The United States is pressing Arab leaders to take steps to prevent or contain any escalation resulting from the potential Israeli occupation of Gaza, while Arab officials fear that their silence on Israel’s invasion of Gaza may spark street protests, according to The Wall newspaper. American Street Journal.

The American newspaper explained in a report, Saturday, October 14, 2023, that some Arab officials fear that images of the violent bombing in Gaza and its buildings that were leveled will push their country’s citizens to protest in the streets. Increasing support for Hamas in a way that makes it the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people; And strengthening Hezbollah and the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen.

During the past week, American officials sought to convey these fears of Israel’s invasion of Gaza to their counterparts in Tel Aviv.

Framing the Arab response to Israel's invasion of Gaza

One of the Arab diplomats said that the goal of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's tour of Arab capitals is to seek to frame the expected response from those countries to Israel's invasion of Gaza, which may be extremely destructive to Gaza.

In the meetings he held in Tel Aviv and in the countries he visited in the region, Blinken sought to urge Arab countries to put aside mistrust of Israel and cooperate to isolate Hamas, and to stand firmly in the face of the threats of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its strong supporter, Iran.

American pressure in the region relies on a long-term American effort to normalize stable relations between the Israeli occupation and Arab countries, and the ability of these efforts to overcome the complications arising from the recent violence and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, according to what the Wall Street Journal reported.

Blinken said before his meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan: “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people nor their legitimate aspirations for the future,” but rather, “Hamas is a terrorist group. Its only program is to destroy the State of Israel and kill the Jews. It is important for the whole world to see this.” Grammar.

Meanwhile, the White House said that US President Joe Biden, on Saturday, October 14, made a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Biden also told Netanyahu that Israel has the “firm” support of the United States, and discussed American coordination with the United Nations, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, “to ensure that innocent civilians have access to water, food, and medical care.” He told Abbas that he would offer his "full support" to the Palestinian Authority's efforts to seek to provide humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

The American mission will not be easy

However, cutting off Hamas - nor reassuring Arab allies who have little confidence in Israel - was not easy. The ruling family in Qatar wanted to continue hosting the political office of Hamas on its territory to enable communications regarding prisoners held by Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, said in the press conference he held with Blinken, Friday, October 13, that the Hamas office will remain open “as long as communications remain open at the present time, and work is underway to put an end to for this conflict.

Meanwhile, American officials realize that there are restrictions on Arab leaders that prevent them from speaking out against Hamas, for fear that they would thereby violate popular support in their countries for the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Evidence of this is that Saudi Arabia criticized Israel in its comment on the Hamas attack and the subsequent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

On Saturday, October 14, the Saudi Foreign Minister said: “It is important that we all condemn the targeting of civilians in any form, at any time, and by anyone.”

In Egypt, US officials pressured their Egyptian counterparts to negotiate the exit of foreign residents in Gaza and the entry of humanitarian aid.

American and Arab officials also said that discussions between the two countries focused on securing the safe exit of an estimated 500 to 600 Americans in Gaza. The Egyptian President's government has held similar talks with several countries looking to remove their nationals from Gaza after the outbreak of war.

However, these talks did not address the fate of Palestinians who may wish to leave the Gaza Strip before the expected Israeli ground invasion. An Arab official said: “The idea of opening the Rafah crossing to [all] civilians was not discussed.” Rather, “the Americans only talked about safe passage for those holding American citizenship.”

Biden's support for Israel

On the other hand, the strong support provided by the Biden administration to Israel is one of the factors that adds difficulties to Blinken’s mission to pressure Arab countries.

However, the United States believes that strong military support for Israel is critical to deter Lebanese Hezbollah from opening a second front in northern Israel, and to prevent violence from spreading to the West Bank.

Moreover, any reluctance to support Israel would strengthen the political attacks of Republican Party supporters seeking to regain the presidency in the White House.

Despite this, American officials claim that they do not seek to shape the Israeli military campaign against Hamas, but rather only support it, and stress that they want to rely on the Israeli occupation to reduce the repercussions on civilians, which is a major demand of Arab countries.

The Prisoners' Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club announced that the administrative detainee, Kayed Al-Fafsous, decided to suspend his open hunger strike, which lasted for (75) days, against his administrative detention.

According to a statement issued by them, today, Monday, the suspension of the strike came after a call and letter sent to him by his family, as well as the competent institutions through the lawyer of the Prisoners’ Authority, who was able to visit him today in “Ramla Prison”, after (12) days had passed since the competent institutions’ requests to allow him to visit him. .

The call from his family and institutions came out of great fear that the occupation would single him out and assassinate him, in light of the comprehensive aggression launched by the occupation against our people and fellow prisoners in all prisons who are facing the collective retaliatory measures that have been imposed on them since the seventh of this month.

The Prisoners' Authority and the Prisoners' Club confirmed that the detainee Kayed Al-Fasfous, who waged an empty struggle against the crime of administrative detention, had been in complete isolation from the outside world over the past period, and had no knowledge of what was going on outside, due to the harsh conditions of isolation.

A court session will be held for him the day after tomorrow in the Supreme Court of the Occupation in Jerusalem, to consider the petition submitted by the lawyer of the Prisoners’ Authority.

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By SOPHIE POMMIER

On October 7, 2023, Ismaïl Haniyeh appeared on the screens of the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera in his office in Doha. He gave a twenty-minute speech explaining the causes and objectives of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, launched from Gaza the same day. This text deserves to be studied closely. It is indeed very instructive on a political level and ultimately rather measured. Prior to the massacres of civilians in Gaza, the speech, first broadcast on YouTube, was then censored.

The head of the Hamas Political Bureau appeared soberly dressed as usual in a white shirt and a jacket adorned with a pin in the shape of the Palestinian flag. He expressed himself in a controlled manner, far from the vociferations of certain preachers or war leaders, even if the tone became harsher towards the end. He also varied the language register used, moving from classical Arabic which dominates the discourse to Palestinian dialect when it comes to evoking the suffering of the people of Gaza, or the fate of the prisoners which takes on an emotional and affective value. particular. In the background, a view of Jerusalem with the Dome of the Rock illustrates the double dimension of the conflict, national and religious.

WE WARNED THEM...

The speech returns several times to the origin of the current escalation, attributed both to Israel's aggressive attitude and the indifference of the international community to the tragedy of the Palestinians. Hamas did not want this war but was forced into it. The text evokes the imminence of danger and the risks jeopardizing the very survival of Palestine. It is this context which would have forced Hamas to act, Israel remaining deaf to its repeated warnings. Hamas explicitly places responsibility for the attack on Israel, on the international community, and more indirectly on the Arab regimes in the region.

To show that patience is running out and that “enough is enough” the formula “How many times…” comes up several times to punctuate the speech.

FEAR OF ISOLATION

By exposing the weakness and failures of the Israelis, the operation launched by Hamas shows the limits of an alliance with Tel Aviv. The reference is clear: it is the Abraham Accords, signed by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on September 15, 2020, under American sponsorship. Milestones were then laid to extend this alliance to Morocco and Sudan, attracted on this path by other considerations.

Incapable of ensuring its own protection, Israel will be even less able to guarantee that of its new allies. Haniyeh points out – and he is not the only one – the failure of Israeli intelligence and security apparatus:

You must know that this entity which is incapable of protecting itself against our fighters is incapable of providing you with security or protection. The whole process of normalization and recognition, all the agreements that have been signed [with Israel] can never end this battle.

The danger against which Arab countries seek to protect themselves by moving closer to Israel is obviously Iran. The message from the Hamas leader is particularly aimed at Saudi Arabia, which recently seemed to be making great strides on the path to normalization. It is clear in fact that the rallying of the new heavyweight of the regional scene to the Abraham Accords would deal a fatal blow to the already very measured support of the Arabs for the Palestinian cause. The tone against this abandonment becomes accusatory: “Today, Gaza is erasing from the Arab-Muslim Community the shame of defeats, the shame of acceptance and inaction.”

This question of normalization between Israel and certain Arab states arises very quickly in the course of the argument. The speaker returns to it again at the end of his speech, which testifies to the importance of this point. This insistence can actually lead one to question the degree of involvement of the Iranians in the launch of the operation, as an article in the Wall Street Journal dated October 8, 20231 does. It is obvious that the rapprochement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv would deal a very heavy blow to the Iranians and reinforce their isolation.

AN APPEAL TO THE ARAB-MUSLIM COMMUNITY

In his speech, Haniyeh returns to the unsustainable blockade imposed on the population of Gaza:

Gaza which has suffered this blockade for almost twenty years2 during which there have been four or five wars3 which have caused tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded, houses destroyed, Gaza which is experiencing this humanitarian tragedy, this giant prison which locks up more of 2 million of our people and our families.

He evokes the deterioration of the situation of the Palestinians in recent months: Israeli raids in the West Bank, the deaths of innocent civilians, the desecration of holy sites, the limitations imposed on Palestinians in the exercise of their worship at al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, and at the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Ibrahim Mosque) in Hebron, as well as the abuses of the settlers. He reports serious threats weighing on the West Bank, where “two million” settlers are ready to settle, and on the Muslim holy sites of which the Israelis are preparing to take control.

