The following are axioms:

• The war in Gaza will not end until all of the Israeli and foreign hostages are freed from Gaza.
• The war will not end as long as Hamas continues to rule Gaza.
• Hamas may be willing to give up civil governmental control over Gaza to a professional, non-partisan, technocratic government, but it will not voluntarily give up its weapons.
• The war will not end without a significant release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
• Hamas wants the war to end and for all Israeli forces to withdrawal from Gaza.
• Hamas will not end the war until all Israeli forces leave Gaza.
• The Sunni Arab states around Israel want a unified Palestinian government which is not Hamas to rule the West Bank and Gaza, but not the current Palestinian Authority leadership.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu does not want to end the war.

I am in regular contact with the people responsible for negotiations in Israel, Egypt, Qatar, the United States and Hamas. I have 18 years of experience negotiating with Hamas. I believe that I am the Israeli citizen with the most hours of discussions with Hamas leaders, except perhaps Israeli prison guards and prison authorities and their discussions with Hamas people are entirely different than mine. From what I have been told by several Hamas leaders over the past two months I believe that Hamas’s primary goal now is to end the war in Gaza and for Israel to withdraw all of its troops from the Strip. Hamas will not make any agreement with Israel to release hostages held in Gaza without the end of the war and the Israeli withdrawal.  Hamas will also demand a significant release of Palestinian prisoners from Israel, especially those serving life sentences for killing Israelis. Hamas is will to have their control over Gaza transferred to a professional, technocratic Palestinian government which is not composed of members of the various political factions, including Hamas and Fatah.  Although Hamas has stated that they are willing to turn over all aspects of government to the new non-Hamas government, including security and control of border passages, several Arab intelligence agencies have stated that they do not believe that Hamas will surrender their weapons to the new government.

Assuming that Hamas is willing for a new Palestinian government to be established, most of the Arab states involved, along with the United States would like to see a reunification of Palestinian government, with one authority governing both the West Bank and Gaza. All parties concerned do not see the viability of the current Palestinian Authority, including its latest Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa as having the legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian street, in the West Bank and Gaza in order to actually govern Gaza post-Hamas. Most of the parties involved would like to see President Mahmoud Abbas appointing a new Prime Minister with much greater independence than Mr. Mustafa has and that the new Prime Minister be granted by Abbas the real powers to govern. Mr. Abbas would remain President, but he would be more ceremonial than what he is today which is in charge of executive, legislative, judicial powers as well as controlling the money and the security.  The newly appointed Prime Minister should be granted the powers to independently appoint a governing council for Gaza (at least) with real executive powers and the ability to invite an Arab-led international peace keeping force to Gaza. If President Abbas refuses to give up power and to appoint a truly independent Prime Minister, then the Arab states, the US and the EU should pressure Abbas to at least appoint a head for a Gaza governing council that would be independent to establish the non-partisan technocrat professional governing council. According to the leaders and people involved in negotiations, Prime Minister Netanyahu has no plan for post Hamas Gaza and has voiced opposition to every plan put forward by the Arab mediators and by the United States.

Hamas has agreed that in a deal to end the war and for Israel to withdraw all of its forces from Gaza, it is willing to release all of the hostages held in Gaza.  Hamas has said that they require 3-5 days of cull ceasefire including no Israeli fly-overs to locate all of the hostages and to know what is their condition. Hamas claims that they do now have that information now, and I believe them.  They don’t have freedom and ability to move around Gaza and their chain of command is quite broken and destroyed. There are hostages that might be held by non-Hamas groups, such as Islamic Jihad or the Popular Front. There might be hostages being held by non-affiliated civilians. There are also likely to be hostages who are buried underneath the rubble of buildings bombed by Israel along with thousands of Gazans who status is “missing”.  It may be that all 101 hostages held in Gaza cannot be returned. When a deal is made, the first test of Hamas’s ability to implement the deal will have to be to produce a list of all of the hostages and their status and that list needs to be given to the Qatari and Egyptian mediators.   It will be difficult for Hamas to lie to the mediators and therefore, the list that they produce will be as accurate as possible.

Israel has legitimate security concerns regarding leaving Gaza. Even if a new Palestinian non-Hamas government is established, as I have heard in Egypt and in Qatar, Hamas will not turn over their weapons to the new government. Turning Gaza into a non-militarized zone is a process that will take time.

First, Israel (and Egypt) must agree that any Hamas civilian or military personnel that want to leave Gaza to a third country that would accept them, should be granted safe passage out of Gaza – most likely through Egypt.

The Hamas or Islamic military people that would choose to leave, would do so, of course without their weapons. The new government in Gaza will form a professional security force. Hamas police and other security or military personnel remaining in Gaza should be encouraged to join the new security force with the enticement of receiving double the salary that they were receiving before.  The new Palestinian non-Hamas government would have to be committed to a non-aggression policy towards Israel, otherwise it will not be supported by the Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and maybe others) and will receive no funding from these countries or from the USA or the EU or other donor nations. Even if the majority of remaining Hamas military people join the new governing security force, or leave Gaza, there will remain more radical armed militants willing to continue their attacks against Israel.  This will be a challenge for Israel, for the Palestinian government in Gaza and for the Arab-led international peace keeping force, but it is not a reason for Israel to not withdraw from Gaza. In fact, the longer Israeli forces remain in Gaza, the longer the war will continue, more Israeli soldiers will be killed and armed insurgency will be supported by the general Palestinian public in Gaza, of whom today a large majority simply want the war to end. Israel will not be facing the Russian army and the forces that remain in Gaza have little access to more weapons, no ability to produce new weapons and severely damaged military command and control capabilities.  Israel forces need to be deployed on the Israeli-Gaza border so that there is a zero chance of another attack such as October 7. Egypt needs to continue to guarantee that the Egypt-Gaza border will be sealed and that the legal crossing point at Rafah will be controlled against smuggling by Egypt from the Egyptian side on the Gaza side, it is advisable that international observers be stationed there, perhaps from the Arab-led international peacekeeping force.

The economic blockade on Gaza must come to an end and Gazans must be reintegrated into the world with the right for movement and access, just like any other people in the world.   The continuation of the economic blockade on Gaza cannot be justified in anyway. Obviously, security systems need to be put in place to ensure the safe passage of people and goods in and out of Gaza.

Israel will have to release Palestinian prisoners in order for Hamas to agree to release hostages in Gaza. This is the price to be paid to retrieve the hostages. Before October 7, 2023 there were 559 Palestinian prisoners serving life-sentences for killing Israelis. Some of them are serving multiple life-sentences for killing many Israelis. Some of these prisoners are considered the symbols of Palestinian terrorism by Israel and these will be the most difficult for Israel to release. As such, they will be the prisoners that Hamas is most anxious to release. Israel will probably not have a choice and Hamas will not agree to an Israeli veto on the names of Palestinian prisoners. One solution might be for the most dangerous (as considered by Israel) of the prisoners to be granted safe passage to a third country (perhaps Algeria, Turkey, Iran, maybe some others). They would not be allowed to return to Palestine according to the agreement.   This was done partially in the Schalit deal of 2011. My advice to the Israeli side would be to allow all other West Bank prisoners to return to their homes in the West Bank. All prisoners released have historically been required to sign an undertaking that they will not return to acts of violence against Israel.  The main reason for this document to be used is that it provides the legal pretext for re-arresting those who violate the terms of their release, as was done in 2014 when 68 prisoners released in 2011 were re-arrested by Israel. By allowing them to remain in the West Bank there is greater ability for Israel to monitor them and to re-arrest them if need be.

The end of the war in Gaza needs to be the beginning of a genuine new regional based peace process to enable the Palestinian people to establish their own independent state next to Israel in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. I won’t go into the contours of what that peace should be.  I will only state that this war in Gaza must be the last Israeli-Palestinian war, but if the occupation over the Palestinian people continues, it will not be the last Israeli-Palestinian war.

Almost everything that I have written above is opposed to by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. I have heard from very senior sources in Qatar, Egypt, the EU and the United States that the primary obstacle to ending the war today is Prime Minister Netanyahu.   In all honesty, the United States is also opposed to ending the war as long as Hamas continue to control Gaza. But there is a way out. What I have heard from Qatar, Egypt and the USA is that with Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to any possible day-after scenario for Gaza, the mediators are stuck and don’t know how to move forward. To me this is shocking. The formulation of a non-Hamas professional technocratic government for Gaza is a Palestinian issue over which Israel should not be granted a veto. Israel should not be asked or consulted on this matter.  Both Egypt and Qatar have the ability to work with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and other independent Palestinian personalities in order to come up with a solution that enables the legitimate creation of a Palestinian government that can take Gaza forward into reconstruction. This is not a matter on which Israel should even have the right to decide. As long as Egypt and Qatar are satisfied that the new government in Gaza will not be Hamas and will not provoke new attacks against Israel, they should support it and enable the international community to begin to assist in the reconstruction of Gaza.

