressure on the American administration, Israel is likely to act according to its own time in its aggressive war against the Gaza Strip.

[1] Ronen Bergman and Itay Ilnai, “Investigation: The series of incomprehensible errors that led to the October 7 surprise,” Yedioth Ahronoth Supplement, 10/20/2023. (in Hebrew)

[2] Sima Kadmon, “This Will Not Be a Victory,” Yedioth Ahronoth, 11/10/2023. (in Hebrew)

[3] Yehontan Liss, Noah Spiegel, and Jackie Khoury, “Minister Eliyahu: Nuclear power in Gaza is one way, this Netanyahu is disconnected from reality,” Haaretz, 11/5/2023, viewed on 11/13/2023, at: https:// bit.ly/47xz6pd (in Hebrew)

Source: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies

The Jordanian House of Representatives unanimously agreed on Monday to invite its president, Ahmed Al-Safadi, to review the agreements signed with Israel and provide recommendations to the government, according to the Council’s account on the X platform (formerly Twitter).

Ahmed Al-Safadi said, according to a video clip published by the “Al-Mamlaka” channel of the parliament session on Monday: “I call on, in your name, the legal committee to review the agreements signed with (the usurping entity) and to make the necessary recommendations regarding them in order to present them to the government, to be conditional on stopping the aggression against Gaza.”

Al-Safadi added: “I place this proposal in the hands of any colleagues who wish to present it to the Council for a vote on it, as the bylaws do not allow the President of the Council to submit proposals.”

The Speaker of the Jordanian House of Representatives affirmed during the Council session: “I call on the Legal Committee to establish a framework, through official channels, before the International Criminal Court to investigate and hold accountable the war crimes and genocide committed in Gaza, and to circulate this step to the Arab and Islamic parliaments.”

Ahmed Al-Safadi added: “Some are practicing theorizing about the resistance in the steps it is taking, and we say to them: (You have nothing to do with what the resistance decides. Remain silent. They are the owners of the land and the cause, and you are the ones who have failed, and it is not permissible for the one who is sitting to issue a fatwa to the resistance).”

Al-Safadi pointed out that “the efforts of the Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II, contributed to changing global public opinion, after he had been led by the (false entity) narrative,” he said.

Isaac Brick

The Israeli army has succeeded, so far, in removing parts of Gaza City from the face of the earth, while Israeli army forces are moving towards the heart of Gaza City. There were almost no clashes with Hamas "saboteurs" above ground, and no enemy combatants stood in front of the Israeli army. As is known, Hamas chose to hide in underground tunnels, instead of fighting the Israeli army. The army was able to kill a few hundred "saboteurs" in the movement's sites that the army decided to attack, and in these attacks, we lost quite a few victims.

We have not yet begun working to achieve the goal for which we launched this campaign, which is to eliminate the rule of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements in the Gaza Strip. There are tens of thousands of “saboteurs” hiding in tunnels extending about a thousand kilometers in length under Gaza City, in the southern Gaza Strip, Khan Yunis, and other towns. The talk is about two Hamas brigades in Gaza City, and three Hamas brigades in the southern Gaza Strip, where we have not yet begun fighting.

Simultaneously with the process of removing these parts of Gaza City, international pressure began calling for an end to the fighting there. The source of this pressure is the thousands of dead Gazans not involved in the hostilities, whose images are spread all over television channels around the world, and in some countries we are given names such as “child killers and perpetrators of war crimes.” These international pressures also stem from the situation experienced by approximately two million Gazans in the southern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of them fled Gaza City. They live in very dire conditions, with very serious humanitarian problems, and the imminent arrival of winter may make their deteriorating situation much worse.

Pressure on Israel from countries around the world is increasing, due to the possibility of the war expanding into a regional war. All of this will not provide the Israeli army with the time required to address the issue of the tens of thousands of “terrorists” present in the city of tunnels located under Gaza City, and it will certainly not allow the issue of the tens of thousands of “terrorists” present in the southern Gaza Strip, in the Khan Yunis area, to be addressed. And the towns we haven't reached yet. The goal of the war, as we mentioned, is to uproot Hamas’ authority in the Gaza Strip and its military structure, but estimates indicate that this uprooting process will take a few years.