Islamist movement obliges: the speech opens with the usual religious formulas. The general tone is that generally used by Islamic fighting organizations, with recourse to hyperbole and high-sounding, triumphalist rhetoric. It is peppered with eight Koranic references. The question of holy places is raised several times, to evoke their desecration or the risk of seeing Muslims dispossessed of their places of worship. It sheds light on the name of the operation launched against Israel, with a double religious connotation: “Al-Aqsa Flood”. The choice of the background image is part of the same register.

Haniyeh encourages Arab-Muslim people to support the Palestinians:

Gaza is the spearhead of the Resistance and started this battle, but as it is a battle that concerns the land of Palestine and Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, it is the battle of the entire Ummah. This is why I call on all the children of this Umma, wherever they are in the world, to join, each in their own way, in this battle, without delay or turning away.

By this injunction, he of course intends to strengthen the scope of the offensive. It is also about putting Arab leaders at odds with their populations, showing that rapprochement with Israel is massively rejected.

THE FATE OF THE PRISONERS

The text is also intended to be universal in scope: it calls for solidarity with the Palestinians and general mobilization. The Palestinians are of course concerned, all Palestinians wherever they are (in Palestine, in Israel, in the diaspora), who must defend their land. Part of the al-Qassam Brigades, extended to other factions of the Resistance and then to all Palestinians, the current war is not exclusively that of Hamas, even if it leads it. The emphasis here is on unity. The operation is part of the cycle of intifadas and completes their cycle. It also concerns, beyond the Arab and Muslim peoples, all men of good will who want to fight injustice.

The fate of the prisoners, whose number the Hamas leader estimates at 6,000, and the blockage of negotiations for their release take on particular importance in his speech. For the Palestinian population, this is a crucial point and therefore an element of legitimacy for Hamas. Haniyeh names the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir as the major architect of the tension on this issue, with the tightening of detention conditions. He is also the only Israeli official cited in the text. The Israeli supremacist was also implicated in the fiasco of the Israeli security forces on the edge of Gaza, for having weakened and exposed them by moving troops towards the West Bank, in order to support the settlers. But these crossed accusations will not necessarily end his political career.

The Israeli refusal to accept requests for release justifies the capture of Israeli prisoners and hostages to force them to resume discussions. On this point too, warnings had been issued on several occasions.

THE POSSIBILITY OF A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT

Listening carefully to the speech, we will see that Ismaïl Haniyeh does not close the door to a possible political settlement. First of all, the enemy is not stigmatized as a non-Muslim, he is not identified as a “Jew” but rather as an “Israeli”. The existence of Israel is therefore not called into question, which reflects the evolution of Hamas in relation to the text of its 1988 charter which called for replacing Israel with an Islamic state, and advocated jihad against the Jews. A new text published in 2017 already adopted a more realistic position.

Haniyeh does not call for the destruction of Israel as, for example, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did in 2005. While he himself declared in 2012 in Tehran that Hamas would never recognize Israel, he is content here to demand the departure of Israelis from Palestinian lands, the counterpart of the fate that they had reserved for the Palestinians. But he remains quite vague on his vision of Palestine, effectively leaving the door open to the two-state solution. The time has passed when the movement aimed to reestablish Palestine “from the Mediterranean to the Jordan”. When the leader of Hamas mentions the territories occupied in 1948, it is above all to denounce the discrimination suffered by internal Palestinians: “How many times have we warned you about what you are committing and perpetrating in the occupied territories in 1948, and your attempts to isolate our people there? »

Likewise, the Qur'anic verses chosen are not those which call for fighting “the infidels”, but rather for standing up against injustice and testifying to the courage and dignity of believers. Allusion is even made to the three holy books: the Torah, the Gospel and the Qor'an. The theme of dignity is very present and comes up numerous times. It’s about erasing shame, speaking out against the “culture of helplessness and despair”.

Some will object that this relatively moderate speech is nothing but duplicity and that it certainly in no way reflects the positions of Mohamed Deif, the leader of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, with whom Haniyeh affirms its solidarity. Deif, in charge of operations on the ground, is undoubtedly partly responsible for the abuses against civilians, although he called in his own speech to spare the elderly and children. However, by including Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations in the same way as its armed branch which previously appeared there, part of the international community has rejected all these actors in the same category of unacceptable. In 2003, when the question arose, France was reluctant and believed that it was necessary to maintain dialogue with Hamas. But in the complicated context of the second intifada, it ended up complying and giving in to pressure from its European partners.

REOPEN NEGOTIATIONS?

Analysis of this speech reveals two essential points. The first is the desire to dissuade Arab states, and particularly Saudi Arabia, from pursuing rapprochement with Israel. The choice of medium is not insignificant: Al-Jazeera has made a specialty of supporting the Palestinian cause. While Qatar paid with several years of isolation for its proximity to the Muslim Brotherhood – an allegiance to which Hamas is attached – and its enthusiasm for the “Arab Spring”, it was more or less reintegrated in 2021 into “the family golfer”. By relaying the words of Haniyeh who installed Hamas offices in Doha in 2016, the small emirate persists and signs, relaying the voice of the Arab people to their leaders. A commitment which should be seen as irritating, particularly by the Saudis. In any case, the latter clearly perceived the challenge: Crown Prince Mohamed Ben Salman reacted to recent events by affirming that the Kingdom “stands alongside the Palestinian people to assert their legitimate right to a dignified life, to realization of their hopes and aspirations and the finalization of a just and lasting peace”. The Saudi foreign affairs statement again calls – albeit rather weakly – for a two-state solution. An almost obligatory reminder to which the United Arab Emirates also paid lip service at the time of the launch of the Abraham Accords. However, it is not certain that after the crisis, Riyadh will not return to Tel Aviv.

Paradoxically, and this is the second point, the offensive launched by Hamas perhaps aims to reopen negotiations. It is not insignificant that it was launched the day after the celebration of the 1973 war. Haniyeh also draws the parallel by speaking of a “crossing” (“oubour”) to describe the breakthrough of the Israeli lines, following the terminology used at the time, regarding the crossing of Egyptian troops through the Suez Canal. By taking the initiative for the attack, President Sadat had then re-established a form of balance with the enemy allowing him to initiate negotiations and a process of normalization with Israel, without being in a position of too great inferiority and without lose face. The Islamist leader says it explicitly: the Israelis underestimated the Palestinians. These remain important interlocutors, which cannot be avoided, the establishment of a future settlement of the Palestinian question remaining the essential prerequisite for the establishment of regional peace and the end of the cycle of violence and bereavement.

Contrary to what was expected, the unfolding events - in particular the massacres of Israeli civilians - have seriously undermined support for the Palestinian cause in the Western world. It remains to be seen whether the current war will set the region ablaze and put people on the streets or if, once the emotion has subsided and the victims have been counted, History will resume its course, further marginalizing the Palestinian question. Hamas would then have lost its bet.

By SOPHIE POMMIER

Arabized, with a degree in history and political science, she taught at Sciences Po Paris and held diplomatic positions in the Near and Middle East region, particularly in Iraq and Egypt. 

Source: Orient XXI

It was also in the month of October, exactly 50 years ago, in 1973. The Egyptian and Syrian armies crossed the cease-fire lines ad inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli army. What a dreadful commotion in Tel Aviv! While their intelligence services had information that an attack was imminent, the political leadership remained cloaked in its arrogance: defeated in 1967, the Arabs could not fight any more; the occupation of Arab lands could go on unchecked and ad infinitum.

‘IS TRYING TO GO HOME AN AGGRESSION?’

At the time, many commentators in Europe and the United States denounced ‘an Egypto-Syrian aggression, unjustifiable, immoral and unprovoked’ – a term which Israel’s leaders are especially fond of since it makes it possible to obfuscate the root of these conflicts: the occupation. Michel Jobert, then French foreign minister displayed a clear-sightedness which honored his country: ‘Does trying to set foot on one’s home territory necessarily constitute an aggression?’1 It is true that in those years the voice of Paris soared a thousand leagues above the occidental chorus and proclaimed that the recognition of the Palestinians’ national rights and the evacuation of the Arab territories occupied in 1967 were the keys to peace.

If, in 1973 the hope of putting an end to the occupation of Egypt’s Sinai and Syria’s Golan Heights was legitimate, fifty years later is the determination of the Palestinians to rid themselves of the Israeli occupation illegitimate? Tel Aviv, just as in October 1973, was caught short by the Palestinian action and suffered an exceptionally heavy military defeat. This time too, the occupiers’ arrogance, their contempt for the Palestinians, the conviction of this Jewish supremacist government that God is on its side, all contributed to its self-deception.

The attack, launched by a joint military command regrouping most of the Palestinian organisations under the leadership of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades (military wing of Hamas) was a surprise not only because of the moment chosen but also by its magnitude, its degree of organisation and the military capacities exhibited which made possible, among other feats, to overrun Israel’s military bases. It united all Palestinians and gained widespread support throughout the Arab world, even though its leaders are trying to come to terms with Israel on the backs of the Palestinians. Even Mahmoud Abbas, President of a largely demonetised Palestinian Authority whose main reason for being is its security cooperation with the Israeli army, felt obliged to declare that his people ‘had the right to defend themselves against the colonists’ and occupation troops’ reign of terror’ and that ‘we must protect our people.

ALL TERRORISTS!