The President of the United States Biden has said that the war must end. US officials have said that President Biden wants the war to end by the end of his term in office on January 20, 2025.  There are 75 days between Election Day and the day that the new President is sworn into office. That is sufficient time for the US to use its enormous leverage on Israel to even force Netanyahu to accept a deal – assuming that Hamas does not continue to control Gaza after the war ends. If Hamas is willing to release all of the hostages and to give up control over Gaza, then Biden needs to use the full weight of the Office of the President to even force the deal on Netanyahu. There are so many points of US leverage over Israel, I am not even referring to the doomsday leverage of withholding military support and weapons. There is leverage behind closed doors which can be very effective, but there is also the kind of leverage which is used openly and announced publicly and that has proven, in the past to be even more effective on changing Israeli public opinion.

Lastly, the Israeli public is very divided on the issue of ending the war. The division derives from the belief that Hamas will never release all of the hostages and that Hamas will never give up control over Gaza. This is clearly part of the narrative of the Israeli government and it has penetrated deeply into Israeli public opinion. But if it is turns out that Hamas is ready to release all of the hostages and that Hamas is prepared to give up control over Gaza, the overwhelming majority of Israelis would support the deal to end the war and to withdraw from Gaza.  This is what must happen now to bring this war to an end, to return the hostages to Israel, to free Palestinian prisoners and to enable the millions in Gaza to begin the process of reconstruction.

Settlers burned a number of citizens' vehicles at dawn on Monday after attacking the city of Al-Bireh and the town of Deir Dibwan to the east.

Local sources reported that a number of settlers attacked the industrial area in the city of Al-Bireh, and burned a number of vehicles there before withdrawing, while fire engines rushed to extinguish the fire that broke out in 20 vehicles.

They added that settlers fired into the air and towards civil defence vehicles when they arrived in the area to put out the fire, before fleeing.

Settlers also burned a building in the town of Deir Dibwan, east of Ramallah, and wrote racist slogans on a retaining wall.

Israel has officially notified the United Nations of the cancellation of the agreement regulating the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a letter notifying the United Nations of the decision on Sunday that Israel "withdraws its request to UNRWA, as stated in the (Exchange of Notes between Israel and UNRWA Constituting an Agreement on the Operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) of June 14, 1967," "based on legislation passed by the Israeli Knesset on October 28."

The letter, which was published by an Axios correspondent on his X account, added that the decision “will enter into force after a period of three months,” and during this period, and after it, “Israel will continue to work with international partners, including other UN agencies, to ensure the facilitation of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza in a manner that does not undermine Israel’s security.”

The Israeli army announced, on Sunday evening, that it had kidnapped a Syrian citizen from within his country, claiming that he was working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

This comes two days after the Israeli army kidnapped a Lebanese man from within his country, claiming that he was a military official in Hezbollah.

The Israeli army said in a statement: "In a night operation across the border with Syria, Egoz unit forces, under the command of the 210th Division, arrested an element of an Iranian network in Syrian territory."

He explained that the detainee is a Syrian named "Ali Suleiman Al-Asi", who resides in the city of Saida (affiliated with Daraa Governorate) in southern Syria.

He claimed that he "was working to collect information about (Israeli) forces in the border area (with Syria) for the Revolutionary Guards."

The Israeli army said it was investigating him, and did not specify the date of his kidnapping, but said he carried it out during the "recent months."

This is the first operation of its kind in Syrian territory announced by the Israeli army.

There was no comment from Damascus or Tehran on this matter until 17:30 GMT.

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority reported that 4 people were arrested in the security leaks case, including an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Media reported that the main detainee in the leaks case is Eli Feldstein, who worked as a spokesman in Netanyahu's office.

This evening, Sunday, the Israeli occupation forces targeted Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda, and Indonesian hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip.

Medical sources at Kamal Adwan Hospital reported that the occupation forces targeted its facilities with direct artillery shelling, as they bombed the dormitory, the nursery, the hospital yard and the water tanks, noting that a child was seriously injured.

The occupation artillery also shelled the vicinity of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia camp, while an Israeli drone opened fire at the gate and walls of the Indonesian Hospital in the town of Beit Lahia.

The occupation forces continue their aggression on the Gaza Strip, by land, sea and air, since October 7, 2023, which resulted in the death of 43,341 citizens, and the injury of 102,105 others, the majority of whom are children and women, in an incomplete toll, as thousands of people are still missing under the rubble, amid the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the besieged Strip.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa called on the European Parliament on Sunday to confront Israel's decision to ban the activities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Mustafa met a delegation from the European Parliament at his office in the city of Ramallah, in the central occupied West Bank, according to a statement issued by his office.

Mustafa called on the European delegation to "confront Israel's decision to ban UNRWA, which aims politically to eliminate the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and contributes to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories."

A child from the town of Halhul, north of Hebron, was killed this evening, Sunday, after being shot by the Israeli occupation forces.

Security sources said that the occupation forces opened fire at the child Naji Nidal Al-Baba (16 years old), while he was in the Al-Ramuz area near the northern entrance to the town of Halhul.

The Red Crescent Society reported that its crews in the city of Hebron received the victim Al-Baba.

The occupation forces have strengthened their military measures in the area.

A win of just a few percentage points in the popular vote could translate into an Electoral College win for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, a significant shift from the last two cycles in which Democrats have been losing ground, according to polls and analysis released Saturday night, two days before voting begins on Tuesday, Nov. 5.

The reason, according to experts, is the shifts in voters that may allow Republicans to outperform Democrats when it comes to the popular vote, but that may not translate into more electoral votes for former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

“You can win some states that you win by a large margin, but it doesn’t help you anymore,” Jason Roberts, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, told The Hill, a website that specializes in races and domestic politics. “Winning a state 80-20 doesn’t help any more than winning a state 55-45.”

Democrats have often been the victims of this equation. Since 2000, Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, but they have won the Electoral College in only three of those elections.

In 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes but fell short of victory. She outscored Trump when it came to the popular vote in states like California and New York, but that was little consolation when she won by just 232 electoral votes.

To win the "Electoral College" and the presidency, a candidate must secure at least 270 electoral votes (from the Electoral College) out of 535 votes, which is equal to the number of members of the House of Representatives (Congress, 435), and 100 members of the Senate.

24 years ago, (2000 election), then-Vice President (Bill Clinton), Al Gore lost the Electoral College to Republican George W. Bush, even though Gore won the popular vote.

In 2020, President Biden won both, but his advantage in the popular vote and the Electoral College obscured how close the election was. Biden won the popular vote by 7 million and received 306 electoral votes (to Trump’s 229) from the Electoral College, but he only won key states that gave him an advantage of a few tens of thousands of votes at most.

According to Zachary Donini, an expert at the polling firm Decision Desk (DDHQ), the circumstances of the 2020 race allowed Trump to have a chance of winning the Electoral College even if he lost the popular vote by as much as 3.5 points, but Biden won the popular vote by about 4.5 points.

According to experts, this year’s presidential election cycle looks a little different. “If Harris wins the popular vote by 3.5 points, she has an 80 percent or higher chance of winning the presidency,” he told the same site. That’s because polls show her doing better in the so-called “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin than nationally.

As a result, Harris's margin in the popular vote is unlikely to be as large as those of previous Democratic candidates.

“There’s a lot of random variation here based on this, but the DDHQ model, in our forecast now, pegs this number at between 1.5 and 2.5 percent compared to the 3.7 percent it was in 2020,” Donini said. “So we think it’s going to narrow, but we can’t be absolutely sure.”

Polls indicating demographic shifts in support for each candidate may explain some of the shift.

Harris has not performed as well as Biden with minority voters but has shown some improvement with white voters, Chris Jackson, senior vice president of public affairs at polling firm Ipsos, told The Hill.

This could mean she loses ground in traditional Democratic strongholds, such as California and New York, while still winning them comfortably, but gains ground in the key states needed for her to reach 270 electoral votes.

“Because swing states, especially swing states in the Midwest, have larger numbers of white voters than the country as a whole, this stronger performance with white voters means she has a little bit more room in those states to make up for any potential losses with minority voters,” Jackson said.

He noted that Clinton came within a “throw of a stick” of winning the Electoral College in 2016, losing by a fraction of a percentage point in key states. A two-point popular vote win for Harris, like Clinton, could give her the White House this year. But a one-point win may not be enough.

"I think anything less than two points, that's a real warning sign and very concerning" for Harris, Jackson said.

The possibility remains, though unlikely, that the opposite effect will occur with Trump winning the popular vote and losing the Electoral College.

John Cluverius, associate director of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said he could see either scenario playing out, with Trump narrowly winning the popular vote and Harris narrowly winning the electoral vote if the former president can narrow the traditional Democratic lead in California and New York enough. A margin of just a few percentage points in the popular vote could translate into an Electoral College win for Vice President Harris, a significant turnaround from the last two cycles when Democrats faced a significant disadvantage in the count.

The reason is shifts in voters that may allow Republicans to edge out Democrats when it comes to the popular vote, but that may not translate into more electoral votes for former President Trump and the GOP.

“Because of Republican gains in states like California, New York, and Florida, it may help in the popular vote, and it may even help in the House of Representatives, but it’s not effective from an electoral college standpoint,” Donini, a data scientist at Decision Desk Headquarters (DDHQ), points out.

The “traditional” situation of Harris winning the popular vote but not the electoral vote seems more likely, Cluverius said, but some may underestimate how much some key blue-state areas are talking about issues like immigration, where Republican voters broadly favor Republicans.