Our entry into the fighting in the southern Gaza Strip (in Deir al-Balah, then Khan Yunis), after completing our activity in Gaza City, will force us this time to displace about two million Gazans, some of whom live in that area, and some of whom fled from Gaza City to South, with our encouragement, so that they can receive humanitarian assistance. Where exactly can we emigrate these people to? Will the world agree to displacement? Do we have a chance to fight for the next two years in the Gaza Strip?

The solution is for the political echelon to announce that in exchange for us recovering the 240 kidnapped sons of ours, it will stop the campaign. This is a request that the world will understand, and after we get the kidnapped ones, we will think about how we can continue.

The catastrophe that Israel experienced on October 7 exposed the Israeli rejectionist front, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu's words in the press conference the day before yesterday indicate that the destructive theory that he leads still exists. Not only does he maintain Israel's overall security control over the Gaza Strip, but he declared that "there will be no civil authority to pay salaries to the families of the 'killers.'" Here he means the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

It seems that Netanyahu's words are directed inward, and his goal is to fortify his authority. He himself expressed reservations about the return of Israeli civilian control over the region, and thus distanced himself from the messianic extreme right. But it is difficult to find an Arab or international party that would volunteer to bear this difficult task, and the Palestinian Authority is the only one that can bear responsibility for the 2.2 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. 

The campaign that Netanyahu is waging against power is devastating, and indicates that there has been no change in theory.

Netanyahu must say “no” to “terrorism,” and “yes” to the diplomatic channel, and not just to security cooperation. The Authority's leadership has previously made clear that the condition for its return to Gaza is a return to the negotiating table regarding the two-state solution. President Joe Biden also made clear that he adheres to this solution. The meeting between Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and PA President Abbas confirms that the United States sees the PA as a partner for Israel in the political solution.

The disaster of October 7, and the multi-front confrontation that began after it, brought together the Palestinian issue with the Iranian issue and its branches. The Prime Minister, who remains silent about those who stir up strife, such as Ministers Yisrael Katz and Avi Dichter, who talk about a “second Nakba,” and others who dream of returning to Gush Katif, is endangering the peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt and the Abraham Accords. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has publicly announced that the normalization of relations with Israel is conditional on the progress of the settlement with the Palestinians. A political process that would give the Palestinian Authority a broad umbrella from the Arab League and Islamic countries.

Netanyahu continues his strategy that has brought Israel to the abyss: pushing the Palestinian Authority into a corner, with the aim of thwarting any possibility of a two-state solution. And the coalition cooperation with the settlers’ party, the result of which was to ignite the region, instead of asking the Minister of Defense to put an end to the incitement carried out by settler rioters who do whatever they want, and to open a diplomatic channel with Abbas.

Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot should not be satisfied with participating in military steps, defending the home front, and feeling “together we win.” They must explain well to Netanyahu that going to all-out war must include ending the political boycott imposed on the Palestinian Authority, and restoring its standing among the Palestinian people and Israeli citizens.

Jordanian King Abdullah II confirmed on Monday that any scenario or idea of reoccupying parts of Gaza or establishing buffer zones there will exacerbate the crisis, stressing that this is unacceptable and is considered an attack on Palestinian rights.

The king reiterated his statement during his meeting with the heads of the Senate and House of Representatives, former prime ministers and politicians, according to Petra Agency, that neither the military nor the security solution can succeed, stressing that the war must be stopped and a serious political process should be launched that leads to a two-state solution.

He also stressed the importance of the unity of the Palestinian territories and supporting the legitimate authority, warning that Gaza should not be separated from the rest of the Palestinian territories.