Each time the Palestinians rebel, the West, – so prompt to glorify the resistance of the Ukrainians – speaks of terrorism. Thus, President Emmanuel Macron ‘firmly condemned the ongoing terrorist attacks against Israel’ without a word about the continuing occupation which is the source of the violence. The resilience of the Palestinians, tenacious, irrepressible, stubborn always amazes the occupiers and appears shocking in the eyes of many Westerners. As at the time of the first Intifada in 1987, or the second in 2000, at the time of the armed actions on the West Bank or the mobilization in favor of Jerusalem or the clashes around Gaza, under siege since 2007 and which has suffered six wars in 17 years (400 dead in 2006, 300 in 2008–2009, 160 in 2012, 2,100 in 2014, nearly 300 in 2021 and several dozen in the spring of 2023). The Israeli rulers accuse their enemies of ‘barbarity’, of disrespect for human life, in a word, of ‘terrorism.’

The accusation allows the accusers to wrap themselves in the cloak of righteousness and a clear conscience, camouflaging the apartheid system of an unbelievable brutality which oppresses the Palestinians every single day of their lives.

Let me remind readers once again that many terrorist organizations, pilloried as such in the course of recent history, have ceased to be pariahs and become legitimate interlocutors. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Algerian National Liberation Front, the African National Congress (ANC) and many others have been by turns described as ‘terrorists’, a word which serves to depoliticise their struggle, to present it as a confrontation between Good and Evil.

In the end the power structures had to negotiate with them. In 1967, following the Israeli aggression, General de Gaulle spoke these premonitory words: ‘Now Israel is organizing, on the territories it has conquered, an occupation which will necessarily involve oppression, repression, and expulsions. If they encounter any resistance, they will call it terrorism…

THIS IS NOT AN ‘UNPROVOKED’ ATTACK

As Israeli journalist Haggai Matar has observed:

Contrary to what many Israelis claim (…) this is not a ‘unilateral’ and ‘unprovoked’ attack. The fright which Israelis are experiencing just now, me included, is only a tiny fraction of what the Palestinians experience every day under the military regime which has raged for decades on the West Bank and under the siege and repeated assaults against Gaza. The responses we hear from many Israelis – calling for the military to ‘level’ Gaza, who say ‘they are savages, not people we can negotiate with, ‘they assassinate whole families,’ ‘there is no way to talk to those people’ – are exactly the words I have heard countless times in the mouths of Palestinians describing the Israelis.4

As in every war, one can only deplore the civilian casualties, but are there ‘good civilians’ for whom to shed a tear and‘bad civilians’ like the Palestinians who are killed every day on the West Bank and whose death elicits so little indignation?

The political and geopolitical context in the region will be completely turned around in a way which it is difficult to predict at this point. But what the current events lend credence to, once again, is the fact that an occupation always unleashes a resistance for which the occupiers alone are responsible

As article 2 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen dating from 26 August 1789 proclaims: resistance to oppression is a fundamental right, one to which the Palestinians can justifiably lay claim.

Alain Cresh Publication director of Orient XXI. A specialist in the Near East, he is the author of several books

Source: Orient XXI

Thursday night’s order by the Israel Defense Forces to Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate their homes within 24 hours was dangerous and deeply troubling. Any demand for a mass evacuation on extremely short notice could have devastating humanitarian consequences.The evacuation order applies to approximately 1.1 million people. 

It applies to a territory that is already besieged, under aerial bombardment and without fuel, electricity, water and food. It applies to a territory that has suffered critical damage to roads and infrastructure in the past week, making the act of evacuating nearly impossible in the first place. It applies to United Nations staff members and more than 200,000 people sheltering in UN facilities, including schools, health centers and clinics. It applies to hundreds of thousands of children: Nearly half of Gaza is under the age of 18.As secretary general of the United Nations, I appeal to Israeli authorities to reconsider.We have approached a moment of calamitous escalation, and find ourselves at a critical crossroads. 

It is imperative that all parties — and those with influence over them — do everything possible to avoid fresh violence or spillover of the conflict to the West Bank and the wider region. We urgently need a way out of this disastrous dead end before more lives are lost. There are several key priorities to focus on right now in order to pull the world back from this abyss. 

The United Nations and our partners need rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access now throughout Gaza. Humanitarian aid including fuel, food and water must be allowed to enter.All hostages in Gaza must be released. Civilians must not be used as human shields.International humanitarian law — including the Geneva Conventions — must be respected and upheld. Civilians on both sides must be protected at all times. Hospitals, schools, clinics and United Nations premises must never be targeted. 

I mourn my colleagues in Gaza who have already lost their lives in the last week. And still, United Nations personnel are working nonstop to support the people of Gaza. We will continue to do so.I have been in constant contact with leaders in the region. It is clear that the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East is polarizing communities around the world, widening divides, and spreading and amplifying hate. If truth is the first casualty of war, reason is not far behind.I am horrified to hear the language of genocide entering the public discourse. People are losing sight of each other’s humanity. Brutality and violence cannot be allowed to obscure a fundamental truth: We are all the product of our lived realities and collective history.

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset put it this way: “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” — “I am myself and my circumstances.” And sometimes, those circumstances are unbearable. When I put myself in the shoes of an Israeli Jew, I experience the recent horrors in the context of two millenniums of discrimination, expulsion, exile and extermination, leading to the Holocaust. 

During the 15th century, my own country of Portugal expelled or forcibly converted its Jewish community and after a period of discrimination, they were forced to leave. As an Israeli Jew, I would be painfully aware that some in our neighborhood do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. And if today, as an Israeli Jew, I see young people massacred at a concert, grandmothers shot in their homes in cold blood, and scores of civilians, including children, brutally abducted and held at gunpoint, it is only natural for me to feel enormous pain, insecurity and, yes, blind fury.

Then I try to consider the circumstances across the divide: if I were a Palestinian living in Gaza. 

My community has been marginalized and forgotten for generations. My grandparents may have been forced to leave their villages and homes. If I’m lucky, my children have already survived several wars that flattened their neighborhoods and killed their friends.As a Palestinian, I have nowhere to go and no political solution in sight. I see the peace process essentially ignored by the international community, with ever more settlements, ever more evictions, and endless occupation. It is only natural for me to feel an enormous sense of pain, insecurity and again, blind fury. Clearly, the grievances felt by the Palestinian people do not justify the terror that was unleashed against civilians in Israel. 

I once again utterly condemn the abhorrent attacks by Hamas and others that terrorized Israel. And clearly, the horrific acts by Hamas do not justify responding with collective punishment of the Palestinian people. But any solution to this tragic, decades-long ordeal of death and destruction requires full recognition of the circumstances of both Israelis and Palestinians, of both their realities and both their perspectives. We cannot ignore the power and the pull of collective memory; the circumstances that shape and define our identity and our very essence.

Israel must see its legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see a clear perspective for the establishment of their own state realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements. If the international community truly believes in these two objectives, we need to find a way to work together to find real, lasting solutions — solutions that are based on our common humanity and that recognize the need for people to live together, despite histories and circumstances that tear them apart.Ortega y Gasset’s quotation concludes: “Y si no la salvo a ella, no me salvo yo.” (“If I don’t save my circumstances, I cannot save myself.”) This horrifying cycle of ever-escalating violence and bloodshed must end. 

It is clear that the two sides in this conflict cannot achieve a solution without concerted action and strong support from us, the international community. That is the only way to save any chance of security and opportunity for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Diplomats said that the United Nations Security Council will vote, later today, Monday, on draft resolutions from various parties regarding Israel and Gaza, according to the Reuters news agency.

The continuous bombing since October 7 led to the leveling of neighborhoods to the ground and the killing of at least 2,800 people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, according to the latest toll from the Ministry of Health in the Strip.

The ministry explained, in a statement, that about 2,750 of the deaths were in the Gaza Strip, in addition to 58 in the West Bank. The statement indicated that the number of injured Palestinians exceeded 10,950, including more than 9,700 in the Gaza Strip.

According to an Agence France-Presse count confirmed by the authorities of the various countries concerned, about 160 foreign citizens were killed, a number of whom also held Israeli citizenship. The Israeli army said on Monday that it had confirmed the presence of 199 hostages held by Hamas.

Prayers have been offered during services at two churches in the blockaded Gaza Strip, appealing to end Israel's ongoing 9-day attacks.

Amid Israel's ongoing attacks on Gaza, Christian Palestinians conducted religious services at the Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church and the Holy Family Catholic Church, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

As a result of Israel's ongoing attacks since Oct. 7, some Christian families whose homes were destroyed sought refuge in the Holy Family Church and its affiliated school.

Isa Muslih, the Jerusalem Greek Orthodox Church spokesman, said, "The world must take immediate action to stop the genocide committed against innocent Palestinians."

Muslih called for ending this war, pressure on the occupying Israeli government, and establishing safe corridors for delivering food, baby formula, and medical aid to vulnerable civilians in Gaza.

It is estimated that around 1,000 Palestinian Christians live in Gaza. Some Palestinian Christians have also been displaced and turned into refugees due to the Israeli occupation, forcing them to leave their homes.

Israel-Palestine conflict

The State of Palestine called on all states parties to the Arms Trade Treaty and its signatory states to end the transfer of any weapons or ammunition to the Israeli occupying state.