“I think people are going in with a lot of assumptions about voters that are based on that historical data,” he said. “Now that’s not a bad thing, but it also means that people are going to assume that what’s going to happen is traditional Democratic strength in the popular vote and traditional Republican strength in the electoral vote.” The amount of split voting can be crucial in determining margins, Cluverius added. Polls have regularly shown Democratic Senate candidates performing relatively strongly relative to the top of the ticket, though split voting in recent history has not happened in large numbers.

"Because there is so much uncertainty in the race, and because the race is so close, we have to have a broad mindset about what could happen," he said.

Jackson noted that more people ultimately support Harris and Trump than will vote for them in the election, meaning the side that can best mobilize its supporters may emerge victorious. Polls can sometimes struggle to measure this adequately, he said, since they can gauge someone’s likelihood of voting but can’t guarantee their behavior.

"We all have to be prepared for a very close race to something that looks like an explosion, which in the context of the poll is still only a few percentage points," he said.

The Associated Press reported on Sunday that "Israel has provided little evidence that Hamas fighters were present in the hospitals targeted in the Gaza Strip in many cases."

This came in an investigation conducted by the American agency over the course of months, during which it collected testimonies about the Israeli raids that targeted Al-Awda, Al-Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including interviews with more than 30 patients, witnesses, and workers in the medical and humanitarian fields, in addition to Israeli officials.

The investigation concluded that "Israel provided little evidence of the presence of Hamas fighters in those cases."

The Associated Press reported that the Israeli military spokesman's office declined to comment on a list of incidents related to Israeli attacks on hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

The agency quoted the office as saying that it "cannot comment on specific events."

Since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, the Israeli army has deliberately targeted Gaza’s hospitals and health system, putting them out of service, endangering the lives of patients and the wounded, according to Palestinian and international data.

The agency says: "These hospitals were built to be places of healing. But once again, Israeli forces surrounded three hospitals in northern Gaza and came under fire.

Heavy bombardment is underway around it as Israel claims to be launching a new offensive against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped nearby. As staff rush to treat waves of wounded, they remain haunted by a war that has seen hospitals targeted with an intensity and publicity rarely seen in modern warfare.

The three hospitals were besieged and attacked by Israeli forces about ten months ago. Kamal Adwan, Al Awda and Indonesian hospitals have not yet recovered from the damage, yet they are the only partially functioning hospitals in the area.

Medical facilities often come under fire in war, but combatants often portray such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals have special protections under international law. In its year-long campaign in Gaza, Israel has been notable for carrying out an open-ended assault on hospitals, besieging and raiding at least 10 across the Gaza Strip, some multiple times, and hitting many others in airstrikes.

Israel claims this is a military necessity in its goal of destroying Hamas after the October 7 attacks. It also claims that Hamas uses hospitals as "command and control bases" to plan attacks, house fighters and hide hostages. It claims this negates the protection of hospitals.

“If we intend to destroy the military infrastructure in the north, we have to destroy the philosophy of (using) hospitals,” Israeli military spokesman Adm. Daniel Hagari said of Hamas in an interview with The Associated Press in January after the first round of hospital strikes.

Israel has twice raided Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the Strip, and produced video animations depicting it as a major Hamas base, although the evidence it presented remains disputed.

But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed strikes on other facilities. The Associated Press spent months gathering accounts of the strikes on the al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses, medical and humanitarian workers, as well as Israeli officials.

It found that Israel had provided little evidence of a significant Hamas presence in those cases. The Associated Press provided a file listing the incidents reported by those interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s office. The office said it could not comment on specific incidents.

Al Awda Hospital: “Death Sentence”

The Israeli military has never claimed that Hamas was present at Al-Awda Hospital. Asked about the intelligence that led troops to surround and raid the hospital last year, the military spokesman’s office did not respond.

In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralyzed again, with Israeli forces fighting in the nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies entering northern Gaza. Hospital director Mohammed Salha said last month that the facility was surrounded by troops and had been unable to evacuate six critically ill patients. Staff were forced to eat just one meal a day, usually just flat bread or a spoonful of rice, he said.

As the war's wounded poured in, exhausted surgeons struggled to treat them. There were no vascular or neurosurgeons left north of Gaza City, so doctors often resorted to amputating limbs shattered by shrapnel to save lives.

“We are reliving the nightmares of November and December last year, but worse,” said Dr. Mohammed Salha, the hospital’s director. “We have fewer supplies, fewer doctors, and less hope that anything will be done to stop this.”

The Israeli military, which did not respond to a specific request for comment on Al-Awda Hospital, says it takes every possible precaution to prevent civilian casualties.

Last year, fighting was raging around Al-Awda Hospital when a shell exploded in the facility's operating room on November 21. Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujila, two other doctors and a patient's uncle died almost instantly, according to the international charity Doctors Without Borders, which said it had provided the Israeli military with its coordinates.

Dr. Mohammed Obaid, a colleague of Abu Nujaila's, recalled trying to avoid shelling inside the hospital compound. Hospital officials said Israeli sniper fire killed a nurse and two cleaners and wounded one.

By December 5, Al-Awda Hospital was under siege. Coming back and forth became a “death sentence” for 18 days, Obaid said.

Survivors and hospital managers recounted at least four occasions when Israeli drones or snipers killed or seriously wounded Palestinians as they tried to enter. Staff said two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death on the street. Salha, the manager, watched as his cousin, Soma, and her 6-year-old son were shot and killed as she carried the boy to be treated for his wounds.

The agency quotes Shatha al-Shuraim as saying that labor pains left her with no choice but to walk an hour to al-Awda Hospital to give birth. She, her mother-in-law and her 16-year-old brother-in-law held up flags made of white blouses. Her mother-in-law, Khatam Shariir, kept shouting: “Civilians!” Right at the gate, a volley of bullets returned, killing one of the group.

On December 23, troops stormed the hospital, ordering the men, aged between 15 and 65, to strip and submit to interrogation in the courtyard. Mazen Khalidi, whose injured right leg had been amputated, said nurses begged the soldiers to let him rest rather than join the blindfolded and shackled men outside. They refused, and he stumbled downstairs, the stump of his leg bleeding.

“Humiliation scared me more than death,” Khalidi said.

Israeli forces arrested the hospital director, Ahmed Mahna; his whereabouts remain unknown. One of Gaza’s most prominent doctors, orthopedic surgeon Adnan al-Barsh, was also arrested during the raid and died in Israeli custody in May.

In the wreckage of the November bombing, staff found a message Abu Nujila had written on the whiteboard in the previous weeks.

“Whoever survives to the end will tell the story,” the message read in English. “We did our best. Remember us.”

Indonesian Hospital: 'Patients are dying before your eyes'

On Oct. 18, several blocks away, artillery hit the upper floors of the Indonesian Hospital, staff said. People fled in fear for their lives. Israeli forces had effectively surrounded them, leaving doctors and patients inside without enough food, water and supplies.

“The shelling around us has increased,” said Eddy Wahyudi, an Indonesian volunteer. “It has paralyzed us.”

Muhannad Hadi, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories, said two patients died due to power outages and lack of supplies.

Tamer al-Kurd, a nurse at the hospital, said only about 44 patients and two doctors remained. He said he was so dehydrated he began hallucinating. “People come to me to save them,” he said in a weak voice message. “I can’t do it by myself, with two doctors. I’m tired.”

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had facilitated the evacuation of 29 patients from the Indonesian hospital and back.

The Indonesian Hospital is the largest hospital in northern Gaza. Today, its upper floors are burned, its walls are riddled with shrapnel, and its gates are strewn with piles of rubble—all a legacy of Israel’s blockade in the fall of 2023.

Rather, the attack, the Israeli military claimed, was an underground command and control center located beneath the hospital. It released blurry satellite images of what it said was a tunnel entrance in the courtyard and a nearby rocket launch pad, outside the hospital complex.

The Indonesia-based group that funds the hospital has denied any Hamas presence. “If there was a tunnel, we would know,” Arif Rahman, the hospital director for the Indonesia-based Emergency Medical Rescue Committee, told The Associated Press last month. “We know this building because we built it brick by brick, layer by layer. It’s ridiculous.”

After surrounding and raiding the hospital, the military did not mention or show evidence of the facility or the underground tunnels it had previously claimed. When asked if any tunnels had been found, the military spokesman’s office did not respond.

It released photos of two vehicles found at the compound - a pickup truck with military vests and a blood-stained car belonging to a kidnapped Israeli, suggesting he had been taken to hospital on October 7, 2023. Hamas said it had taken the wounded hostages to hospitals for treatment.

During the siege, Israeli shelling moved closer and closer, hitting the second floor of the Indonesian Hospital on November 20, killing 12 people and wounding dozens, according to staff. Israel said its forces responded to “enemy fire” from the hospital but denied using shells.

Over the next few days, fires ripped through the walls and quickly spread through the intensive care unit. Explosions set fires outside the hospital grounds, where about 1,000 displaced Palestinians had taken refuge, according to staff. The Israeli military denied targeting the hospital, though it acknowledged that nearby shelling may have damaged it.