He stressed that the highest priority today is to stop the war on Gaza and bring in sufficient aid, calling on the international community to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in the Strip immediately, out of respect for international law and the Charter of the United Nations.

His Majesty considered that what Gaza is witnessing in terms of collective punishment, the killing of civilians, and the demolition of all vital facilities, including hospitals and places of worship, are not acceptable to heavenly laws or human values, noting that he clearly warned that the Israeli violations in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the attacks of the colonialists will lead to the explosion of the situation in The region and the expansion of the conflict.

He reiterated that the origin of the crisis is the occupation and the deprivation of Palestinians of their legitimate rights, and said, "The solution starts from here. Any other path will result in failure and more cycles of violence and destruction."

His Majesty stressed that no one can compete with Jordan’s firm position and its continuous efforts to defend our people in Gaza, and said, “We have been and will remain the strong support and main support for our brothers in Palestine,” indicating that Jordan’s positions towards the Palestinian issue are firm and stem from an absolute belief that what links us to Palestine It is a shared history and future.

“We realize that increasing pressure has begun on Israel,” Cohen said, adding: “I estimate that this is a window of time of two to three weeks until the heavy international pressure begins” on Tel Aviv.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen reported increasing pressure on Israel regarding its ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, estimating that the pressure will increase significantly within two or three weeks.

“We realize that increasing pressure has begun on Israel,” Cohen said, adding: “I estimate that this is a window of time of two to three weeks, until heavy international pressure begins” on Tel Aviv.

According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, “Israel received the green light for a military response after October 7, and is now at the end of the orange light, before the red light.”

This comes as military analysts in Israeli newspapers pointed out, yesterday, Sunday, that there are several factors that would prevent the continuation of the war on Gaza in its current form and intensity, in addition to the “structural contradiction” between Israel’s two goals in this war - eliminating the Hamas movement and returning the prisoners in Gaza. Gaza, while world public opinion is pressuring the leaders of Western countries to in turn exert pressure on Israel and demand a ceasefire in light of the horrific number of civilian martyrs in the Gaza Strip.

As the Israeli occupation forces approach the Shifa Hospital in Gaza and besiege it more and more, claiming that Hamas leaders are under it, the military analyst in the Maariv newspaper, Tal Lev Ram, pointed out that besieging the hospital “constitutes an opportunity for Hamas through increased international pressure and criticism.” "The world directs it to Israel. It would also encourage violent incidents against Jews around the world, and cause Hezbollah to escalate its military operations against Israel."

He added, "It is clear that the passage of time does not play in Israel's favor. Hence the large gap between the feeling of the success of the forces in the field and the big questions about whether the military operation, no matter how good it is, will bring Israel closer to achieving the major goals of defeating Hamas and returning the kidnapped people."

The American administration leaked through American media that Israel’s time in the war in its current form is “limited,” and that it has a week or two at most to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. The Israeli army appears to be isolated from the world, according to the Israeli media, which indicates that the army is talking about that the war will continue for many months.

The number of applications for licenses to possess weapons in Israel has reached 190,000 since October 7, according to Hebrew media.

The Hebrew economic newspaper "Calcalist" said on Monday: "Since the beginning of the war, more than 190,000 weapons license applications have been submitted to the Ministry of National Security, and in the first ten months of 2023, more than 210,000 applications have been submitted, and the year is not over yet."

It added: “So far, about 31,000 licenses have been issued. For comparison, in 2022, 42,000 applications were submitted, and about 13,000 licenses were granted.”

As for “in 2021, about 20,000 applications were submitted, and about 10,000 licenses were issued,” according to the same source.

The newspaper explained that "weapon production has increased in Israeli companies."

It added, quoting the owners of arms production companies: “All production machines have been working non-stop and around the clock for more than a month, even on weekends, and every day they provide hundreds of assault rifles to the Israeli army units, which are fighting on the front, and to the reserve groups that are arming themselves.” , and personal pistols, to the civilian market that woke up terrified by the massacre in the south (the Gaza envelope), and it jumped by hundreds of percent last month.”