This came in a letter sent by the mission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations in Geneva, calling for an immediate end to any current transfers and prohibiting any future transfers of conventional weapons, ammunition, parts and components referred to in Articles 2 (1), 3 or 4 of the Arms Trade Treaty to Israel, The occupying Power, in particular during its genocidal aggression against Gaza, until it ends its illegal occupation of Palestine and fully complies with its obligations under international law. Pending the imposition of this embargo, all countries must immediately suspend all transfers of military equipment, aid, and ammunition to Israel.

The mission explained that Gaza, an occupied and besieged enclave of Palestinian territory, is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. There are 2.3 million people living there, 50% of whom are children, and 70% of whom are refugees. Bombing Gaza is essentially equivalent to bombing children and refugees who have nowhere to run.

The mission stated, “Over the past six days, after issuing public calls for genocide - with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to turn Gaza into a deserted island, Israel, the occupying power, began dropping 6,000 bombs weighing 4,000 tons on Gaza. It closed all exits to Gaza, It cut off food, water, fuel, gas, and electricity from the civilian population. It killed more than 2,700 Palestinians, most of them children and women. At least 11 United Nations employees, 5 members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, 16 medical workers, and 10 journalists were killed. Entire families have been wiped from the population registry in Gaza - from grandparents to grandchildren - they have been wiped out. Residential areas have been destroyed, including refugee camps, residential buildings, hospitals, schools and historical monuments. Ambulances and medical facilities have been deliberately targeted. 18 ambulances were destroyed and 8 medical facilities were severely damaged.

The mission said that the effects of the use of explosive weapons on hospitals, schools, food security, water, electricity and shelter affect millions, and that the deadly military operation launched by the occupying authority against the Palestinian population in Gaza is the sixth since 2008. In each of these operations, war crimes were committed, It was also confirmed by countless reports issued by civil society organizations around the world, United Nations bodies and investigative committees.

It stressed, "States parties to the Arms Trade Treaty have legal obligations to put an end to the irresponsible trade in conventional arms that undermines international peace and security, facilitates the commission of atrocity crimes, and threatens the international legal order."

Under Article 6 (3), States Parties undertook not to permit any transfer of conventional arms if they had knowledge at the time of declaration that the arms or items would be used to commit crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and attacks directed against objects. civilians or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined in international conventions to which they are a party.

Under Articles 7 and 11, it pledged not to permit any export of conventional arms, ammunition, parts and components that would, inter alia, undermine peace and security or be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

The mission indicated that it is clear that arms exports to Israel are not consistent with these obligations. Despite the declared support of the Arms Trade Treaty and its support for international law, a group of European countries that are parties to the Arms Trade Treaty decided to send military aid to Israel or approved Israel's use of its weapons while the occupying authority bombed Gaza and pledged to abide by it. The United States of America, a signatory, also sent large amounts of military aid to Israel.

The mission stressed that “States parties to the Arms Trade Treaty and signatory states must immediately end any action and prohibit any future transfers of conventional weapons, ammunition, parts and components referred to in Articles 2 (1), 3 or 4 of the Arms Trade Treaty to Israel.” "the occupying power."

The mission said that failure to take these measures would mean more deaths and more suffering, as thousands of civilians continue to endure the brutality of the occupying power, and discredit the Arms Trade Treaty itself. It also makes States parties and signatories vulnerable to complicity in internationally wrongful acts through assistance. Or incitement to commit international crimes.

The mission concluded that the Arms Trade Treaty could make a difference in the lives of many countries, and that it had the potential, if implemented in good faith, to spare countless potentially protected persons, including women and children, from needless suffering, if ignored. Our call to stop leaving the Palestinian people behind when it comes to implementing the Arms Trade Treaty will destroy the raison d'être of the Arms Trade Treaty.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken returned - today, Monday - to Israel on a visit, the second of its kind within days, after an Arab tour during which he sought to rally support against the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).

Blinken's plane landed at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, and he is scheduled to meet with the head of the emergency government, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other officials, as part of what Washington says are efforts to reduce tensions and prevent further escalation in Gaza.

This is Blinken's second visit, while Hebrew media reported that US President Joe Biden may visit Israel on Wednesday or Thursday.

An informed source also reported yesterday that American and Israeli officials are discussing the possibility of Biden visiting Israel soon at the invitation of the Prime Minister.

Netanyahu invited Biden to visit Israel, praising his support for responding to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation launched by the Palestinian resistance on October 7.

Source: Al Jazeera

The Israeli government’s demand that more than one million Palestinians leave their homes in northern Gaza and flee south has horrific echoes of the past.

I worked as a journalist in the region in the 1990s, and in recent years I have spent a great deal of time in Gaza and Israel, researching the history of Gaza’s 2.3 million refugees. Almost everyone in Gaza is a refugee from one of 200 Arab villages, then in southern Palestine, that were destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948 when the Jewish state came into being. What remains of some of these villages lies within 10 miles of the Gaza boundary. Some refugees can even see their land through the fence.

The first phase of Israel’s revenge for Hamas’s atrocities – the intense aerial bombardment of the past few days – was easy to predict. Every innocent Palestinian in Gaza was bound to pay the appalling price, and thousands already have.

However, I did not predict that this time the west would not only let it happen – as it has several times before – but cheer Israel on, sending arms and effectively promising impunity from international law, abandoning the Palestinians to their plight.

With the green light from Israel’s allies, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Friday that 1.1 million Gazans were to be “evacuated” from the north to the south of Gaza. Netanyahu wants us to believe his prime concern is to keep civilians out of danger during the expected ground invasion from the north, which is presumably how he plans to finally “crush” Hamas. Such empty claims – at the time of writing, 1,800 Palestinians have already been killed – are made in the hope of immunizing Israel against accusations of war crimes. Driving one million people south will cause ever more horror, and we all know by now that there is no safe place for civilians to flee to or to shelter.

When Israeli forces “cleansed” the nearby villages in 1948, the process started with the same psychological warfare we see today, warnings to flee, the dropping of leaflets, and threats of what might happen if they didn’t. Villages were generally shelled before ground troops went in; many civilians were killed, and there were massacres. The village was usually surrounded, with one exit left open for Palestinians to flee through. 

Survivors eventually went to the Gaza Strip, as it was deemed a safe area. United Nations Resolution 194, passed in December 1948, granted them a right to return. Israel refused.

If Netanyahu continues with his “evacuation” plan, history and events on the ground tell us that after the warnings and bombings we are already seeing, the refugees will flee, as they did in 1948. The one potential exit for them is into Egypt. Although Egypt is strongly opposed to accepting refugees, knowing it would be collaborating in permanent ethnic cleansing, this could change if the humanitarian crisis at its borders escalates. If Gazans do indeed flood over into the Sinai, they may not be allowed back.

The risks for Netanyahu are huge, not least because of the Israeli hostages inside Gaza. But given that his political future looks almost certainly over anyway, he may calculate that he has nothing to lose. And the Israeli right has long pressed for expelling Gaza’s population into the Sinai.

In other words, should the west and other influential actors not move to halt this “evacuation”, a process of ethnic cleansing could be under way, bringing with it the risks of a regional conflagration.

As with Israel’s expulsions in 1948, today’s leadership will then project a narrative saying that there is no safe future for Israel unless the entire population of Gaza is permanently expelled. Negotiation will then begin about whether the refugees have a right to return to Gaza, which was already a place of exile.

This scenario may sound overly apocalyptic, but as Palestinian refugees know only too well, it is not. Israel has long hoped that the story of its ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages of 1948 would be forgotten. From the first days of the 1948 flight, Israel devised its own narrative of those events, claiming the Palestinians fled under orders of the Arab leadership. When they tried to return to their villages after the war, they were labeled “infiltrators” and then “terrorists”.

Since Israel and Egypt blockaded Gaza in 2006-7, cutting it off from the world, Israel has seen reason to hope that the story of 1948 would remain hidden, too. Archives have been blocked, and the last remains of villages destroyed. But many Gazans today not only remember 1948, but feel as if they are back in it.

I have spoken to friends inside the strip who say they are determined not to be uprooted a second time, and that they would rather stay put in their houses and die there.

“I will not move. I will be killed in my house with my family,” one mother, Adalah, who lives in central Gaza, told me. Their house sits on the beach with a view out to sea, where Israeli gunboats patrol. Adalah told me she had gathered all her family in the house so they could die together.

Source: The Guardian

Sarah Helm is a former Middle East correspondent and diplomatic editor of the Independent

This week, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued a statement on “terrorist attacks in Israel” and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) followed suit with a similar statement. These are disappointingly one-eyed condemnations, as they make no reference to the 75-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestine. years and many atrocities committed against Palestinians throughout this period.

While the American Psychiatric Association portrays Palestinian resistance as “anti-Semitism and terrorism,” the right of the occupied people to resist is legal under international law and, like mental health itself, a fundamental human right.

The horrific imbalance in the declared positions of the two associations reflects a serious lack of awareness or willful neglect of the physical and psychological health effects of the occupation, especially the impact of the prolonged siege of Gaza, on Palestinians.

By failing to address the long-term suffering of Palestinians and standing unequivocally with the Israeli occupier, the two associations violated their principles of neutrality and revealed their lack of commitment to meeting the mental health needs of all people equally.

