By Amos Harel

As Israel lays the infrastructure for a creeping occupation of northern Gaza and plans its next step in Lebanon, it's waiting to see if Biden gets tough in his last two months with stingier arms supplies and a possible harder line at the UN Security Council

Donald Trump's election as U.S. president last week seems to have the best chance to shake things up in the Middle East and maybe extract Israel from its long war of attrition on multiple fronts.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is feeling confident that he can harness Trump and further his own goals, as happened in the past. But since the 45th president's big victory on Tuesday, Trump has been sending hard-to-decipher messages, as usual. Things may only become clearer when he enters the White House on January 20.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is considering harsh moves against Israel during the transition period, including tighter restrictions on arms supplies and a possible failure to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council.

After Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week, the retired general told the truth to the hostage families in a farewell meeting with them. He said that conditions were ripe for a deal and that there was no security or diplomatic justification for Israel to stay in the Philadelphi corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border.

"There is nothing left to do in Gaza. We've already accomplished the major achievements," Gallant told them, adding that he feared that Netanyahu's refusal to withdraw Israeli forces "comes from a desire to remain there. This isn't a worthy purpose for risking soldiers' lives."

In fact, the picture is even bleaker: The government has no interest in a hostage deal. The far right of the governing coalition opposes the freeing of any Palestinian prisoners, and Netanyahu is completely dependent on the hard right for his political survival, as he keeps trying to postpone his testimony in his corruption trial.

On the other hand, tremendous effort is being put into preparations for long-term control of northern Gaza, which the right seeks to parlay into a full-fledged occupation and the building of settlements.

Last week, Haaretz reported on moves designed to push the entire Palestinian population out of the northern quarter of the Gaza Strip. Over the weekend, Yedioth Ahronoth reporter Yoav Zitun described his impressions from a visit to the east-west Netzarim corridor south of there: The width of this strip that the Israel Defense Forces created during the war has expanded to 7 kilometers (4.3 miles).

The army is putting up outposts there suitable for a permanent presence and is installing water systems and gear for cellular reception. Zitun predicts that "after another 20 or 30 hostages die in captivity, no Israeli leadership will give Hamas the prize in return": a corridor bisecting the Strip "that was initially meant to be a bargaining chip."

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has tapped Yechiel Leiter, his former chief of staff, to be Israel's ambassador to the United States. Leiter is a member of the settlers' ideological wing (and his son Moshe, a reservist deputy battalion commander in the Paratroopers Brigade, was killed in action last year in northern Gaza).

This appointment gives an indication of the prime minister's ambition to win U.S. recognition of an annexation of the West Bank settlements (which he failed to obtain in Trump's 2020 "deal of the century"). Netanyahu also seems to be angling for a creeping occupation of northern Gaza. The basis for this is already being laid.

In Lebanon, the IDF has essentially completed its main mission: surveying and destroying terrorist infrastructure in the first line of villages up to 5 kilometers from the border. Now the army is preparing for the possibility of advancing to the second line.

Such a move would entail two major challenges: the worsening autumn weather and the need for another large call-up of reservists despite the increasing complaints about the burden being shouldered by too small a segment of the population.

Netanyahu's office is projecting optimism about the chances of attaining a diplomatic solution and cease-fire in Lebanon soon, though it's unclear what this prediction is based on. Either way, the aim appears to be an upgraded version of UN Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

This would be far from total victory, but Israel could at take satisfaction in its considerable achievements against Hezbollah in recent months and hope that the next time it will be able to more strictly enforce violations of the agreement by the terror group.

In Gaza, the baton is gradually passing to Trump. It's not hard to imagine that the idea of securing a deal to end both the war and the hostage families' tragedy appeals to him. He surely remembers the precedent of the Iranian regime freeing the American hostages in 1981 on the day Ronald Reagan took office, ending a saga that haunted Jimmy Carter for 14-plus months at the end of his presidency.

Trump and his people have even bigger plans for the future of the region, like expanding the Abraham Accords to include an Israeli-Saudi normalization and massive deals between Washington and Riyadh.

In yet another example of how difficult Trump is to predict, the president-elect has announced that Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, two of the most prominent figures in his previous administration, will not have roles this time around. They both were on very friendly terms with Netanyahu.

Many of the key people in Trump's orbit have isolationist views and aim to reduce America's military presence around the world. It remains to be seen if one of them receives a key position in the administration.

The aftermath of an Israeli strike in Mashghara, in the western part of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, on Sunday. Netanyahu's office is projecting optimism about the chances of attaining a diplomatic solution and cease-fire in Lebanon soon, though it's unclear what this prediction is based on.

Waiting for frustration to boil over

In Israel, suspicions continue to pile up about people in Netanyahu's close orbit, and criminal investigations seem to be gradually approaching. This is a long and dreary saga that combines two main trends: evidence of alleged offenses by people at the Prime Minister's Office that dwarf past scandals, and attempts to rewrite history for the boss' sake.

This rewriting would obscure Netanyahu's responsibility for the failures that allowed the October 7 massacre to happen. It would also blur the picture regarding missed opportunities in the hostage talks and shift responsibility for failures to Gallant and other top security officials.

The mounting revelations are heightening the panic at the Prime Minister's Office, especially the assessments that Eli Feldstein, the spokesman who has been arrested, is cooperating with the investigation.

But at this stage, there are no direct suspicions of malfeasance by Netanyahu, and let's remember that he emerged unscathed from similar scandals in the past. Moreover, law enforcement has been significantly weakened since the wave of investigations into Netanyahu began in 2016. This can be seen in the conduct of the police and in the judges' timid responses to his constantly growing demands during his trial.

Netanyahu crossed the fear threshold with his dismissal of Gallant last week, which sparked a pale imitation of the protests that made him backtrack after he tried to fire Gallant in March 2023. It's no wonder that threats are in the air to offload other officials standing in the prime minister's way.

The threat to the government comes from two other issues; the public's disgust over the criminal culture being revealed is still in the background.