It pointed out that "the arming process is dangerous, but arms manufacturers and dealers come up with ready-made answers such as: It is not the weapon that kills, but the person who pulls the trigger," and "licenses are issued selectively, professionally, and in a responsible process."

It stated that "the price of a personal pistol ranges between 3,000-4,000 Israeli shekels (775-1,033 US dollars), while companies indicate that they have not raised prices due to high demand."

It continued, "Weapons made in Israel are only a small part of the arms market."

It quoted Amos Golan, head of the firearms department at the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce, as saying: “98 percent of weapons in Israel are imported.”

It pointed out that the head of the settlement council in the northern West Bank, Yossi Dagan, submitted a request a few weeks ago to purchase 200 assault rifles from an Israeli factory.

In recent weeks, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir announced the distribution of thousands of assault rifles in the West Bank, northern and southern Israel.

The economic newspaper said: “The war in Gaza has taken over the entire Israeli arms industry, with production floors busy working against the backdrop of the global arms fever, which was created by the war between Russia and Ukraine.”

It added: “On the first day of the war, they rushed to side with the Defense Ministry’s expectations, diverted all production to the needs of the Israeli army and stopped exports, despite everything that meant.”

It pointed out that "arms companies do not care about the opportunities they are missing these days abroad, as they know that in the midst of battles it will be very easy to sell to the world the weapons that were used by the special units of the Israeli army in the war in Gaza."

It pointed out that the companies consider that “sales to the Israeli army and security forces are a sign of the quality of any product in the weapons sector,” in reference to the ease of marketing them globally if the Israeli army uses them.

It added: "While many companies have been closed, the Israeli arms industry has not previously recorded such demands since the establishment of the state," referring to the large demand for weapons.

Last June, the Israeli Ministry of Defense said that the country’s total arms exports to many markets around the world reached $12.5 billion in 2022.

The ministry stated in a statement that Israeli arms exports have more than doubled since 2014, and jumped by 50 percent in the past three years alone, according to what was reported by the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

For 38 days, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, which led to the killing of more than 11,180 Palestinians, including 4,609 children, 3,100 women, and 678 elderly people, and injured more than 27,490 with various injuries, according to official sources, as of Monday morning.

The Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, condemned in the strongest terms the occupation forces’ targeting of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, especially Al-Shifa Hospital, which is the main health center in the Strip.

Aboul Gheit stressed that this act is devoid of human conscience and is criminalized by all laws, in addition to being a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

Gamal Rushdi, spokesman for the Secretary-General, quoted Aboul Gheit as saying that these brutal attacks on hospitals housing the sick and wounded must stop immediately, holding international parties responsible for still giving Israel the green light to continue an extrajudicial war, using methods that are unacceptable to any human conscience. .

On the other hand, Rushdi stated that the Secretary-General of the League received, today, Monday, at the headquarters of the General Secretariat, General Patrick Gochat, head of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization mission, which was established by a UN resolution in 1948 to monitor the armistice agreements between Israel and four Arab countries.

He said that Aboul Gheit listened to an assessment presented by the UN official of the security and field situation on the various fronts, where the Secretary-General of the Arab League stressed that the continuation of the war in Gaza and the failure to adopt an immediate ceasefire is what raises the possibility of security deterioration and the conflict moving to other fronts, and that those seeking to Contain the conflict and work immediately to achieve a sustainable ceasefire.

Gaza faces annihilation

For the 38th day in a row, the occupation continues its aggression against the Gaza Strip since it began on October 7, after the Palestinian resistance carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, in the Gaza envelope area.

The raids launched by occupation fighters continue, targeting the homes of defenseless civilians, in addition to targeting hospitals, mosques and churches, which has led to thousands of martyrs and wounded, while those who have survived the bombing so far suffer from catastrophic humanitarian conditions.

According to the latest statistics issued by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the death toll from the Israeli aggression since October 7 has risen to more than 11,180 martyrs, including more than 8,000 children and women, in addition to more than 28,000 wounded.