The statements of the most prominent psychiatric associations in the world ignore the historical context, the besieged population of Gaza, half of which is children, and do not mention the horrific bombing of the small Strip or what many rights groups now call genocide against the Palestinians.

In the same vein, the statements completely ignore the psychological impact and trauma even though human rights organizations have documented inhumane conditions for many years, including reports by Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Save the Children, and others.

In its brutal campaign of collective punishment, Israel has cut off food, fuel, electricity, water and medical supplies, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been forced to flee their homes.

A third of the more than 2,400 Palestinians killed and nearly 12,000 injured so far in Gaza are children, yet their lives are apparently not worthy of being mentioned by the Society for Children and Adolescents.

Even in its tepid statement on the current “crisis” in Gaza, the association cannot express “mourning” for the children who were killed, and only faint concern about the traumatic “images” to which children may be exposed, despite the young teenagers being forced to It endures five Israeli wars on Gaza, which resulted in huge numbers of civilian deaths, during the past decade and a half.

Aside from the horrific violence, Gaza has been exhausted by the crippling 16-year blockade, which has turned Gaza into an open-air prison with the highest population density. In the past few days, Israel has ordered more than a million people to evacuate without providing them anywhere to go.

The concerns of mental health professionals must include all people equally. Who better than mental health professionals to understand the importance of freedom for all human beings? Otherwise, the only explanation for such apparent double standards is that the American Psychiatric Association and the American Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Association have fully embraced the official Israeli narrative and cannot see Palestinians as human beings.

These statements further dehumanize Palestinians by ignoring the ongoing mental health challenges and collective trauma resulting from decades of oppression, ongoing violence, humiliation, and injustice imposed by the occupation. The bombing of Palestinian schools, ambulances and hospitals – including Gaza’s only psychiatric hospital – which took place on Friday morning, as I learned from its director and colleague Dr Abdullah Al-Jamal, is just one example of these recurring harms.

Such statements by medical organizations - which are allegedly not a political lobby - further inflame public sentiment and promote dangerous propaganda supporting Israel's acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Instead, the two associations could have done better in the face of the vicious lies spread by the US government and the media, including the vicious slander of “headless children” that has since been debunked. If these organizations were truly concerned with the well-being of civilians or children, they could have objected to the massive arsenal of US military aid to Israel, which helps Israel implement its genocidal plans against the Palestinians.

The American Psychiatric Association and the American Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Association could have served the people of Israel better by helping them to make sense of what happened, internalizing it in their experience as occupiers, and helping them to shed their arrogant attitudes and sense of entitlement. They can also help stop future violence by recognizing the legitimate struggle of Palestinians to live in freedom and dignity and recognizing that where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

A more balanced and compassionate approach is necessary – one that acknowledges mental health struggles on both sides and calls for a fair solution for both people. Initial decisions must be based on human rights and international law.

Mental health as a basic human right was the theme of the recent World Mental Health Day on October 10. Working for global mental health requires a holistic, inclusive perspective that truly supports all those affected by this long and ongoing crisis.

Palestinian psychiatrists and mental health workers call on all colleagues and health organizations, both physical and mental, around the world, to adhere to the ethics of our professional role and not to corrupt it with political ideology.

We must resist the two associations and any other professional organizations that contribute to the hateful and negative portrayal of the Palestinian people. Such dangerous statements make them complicit in the bleeding of Palestinians.

On Monday, the Ministry of Interior in Gaza warned of a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe in the Strip, due to the presence of the bodies of more than a thousand martyrs under the rubble of destroyed homes, as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression for the tenth day in a row.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement, "On the tenth day of the ongoing barbaric Israeli aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip, we warn of a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe due to the presence of the bodies of more than a thousand martyrs under the rubble of destroyed homes."

Today, Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that the death toll from the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip since October 7 has risen to 2,750 martyrs and more than 9,700 injured in the Strip.

Ministry added - in a statement - that the number of Palestinian martyrs in the West Bank has reached 58, in addition to more than 1,250 wounded, since the seventh of this October.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the United Nations must be able to access Gaza in all its areas without hindrance, to provide humanitarian aid, including water and basic supplies.

Borrell stressed that human suffering cannot be a bargaining chip.

The United Nations Population Fund in Palestine revealed that there are 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip who cannot obtain basic health services.

The Fund added in a statement on the “X” platform: “50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip cannot obtain health services. 5,500 of them will give birth during the month of October.”

The Fund stressed that these women “need urgent health care and protection,” and urged all parties to “abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”

The fund's director, Dominic Allen, said in an interview with the American network "CNN", and published on the "X" platform, "The health care system itself in Gaza is in a sensitive situation. It is under attack, and is on the verge of collapse."

He added, "These pregnant women, whom we are extremely concerned about, have nowhere to go," stressing that they face "unimaginable" challenges.

He continued: "Imagine going through this process in those final stages and the last three months of pregnancy before giving birth, with possible complications, without clothes, without hygiene and support, without knowing what will happen to them the next day, the next hour, and the next minute."

He stressed that "the stories coming from the hospitals were horrific, and that one of the midwives in the maternity hospital in Gaza told him that since the beginning of the aggression, some midwives were not even able to reach the maternity ward to provide assistance due to the unsafe environment."

Allen stressed the need to "allow aid and humanitarian supplies to pass into Gaza," stressing that "a humanitarian corridor must be opened, and humanitarian law must be adhered to. Therefore, pregnant women must receive these life-saving health services."

In light of the continuing escalation between Hamas and Israel, Washington announced that it had decided to deploy two aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean to ensure Israel's security and not expand the escalation. There are 10,000 sailors on board the two carriers. One of them is the largest in the world, and the newest in the United States.

The United States announced the deployment of two aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean as part of “Washington’s firm commitment to Israel’s security and our determination to deter any state or non-governmental entity that seeks to escalate this war.” The United States seeks to prevent further escalation between the Palestinian Hamas movement and Israel. Washington has repeatedly stressed Israel's right to defend itself, stressing that it stands with Tel Aviv.

Ford aircraft carrier

This giant carrier and its supporting ships arrived in the eastern Mediterranean last week. The Ford, which was commissioned in 2017, is the newest aircraft carrier in the United States and the largest in the world, with more than 5,000 sailors on board.

The carrier, which includes a nuclear reactor, can accommodate more than 75 military combat aircraft, including the F-18 Super Hornet and A-2 Hawkeye, which can be used as an early warning system.

It also carries an arsenal of missiles, including the Evolved Sea Sparrow missile, which is a medium-range surface-to-air missile used to confront aircraft, including drones.

Another rotary-frame missile aboard the Ford is used to target anti-ship missiles along with the MK-15 Phalanx Close-In weapon system, which is used to fire armour-piercing bullets.

The Ford carrier is also equipped with advanced radar systems that can assist in air traffic control and navigation.

Ships supporting Ford include the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser Normandy and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers Thomas Hudner, Ramage, Carney, and Roosevelt. The ships are equipped with surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower

The Pentagon directed the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to move to the eastern Mediterranean. It will take between a week and a week and a half for it to arrive in the area. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which was commissioned in 1977, carried out its first operations during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

The carrier has 5,000 sailors on board and can carry up to nine squadrons of aircraft, including fighters, helicopters and reconnaissance.

As with the aircraft carrier Ford, the Eisenhower is accompanied by other ships such as the guided-missile cruiser Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyers Greeley and Mason.

These ships focus on protecting themselves and the aircraft carrier. While it can carry out offensive operations, it is not suitable to serve as a missile defense system for Israel, which already has advanced systems.

France 24/Reuters

The Israeli occupation army confirmed, on Monday, that the number of prisoners being held by the Al-Qassam Brigades "Hamas" in the Gaza Strip has reached 199 people.

Israeli occupation army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a press conference: “We notified the families of 199 prisoners.”

Israel had previously announced the presence of 155 prisoners held by the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas).

On the other hand, Hagari announced the killing of at least 291 Israeli soldiers.

Israel confirmed that about 1,400 Israelis were killed, and thousands were injured.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said that 11 journalists were martyred, and more than 20 others were injured, since the beginning of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, on October 7th.

The union’s report, issued by the Freedoms Committee, today, Monday, stated that the journalist martyrs were: Ahmed Shehab, programmer for Voice of Prisoners Radio, photojournalist Mohamed Al-Salhi from the Fourth Estate Agency, photojournalist Mohamed Fayez Abu Matar, and “Khabar” agency photographer Hisham Al-Nawajah. Muhammad Abu Rizq, Ain Media Foundation photographer Ibrahim Lafi, editor-in-chief of the Fifth News Agency Saeed Al-Taweel, journalist Muhammad Jarghouth from Smart Media Agency, journalist Asaad Shamlikh, journalist Salam Mayma, and jou rnalist Hossam Mubarak.

The Union indicated in her report that there are two journalists whose traces have been lost, namely: photojournalist Nidal Al-Wahidi, who works as a producer with Al-Najah TV, and journalist Haitham Abdel Wahed from the Ain Media Media Foundation.

He pointed out that more than 20 journalists were injured in the ongoing aggression, while about 20 houses owned by journalists were bombed, some of which were completely destroyed and others were partially destroyed.