The first and perhaps most important issue is the impossible burden being put on the reservists, which includes the dangers that all the combat troops are facing. Against this backdrop, the government is absolutely determined to pass legislation perpetuating the ultra-Orthodox community's dodging of the draft.

The second issue is the public's deep anguish over the fate of the 101 hostages, half of whom are believed to have died. At some point we may reach the stage where frustration from all these things, on top of the economic crisis and the government's complete ineptitude in addressing all areas of the public's needs, bring Israelis back out into the streets.

For now, the coalition appears stable, and Trump seems to be the main person who could force a change in the war – if he has any desire to do so.

By Bernard Hourcade

What dictates Tehran’s policy in the Middle East? More than support for Palestine, the Islamic Republic’s primary goal is to oppose a restructuring of the region dictated by Israel and the United States that would marginalize it, while it is trying to reconcile with the Gulf countries.

Yasser Arafat’s visit to Tehran on February 17, 1979, a few days after the fall of the imperial regime, was a trauma for Israel. Iran, an ally of the United States, was a major part of the “second circle” of non-Arab countries (with Ethiopia and Turkey), beyond hostile neighbors, and supplied Israel with oil while the Mossad maintained effective collaboration with Savak, the political police of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In all areas, the seizure of power in Tehran by an alliance of liberals, Marxists and especially Islamists, all close to the Palestinians, was going to shake the old regional order. The Israeli embassy became that of Fatah and Palestine, a symbol and a tool, even a passport, for Shiite Iran in its plans to export the revolution to a Middle East with an Arab and Sunni majority. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose hostility to Israel was unwavering, however, put things right by specifying to his supporters trained in the Palestinian camps of Lebanon or Syria that "there is no Palestinian cause, but an Islamic cause". The national and ideological stakes of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988) then dominated all other conflicts, including the too local one of Palestine. 

"THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM PASSES THROUGH KERBALA"

In fact, beyond the fiery speeches, the Islamic Republic has remained cautious in the face of Palestinian movements such as Fatah, which is nationalist and not very religious. When Israel occupied Lebanon in 1982 and forced Yasser Arafat to take refuge in Tunisia, Ayatollah Khomeini blocked the departure of armed militants who wanted to "liberate Jerusalem" by telling them that "the road to Jerusalem passes through Kerbala1". The priority was to defend Iranian national territory attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

From then on, Iran began to very actively support the creation of Hezbollah, a Shiite and Lebanese movement that could both fight Israel and its Western allies while collaborating with Syria, Iran's only Arab ally. Realpolitik also led Israel to supply weapons to Iran2 and to collaborate in destroying the Iraqi nuclear power plant in Osirak. Iraq was then the only real enemy of Israel and Iran.

Subsequently, Tehran did not hold back its support for Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, which opened an office in Tehran in 1988. But the Islamic Republic was not a major player in the two Intifadas (1987-1993; 2000-2005), despite the presence of military advisers from the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Lebanon. It worked primarily to strengthen the Lebanese Hezbollah, which would play a central role in its regional policy, to oppose Israel, but especially the United States and its European allies, as well as the Sunni Arab states. The election of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), an expert on Lebanon and supporter of the Palestinian cause, marked a shift. He was not opposed to compromise solutions with Israel. After the Oslo Accords (1993), he intended to “be no more Palestinian than the Palestinians”. This conciliatory attitude and support for the emergence of a Palestinian state, however, ran into opposition from the leader Ali Khamenei and conservative factions, and it was shattered by the emergence of the “Iranian nuclear threat” from 2002.

THE NUCLEAR SCARECROW

The discovery in 2002 of the hitherto clandestine Iranian nuclear program triggered debates, controversies, colloquiums, conferences, publications, films, speeches, at the highest level of states as well as among the populations concerned. All other issues in the Middle East became secondary. The Islamic Republic was designated as the main threat to Western Europe and also to Israel. Iran replaced the recently defunct Soviet Union in world politics. A place, perhaps, oversized for a country that then had only a few grams of enriched uranium compared to Israel's 300 nuclear warheads and the arsenal of the five major nuclear powers.

While Israel had always had a cult of secrecy in matters of defense, it was surprising to note that the "Iranian nuclear threat" was the subject of information and passionate debates in the Israeli press and media. It was presented as existential for Israel. In this context, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement of October 26, 2005, "Israel must be wiped off the map," became proof of the need for Israel to eradicate this threat as a priority. Palestine, locked behind a wall, was no longer a major problem. While at the UN, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the support of the West, accused Tehran, Israel continued with impunity the colonization of the West Bank. Signed in Vienna on July 14, 2015, the JCPOA offered a framework agreement to control the civilian use of Iranian nuclear power in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions. It had been endorsed by the P5+1 countries (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany), as well as by the European Union. But in 2018, President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from it under Israeli pressure. The Israeli military had nevertheless recognized that this compromise was a real step forward in terms of security, but for the Netanyahu government, the risk was the lifting of sanctions, and therefore the “normalization” of Iran. The unspoken fear was that Iran, with its large, highly educated population, would become in the short/medium term a strong and stable regional power, capable of challenging Israel’s regional ambitions to reshape the entire region to its own ends.

This hostility also concerned the "hegemonic ambitions of Iran" which supported many non-state forces in the context of conflicts with Israel, but also with Saudi Arabia, then in its fight against the Islamic State Organization (ISO) in Iraq and Syria or to support the Syrian regime. These issues were a consensus between Western countries and Israel, and placed little Palestine outside the international priorities.

With a view to a confrontation to eradicate the "Iranian threat", Donald Trump's government took a decisive step in 2020 with the signing of the Abraham Accords. The recognition of Israel by several Muslim states, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), concretized the Israeli-American desire to encircle the Islamic Republic. The prospect of Saudi Arabia joining them risked destroying the national and consensual ambitions between the different factions in power in Iran: to become a regional power.