A Turkish aid ship carrying field hospitals for the Gaza Strip arrived at the port of Al-Arish, near the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, according to what an official in the port located in northern Sinai, Egypt, told Agence France-Presse.

The ship is the first to carry field hospitals for Gaza to arrive in Egypt at a time when all Gaza hospitals are out of service, according to the Ministry of Health in the Strip. The Turkish Ministry of Health confirmed that “the ship that arrived in Al-Arish carries equipment, supplies, and ambulances to establish 8 field hospitals.”

An official in the Turkish Ministry of Health confirmed that Ankara requested the approval of the Egyptian authorities to establish these hospitals in Al-Arish, which is 40 kilometers from the Rafah crossing, explaining that the Egyptian authorities had already given the green light to establish the hospitals in the places they specified.

Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza more than 6 weeks ago, the Rafah crossing, the only outlet for the besieged Gaza Strip to the outside world, has been opened intermittently and limited aid has entered from it, while a limited number of those who were injured in the Israeli bombing of the Strip and hundreds of foreigners and dual nationals have left.

Doctors Without Borders warned that hospitals in Gaza City could become “morgues,” as thousands of residents of northern Gaza are crowded into hospitals surrounded by tanks and bombed by Israeli aircraft. While the wounded remain in the streets, those displaced to the south complain of tragic conditions, where there is no shelter no medicine or food.

The latest reports indicate that there are wounded people in the streets without medical care, as ambulances are unable to transport them, with aircraft bombing every movement in the vicinity of hospitals.

Since the seventh of last October, the occupation army has launched a continuous aggression against the Gaza Strip, which has led to the martyrdom of more than 11,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children, in addition to the destruction of the health sector and various vital facilities.

Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh announced today, Monday, his rejection of Israeli calls to establish temporary camps for the displaced in the southern Gaza Strip, during his speech at the weekly government meeting in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank.

Shtayyeh said: "We refuse to establish temporary camps for the displaced, as the Israeli army requests from international organizations. We want our people to return to their homes from which they were displaced. In the history of Palestine, there is no such thing as temporary. Experience has taught us that temporary is permanent."

He added: "We are struggling in all international circles to stop the aggression, and to secure the delivery of food and medicine to all areas of the Gaza Strip, especially the north, and we are doing everything possible to save our people there."

In this context, Shtayyeh called on the United Nations and the European Union to "drop aid into the Gaza Strip, especially the north, by parachute, as happened in various experiences in the world, and to open relief corridors to Gaza and not limit it to the Rafah crossing only."

He continued: “I say to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposes the return of authority to Gaza and wants to maintain the occupation for a long time, that his policy will bring calamity on them,” noting that the Gaza Strip “is part of the land of Palestine that was occupied in 1967, and we do not need anyone’s permission to help our people.” there".

Al-Shifa Hospital

Shtayyeh expressed his "regret that some countries are still calling for Israel's right to defend itself," explaining that "the aggressor has no right to self-defense."

He continued: "Whoever supplies Israel with weapons now is a partner in the aggression against the blood of children, women and innocent people from our people," noting that Israel has made Al-Shifa Hospital "an address for its control over Gaza, as if it were a military barracks."

He added: "The (Al-Shifa) hospital contains wounded and sick people, and whatever the justification, bombing hospitals, cutting off their electricity, and preventing fuel and oil from reaching them can only be considered a war crime according to international humanitarian law."

For 3 days, the Israeli occupation forces have besieged the vicinity of hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, denying water, food and fuel to these health facilities. The occupation army is targeting Al-Shifa Hospital and its surroundings, and the rest of the hospitals in the Strip, with continuous bombing.

Earlier today, the director of the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, Muhammad Abu Salamiya, announced that the number of martyrs due to the interruption of services and electricity in the hospital had risen to 20 people, including 6 premature babies and 9 wounded and other patients in the intensive care department.