For three weeks, the wounded streamed in—up to 500 a day into a facility that could hold 200. Supplies had not entered for weeks. Blood-stained sheets piled up. Doctors, some working 24-hour shifts, ate just a few dates a day. The discovery of moldy flour on November 23 was particularly dramatic.

Without medicine or ventilators, doctors could do little. Wounds became infected. Doctors said they had performed dozens of amputations on injured limbs. Medics estimated that a fifth of the patients arriving had died. At least 60 bodies lay in the courtyard. Others were buried under a nearby playground.

“Seeing patients dying in front of your eyes because you don’t have the ability to help them means you have to ask yourself: Where is the humanity?” asked Durgham Abu Ibrahim, one of the volunteers.

Kamal Adwan: "This makes no sense"

Kamal Adwan Hospital, once the hub of the health system in northern Gaza, was on fire on Thursday of last week.

The World Health Organization, which delivered the equipment a few days ago, said Israeli shells hit the third floor, sparking a fire that destroyed medical supplies. The hospital director, Hussam Abu Safia, said the artillery hit water tanks and damaged a dialysis unit, seriously injuring four medics who tried to put out the fire.

In videos of him pleading for help over the past weeks, Abu Safia had tried to maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital. But last weekend, tears filled his eyes.

“They burned everything we built,” he said, his voice breaking. “They burned our hearts. They killed my son.”

On October 25, 2024, Israeli forces stormed the hospital after what an Israeli military official described as heavy fighting with militants nearby. The official said Israeli fire targeted the hospital's oxygen tanks during the battle because "they could be booby-traps."

Israeli forces withdrew after three days, during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all of Kamal Adwan Hospital's medical staff were detained, an Israeli drone killed at least one doctor and two children died in intensive care when generators stopped working.

Days later, a drone struck Abu Safia’s son in nearby Jabaliya. The 21-year-old had been shot by Israeli snipers during the first military strike on Kamal Adwan last December. Now buried in the hospital courtyard, Abu Safia and another doctor were the only ones left to treat the dozens of wounded who poured in every day from new strikes on Jabaliya.

The Israeli military said troops arrested 100 people, some of whom were “posing as medical personnel.” The military said soldiers stripped the men to check for weapons, before sending those deemed armed to detention camps. The military said the hospital was “operating at full capacity, with all departments continuing to treat patients.” It released footage of several rifles and an RPG launcher with several rounds of ammunition it said it found inside the hospital.

Kamal Adwan Hospital staff say more than 30 medical workers are still being held, including the head nurse, who works for MedGlobal, a US organization that sends medical teams to disaster zones, and Dr. Mohammed Obaid, a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders who previously worked at Al-Awda Hospital and has moved to Kamal Adwan Hospital.

The unrest was echoed by Israel’s nine-day siege of Kamal Adwan last December. On Dec. 12, soldiers entered and allowed police dogs to attack staff, patients and others, according to multiple witnesses. Ahmed Atabil, 36, who had taken refuge in the hospital, said he saw a dog bite a man’s finger.

Witnesses said soldiers ordered boys and men, ranging in age from their mid-teens to their 60s, to stand in rows outside the hospital, squatting in the cold, blindfolded and nearly naked, for hours of interrogation. “Every time one of them raised his head, he was beaten,” said Mohamed al-Masry, a lawyer who was arrested.

The Israeli military later released footage of the men walking out of the hospital. Al-Masri identified himself in the footage. He said the soldiers staged the photos, ordering the men to drop the hospital guards’ guns as if they were surrendering militants. Israel said all the photos released were authentic and that it had captured dozens of suspected militants.

Three detainees said that when soldiers released some of the men after interrogation, they opened fire on them as they tried to re-enter the hospital, wounding five of them. Ahmed Abu Hajjaj recalled hearing bursts of gunfire as he made his way back in the dark. “I thought, this doesn’t make sense – who are they going to shoot?” he said.

Eyewitnesses said a bulldozer entered the hospital compound, destroying buildings. Abu Safia, Abu Hajjaj and Al-Masri described being held by soldiers inside the hospital while they heard people screaming outside.

After the soldiers withdrew, the men saw that the bulldozer had crushed tents that had previously housed about 2,500 people. Most of the displaced had been evacuated, but Abu Safia said he found the bodies of four people crushed, with shrapnel from their recent hospital treatment still on their limbs.

Three Lebanese citizens were killed today, Sunday, in an occupation raid on the Saida neighborhood in southern Lebanon, and two others were martyred in a raid on the town of Jabal al-Batm in Tyre district.

The Public Health Emergency Operations Center of the Ministry of Public Health stated in a statement that "the Israeli enemy's raid on the Saida neighborhood led, in an initial toll, to the martyrdom of three people and the injury of nine others."

The National News Agency also reported that two people were killed in an airstrike targeting the town of Jabal al-Batm in southern Lebanon.

This afternoon, the Israeli warplanes launched 3 airstrikes, targeting the town of Harid, the town of Ghandouriya, and the vicinity of the government hospital in the town of Tebnin, south Lebanon, according to the same source.

The spokesman for the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Basal, confirmed today, Sunday, that "the Israeli occupation, around the clock, has not stopped bombing inhabited citizens' homes, especially in the northern areas of the Strip."

He added, "The bombing caused the destruction of a large number of buildings and infrastructure, and service providers were not spared from this bombing."

"Israeli artillery and drones pose a major threat to citizens, creating a state of constant fear and panic," Basal said.

He added: "All the appeals we made to international organizations and humanitarian institutions were of no use in changing the reality," noting that the civil defense system in the northern Gaza Strip had stopped working and was not allowed to intervene in rescue operations.

Basal stressed that the occupation prevented the entry of civil defense vehicles and equipment for more than 400 days, which shows "the occupation's intention to keep civil defense in a state of paralysis and inability to respond to events," stressing the necessity of providing "humanitarian services to our people in light of the war on the Strip" and for civil defense crews to continue performing their work without any obstacles.

"We have more than 100,000 people in northern Gaza who lack food, water and medicine, and we are unable to provide them with any assistance," Basal continued. He concluded by appealing to "the free people of the world to pressure the international community to enable service providers to perform their humanitarian duty in accordance with humanitarian laws."

The Abu Al-Hawa family was able to reclaim their home and land in the town of At-Tur in occupied Jerusalem, after settlers seized them.

According to local sources, settlers seized the house and the land on September 16, and forced the family of citizen Ahmed Abu Al-Hawa to leave the house under the protection of the occupation forces, and closed it with locks and barbed wire.

She added: "The person in charge of the property, Ms. Ibtisam Abu Al-Hawa, filed a complaint with the occupation police, challenging the ownership papers that the settlers claim to own the house and the land, and we demanded their return."

She pointed out that they obtained a decision from the occupation court to return the house to the Abu Al-Hawa family, and rejected the settlers’ request to take possession of the house.

Settlers, under the protection of the occupation forces, stormed Al-Khalwa Street in At-Tur, raided a residential apartment, locked its doors, placed barbed wire around it, and installed surveillance cameras.

A number of citizens were killed and others were injured, Sunday evening, in an Israeli bombing east of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.

Medical sources reported that at least 9 citizens were killed and several others were injured after an Israeli air strike targeted a group of citizens in the Sheikh Nasser area, east of Khan Yunis.

The occupation forces have continued their aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, which has resulted in the death of 43,341 citizens and the injury of 102,105 others, while thousands of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and rescue teams cannot reach them.

President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas arrived in the Arab Republic of Egypt today, Sunday, on an official visit, in response to an invitation from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, to participate in the opening session of the 12th session of the World Urban Forum.

He was received at the presidential lounge at Cairo International Airport by Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities Sherif El-Sherbiny, and the staff of the Embassy and Delegation of the State of Palestine to the League of Arab States and the Consulate General of the State of Palestine in Alexandria.

The President is accompanied on the visit by: Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization Hussein al-Sheikh, Head of the General Intelligence Service Major General Majed Faraj, Chief Justice of Palestine, Advisor to the President for Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud al-Habbash, Advisor to the President for Diplomatic Affairs Majdi al-Khalidi, and Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Egypt Diab al-Louh.

Today, Sunday, the Israeli occupation army issued new evacuation instructions for the residents of the Lebanese province of Baalbek, warning of striking it due to the "presence of interests" belonging to "Hezbollah" there.

Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee warned residents of Baalbek and the village of Douris (southwest) via his X account against being “near Hezbollah facilities, as the IDF will act against them.” He attached maps to his posts that included buildings that he called for to be evacuated “and to stay away from them at a distance of no less than 500 meters, within the next four hours.”

The Israeli army announced the launch of about 10 rockets into northern Israel, in the latest barrage of rockets launched from Lebanon.

The Israeli military said it intercepted some of the rockets, while others landed in open ground, The Times of Israel reported Sunday. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.

The Israeli army announced earlier this morning that a suspicious aerial target crossed into Israel from the east, following alerts that were sounded in the southern Golan Heights, starting at 6:45 a.m. local time.

In a parallel context, the Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry announced today that one of its nationals was killed in an airstrike in Lebanon, while Israeli bombing is hampering efforts to recover its citizens.

The Foreign Ministry in Dhaka estimates that between 70,000 and 100,000 of its citizens work in Lebanon.