CHINA IMPOSES ITSELF DISCREETLY

Saudi Arabia and Iran were on the brink of war when, on March 10, 2023, China forced the two “Gulf policemen” to normalize their relations. This marked the beginning of a new phase in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Despite the rhetoric, Iran’s nuclear program is no longer at the heart of the debate. The debate is now centered on the opposition between two perspectives for reshaping the Middle East: either around Israel and the United States, or more independently, under the aegis of Iran and Saudi Arabia, emerging regional powers, with the support of the countries of the South and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

This Iranian desire was already explicit after the election of Hassan Rouhani to the presidency in 2013, then with the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the normalization of the country’s international relations. Iran, with the agreement of the Supreme Leader, had then prioritized building good relations with all its border countries from which a threat could come, as in 1980 with Iraq or in 2015 with the IS. Building peaceful relations with Riyadh has become a priority. China's intervention has made it possible to quickly conclude the indirect discussions that had been underway for a long time to put an end to the multiple local conflicts in progress, particularly in Yemen. Among the thousand issues to be resolved, one observation seems to have reached consensus: the need to quickly find a just and lasting solution to the "Palestinian question" which concerned the entire region, and even the entire Muslim world. Any project to reshape the region was illusory as long as this injustice persisted. This compromise project on the "return" of Palestine came about in the worst conditions with the violence of the intervention of the military branch of Hamas on October 7, 2023, then the war against Gaza and against Lebanon.

NOT GETTING DRIVEN

We will not return to these events here, except to note that Iran sought to avoid being drawn into a “local” Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Islamic Republic certainly wanted to protect Hezbollah and its powerful arsenal in order to maintain a credible means of deterrence against Israel, and to maintain its potential for influence in Lebanon. But it did not want to give in to Israeli provocations that could lead to a large-scale war involving the United States.

Iran does not have the military means to “win” a war against Israel 1,200 km away. In addition, it would ruin its hopes of quickly becoming a regional power coexisting with Saudi Arabia. A conflict could also cause radical changes in an Islamic Republic worn down by 45 years of power, by internal divisions exacerbated by the fear of popular revolts, and by an unprecedented economic crisis. The priority of the new reformist government of Massoud Pezeshkian, with the support of the Supreme Leader, therefore remains the lifting of the sanctions imposed again since 2018, and therefore the normalization of relations with the United States. Without success for the moment, and despite strong internal opposition, this policy of openness and caution is consistently pursued by Iran. Tehran is distancing itself from its allies in the Resistance axis, forcing Hezbollah not to massively attack northern Israel, which could have relieved Hamas in Gaza, and not to use its most powerful missiles after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. During the Friday prayer of October 5, 2024, the Guide paid a moving tribute to the courage of the Hamas and Hezbollah fighters who had shown that they could now defend themselves alone! After the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, an Iranian statement stated that it was not responsible for the drone attack on Netanyahu’s residence on October 19, and Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the operation.

The attack on Israel by more than 350 Iranian drones and missiles on April 13, 2024 marks a historic date in Iran’s new strategy of retreating to its national interests and the defense of its territory. This demonstration of technical and military force, announced in advance, was intended to show that to defend itself, Iran had the means to face its enemies alone, without the help of its proxies. The Israeli response was initially symbolic, unlike the massive air attack of October 26, which responded to this first demonstration of force rather than to the 180 missiles launched by Iran on October 1. Israel has demonstrated—without causing major damage—the remarkable capabilities of its air force and Iran’s weaknesses in countering this type of attack. Both adversaries have proven that a large-scale conflict would be absurd.

The most interesting thing to note is not the pressure from the United States, paralyzed by the election campaign, for Israel not to bomb Iranian nuclear and oil sites, but the new attitude of the Arab countries that have refused to allow Israeli bombers and missiles to fly over their territory. All of them—even Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain—have denounced or regretted the “aggression against Iranian national territory.” Of course, this tentative change in attitude toward Iran is the result of the work of Iranian diplomats, but it is also linked to fundamental questions about relations with Israel and the United States. As Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza and Lebanon began to call into question the West’s unconditional support for Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt participated in the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, in late October. In this context, the prospects for political reconstruction in the region with Iran’s participation became credible by imposing a just solution for Palestine on Israel. A “victory” that would also have the support of the populations of the Arab and Muslim world.

A NATIONALIST AMBITION

The Gaza war has changed the balance of power. By directly opposing Israel, state to state, Iran is flattering the nationalist sentiment shared by the 90 million Iranians and the pride of the Muslim populations, and this national ambition for power could take precedence over the defense of Palestine. Furthermore, Israeli provocations against Iran and speeches once again stirring up the danger of its nuclear program are seeking to rally Europe and the Arab monarchies, as in the 2000s, and to make people forget Palestine. This risk is reinforced by the most conservative Iranian factions, particularly in parliament, which have just relaunched the debate so that Tehran chooses military nuclear power over Israel.

With the demonstrations of military force having been made, Iran is now prioritizing politics. The Islamic Republic presents itself as an actor of peace by relying on the fact that Israel's hubris in Gaza and Lebanon discredits the image of this country as a "democratic bulwark of civilization" and brings it closer to Saudi Arabia and the oil monarchies. The reformers who have returned to power since June 2024, with the support of Guide Ali Khamenei, are trying to be accepted, as in 2015, as a valid interlocutor by the "international community", starting with neighboring Arab countries, to contribute to the political reconstruction of the region. In vain so far. By highlighting its face-to-face with Iran, Israel is seeking to divert attention from its colonization of Palestine, and the efforts of the Iranian state are also - first of all? - a way of giving the Islamic Republic a credible reprieve. A dual priority, nationalist and ideological, which could once again make people forget distant Palestine.

So0urce: OrientXXI

French diplomat, former Ambassador to Italy, Tunisia, Iraq and Chad and specialist in the Middle East, Yves Aubin de La Messuzière answers my questions on the occasion of the publication of his book Gaza: Analysis of a Tragedy published by Maisonneuve Larose and Hemisphères.