The Journalists Syndicate said that about 50 headquarters and centers of media institutions were bombed, including: the offices of Al Jazeera Network, Palestine TV, the French Agency office, Al-Aqsa Media Network, Ma’an News Agency, Sawa Agency, Shihab Agency, Al-Quds newspaper, Radio Baladna, and Zaman Radio. The National Agency, Khabar Agency, Al-Ayyam newspaper, Event Media Services Company, Fadl Shanaa Foundation, Holy Quran Radio, Shams News Agency, and the APA office.

It stressed that the continued interruption of electricity and the Internet in the Gaza Strip limited the ability of journalists to continue their coverage of the Israeli aggression.

In its report, the Syndicate touched on violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and noted that many journalistic crews were beaten, arrested, detained, prevented from covering, and fired upon. It recorded 10 cases of shooting, the last of which targeted journalists Yazan Hamayel and Wahhaj Bani Mufleh in the town of Beita, south of Nablus, in addition to the arrest of 4 journalists, namely: Abdel Nasser Al-Laham, Sabri Jabr, Moaz Amarneh, and Mustafa Al-Khawaja, after the occupation forces raided their homes. There were also 22 cases of detention and prevention of crews from working, 10 beating attacks, and 7 cases of seizing and destroying journalists’ equipment, in addition to jamming the channel’s broadcast. Fourth and hacked. Al-Aqsa Channel was also stopped broadcasting on the Eutelsat satellite.

It pointed out that many journalists were subjected to direct threats and incitement campaigns from Israeli pages on social media platforms, as happened with journalist Muthanna Al-Najjar from Gaza, as well as journalist Muhammad Turkman from the West Bank, in addition to monitoring many publications calling for the liquidation of journalists, describing them as “saboteurs.” And terrorists,” and an armed colonist’s threat to the Al-Arabi TV broadcaster was monitored live.

Today, Monday, Israel announced a plan to evacuate residents of settlements near the Lebanese border, and acknowledged the killing of an officer in its army in a bombing by the Lebanese Hezbollah, amid an exchange of attacks between the two sides in conjunction with the continued occupation aggression against the Gaza Strip.

The Ministry of Defense and the Israeli army said - in a joint statement - that "a plan will be implemented to evacuate residents of northern Israel who live in a two-kilometre-deep sector of the Lebanese border to state-funded accommodation."

One of these settlements, Shtoula, was subjected to a missile attack from Hezbollah yesterday. Israeli media said that a civilian was killed.

For its part, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that an Israeli army officer was killed yesterday by anti-tank fire on the Lebanese border.

The newspaper said that the Israeli army allowed the publication of the name of Lieutenant Amitai Zvi Granot (24 years old) from Tel Aviv, a team leader in the 75th Battalion - storming formation from the Golan.

She explained that the lieutenant fell yesterday during operational activity as a result of anti-tank fire near the Nurit site, without further details.

Nurit is an Israeli military site located in the western region of the border with Lebanon.

Attack exchange

Hezbollah announced that it attacked with machine guns 8 Israeli positions along the border line with Israel.

The occupation army said that its forces attacked Hezbollah military infrastructure at night in response to the shooting that occurred yesterday towards Israel.

Tensions erupted on the Israeli-Lebanese border following the Israeli aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip, which entered its tenth day.

BY HASHEM ABUSHAMA 

With every Israeli massacre in the besieged Gaza Strip, the double standards of Western media and governments become palpable. This time, however, the targeting of Palestinians and their supporters, especially across Europe, seems to be more violent and coordinated than ever before. 

On October 10th, the UK Home Secretary sent a letter to Chief Constables in England and Wales, encouraging the police to broaden the grounds on which they can arrest Palestine supporters. The letter encourages the police to consider chants such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ as an “expression of violent desire” and Palestinian flags as “intended to glorify acts of terrorism.” Yesterday, the German police attacked supporters of Palestine on Sonnenallee, arresting some of the protestors. In Vienna, the police banned a Palestine protest and issued fines to as many as three hundred protestors. In France, the police banned Palestine protests. 

This coordinated violence across the continent occurs in parallel with the Israeli besiegement and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, its shooting of Palestinians in the West Bank, and its theft of land across 1948- and 1967-occupied lands. Thus far, the Israeli settler colonial regime has killed roughly 1,500 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and injured more than 6,000, as its brutal shelling has wiped entire families from the public record. And the death toll is only starting to mount. 

The Israeli settler colonial state has tightened its blockade on the Strip, holding its entire population hostage, refusing requests to bring food and medical supplies into Gaza, and has paralyzed the enclave’s already-overburdened and under-resourced health system. One is compelled to wonder how, in the midst of this calculated and systemic violence, can media organizations and governments in Europe and its offshoots (the United States, Australia, among others) choose to proactively pluck the Palestinian violence against the Israeli settler state out of context, selectively framing it as the root and cause of the unfolding atrocities. 

This ahistorical framing, coupled with a legal push in the higher power echelons to criminalize support for Palestine, contributes to the unfolding violence against Palestine and the Palestinians. The fact that the Western media only uses the register of violence to speak on Palestine feeds on a colonial, racist, patriarchal, and capitalist discourse that aims to justify the Israeli settler colonial erasure of Palestine.  

Since the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip started, I have been reviewing British media and its everyday items, such as the newspaper, phone, posters, and TV channels that seep into the public’s consciousness. Without the critical tools and education to puncture through their framing, we become complicit and easily intimidated. Some media outlets have gone as far as spreading misinformation, which surely would have been considered a hate crime in other contexts. Both the Daily Telegraph and The Times chose this misinformation as the headline for their October 11th issues. Although some (not all!) of those newspapers have already retracted their original false claims, the damage has already been done.  

The Guardian chose to adorn its main headline for October 12th with the words ‘Israelis suspended between fear, grief and foreboding.’ The Daily Mail selected ‘The King Calls Them Terrorists, Why Can’t the BBC?’ Marching to the same beat, the Daily Telegraph opted to plaster the Royals’ condemnation of Hamas on its front pages. Survey the pages of the newspapers, and the stories eliciting support and empathy for Israel abound, making it clear who the perpetrators are and that vengeance against them is justified. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are only evoked through the register of terrorism and violence.

Even those headlines, which are shy in their coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, intentionally omit the perpetrators: the Israeli army and state. They are designed to neglect the root and cause of the violence: Israeli settler colonialism. By settler colonialism, we mean the gradual transfer of European Jews to the land of Palestine, the coercive displacement and dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population, and the imposition of a coordinated and sustainable system that turns this displacement into a continuous process. 

Western media relies on racial, gendered, and colonial tropes to describe the atrocities in Palestine. It instrumentalizes white female faces to elicit support for Israel. Such a tactic simultaneously serves racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. It relies on notions of white female ‘innocence’ and ‘victimhood’ to justify the continuous erasure of Palestine. In a headline by the Daily Telegraph about a British IDF female soldier, below, we are shown a smiling white female soldier wearing military attire and a keffiyeh on her head. Neither the photograph nor the article questions why a British citizen is justified in enlisting in a settler army elsewhere, let alone the same army that is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. 

To the contrary, the article frames such enlisting as voluntary and dignified. These strategies bring to mind 9/11, Laura Bush, and the weaponization of white feminism in the service of imperialist and colonial expansion. Black and Brown feminist scholars and activists, including Lila Abu Lughod, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde amongst others, have long debunked and punctured through such strategies. It is this same white feminism that has been utilized by the media and governments to justify the intensification of Israeli brutality against the Palestinian residents of Gaza. 

There is a hierarchy of life and suffering at the root of this. And it is this hierarchy that the ahistorical and manipulative comparisons between the Nazi pogroms and Palestinian armed resistance against the Israeli settler colonial state aims to hide. A comparison that U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has used in his speech alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on October 12th. A comparison that not only obfuscates the colonial nature of the ongoing atrocities against the Gaza Strip but works to silence and intimidate any contextualization or criticism of said colonial atrocities. Nazism is a European sin, one that Europe chose to resolve through its colonial support for an ethno-nationalist settler colonial project on the land of historic Palestine. Europe has not dealt with Nazism, its roots (the racial logics of Europe, fed and bred in the colonies), and its ramifications

This is all evidenced by the rise of neo-Nazi groups in some European countries in the last few years. The establishment of Israel as a settler colonial project remains a desperate attempt to rationalize the racial logics of Europe rather than abolishing them. Is not that the root of all of this? That Europe killed, oppressed, and racialized its Jews until it came up with a racist solution to dispossess the Palestinian people and put the European Jews in their place? That Europe chose to offer reparations for the Holocaust by establishing institutional, legal, discursive, political, and military support for the Israeli settler state?  

BY HASHEM ABUSHAMA 

This selective offering of reparations by Europe to its white victims is already indicative of the racial nature of the Israeli state. It is not a surprise that the only reparations Europe and North America have offered to the descendants of the enslaved and colonized are performative placards placed inside and outside buildings and statues built through the blood and sweat of black and brown people. 

Only the European, white, male Jew could make a historical and political claim on Europe, and that claim was racist and colonial in its essence: to ask for reparations through the establishment of an exclusionary, ethno-nationalist state on a distant, colonized land. This is, then, the same Europe that is arresting protestors for Palestine today. To state the obvious: Europe has not been decolonized. Despite all the news titles, university reports, and academic books and articles that evoke this terminology, Europe has not been decolonized. It does to the Palestinians what it has always done to colonized people: relegating their suffering to the sphere of unintelligible and nonhuman. 