The first flights organised by the Bangladesh government in collaboration with the International Organisation for Migration brought back dozens of Bangladeshi nationals from Beirut last month.

Bangladesh's ambassador to Lebanon, Javed Tanveer Khan, said in a statement that Mohammad Nizam, 31, was killed on Saturday afternoon in a strike when he stopped at a cafe on his way to work in Beirut.

The war that has been going on in the Gaza Strip for more than a year between Israel and Hamas has expanded to include Lebanon, where Israel has been carrying out intensive air strikes against Hezbollah since September 23. On September 30, it began “limited” ground operations in the south.

The war has displaced hundreds of thousands in Lebanon, where at least 1,930 people have been killed since September 23, according to a tally based on health ministry data, but the actual number is likely higher.

The Israeli army reports that 38 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since September 30.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported today, Sunday, that the Israeli occupation committed 4 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 27 dead and 86 injuries arriving at hospitals during the past 24 hours.

It pointed out that the death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 43,341 dead and 102,105 injuries since October 7, 2023.

The Commission of Prisoners' Affairs and Freed Prisoners reported that the total number of female detainees to date has reached 95, who are suffering from the harshest and worst detention conditions in the occupation's prisons, and their severity has increased since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.

The Commission explained, in a statement issued today, Sunday, that the occupation prison administration deliberately imposed additional retaliatory punishments on the female detainees, by depriving them of the most basic human requirements of clothing, food, and treatment, and completely isolating them from the world, in addition to what they are exposed to in terms of strip searches, beatings, and repression, the latest of which was the storming of several sections in the "Damon" prison, and the abuse of the female detainees on 10/27/2024.

She pointed out that the Commission’s lawyer visited the following detainees and checked on them: Fawzan Awida (20 years old) from the city of Nablus, who was arrested on 03/27/2024, Diala Aida from the city of Ramallah, whose administrative detention was extended for the third time, and she is expected to be released on 01/14/2025, and Shaima Ramadan, who was arrested in July 2024.

She added that there are 3 female detainees held in solitary confinement: (Khalida Jarrar, Saja Daraghmeh, and Nawal Abu Fatiha).

Today, Sunday, the Israeli occupation forces and its settlers attacked farmers in the town of Tarqumiya, west of Hebron, and forcibly prevented them from reaching their lands threatened with seizure to pick olives.

According to local sources, the settlers, accompanied by occupation soldiers, forced the citizens to leave their lands in the Taybeh area of Tarqumiya.

She added that the area of land planted with olives that citizens were unable to harvest amounts to 3,000 dunums in Taybeh, and the occupation authorities did not allow farmers to access many areas in the governorate, such as the areas of Tel Armida, Farsh al-Hawa, and the lands surrounding the "Kiryat Arba" settlement.

In Ramallah, dozens of settlers accompanied by occupation forces stormed the village of Al-Mughayyir, and picked olives from trees belonging to the citizens: Samir Abu Aliya, Rateb Al-Naasan, and Nael Al-Hajj Muhammad, and stole them.

According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, the West Bank governorates witnessed a dangerous wave of terrorism last month during the olive season, with 360 attacks, most of them in Nablus, 245 acts of vandalism and theft, and the uprooting of 1,401 trees.

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority reported on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office had requested to join a request to lift the gag order on the leak of sensitive material to the media, after his office spokesman was accused of leaking classified information, leading to a government crisis.

She said that Netanyahu's spokesman - the main suspect in leaking classified information from his office - had not received his salary for months, had failed to obtain a security clearance, and had been forced to leave his position, but had continued to work effectively for Netanyahu.

She stressed that the leak case in Netanyahu's office sparked an unprecedented crisis between the political and security levels in Israel.

Leak details

For its part, Maariv newspaper reported that information it described as confidential was stolen from the Military Intelligence Division and ended up in the hands of one of Netanyahu's men, and from there to the foreign media.

Netanyahu's spokesman leaked "top secret" documents that were forged to the German newspaper Bild and the British newspaper Jewish Chronicle.

Netanyahu's office claimed that the leaked documents were found on a private computer belonging to the leadership of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), with the aim of influencing public opinion in Israel regarding the prisoner exchange negotiations.

The leaked documents claim that the late Hamas political bureau chief Yahya Sinwar was not interested in a swap deal and was seeking to smuggle the detainees to Iran.

According to Israeli intelligence expert Ronen Bergman, the Israeli security leadership confirmed that what was stated in the leaked documents was not true.

He added that the leaking of forged documents to the foreign press led to a lack of trust between the security and military levels on the one hand and the political and governmental levels on the other.

According to Bergman, the anger centered around two publications published by the German newspaper Bild and the British newspaper Jewish Chronicle, in early September, which were claimed to be secret internal documents of the Hamas leadership and reflect the atmosphere within the movement’s top leadership and the orders issued by its leader, Yahya Sinwar, with the aim of entrenching and deepening divisions within Israeli society and disintegrating it.

Media expert Nir Hefetz confirmed in an interview with Israel's Channel 12 that Netanyahu has a strong relationship with the owners of the German newspaper Bild, which published these forged documents.

impose censorship

The scandal of these forged documents has returned to occupy the Israeli media after the military censor imposed a strict ban on the details, after the security services arrested senior officials from Netanyahu's office, who quickly denied any connection to the prime minister.

The American website Axios suggested that the arrests that took place were "the biggest scandal within the Israeli government since the beginning of the war in Gaza."

He pointed out that the leaks scandal is likely to deepen the state of mistrust and tension between Netanyahu and the army and intelligence services.

Haaretz newspaper said - in an analysis by its chief analyst Yossi Verter - that when the ban is lifted, the facts will be revealed, and it will become clear that Netanyahu's office is made up of corruption that serves his interests, and that this is evidence that Netanyahu has installed a criminal organization above Israel and its national security interests to serve him.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that the international system’s reluctance to take decisive decisions regarding Israel’s massacres in the Gaza Strip - especially in the north - makes it a partner in these crimes and represents a green light for Israel to proceed with escalating the crime of genocide, and also reflects a shocking disregard for the lives and dignity of the Palestinians.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor pointed out in a statement that the international system - including the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the European Union and various United Nations organizations - have all failed to achieve the basic goals and principles on which they were founded, and have demonstrated a shameful failure over the course of 13 months to commit to protecting civilians and stopping the crime of genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza, which is supposed to be at the core of its work and the reason for its existence.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor added that the continuation of Israeli crimes throughout the occupied Palestinian territories - especially in the Gaza Strip - indicates a structural defect in the collective security system that was established to prevent serious crimes and impose the rule of law at the global level, which makes the international system lose its credibility and reveals its fragility and farce in the face of political calculations and the influence of major countries that are partners in the genocide and opens the way for the consecration of a culture of impunity.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor confirmed that the international community and international justice mechanisms did not deal seriously with the crimes committed despite their seriousness and atrocity, but rather largely ignored them, while some parties limited themselves, at best, to timid statements that did not call things by their correct names, which encouraged Israel to expand those crimes with support and armament from the United States of America and a number of European countries.

Israeli Channel 12 said on Sunday that the Ministry of Defense has begun fortifying and protecting buildings in several towns adjacent to the northern border with Lebanon.

The channel added that the fortification includes adding more than 200 shelters in towns in the Golan Heights, Upper Galilee and the West.

The revelation of the new fortifications comes as Israeli cities and settlements from the border with Lebanon in the north to Haifa and Tel Aviv in the south are subjected to daily missile strikes by the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are forced to take shelters every day due to Hezbollah missiles and drones.

The party recently called on the residents of 25 Israeli settlements in the north to leave their homes immediately, before starting to bombard them with missiles and drones, stressing that they have become legitimate targets for it because they have become a place for the deployment and settlement of Israeli forces.

Yesterday, Saturday, Israel expanded restrictions on gatherings in the Lower Galilee and the southern Golan Heights, and it was decided to suspend studies today, Sunday, in the city of Acre due to the missile bombardment by Hezbollah.

Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch said on Sunday that if Iran made a "mistake" and decided to respond to the Israeli attack last October, it would allow his country to continue implementing its strategy in the region.

This came in statements made by the minister from the ruling Likud party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the Israeli Army Radio.

"If Iran makes a mistake and decides to respond (to the Israeli attack), perhaps there will be an advantage in that, because it will allow us to continue implementing our strategy," Kish said, without giving further details.

The army radio described the Israeli minister's statements as "surprising."

On the dawn of October 26, the Israeli army announced that it had launched a 4-hour attack on Iran, which confirmed that it had "successfully confronted the Zionist entity's attempts to attack some points in Tehran and the country," while the attack led to the killing of 4 Iranian soldiers, according to an official statement.

Since then, Israel has raised its alert level by deploying the US THAAD air defence system, in anticipation of an Iranian response.

Earlier on Sunday, Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman said: "I expect that Iran will not attack Israel before the US elections (scheduled for the day after tomorrow, Tuesday), and we must strike it and not wait."

"There must be a crushing response to Iran that includes all of their energy infrastructure and nuclear facilities," Lieberman, a former defense minister, told the Hebrew newspaper Maariv.