You believe that France has lost the credibility it had on the Israeli-Palestinian issue…

France’s loss of credibility on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is clear under Emmanuel Macron’s mandate. I believed, along with others, that France’s voice had gradually faded away on a structuring aspect of our foreign policy. Since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020 between Israel and several Gulf countries, European diplomacy wrongly considered that the Palestinian question had lost its centrality and could be managed as a low-intensity conflict. The improvised initiatives of the President of the Republic, since October 7, 2023, have revealed a lack of global strategic vision on the conflicts that are shaking the Near and Middle East region. Our diplomacy, which has become illegible, due to contradictory presidential statements regarding the Gaza war and the situation in Lebanon, has offended our Israeli and Arab partners. The "at the same time" does not work in foreign policy. The Quai d'Orsay is marginalized, so much so that there is talk of developing a "diplomacy without diplomats".

You believe that Hamas, even weakened, will survive this war.

Hamas’ military wing is largely disorganized, due to its losses and the elimination of Yahya Sinwar, who replaced Ismail Haniyeh at the head of the movement. The political wing, whose leaders are in Qatar, will take over and could be willing to resume negotiations for the conclusion of a ceasefire and the release of the hostages. Hamas, which has permeated Gazan society for decades, is undoubtedly more popular in the West Bank. It will survive this war and we can hope that its new leaders, including Khaled Meshaal, will focus on a form of normalization, which could involve integration into the PLO, which remains for the international community the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

Is the Palestinian Authority reformable?

From the beginning of the war, Joe Biden called for the return to Gaza of a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority. With the support of Arab countries and Europeans, the Palestinian Authority is reformable, provided that Mahmoud Abbas is removed and corruption within it is eradicated. With the support of Europeans, particularly France, institutions were set up in the 1990s by the Palestinian Authority with a view to creating a state based on the rule of law. 139 UN member countries recognize the Palestinian State. France remains in the background, even though it had been at the forefront of its creation.

Benyamin Netanyahu’s response is unambiguous: “neither Hamastan nor Fatahstan” to rule the enclave. Tsahal has opened a new front in the West Bank, eliminating Fatah leaders, encouraging the expansion of colonization and covering up the exactions of the settlers.

Does the emergence of the “Global South” change the situation?

The Gaza war has opened a new fracture between the West and the "Global South" that is becoming a geopolitical reality, despite its lack of structure. China, which aspires to take the leadership, brought together all the Palestinian factions in Beijing, after having promoted the resumption of relations between Riyadh and Tehran.

Can international justice become efficient?

International justice has set in motion. At the end of 2023, South Africa filed a request with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. Without ruling on the merits, the UN's supreme legal body issued warnings to Israel urging it to take measures to prevent possible crimes of genocide. A dozen countries have joined Pretoria's approach. By coincidence, the ICJ ruled, in particularly severe terms, in July 2024 on the illegality of the occupation of the Palestinian Territories and of colonization.

For his part, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders (since eliminated), as well as Benjamin Netanyahu and the Minister of Defense, for war crimes or crimes against humanity. To be effective, the warrants must be confirmed by three ICC judges, who are subject to strong pressure. Described as anti-Semitic by Netanyahu, the ICC is playing for its credibility.

In his recent speech to the UN General Assembly, the Israeli Prime Minister violently vilified the United Nations, accusing him of “spilling his anti-Semitic bile.” Its Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has been declared persona non grata in Israel. The IDF’s attacks on UNRWA in Gaza and UNIFIL in Lebanon are part of this strategy aimed at removing the United Nations from any prospect of a political solution.

By JONATHAN COOK

If the West was really worried about Europe’s Nazi past, it would be better advised to stop stoking an all-too-real new antisemitism: incitement against Arab and Muslim minorities

There has never been a harder time to do political and media analysis than right now. Each day, the western establishment unmoors itself further from reality. Its priorities are so inverted, so obscene, that the most appropriate response is ridicule.

The latest example was the reaction late last week to violent clashes in Amsterdam before and after a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local team Ajax.

The ridiculous framing from western politicians, assisted by mainstream media outlets, was that the visiting Israelis were “hunted down” in what supposedly amounted to a “pogrom” by Dutch street gangs, comprising mainly youths of Arab and Muslim heritage.

According to this official narrative, the violence on Amsterdam’s streets was further proof of a rising tide of antisemitism sweeping Europe and imported from the Middle East. More, the attacks were presented as having disturbing echoes of Europe’s Nazi past.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden claimed the Israeli fans faced “despicable” attacks that “echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted”.

Israel, of course, helpfully stoked this idea by promising “emergency flights” to “rescue” its football fans – seeking to evoke memories of its airlifts in the 1980s of Ethiopian Jews to escape famine and reports of persecution, or possibly of the 1975 airlift of US embassy staff from Saigon.

Nazi comparisons

Dutch politicians with their own ugly, racist agendas, as well as the country’s king, rushed to join Israel in fuelling the hysteria. Geert Wilders, the racist, far-right leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament, said “multicultural scum” had carried out a “Jew hunt”.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, gave her country’s official stamp of approval to portray events in Amsterdam as a potential “second Holocaust”, calling the scenes “horrific and deeply shameful”. 

She added: “The outbreak of such violence against Jews crosses all boundaries. There is no justification whatsoever for such violence. Jews must be safe in Europe.”

This is the same Germany where videos daily show Arab and Muslim demonstrators – in fact, anyone waving a Palestinian flag – being brutally assaulted by German police officers for protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Baerbock seems just fine with crossing those kinds of boundaries – whether it be eradicating the right to protest or fostering a political climate that authorises Islamophobic violence, not from random football hooligans but from functionaries of the German state.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exploited the opening offered by Baerbock to compare the violence in Amsterdam to the Nazi pogroms against Jews in 1938 known as Kristallnacht.

And, of course, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy took his cue from Washington, declaring he was “horrified”. He wrote on X: “I utterly condemn these abhorrent acts of violence and stand with Israeli and Jewish people across the world.”

Celebrating genocide

It is not support for violence, let alone for antisemitism, to point out that this portrayal of events was utterly divorced from reality.