While violence against the Palestinians is specific, it does not occur in isolation from what is happening elsewhere in the world. Black and brown people are racialized everywhere in Europe and North America, and that racialization contributes to the demonization of Palestinian people. Our suffering is seen as illegitimate and unworthy of attention—let alone justice—because we are, quite literally, not seen as humans.  When it comes to Palestine, this racial violence becomes more exact and brutal. 

And that is precisely because of the power of the Palestinian cause: it puts into question the entire world order—in its racialization of black and brown people, its denial of the constitutive and active role of colonialism, and its coordination of violence and exploitation. Palestine brings to the forefront the racist, patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial relations that underpin today’s world and that Europe and its offshoots work tirelessly to hide. This is precisely why we need staunch support for Palestine and the Palestinian right to self-determination at this moment. Because, without exaggeration, a better world depends on that support.  

Source: mondoweiss.net

Today, Monday, settlers stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, under heavy protection from the Israeli occupation police.

Local sources reported that dozens of settlers stormed Al-Aqsa from the direction of the Mughariba Gate, and carried out provocative rounds in its courtyards.

Settlers carry out provocative daily raids on the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, except on Fridays and Saturdays, in an attempt to control it and impose temporal and spatial division.

In a related context, the occupation forces tightened their military measures at all gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque, preventing citizens from entering it, returning many of them, and preventing them from performing prayers in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque as well, in conjunction with allowing the colonists to storm it.

The war of genocide that the occupying state is waging against the Gaza Strip has become unstoppable. Homes are being demolished on their inhabitants, and deaths - children, women and the elderly - are in the hundreds. Indeed, the number of martyrs has reached more than 2,400 martyrs, along with thousands of wounded. So where are the Arab and Islamic nations and the leaders of these two nations? Is there a slaughter of innocent citizens?!

Isn't Palestine part of the Arab and Islamic world? Aren't the Palestinian people an integral part of this nation?! So why is this people not supported, even with the minimum of this support, and not just issuing statements of denunciation and denunciation and appealing to the United Nations and the world to intervene on the side of the Israeli occupation to stop these massacres that are being committed in front of the entire world’s eyes and ears?

Isn’t this world ruled by America and the colonial West unable to do anything except declaring solidarity and going out with demonstrations and marches by the masses of these countries? So why do Arab and Muslim leaders rely on this world that only recognizes force, and force alone?

The crime practiced by the occupation does not only require what the Arab and Muslim rulers do, but rather the matter requires much more than that. For example, but not limited to, why have the Arab countries not yet, especially the countries that are establishing normal relations and “peace” with the occupying state must stop these relations and expel the ambassadors of the occupying state from the capitals of their countries, so that the occupation feels that the Arab and Muslim leaders are not mediators between the occupying state and the Palestinian people and the resistance, which according to international laws and norms is a legitimate right to defend the national rights of the Palestinian people, and yet the occupying state and the colonial West consider them organizations. Terrorist, and the occupying state has the right to what is called self-defense, while the reasons for all of this are the continuation of the Israeli occupation and the practices of its forces and herds of settlers.

If international resolutions had been applied to the occupying state, what is happening now would not have happened and our people would have been able to establish their independent state with Holy Jerusalem as its capital. The occupation and its crimes are responsible, as are the countries supporting it, most notably America and the colonial West, which came to support the occupation as if it were the oppressed, when in fact it is the executioner and not the lamb. Meek, as the West likes to describe the occupying state.

The genocidal war committed by the occupying state must push the nation's rulers to unify its ranks and take practical measures on the ground that force this shameless occupation to put an end to its crimes. The nation has the capabilities to make it a force with influence in the world and prevent the occupying state from continuing its massacres against our people.

Second episode

Israel is now waging a war of revenge and genocide against the Palestinian people and is using a scorched earth policy. It is asking the people to flee! Giving leaflets in this regard is accompanied by the publication of pictures of military concentrations surrounding the Gaza Strip. Does this come in the context of psychological warfare and a war of rumors? Or in the context of misleading the resistance, distracting its efforts and deceiving it? And exhaust its forces? Or in preparation for a ground war, although it is still in the preparation stage.

The declared goals of the ground war: if it occurred?
1. Building a security belt in the northern Gaza Strip?
2. Reoccupation of the Gaza Strip?
3. Destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian resistance?
4. Limited penetration process? To carry out assassinations and arrests?

Possible scenarios for ground war? If it happened???
The first scenario: a war without goals, by moving the external blockade from the cover of the Gaza Strip to the interior, carrying out reconnaissance operations, gathering information, and feeling the pulse of the force through limited penetrations and extensive maneuvers to avoid losses. With carrying out assassinations of leaders whenever possible. As a first stage, then any goal that looms on the horizon later.

The second scenario: limited progress on two main axes in northwest Jabalia and northeast of Beit Hanoun and the construction of a security belt and buffer zones that prevent the launching of Palestinian rockets. This is consistent with the military capabilities they have mobilized, given that this scenario reduces the possibility of confrontation and cohesion with the resistance and gives them a margin. A retreat maneuver in the event of a ceasefire agreement. It is most likely.

The third scenario: An advance towards the Salah al-Din axis and along the border, with another advance on an axis in the south, north of Rafah, and other sub-axes to deceive. In this scenario, there are many caveats that would open many closed doors that Israel does not want in its current crisis situation.

Fourth scenario: Dismemberment and advance from multiple main axes from the north, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and from the east, and naval landings in the areas of Al-Shati, northwest, and Al-Nuseirat and Deir Al-Balah, southwest of Gaza City, with the aim of draining a large number of the Palestinian resistance’s energy, isolating the forces, and preventing communication. This possibility means determining the Israeli army is forced to incursion and stay for a long time and requires a large number of forces, and this leads to the possibility of greater losses among the ranks of the Israeli army and difficulty in withdrawing.

The fifth scenario: The most dangerous, which is targeting the headland where the Palestinian leadership and strategic reserve of modern and advanced weapons are present. It is the most dangerous scenario for Israel due to the possibility of large losses occurring among their ranks, the lack of guarantee of victory and the achievement of goals, and even getting involved in the quagmire of a long war. This possibility is implemented through a ground advance and a rapid breach towards the depth of Gaza from the east is accompanied by the construction of a bridgehead and an advance from the sea. Naval battleships drop tanks and soldiers to close in and encircle Gaza while consolidating the other axes in the north, northeast, south and southeast with air and artillery fire and imaginary movements, but this scenario is governed by their ability to collect close detailed information about the resistance.

The ground war is not a picnic. It is an opportunity for direct confrontation between the Palestinian fighter, armed with his will and courage, and the Israeli soldier, whose morale and the support of his planes and tanks are deteriorating.
Finally, the Palestinian resistance fighters are waiting for the opportunity for a direct and close clash!?

*Military expert and analyst

The Hamas movement fought several major battles with Israel, and with its limited capabilities compared to its opponent, it held out and continued its rule of Gaza and its friction with Israel.

The battles it fought did not involve any external party, “in the sense of field participation,” but in order to strengthen morale, they never ceased to remind us of the support of Hezbollah, which is a branch of the Iranian tree.

By mentioning this, I intended to conclude that Hamas has long and detailed experience in fighting with Israel, and has succeeded, for a long time, in managing a war in which there is progress and retreat, prices are taken and prices are paid, and it has experienced concrete experience, action and reaction, bargaining to the brink of the abyss, and deception the enemy, according to Sadat's famous term.

All of this was done by Hamas, and it came at a very high price. There are thousands of martyrs, and the lives of two million and more Palestinians are the most difficult in the entire world.

Among its remarkable tactics was refraining from participating with “Jihad” in two major sites, when it left it facing two fierce Israeli attacks, alone, which confirmed, by the logical conclusion, that it was not willing to spoil its extensive and complex preparations for the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, in which it emulated “Hamas.” Egypt's initiative for history to record that it had two Octobers: one on the Egyptian-Syrian fronts, with Palestinian participation "with the size of the capabilities", and the other on the Gaza-Israeli front, and in comparison with the sizes and capabilities, the second October was the largest and deepest, and it can be considered, according to Israeli accounts, the toughest most painful and influential in all aspects.

The question that arose during the first hour of fighting inside the cover settlements. Did Hamas do it on its own responsibility, or did it agree with Hezbollah, i.e. Iran, on what this requires of immediate and direct intervention?

What raised doubts about this issue was the appeal of the head of the Hamas movement, Ismail Haniyeh, who took a general formula, to the allies, to hasten to share in the victory. What is meant by participation is not celebration, of course, but rather fighting.

This was before the Israeli reaction crystallized as this time the complete destruction of Gaza, and the complete eradication of Hamas and those with it, as announced by the Israeli statements, which covered the continuous aerial bombardment to the point of turning neighborhoods into rubble. Without hiding the purpose of this, which is to pave the way for ground intervention.

I am writing this article on the sixth day of the fierce war between the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the “Iron Swords.” During its short time frame, Israel mobilized about 400,000 soldiers in anticipation of a surprise on the northern front. Behind these thousands, composed of its planes, tanks, and cannons, the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford docked, as a supporter of Israeli power, a participant in the military decision, and a warning to Hezbollah against interference. American spokesmen did not stop saying that they had no evidence of an Iranian role in what was happening.