He warned against a weak response to Iran, saying: "We cannot afford another war of attrition against Iran, and we must deal it a crushing blow."

On Saturday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei threatened both the United States and Israel with a "harsh response" for what the two countries did against Tehran.

Khamenei said in a speech to a large group of students in the capital, Tehran, on the occasion of "Student Day": "We will do whatever is necessary on the military level, armament or political action to confront...

Arrogance, and the authorities are currently busy doing this.”

The latest Israeli attack came after Iran fired more than 180 rockets at Israel in early October, in an attack that Tehran said was "revenge" for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas's political bureau; Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah; and Revolutionary Guard commander Abbas Nilforoushan.

By: Amos Goldberg 4/17/2024

In most cases of genocide, from Bosnia to Namibia, from Rwanda to Armenia, the perpetrators said they were acting in self-defense. The fact that what is happening in Gaza does not resemble the Holocaust, writes Holocaust researcher Amos Goldberg, does not mean that it is not genocide

Yes, it is genocide. Although it is so difficult and painful to admit this and despite all efforts to think otherwise, at the end of six months of a brutal war it is no longer possible to escape this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the sign of Cain of the "crime of crimes", which will not be able to be erased from its forehead. As such it will stand the test of time.

From a legal point of view, it is not yet known what the International Court of Justice in The Hague will decide, although in light of its temporary rulings so far and in light of the increasing number of reports by jurists, international organizations and journalist-investigators, it seems that the direction is quite clear.

From Moum Moom to Haag Schmag: Has the end of Israeli immunity come?

Already on January 26, the court ruled by an overwhelming majority (14 to 2) that Israel may be committing genocide in Gaza. On March 28, following the deliberate starvation that Israel imposes on Gaza, the court issued additional orders (and this time by a majority of 15 to 1, Judge Aharon Barak) calling on Israel not to deny the Palestinians their rights protected by the Genocide Convention.

The detailed and reasoned report of the UN Special Mission on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanza, reached a slightly more decisive conclusion and is another step in establishing the insight that Israel is indeed committing genocide. The detailed and updated report by Dr. Lee Mordechai, which gathers information on the level of Israeli violence in Gaza, reaches the same conclusion. Very senior academics such as Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics at Columbia University (and a Jew with a warm attitude towards traditional Zionism), who is regularly consulted by heads of state all over the world on international issues, speaks of the Israeli genocide as a matter of course.

Excellent investigations such as those by Yuval Avraham in "Tasha Mekimim", and especially his recent investigation on the artificial intelligence systems used by the army in selecting and harming those destined for elimination, further deepen this accusation. The fact that the army allowed, for example, the killing of 300 innocent people and the destruction of an entire residential district in order to harm one Hamas general, shows that military goals are almost incidental goals for killing the civilians and that the Palestinian mind in Gaza is in fact a son of death. This is the logic of genocide.

yes. I know, they are all anti-Semitic or self-hating Jews. Only we, the Israelis, who feed on the messages of the IDF spokesperson and are only exposed to the images that the Israeli media filters for us, see the reality present. As if endless literature has not been written about the social and cultural denial mechanisms of societies that commit serious war crimes. Israel is truly a paradigmatic case of such societies. , a case that will be studied in every university seminar in the world dealing with the subject.

It will be a few years before the court in The Hague gives its verdict, but we should not look at the catastrophic reality only through legal glasses. What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of the indiscriminate killing, the destruction, the mass deportations, the displacement, the starvation, the executions, the elimination of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of the elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians - create an overall picture of genocide, of intentional and conscious crushing of the Palestinian existence in Gaza.

In known ways, Palestinian Gaza as a geographical-political-cultural-human complex no longer exists. Genocide is the deliberate destruction of a collective or part of it - not all of its individuals. And this is what is happening in Gaza. The result is undoubtedly genocidal. The numerous declarations of extermination by senior officials in the Israeli government, and the general destructive public atmosphere, which was rightly pointed out by Carolina Landsman, show that this was also the intention.

Israelis are wrong to think that genocide should look like the Holocaust. They imagine trains, gas chambers, incinerators, killing pits, concentration and extermination camps, and a systematic persecution of all members of the victim group until the last one. An event of this kind does not take place in Gaza. Similar to what happened in the Holocaust, most Israelis also imagine that the group of victims is not involved in violent activity or in an actual conflict, and the killers are destroying them due to a crazy and irrational ideology. This is not the case of Gaza either.

The brutal Hamas attack of October 7 was a heinous and terrible crime. During it, about 1,200 people were killed or murdered, of which more than 850 were Israeli citizens (and foreigners), including many children and the elderly, about 240 living Israelis were abducted to Gaza and even atrocities such as rape were committed. This is an event with catastrophic, deep and lasting traumatic effects, for many years, certainly for the direct victims and their immediate circle, but also for Israeli society as a whole. The attack forced Israel to respond in self-defense.

However, although each case of genocide has a different character, in terms of the scope of the murder and its characteristics, the common denominator of most of them is that they were committed out of an authentic sense of self-defense. From a legal point of view, an event cannot be both an event of self-defense and an event of genocide. These two legal categories are mutually exclusive. But historically, self-defense is not at odds with genocide, but is usually one of its central factors, if not the main one.

In Srebrenica - which the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia determined in two instances, that genocide took place in July 1995 - "only" about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men, over the age of 16, were murdered. The women and children were deported earlier.

The attack by the Bosnian Serb forces, who were responsible for the murder, took place in the midst of a bloody civil war, during which both sides committed war crimes (though the Serbs far more) and which erupted following a unilateral decision by the Muslim Croats and Bosnians to secede from Yugoslavia and establish an independent Bosnian state, in which the Serbs were a minority.

The Bosnian Serbs, with painful past memories of persecution and murder from World War II, felt threatened. The complexity of the conflict, in which neither side was innocent, did not prevent the tribunal from recognizing the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide, which went beyond the other war crimes committed by the parties, since these crimes cannot justify genocide. The court reasoned this by the fact that the Serbian forces deliberately destroyed, through murder, deportation and destruction, the Bosnian-Muslim existence in Srebrenica. Today, by the way, Muslim Bosnians live there again, and some of the mosques that were destroyed have been restored. But the genocide continues to haunt the descendants of the killers and the victims alike.

The case of Rwanda is quite different. There, for a long time, as part of the Belgian colonial control mechanism, which was based on a policy of divide and rule, the Tutsi minority group ruled, and it oppressed the Hutu majority group. However, in the 1960s a revolution took place, and upon gaining independence from Belgium in 1962, the Hutu took over the country and adopted an oppressive and discriminatory policy against the Tutsi, again this time with the support of the colonial powers.

Gradually, this policy became intolerable, and as a result, a brutal and bloody civil war broke out in 1990, which began with the invasion of a Tutsi army, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, which consisted mainly of Tutsis who fled Rwanda after the fall of the colonial government. As a result, in the eyes of the Hutu regime, the Tutsi became collectively identified with an actual military enemy.

During the war, both sides committed serious crimes on the soil of Rwanda, and also on the soil of other countries to which the war spilled over. There were no absolute righteous and absolute wicked. The civil war ended with the Arusha Accords, which were signed in 1993 and were supposed to lead to the participation of the Tutsi in the government institutions, the army and the mechanisms of the state.

But these agreements collapsed, and in April 1994 the plane of the president of Rwanda, a member of the Hutu tribe, was shot down. To this day, it is not known who shot down the plane, and it is believed that it was Hutu fighters. However, the Hutus were convinced that the crime was committed by Tutsi underground fighters, and this was perceived as a real threat to the state. The Tutsi genocide was underway. The official rationale for the act of genocide was the need to remove the Tutsi existential threat once and for all.

The case of the Rohingya, which the Biden administration just recently recognized as genocide, is very different. Initially, after the independence of Myanmar (formerly Burma) in 1948, the Rohingya Muslims were seen as equal citizens and part of the national body, which is mostly Buddhist. But over the years, and especially after the establishment of the military dictatorship in 1962, Burmese nationalism has been identified with several dominant ethnic groups, mainly Buddhists, which did not include the Rohingya.

In 1982 and later, citizenship laws were enacted, which deprived most of the Rohingya of their citizenship and rights. They were perceived as foreigners and as a threat to the existence of the state. The Rohingya, who in the past had small rebel groups among them, made an effort not to be drawn into violent resistance, but in 2016 many of them felt that through peaceful means they were unable to prevent the denial of their rights, the oppression, the violence of the state and the mob against them, and the gradual and underground deportation of their children The Rohingya attacked Myanmar police stations.