Videos on social media showed the visiting Israeli fans wilfully provoking confrontation as soon as they arrived in Amsterdam. 

In the days leading up to the match, they had torn down and burned Palestinian flags in the city centre. They had hunted down Dutch taxi drivers and passers-by suspected of being Arab or Muslim. They had chanted genocidal death threats against Arabs. 

At the game itself, they raucously disturbed a minute’s silence in the stadium for the victims of Spain’s floods by singing, “There are no more schools in Gaza because we killed all the kids”.

Spain is apparently reviled by Israeli fans because, in line with international law but against Israel’s wishes, it has recognised Palestine as a state.

Video of the Israeli fans arriving home at Tel Aviv airport showed them unbowed. They chanted the same genocidal songs: “Let the IDF win and fuck the Arabs. Ole ole, ole ole ole. Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”

Like Wilders, the Israeli fans had used their time in Amsterdam to vent their bigotry at “multicultural scum”. 

Even after the match, when they felt the backlash from incensed local residents, it was clear that Israeli fans were initiating the violent clashes as much as getting caught up in them.

A video shot by a young Dutch Ajax fan following the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans as they rampaged through Amsterdam after the match went viral on social media. It shows a large gang of Israelis prowling through Amsterdam armed with batons, throwing stones and aggressively confronting local police.

 Astonishingly, Dutch police are shown either absent or keeping their distance for much of the time as the Israelis look for trouble. Notably, not one Israeli fan has been arrested.

Islamophobic bile

The western media’s coverage of these events was as strangely deferential to these genocide-inciting thugs as the Dutch police’s handling of their violence.

Had visiting British fans behaved this way in Amsterdam, the police would have made mass arrests immediately. 

Similarly, had British hooligans found themselves on the receiving end of violence in such circumstances, the British media would have shown little sympathy. 

The clashes would rightly have been understood as ugly tribalism, a not-unfamiliar sight at football matches.

The difference here was that the clashes unleashed by the Israeli fans’ provocations had a much larger context than simple antipathy between rival teams. It was fuelled by tensions surrounding horrifying events taking place on the international stage. 

There is nothing shocking or especially sinister about Dutch fans, especially those with Arab or Muslim heritage, responding with their own violence to Israeli youths – some of them presumably fresh from military service in Gaza – trying to export their own genocidal anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incitement to Amsterdam. 

All the more so when the Israeli fans were amplifying the bigoted, Islamophobic bile of leading Dutch politicians.

It should have been even less surprising given the wider context: that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were celebrating in someone else’s city the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, among Dutch citizens who don’t view Arab life as worthless or Muslims as “human animals”. 

Sadly, that is exactly how the western establishment has viewed Palestinians over the past 13 months, as Israel has slaughtered them in the ever-shrinking concentration camp that is Gaza.

Paradoxically, it was left to an Israeli politician, Ofer Cassif, who belongs to the tiny Hadash party, the only joint Jewish-Arab party in the Israeli parliament, to bring some perspective.

He wrote on X: “[Israeli] fans go on a violent rampage, carry out beatings, tear up Palestinian flags in the streets as if they were an occupying force, and shout Nazi slogans in favour of the extermination of a nation [Palestinians], and then whine when the situation degenerates into complete chaos and violence returns to them like a boomerang.”

‘Victims of pogroms’

As ever, the establishment media dutifully regurgitated the official presentation of events in Amsterdam. Its reporting is best characterised as industrial-scale trolling.

Headlines like this one from the New York Times took it as read that the Israeli fans were victims of antisemitism who needed saving: “Antisemitic attacks prompt emergency flights for Israeli soccer fans.”

Other outlets uncritically reported unhinged statements from Dutch officials: “We failed Jewish community during football fan attacks as we did under the Nazis, says Dutch king.”

Or, as with this Reuters headline, the media used quotation marks to justify peddling disinformation: “Amsterdam bans protests after ‘antisemitic squads’ attack Israeli soccer fans.”

The BBC, which trumpets its dedication to accurate reporting with its Verify service, didn’t bother to verify images from Amsterdam it used to supposedly illustrate attacks on Israeli fans.

https://twitter.com/medialens/status/1855134397634150608

In fact, as the Dutch photographer who shot an image used by the BBC pointed out, it showed the exact opposite: Israeli youths beating up a local Dutch resident.

The misuse of these images – disinformation – was repeated by CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times, and other major outlets, as all raced to bolster the fake news narrative being imposed by the western political class. 

The photographer has since demanded apologies and corrections from media organisations that used her footage incorrectly and without authorisation. By Saturday, she had received only one – from the German news programme Tagesschau.

Wellspring of thuggery

The degree to which the establishment media intentionally sought to deceive audiences to promote a distorted official narrative was illustrated by Sky News’ coverage. 

Initially, before the politicians had had a chance to frame events more conveniently for their agenda, Sky’s journalist in Amsterdam reported the violence as being initiated by the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans – a club already notorious for the aggressive anti-Arab racism of its supporters.

Her report was soon pulled, however, as Israel, Wilders, Baerbock, Biden and Lammy reformulated the narrative in terms of antisemitism and pogroms. A note from the channel’s editors claimed the video “didn’t meet Sky News’ standards for balance and impartiality”.

A new, heavily re-edited video was posted that played down the Israeli fans’ violence and foregrounded Dutch politicians claiming the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were victims of unprovoked, antisemitic attacks. A Maccabi fan was even given space to suggest the clashes recalled Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

In fact, there was a parallel with 7 October but not in the sense suggested by the Israeli fan or western politicians.

Media coverage of Hamas’ attack 13 months ago has consistently scrubbed out any of the preceding context: decades of illegal, violent Israeli military occupation of Gaza; a 17-year Israeli siege that denied the Palestinian population there the essentials of life; and many months of Israeli snipers executing and crippling Palestinians who tried to protest against their imprisonment. 

The Amsterdam violence was similarly decontextualised. 

The media’s uncritical acceptance of this new, overtly politicised narrative paved the way for Amsterdam’s mayor to then impose a martial law-style crackdown on protest. 