No one except the narrow circle in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah knows whether there is agreed-upon coordination according to one plan. Or was the matter left to individual assessments, which believed that the size of the achievement, when achieved, would be a logical and automatic incentive to achieve what Haniyeh called for, who was apparently surprised by what happened, that the allies must hasten to share the victory with us.

6 days in which very limited clashes took place on the southern Lebanon front, and the question is: Was Hezbollah’s intention to intervene if the matter had remained merely an Israeli-invasion war, or did the American warning work decisively, as it is not right to ignore it and consider it a maneuver, as the aircraft carrier that arrived, called for another one, and this is something that Hezbollah and Iran deserve to take into consideration.

Gaza has reached a state of complete devastation and a siege that has tightened to the point of suffocation. Everything that is being done for it is an Egyptian and international effort to calm the situation for a few hours, for food and medicine to arrive, and Hamas and its fellow factions continue to withstand, bomb, and penetrate the Israeli lines with courage and boldness, as it appears that its missile stock is more than sufficient, and our brother Ismail Haniyeh continues his call to the allies to Share the victory with him. No one knows what happened and what will happen. Perhaps the coming days will reveal more and clearer facts. Most importantly, Gaza before the war, Gaza destroyed during it, and Gaza after it remain Palestinian in spirit, heart, belonging, and survival.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent and unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas.

He said in a statement, "At this difficult moment, as we stand on the brink of abyss in the Middle East, it is my duty as Secretary-General of the United Nations to make two strong humanitarian appeals."

"For Hamas, the hostages must be released immediately and without conditions; and for Israel, urgent and unimpeded access must be allowed for humanitarian supplies and relief workers for civilians in Gaza," Guterres continued.

The Secretary-General emphasized that "both of these goals are important in themselves. They should not be a bargaining chip."

He explained that the United Nations has available stocks of food, water, non-food items, medical supplies and fuel, located in Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel. These materials can be sent within hours.

To ensure their delivery, UN staff and partners on the ground must be able to get these supplies into and around Gaza safely and without hindrance to get them to those in need, Guterres said.

The head of the Palestinian Water Authority, Mazen Ghoneim, denied reports that Israel was supplying the Gaza Strip with water, considering that what was said about that was “slander and untrue.”

Ghoneim said in a phone call with Xinhua News Agency, "Even if Israel pumps water, the Palestinian Water Authority will not be able to supply it to the residents due to the power outage required to pump it into taps and water pumps."

Ghoneim said in a press statement that the remaining water sources in the Gaza Strip “are not enough to provide 15 liters per person, which is the minimum recommended by the World Health Organization for survival.”

Ghoneim added that the continued disruption of water supply systems in the Gaza Strip threatens the lives of residents, calling on the international community to assume its responsibilities in providing urgent protection to the Water Authority’s technical crews so that they can operate the facilities and secure water for citizens.

The Palestinian official's statements come in response to Israeli Energy Minister Yisrael Katz, who stated today that Israel will restore water supplies to parts of the southern Gaza Strip in accordance with an agreement with US President Joe Biden.

Katz spoke in a tweet on the ((X) website) today about a decision to open water to the southern Gaza Strip according to an agreement between Netanyahu and Biden.

The Israeli minister said that this decision "will push civilians to the south of the Gaza Strip, and contribute to tightening the comprehensive siege on Gaza in terms of electricity, water and fuel."

Katz, who holds the position of a member of the Mini Security Political Council in the Israeli government, added that this step would contribute to eliminating Hamas, saying, "It will make it easier for the Israeli army to work and eliminate Hamas' infrastructure."

Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on Gaza, which includes closing all crossings and cutting off electrical, water, food and energy supplies to the Strip since the Hamas movement launched a massive and unprecedented attack on southern Israel on the 7th of this month.

In response, Israel launched Operation Iron Swords against Hamas, and the Israeli army continues its military attacks on various areas in the Gaza Strip, killing 2,670 Palestinians and wounding 9,600 others.

Palestinian and relief sources denied that they had been informed by the Egyptian authorities of the decision to operate the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, or to start a truce with the Israeli side in the south of the Strip.

Salama Maarouf, head of the government media office in Gaza, said in a statement: “We have not received, until this moment, any communications or confirmations from the relevant authorities on the Egyptian side about the intention to open the Rafah crossing today, and everything that is being circulated in particular is attributed to (Israeli) media.”

Two sources, one a high-ranking Palestinian and the other a relief source, reported that they had not yet been informed of the decision to operate the Rafah crossing or start a truce, calling for waiting until an official position arrived from the Egyptian side.

The private Egyptian news channel Cairo, which is close to the authorities, had previously reported from "Israeli media" that there was a ceasefire in southern Gaza as of 9 am today (local time), while Arab press reports reported news of the start of a truce and the start of operation of the crossing.

Neither the Egyptian nor the Palestinian side issued any official positions regarding the news being circulated about the opening of the crossing.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club said that the occupation forces launched a massive arrest campaign last night and at dawn on Monday, targeting at least 70 citizens from the West Bank, including two women from Jerusalem, two journalists, and former prisoners, and the arrests were distributed in most of the West Bank governorates, including Jerusalem.

The number of arrests since October 7 has reached about 540.

The Prisoners' Club added that the arrest campaigns in the West Bank are the highest in years, as the number of arrests since October 7, the date of the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood battle, has reached about (540) arrests, concentrated in the Hebron and Jerusalem governorates, in addition. To the detained workers and detainees from Gaza, whose exact numbers and identities are not yet known.

The Prisoner's Club pointed out that the arrest operations included all groups, including (children, women, and the elderly), and the occupation forces adopted during them a policy of threats, severe beatings against detainees, and widespread acts of sabotage and destruction of homes.

It is noteworthy that since the beginning of this year, arrests have reached more than (6,000) cases.

It is worth mentioning that these arrest campaigns constitute the most prominent and systematic policies used by the occupation forces, with the aim of undermining any escalating situation of confrontation. They are also among the most prominent tools of the policy of (collective punishment), which also constitutes a central tool for the occupation in targeting citizens.

Two citizens were martyred on Monday morning, and others were injured, by bullets from the occupation army in the West Bank, raising the death toll in less than 10 days to 58 martyrs.

The Ministry of Health announced that the young man, Muin Ribhi Damo (21 years old), was killed by occupation bullets in Jericho at dawn today, and 3 others were injured, including a critical condition.

In this context, the Martyr Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital in Tulkarm reported, this morning, the death of the young man, Rami Bilal Hassan (33 years old), from the suburb of Artah, south of Tulkarm, as a result of critical wounds he sustained by occupation bullets in the neck last Friday.

Hassan was injured by an occupation sniper's bullet in the head while he was driving his vehicle west of Tulkarm.

With Hassan's death, the number of Tulkarm martyrs since last Friday rises to eight.

According to the Ministry of Health, the number of martyrs in the West Bank since October 7 has risen to 58 martyrs, including 14 children and women.

With the beginning of the tenth day of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Israeli occupation army continued the intense bombardment of the Gaza Strip, targeting civilians on a large scale, bringing the number of martyrs to 2,750, and the wounded to 9,700, in addition to hundreds of people missing under the rubble, while the resistance responded by bombing the Israeli depth, and confirmed Its readiness to confront any ground invasion.

Israeli channel: Rafah crossing opened at nine o’clock

Israeli Channel 12 reported that the Rafah crossing will be opened at nine in the morning.

Informed sources revealed that a five-hour ceasefire agreement, starting at nine in the morning, includes opening the Rafah crossing to allow the departure of foreigners and the entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip.

The government media in Gaza stated that they had not yet received any confirmations from the Egyptian side regarding the opening of the crossing.

7 members of the civil defense crews were killed in Israeli bombing

Seven members of the Civil Defense crews in Gaza were martyred tonight in two raids by occupation warplanes in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest and central of Gaza City.

Local sources reported that the occupation warplanes launched an Israeli raid on two Civil Defense headquarters and its vehicles in Tal al-Hawa and central Gaza, which led to the death of 7 of its crews and the injury of others.

American police said that a man from Illinois stabbed a Muslim child 26 times, killing him, while seriously wounding his mother, while chanting anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian statements.

The police accused the 71-year-old man of committing a hate crime against the 6-year-old child and his 32-year-old mother, saying that the two victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith.

The Will County Sheriff said in a statement posted on social media, “Investigators were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect because of their Muslim status and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”

Officers found the two victims late in the day at a home in Plainfield, about 65 kilometers southwest of Chicago.

The police chief's office said the boy, who was declared dead in hospital, was stabbed 26 times with a large military knife, according to an autopsy.

The woman suffered more than 12 stab wounds to her body, and remained in the hospital, but her condition was stable.

Police charged the man with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crimes, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

US President Joe Biden said that he felt "shock and disgust" after the killing of a child of Palestinian origins and the attempt to kill his mother in Chicago, Illinois, against the backdrop of the escalation taking place between Israel and Gaza.

The US President offered his condolences to the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities over the child’s killing, stressing that “the brutal killing of a six-year-old child of Palestinian origins is a horrific act of hatred that has no place in America,” according to Al Hurra’s correspondent in the White House