The reaction was brutal. In the raids of the security forces of Myanmar, most of the Rohingya were expelled from their villages, many of them were massacred and the villages were completely destroyed. When Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken read the announcement at the Holocaust Museum in Washington in March 2022 acknowledging that what was done to the Rohingya was genocide, he said that in 2016 and 2017, about 850,000 Rohingya were deported to Bangladesh and about 9,000 of them were murdered. This was enough to recognize what was done to the Rohingya as the eighth genocide

The reaction was brutal. In the raids of the security forces of Myanmar, most of the Rohingya were expelled from their villages, many of them were massacred and the villages were completely destroyed. When Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken read the announcement at the Holocaust Museum in Washington in March 2022 acknowledging that what was done to the Rohingya was genocide, he said that in 2016 and 2017, about 850,000 Rohingya were deported to Bangladesh and about 9,000 of them were murdered. This was enough to recognize what was done to the Rohingya as the eighth genocide recognized by the US, apart from the Holocaust. The case of the Rohingya reminds us of what many genocide researchers have established in terms of research, and it is very relevant to the case of Gaza: a connection between ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The connection between the two phenomena is twofold, and both are relevant to Gaza, where the vast majority of the population was expelled from their places of residence, and only Egypt's refusal to accept masses of Palestinians in its territory prevented their departure from the Strip. On the one hand, ethnic cleansing signifies the willingness to eliminate the enemy group at any cost and without compromise, and for that reason it easily slips into genocide or is part of it. On the other hand, ethnic cleansing usually creates conditions that allow or cause (eg diseases and hunger) the partial or complete destruction of the victim group.

The sense of threat in the small settler community in Namibia, numbering only a few thousand, was real, and Germany feared that it had lost its deterrent power against the natives

In the case of Gaza, the "safe zones" have often turned into death traps and intentional extermination zones, and in these refuge areas Israel is deliberately starving the population. For this reason, there are quite a few commentators who estimate that ethnic cleansing is the goal of the war in Gaza.

The genocide of the Armenians during the First World War also had a connection. During the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians developed their own national identity and demanded self-determination. Their religious and ethnic diversity, as well as their strategic location on the border between the Ottoman and Russian empires, made them a dangerous population in the eyes of the Ottoman government.

Terrible outbreaks of violence against the Armenians occurred already at the end of the 19th century, and because of that some Armenians did sympathize with the Russians and saw them as potential liberators. Small Armenian-Russian groups even cooperated with the Russian army against the Turks, calling their brothers across the border to join them, which led to the strengthening of the sense of existential threat in the eyes of the Ottoman government beyond all proportion. This sense of threat, which developed during a deep crisis of the empire, was a central factor in the development of the Armenian Genocide, which also began during the process of deportation.

The first genocide in the twentieth century was also carried out out of a concept of self-defense by the German settlers against the Herero and Nama people in South-West Africa (today's Namibia). As a result of the harsh oppression of the German settlers, the locals rebelled and in a brutal attack murdered about 123 (perhaps more) unarmed German men. The sense of threat in the small settler community, which numbered only a few thousand, was real, and Germany feared that it had lost its power of deterrence against the natives.

The response was accordingly. Germany sent an army led by an uninhibited commander, and there, too, out of a sense of self-defense, most of the members of these tribes were murdered between 1904 and 1908 - some by direct killing, some by the conditions of hunger and thirst that the Germans imposed on them (again by deportation, this time to the Omaka desert) and some in camps Imprisonment and brutal labor. Similar processes also occurred during the deportation and extermination of the indigenous peoples in North America, mainly during the 19th century.

In all these cases, the perpetrators of the genocide felt an existential threat, more or less justified, and genocide came as a response. The collective destruction of the victims was not opposed to the act of self-defense, but from an authentic motive of self-defense.

In 2011, I published a short article in the Haaretz newspaper about the genocide in South-West Africa, and concluded with the following words: "From the genocide of the Herero and the Nama, we can learn how colonial control, based on a sense of cultural and racial superiority, could slide, in the face of the rebellion of the local inhabitants, into crimes Horrific like mass deportation, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The case of the Herero rebellion should serve as a horrific warning sign for us here in Israel, which has already known one Nakba in its history."

Newspaper boss says Israel imposes 'apartheid' and should be punished; Ministries Order Boycott, Propose Budget Cuts

By Stuart Winer

The Interior, Education and Diaspora Ministries cut ties with the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, while the Communications Minister proposed a boycott by all government bodies, after publisher Amos Schocken told a conference that Palestinian terrorists were “freedom fighters” and that Israel was imposing an “apartheid regime” on the Palestinians.

In a letter to his spokesperson’s office, Interior Ministry Director-General Ronen Peretz wrote that Schocken’s remarks “provoke disgust and demonstrate a disconnect from fundamental values.”

He said Israel is in the midst of a war “that could not be more justified” following the pogrom carried out by the Palestinian terror group Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, in which some 6,000 Gazans including 3,800 terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, kidnapping 251 hostages of all ages, and committing numerous atrocities and using sexual violence as a weapon on a large scale.

“Our ministry is in charge of the campaign against the delegitimization of Israel and it is astonishing to see a supposedly Israeli organization acting against Israel from within,” Diaspora Affairs Ministry Director General Avi Cohen-Scali said.

Education Ministry Director General Meir Shimoni also ordered an end to all cooperation with Haaretz, saying in a letter to staff that Schocken’s remarks “contradict the values of the educational system.”

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi speaks at the Knesset plenum in Jerusalem on October 30, 2024. (Dani Shem-Tov/Knesset)

Meanwhile, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi proposed that the government end all interaction with Haaretz, including announcements by the government press service.

Such action, he wrote in his proposal, “will reduce the harsh impact that Israeli citizens feel, not only because of the newspaper’s publications, but also because they are forced to fund it with their taxes.”

Such a boycott would not have a disproportionate impact on freedom of expression, Karhi stressed.

He noted that Haaretz must take into account that its position, as expressed by Schocken, upsets some of its clients, including the State of Israel.

In his remarks, delivered Sunday at a Haaretz conference in London and circulated on social media in a video apparently compiled from several excerpts of his speech, Schocken is seen saying: “The [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government does not care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It rejects the costs to both sides of defending the [West Bank] settlements while fighting Palestinian freedom fighters whom Israel labels terrorists.”

“In a sense, what is happening in the Occupied Territories and parts of Gaza is a second Nakba,” Schocken said, invoking the Arabic term for the displacement of Arabs during the creation of the State of Israel and the War of Independence.

He said the only way to establish a necessary Palestinian state is "to impose sanctions against Israel, against the leaders who oppose it and against the settlers [residents of the settlements]." Israel rejects accusations of apartheid in the Palestinian territories, saying that Palestinians living there are citizens of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has a form of autonomy, and that Arab Israelis enjoy equal rights with their Jewish counterparts.

The Choose Life Forum, which represents some terror victims and their families, said it filed a complaint with police, accusing Schocken of incitement and encouraging harm to the state and its security forces.

“Such statements go beyond the limits of freedom of expression and amount to incitement,” the forum said in a statement. By calling the terrorists “freedom fighters,” Schocken is “supporting the enemies of the state.”

Karhi had previously called for the government to end ties with Haaretz in November 2023, citing the left-wing newspaper’s reporting on Israel’s war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas, following the latter’s October 7, 2023 pogrom on Israeli soil.

Ben Samuels

Kamala Harris' approach – and the rhetoric of her surrogates – during the campaign's home stretch has done nothing but stick a finger in the eye of her disillusioned base. And all this at a time when she needs to secure support from every corner she can find it

One of the most persistent storylines of the 2024 U.S. presidential election has been the Democratic nominees' failure to quell concerns from voters disillusioned by the Biden administration's policies toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When U.S. President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race in July, many of these frustrated voters – hundreds of thousands of whom reside in battleground states where their votes could very well swing the election – expressed optimism that new nominee Kamala Harris would adopt a more progressive track.

She has accordingly taken pains to articulate her vision for a potential two-state solution with a cease-fire to the Gaza war being the first necessary step, hinting at potential changes should she be elected.

On the campaign trail, however, she has undoubtedly prioritized securing the support of moderates and portions of the electorate more traditionally sympathetic toward Israel over the Palestinians.

To the Harris campaign and many of its liberal surrogates, this should not be considered a binary issue and approaching it as such is among the core reasons the conflict has been so intractable.

However, her approach – and the rhetoric of her surrogates – during the campaign's home stretch has done nothing but stick a finger in the eye of her disillusioned base. And all this at a time where she needs to secure support from every corner she can find it.

One of her biggest own goals, in the eyes of these voters, was the Democratic National Convention's failure to afford time to a Palestinian-American speaker. The Uncommitted National Movement provided the DNC and the Harris campaign with a list of speakers and prepared remarks, in an effort to indicate that it was not trying to antagonize or self-sabotage the party.

Months after this request was ignored, the campaign has again declined to provide any of these speakers with a platform in hopes of securing their vote. Instead, Harris has prioritized the support of "moderates" like Liz Cheney – one of the Republican Party's most vocal foreign policy hawks for years before she found herself exiled from the GOP.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has seized upon Harris' embrace of Cheney to illustrate why he deserves the support of the Arab-American community. He has parlayed this into support from leading community members while also emphasizing the support of socially conservative Muslims, as Republican operatives funded by megadonors have attempted to further drive a wedge using bad-faith tactics and oversimplified arguments amid the backdrop of antisemitic tropes.

Even Harris' traditional Democratic allies, such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, have been overtly dismissive of these voters while trafficking in bizarre oversimplications of their own.

"Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable. I got news for them – they were there first before their faith existed. They were there in the time of King David in the southernmost tribes, had Judea and Samaria," he told a Michigan rally. "When I read people in Michigan are thinking about not voting because they're mad at the Biden administration for honoring its historic obligation to try to keep Israel from being destroyed, I think that's a mistake," he added.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has attempted to directly engage with these voters, stressing that Trump would be far worse than Harris on this issue and there is potential to move her in the desired policy direction.