Predictably, the city’s police then used the ban as a pretext to arrest anti-genocide protesters en masse in Amsterdam on Sunday when residents came out to denounce the provocations and genocidal incitement by Israeli fans over the preceding days.

Conveniently for western politicians and their accomplices in the establishment media, they have provided themselves with yet another opportunity to present protests in the West against Israel’s genocide as inherently dangerous to the safety of Jews.

European antisemitism can be snuffed out, so their logic goes, only by stamping out the right to protest against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian children. 

There is a double deception being perpetrated here. That Jews were attacked in Amsterdam for being Jews rather than for being Israeli football thugs all too visibly trying to provoke confrontation. 

And that the only proper response is to further accommodate not just Israeli football fans’ thuggery but the wellspring of that thuggery: Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.

Israelis, not Jews

Western politicians and the establishment media, meanwhile, have made it all too evident that they share the racist sentiments of Israel and its proudly racist, thuggish football emissaries.

Contrary to what western politicians and the media would have us believe, “taking offence” isn’t something reserved only for Israelis and for Zionist Jews. Other groups have sensitivities, too, even if western politicians and media systematically denigrate those sensitivities.

Lost once again in the political and media frenzy is the fact that people can feel angry towards Israel and its citizens, especially when they glorify the mass slaughter of Palestinian children, without hating Jews. 

Israel, after all, has been carrying out a live-streamed genocide for 13 months, backed by almost its entire population. Anyone opposed to genocide – sadly, not enough of us, it seems – probably isn’t feeling too warmly towards Israel right now. That is a moral position. Confusing it with antisemitism is pure sophistry.

The sophistry is dangerous, to boot. It creates the very reality it claims to be trying to stop. It suggests there is some connection between being Jewish and supporting genocide. That truly is antisemitism.

In echoing Israel’s own mischievous conflations of Israeliness and Jewishness, western politicians and the establishment media have helped to intensify tribalisms that can only lead to damaging polarisation, violence and repression.

Some Europeans fete Israel, and are willing to indulge its genocide, because they wrongly imagine that this is the best way to protect Jews. Other Europeans, though small in number, end up blaming Jews for Israel’s genocidal actions. 

Both of those sides are living in an entirely false and anti-democratic reality, one created for them by the deceptions of western politicians and the establishment media.

Those who reject either position – a sane, embattled majority – suffer constant gaslighting and find themselves lumped in with the genuine antisemites.

The BBC’s reporter in Amsterdam replicated precisely this type of confused narrative on Friday night, arguing that Israeli fans had been attacked for their “nationality”, while also echoing her colleagues in arguing that this amounted to antisemitism. 

But “Jewish” is very obviously not a nationality (whatever Israel may claim), and loudly cheering on Israel’s Zionist ideology of Jewish supremacism over Middle Eastern, Arab populations is a political act – and at the moment, complicity in a monstrous genocide. It is not victimhood or “innocence”. 

Burying the story

There are two, related reasons why the media have been so ready to whip up yet another antisemitism furore out of thin air.

The media have blown up this football hooliganism story into a major international scandal, with front pages concerned for the welfare of violent Israeli football fans, at the same time as they ignore the latest chapter in Israel’s horrifying, 13-month genocide in Gaza.

Israel is currently carrying out the so-called “Generals’ Plan“: bombing and starving Palestinian men, women and children in northern Gaza to force out the 400,000 of them who have been living amid its ruins.

Israel has said this population will never be allowed to return home. In other words, it is formally announcing that these Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed. 

Any Palestinian who refuses to move into the concentration camp Israel has made of southern Gaza – one constantly bombed too – faces being executed as a “terrorist”.

One might imagine these horrors upon horrors would be a major news story. Not so. Nowadays, there is always some other story, however unimportant, to take precedence. 

On Friday night the BBC dedicated not one second to the genocide in Gaza because the corporation, like the rest of the media, was too busy focusing on the suffering in Amsterdam of Israeli football hooligans. Those fans, remember, had threatened to murder Arabs and Muslims in Europe, to replicate what has been happening in Gaza. 

The media’s priorities here are beyond obscene.

Stoking hatred

What the coverage is seeking to do is not just bury the Gaza genocide and turn Israel and Israelis into the victims even as they commit genocide.

It is also intended to stoke Islamophobic hatred towards Arabs and Muslims for being present in Europe, and for insisting that we not forget about Gaza. It is to import into the West the same racist assumptions and discourse that led to Israel’s genocide.

Western establishments have willed this outcome. They are enabling it through their rhetoric and actions. 

What possible justification can there be for banning Russian teams and sportspeople from international competitions the moment Moscow invaded Ukraine, when Israeli teams like Tel Aviv Maccabi are still being welcomed in Europe after 13 months of genocide?

How is it possible that fans of Israeli teams not only find themselves embraced by western leaders but treated as victims when they parade their anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry – and their glorification of genocide – in European cities?

The Israeli national team is due to play France in a Uefa Nations League match in Paris on 14 November. Clashes are all too predictable. They could be easily averted by imposing a ban – similar to the Russian one – on Israeli involvement in international competitions. 

What the coverage demonstrates so clearly is that the aim of leading western politicians, aided by the establishment media, is to recast Europe’s Arab and Muslim populations as a threat, as barbaric, as antisemitic, as impossible to integrate into a supposed western “civilisation”.

In other words, the transparent goal is to turn Europe’s Arab and Muslim communities into Europe’s Jews of the 1930s – reviled, distrusted and seen as a menace.

By supporting every monstrous Israeli crime, by pandering to Israel’s genocide-inciting football hooligans, western politicians and the media know they are bound to inflame tensions, especially with domestic populations of Arab and Muslim heritage. That is what they wish to do.

The aim is to promote the demonisation of Europe’s Arab and Muslim minorities. 

Worthless lives

We know where European bigotry towards Jews led. To the gas chambers. 

And increasingly we can see precisely where western politicians and the establishment media want to take their publics in endlessly promoting Israeli-style bigotry towards Arabs and Muslims. 