Harris' running mate, Tim Walz, directly addressed these voters in an interview with CBS earlier this week, saying: "There's one ticket here that is going to find the pathway to stabilization in the Middle East, but also one that is going to respect their human rights here."

While this may be true, the Harris campaign is heading into the weekend before the election leaving many of these voters on the table. Whether or not this serves as a validation of her strategy or a precursor to her defeat will be clear soon enough.

German police forces arrested several demonstrators during a march held on Saturday in the capital, Berlin, in solidarity with the Palestinian people against the genocide committed by Israel against them, especially in the Gaza Strip.

More than a thousand people gathered near the Platz der Luftbrücke metro station to denounce the attacks that Israel has been carrying out on Gaza for more than a year, and to show solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The demonstrators later marched around the station, waving Palestinian flags and banners demanding that the German government stop supplying Israel with weapons used to kill the Palestinian people.

The correspondent pointed out that clashes occurred during the march between demonstrators and police forces, which led to many participants supporting Palestine being subjected to violence and arrest.

The demonstrators were forced to end the demonstration near the Gneisenau metro station after police intervened to disperse them. After they refused to leave the place, the police arrested another large group of demonstrators. Germany expresses its support for Israel explicitly through its officials, and has agreed to sell weapons and military equipment to Israel worth 31 million euros in the past few weeks.

On October 16, the Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection stated that the government had approved the sale of weapons and military equipment to Israel worth 45.74 million euros during the current year.

With full American support, the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza, which has been ongoing for more than a year, has left more than 145,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, and more than 10,000 missing, amidst massive destruction and famine that has killed dozens of children and elderly people.

Tel Aviv continues its massacres, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution to end them immediately, and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The poem of the late Mahmoud Darwish, the genius of Palestinian poetry, reconnects the entire scene in the Gaza Strip, mixing life and death, and the strange mixture of planting and martyrdom, to confirm that construction is not hindered by death, and rises one layer after another despite the destruction, and this is what our great people in the Gaza Strip are characterized by.

The love of life and education, despite the sinful aggression, yesterday gave birth to the opening of the largest and most massive school inside the shelter camps in the southern Gaza Strip. The children appeared with smiles on their faces, dancing, playing and having fun in a place not far from the sound of shelling and cannons, and the buzzing of planes that killed the dreams and hopes of large families, as happened in Jabalia, Beit Lahia and in the Asmaa School massacre in Al-Shati’ yesterday, where there was a great desire and enthusiasm to welcome the first school day, in more than a year.

One of the teachers gives an explanation to the media, saying: Today the largest field school in the southern Gaza Strip was opened, and greets the children of Gaza who deserve everything beautiful, as the children pass through the morning line, and the camera moves to tents set up inside the shelter camp with school desks, and a clown playing with the children, and the ribbon cutting in the presence of officials and the people, to the rhythm of a video clip that tells about the difficult days and life, but we can appreciate it, and we are a people who change what does not change, then another teacher appears and says: Even in a tent or anywhere, and despite the war, we must continue life, and a tape of a popular Palestinian dabke passes, and its heroes are wearing the keffiyeh of the martyr symbol Abu Ammar, and a student says: I am excited, and another: I love school very much, and a third: I am happy and a child is happy and a clown says: Despite everything, we must teach the sweet children, then the photographer captures a scene of a girl in a wheelchair, and how many of these scenes are due to the occupation’s attacks on the children of Gaza in an attempt to eliminate Their wishes and dreams.

A nurse speaks and says: “Masha’Allah, an abnormal turnout of excited and happy children.” A guide discusses the meanings of steadfastness, challenge and will, as a title for the lives of Palestinians from inside the tents. A guide thanks the Sultanate of Oman for its initiative, and concludes by opening the registration and expressing her pride in the contributors and participants in the opening.

In another spot, life was embodied through the opening of the first phase of the rehabilitation and equipping of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City, where there is an urgent need for all the hospitals and health centers that were destroyed by Israel, to provide their medical services to tens of thousands of wounded who need operations and surgical interventions, and shelter, care and attention in hospitals due to the seriousness of their conditions.

Darwish was honest in describing the suffering of the Palestinian people in an interesting and wonderful way. At the beginning of his poem, we sense the emotional human tendency when he says (and we love life), to present the most beautiful description of a people like the rest of the peoples of the earth, who have the right and the power to live and survive, because they love life and do not turn to death and killing as Israel imagines.

This is how the proud Palestinian people rise from under the rubble to rebuild their homeland and land, despite the pain, massacres and smell of death that Israel and its army spread everywhere. This is a message to the entire world that the Palestinian people, their students and all their groups love life and seek it with pride. Is it time to stop this aggression?

Israel responds by deploying a new brigade, the Kfir Brigade, alongside the Givati Brigade and the 401st Brigade, continuing its massacres and killing of a people who love life, depriving them of this right, in an unprecedented crime in the history of humanity.

A writer friend confided in me that he feared for his venerable library, which he had collected over more than sixty years. He feared that these treasures would end up as scrap or trash on the side of containers. He confided that he regretted spending most of his life reading, writing, researching, and taking life seriously. He asked me sadly: What have my books given me? They haven’t even fed me bread or onions.

I remembered Al-Jahiz with the whisper of a friend. Al-Jahiz who died after his library fell on him with its shelves and heavy books. But I do not believe that his death was a coincidence. Rather, I am certain that it was a planned suicide, after he felt in a moment of anger that his fatigue and sleepless nights reading, writing, composing and researching would not find an echo in others.

Perhaps this is the same reason that prompted the philosopher of poets and poet of philosophers, Abu Al-Ala Al-Maari, to burn his books, thinking that they were against people who did not appreciate his efforts. Many did the same thing to their books. Yusuf bin Asbat put his books in an unknown cave and then closed its door. Abu Sulayman Al-Darani gathered his many books in an oven and lit them on fire, saying: By God, I did not burn you until I almost burned myself with you. The crown of the nation, Dawud Al-Ta’i, threw his books into the sea so that they would not reach the people who did not take him by the hand. Sufyan Al-Thawri tore them up and threw them in the wind, saying: I wish my hand had been cut off from here, or rather from there, and I had never written a single letter!

I was not convinced by the incident of one of the Abbasid caliphs, when he wanted to encourage science and literature, so he ordered that the writer who wrote or translated a book be given the weight of that book in gold. But what I liked very much was that one of the opportunists thought more about gold; so he engraved his book on a heavy rock, and rolled it to the caliph’s court, so that he would be given gold for it.

I do not dream that a writer will be given the weight of his book in gold, but I wish that writers in our country could eat their bread from the proceeds of their books. But we have contented ourselves with lamenting our situation and have not done anything that would restore the book to its true value.

Of course, I do not like it when a writer despairs or offers his books and efforts as a sacrifice to the unknown or to the fire of hell, on the pretext that others do not deserve it, and that time is unfair. I do not like it when readers despair either, and it pains me when they get rid of books that may be their last resort in a time when friends are scarce.

Since October 7, 2023, two battles have been taking place. The first is the Al-Aqsa Flood, which was planned and executed by the Hamas leadership, and the second battle is an Israeli aggression called “Iron Swords,” which aims to kill and displace civilians and destroy infrastructure and service facilities.

The Palestinian Authority has no role, neither in the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa, nor in the negotiations, nor in stopping this battle.

The second battle included air, artillery and tank shelling of civilians, infrastructure and civilian facilities.

This led to demonstrations all over the world, South Africa and others turning to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court to accuse Israel of genocide, and the issuance of global condemnations of the aggression, the severing of relations, the withdrawal of ambassadors, and international recognition of the Palestinian state. The aggression also led to the entry of support fronts from Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, with the aim of stopping this aggression.

The role of the Authority was clear in international courts and discussions of the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations. Some Palestinian ambassadors also played a role in demonstrations and marches.

In the first battle, there is no role for the Authority, and in the legal battle, there is no role for Hamas.

The Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization behind it are the competent legal body accepted in international courts and foreign relations, and it alone bears responsibility for political moves to stop the aggression on Gaza and the West Bank.

The role of the Palestinian embassies in 100 countries has not been at the required level, nor is it commensurate with the size and number of these missions and the tasks that the Palestinian people expect from them. With limited exceptions, you rarely hear about the activity of these embassies and diplomatic missions. At the same time, we expect the Palestinian Foreign Ministry and its embassies to begin preparing files that condemn Israel, and those who stand with it publicly and secretly, from foreigners and Arabs, on charges of participating in the genocide of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian media and diplomatic missions should start coordinating with the friendly Western media to spread the facts about the genocide taking place in Palestine. The West should know that it is accused and a partner in the war of extermination.

The terms "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" must be spread in every corner of the West and Western and global institutions. This is the minimum role of the hundred Palestinian embassies and consulates abroad.

After the battles are over, the Authority and Hamas can sit down and discuss how to heal the wounds, how to rebuild Gaza, and how to prosecute Israel for its crimes. This is how unity is embodied, and this is the least we can do.