Already western establishments have rationalised their active complicity in the genocidal murder of Palestinians in Gaza, and the destruction of south Lebanon, by supplying weapons and diplomatic immunity. 

Already they have cast Israel’s blockade of aid and the mass starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza as “self-defence”, and as a “legitimate war” to eliminate Hamas. 

Already they have insisted that the lives of Palestinians are so worthless, so insignificant, that they can be butchered in their tens of thousands – or, more likely, hundreds of thousands – in revenge for the deaths of barely more than 1,000 Israelis on 7 October 2023. 

Already they have inverted reality to depict genocidal Israel as the innocent victim and the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed and maimed in its slaughterous rampage as the guilty party. 

None of this has happened by accident. A mood is being cynically cultivated in the West, just as it was in parts of Europe in the 1930s, to suggest that some groups are sub-human, that some minorities must be expelled, or rounded up and disappeared.

That is the proper context for understanding what really happened in Amsterdam last week, as the police treated violent Israeli hooligans with kid gloves and the politicians and media recast the villains as victims.

If our politicians and media are really worried about Europe’s not-too-distant Nazi past, they would be far better advised to stop stoking an all-too-real new antisemitism: incitement against Arab and Muslim minorities. 

The darkest days in Europe’s history are indeed back with us. But not because a bunch of Israeli football hooligans ended up receiving as much violence as they tried to dish out.

It is back because the West is all too ready to embrace Israel’s anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry. Day by day we inch ever closer to renewed pogroms. 

Not against Jews or Israelis, who enjoy the support and protection of western politicians, media and police. Rather those in most danger are the “new Jews”, the Middle Eastern populations those same politicians, media and police constantly vilify, insult, incite against and assault. 

Western racism never went away. Europe’s ruling class just found a new target, and a new scapegoat. 

The dark clouds from Amsterdam are gathering across Europe. Authoritarianism and fascism are once again in the ascendant. It is those trying to keep us tethered to reality who will be first in the firing line.

As president, Donald Trump was a staunch supporter of Israel, recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, cutting off aid to the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees and presenting a peace plan that favored Israel. Yet he has also publicly called for the war in Gaza to stop, saying in April, “Israel has to be very careful, because you’re losing a lot of the world.”

Members of Israel’s right-wing government believe that a Trump administration will allow it to end its wars in Gaza and Lebanon on favorable terms. But the president-elect’s comments about Israel’s actions in Gaza have also led some on the Palestinian side to hold out hope that Trump may be swayed, and on Friday he had a call with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority.

We asked Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief, to explain what may lie in store for the region.

Donald Trump has promised in the past to bring peace to the Middle East. With the region in tumult, how plausible is that goal?

When last in office, Donald Trump helped forge landmark diplomatic ties between Israel and three Arab countries, ties that remain intact. Once back in power, he may aim to forge a similar pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But he will find it far harder to seal a deal between Israel and the Palestinians — without which it will be impossible to achieve lasting peace in the region. And while it’s likely that early in his tenure there will be cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon, those truces would likely have been reached under a Harris presidency, too.

What changes might we see for the relationship between Israel and the U.S.?

Many on the Israeli right hope that a Trump presidency will give them greater political cover to install Jewish settlers in Gaza, entrench Israeli control over the West Bank, overhaul the Israeli judicial system and launch bigger strikes on Iran.

But Trump is unpredictable, and his interests may not always align with Israel’s. For example, he suggested last month that he would not support regime change in Iran, a goal for some Israeli leaders.

How could Trump’s approach to the war in Gaza differ from that of the Biden administration?

Trump has said that he wants the war to end with a decisive Israeli victory. That suggests he would tolerate an even more forceful Israeli campaign than Biden. But equally, he may prove less patient with Israel if the war isn’t ended quickly.

What has Trump indicated about his vision for a postwar Gaza?

Under a peace plan proposed by Trump during his last tenure, the entirety of Gaza would have become part of a Palestinian state. But a half-decade later, the Israeli government is even less likely to accept Palestinian sovereignty, particularly after the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. So Trump may ultimately prove more willing than Biden to accept Israeli civilian control over parts of the territory.

Trump’s allies and adversaries eye his next moves

Eight years after his initial victory, Donald Trump returns to the White House with revenge on his mind. He spent much of the campaign focused on exacting “retribution” for all the ways he believed he had been wronged, leaving friends and foes alike anticipating a wave of payback after he takes office again in January.

Whether he will carry out those threats is unclear. He may not go after the biggest figures, like President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, but allies expect him to pursue at least some of the targets he has singled out after years of multiple impeachments, investigations, indictments and lawsuits.

From sabotaging Oslo to funneling Qatari cash into Gaza, Bibi has spent his career bolstering Hamas to help perpetuate the conflict. Even after Oct. 7, argues historian Adam Raz, he's still advancing the same strategy.

ByGhousoon Bisharat

When Israeli historian and human rights activist Adam Raz set out to write “The Road to October 7: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Production of the Endless Conflict and Israel’s Moral Degradation,” he knew he was tackling a blind spot in Israeli public discourse. The vast majority of Israelis, Raz believes, fail to grasp the full extent of Netanyahu’s involvement in bolstering Hamas before the current war, and in perpetuating an unending state of conflict.

Raz’s book, released in May of this year, sheds light on a controversial policy whereby Netanyahu’s governments for years routinely approved and encouraged the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza to prop up Hamas. While noting that the Israeli media has devoted more attention to this policy in the aftermath of October 7, Raz told +972 that this is “just a sliver of the bigger picture,” which is rooted in Netanyahu’s broader opposition to a just resolution to the conflict. “People need to understand the full scope of Netanyahu’s strategy,” he said.

According to Raz, Netanyahu’s priority is not maintaining Israel’s security but preventing any real chance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the division of land, ending the occupation, or a two-state solution. Keeping the cash flowing to Hamas served this objective by ensuring the Palestinian national movement remained splintered between Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, thus allowing Israel to maintain its dominance over the whole of the land. Even after the devastating events of October 7, Raz warns that Netanyahu’s playbook remains unchanged.Top of Form

This book isn’t a history lesson about the conflict, Raz emphasizes, but rather a damning exploration of a political alliance that continues to degrade Israel’s moral fabric. “I didn’t write this book, I yelled it on the pages,” he said. 

I spoke with Raz about the long history of Netanyahu’s symbiotic relationship with Hamas and its recently-killed leader Yahya Sinwar; why the current war represents a continuation of, not a break from, the prime minister’s strategy vis-a-vis the Palestinians as a whole; and why even after more than a year of war and the death of Sinwar, for Netanyahu little has changed. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

While reading your book, I couldn’t help feeling that you’re a bit obsessed with Netanyahu — that there are no political and security elites in Israel, no national security interests, no public opinion, no media. You write as if it’s just Bibi-land. As a Palestinian, this feels like a way to remove the blame from other decisionmakers and Israeli society writ large and instead place it exclusively on Netanyahu.

This is a book about Netanyahu. I didn’t set out to write the story of the occupation under Netanyahu, the history of Hamas, or the collision between the two national movements. It’s the story of the relationship between Netanyahu and Sinwar. I’m trying to understand the motivation of the two most important actors in this game, who have been holding their societies by the neck.  

Israel is Bibi-land. Whatever is at stake in Israel, whether it’s the Palestinians, the Iran nuclear deal, or any other foreign policy issue, it’s all in Netanyahu’s hands. In my book you can read how this came to be, and how Bibi changed Israeli politics. It’s true that the security establishment was against Netanyahu’s policy toward Hamas, but in every crucial crossroads where he went head to head with them, Netanyahu won. 

One of the central arguments in your book is that Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state is the main pillar of his policy toward the Palestinians. How did this policy shape his relationship with Hamas, going back to the 1990s?

Netanyahu is the number one opponent of a two-state solution. In broad terms, Fatah and the PLO are in favor of this solution, while Hamas is against it, which means that on this very crucial point, Netanyahu and Hamas’ interests align. So since 1996 [when he was first elected prime minister], and especially since his second term in office from 2009, Netanyahu has been working hard to strengthen Hamas.

From the initial signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 until the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 [by an Israeli who opposed the peace process], the PLO and Israel worked together against the influence of both Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism. There was a sort of informal agreement not to build new West Bank settlements and outlining where the settlements that already existed could expand. This marked a shift from the [Yitzhak] Shamir government [that preceded Rabin], which oversaw the construction of approximately 7,000 [settlement] housing units per year. 

One of the first things Netanyahu did as prime minister [in 1996] was to approve the construction of the Har Homa neighborhood in East Jerusalem. During his first term in office, 24 new settlements were built in the occupied territories. Of course, under Rabin, the Israelis did keep expanding the settlements, but this was something the Palestinian negotiators felt they could live with. 

The second important thing Netanyahu did was to open the Western Wall tunnels in the Old City of Jerusalem, triggering the first violent clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli army since the Oslo process began. There had been discussions about this during Rabin’s government, which planned to open the tunnels in coordination with the Muslim Waqf and the Jordanians in exchange for the Waqf receiving control over Solomon’s Stables [an area of the Al-Aqsa compound/Temple Mount]. However, Netanyahu chose to disregard these recommendations and make unilateral changes in one of the most sensitive and sacred sites for all three Abrahamic religions. 

It was clear that this would lead to a crisis — and that is exactly what happened. Netanyahu decided to open the tunnels of his own accord, without informing the government or the security establishment. The top security and military personnel heard about it on the radio. The protests that followed the opening of the tunnels, across East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, resulted in the killing of 59 Palestinians and 16 Israelis. 

The third important thing Netanyahu did, which also went against the advice of the security establishment, was to withdraw Israel’s extradition request for Hamas’ political bureau chief Mousa Abu Marzouq [the leader of the movement’s radical wing at the time who advocated for continuing armed resistance, and the most important Hamas figure outside of Gaza]. That request had been approved by Rabin after Abu Marzouq was arrested while in the United States in 1995. Netanyahu’s decision to withdraw it [and therefore avoid putting Abu Marzouq on trial in Israel] came at a time when many Hamas leaders, including the movement’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, were in Israeli jails and there was an internal debate going on about the right way to continue the struggle. 

These three events strengthened Hamas and the people who wanted to see the conflict as a religious one. 

In your book, you mention several occasions in which Netanyahu did publicly express support for some kind of Palestinian state, including his signing of the Wye River Memorandum in October 1998, the famous “Bar Ilan speech” in June 2009, his speech at Congress in May 2011, and his support for Trump’s “Deal of the Century” in 2019-20. How do you make sense of these?

Every time he spoke about it publicly, there was a reason to do so. Take his Bar Ilan speech, for example, which was the best-known instance of Netanyahu “accepting” the two-state solution. There was a foreign policy aspect to this: it was a short time after Barack Obama entered office, and right after Obama’s famous Cairo speech. And there was a domestic aspect: back then, Netanyahu was trying to build a coalition with the center-left. But you can read in my book that the U.S. diplomat, Martin Indyk, understood it was a scam. 

There are different reasons and motivations for why he spoke in favor of dividing the land each time. But as a political historian, my methodology is not only to look at what politicians are saying, but what they are doing. 

How did Netanyahu continue strengthening Hamas when he came back into office in 2009? 

Since coming back to power, Netanyahu has resisted any attempt, be it military or diplomatic, that might bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza.

Until 2009, the Israeli army — together with the PA — was trying to eliminate the movement’s power in the occupied territories. Then, Netanyahu gave an order to stop the cooperation between the Israeli military and the PA security forces in their fight against Hamas. All other forms of security coordination continued, but this specific aspect ceased. From then on, Netanyahu enacted a policy of not negotiating with the Palestinians under the pretext that their leadership is divided, while at the same time trying to undermine every attempt at reconciliation talks between Hamas and the PA.

Fast forward to 2018, when PA President Mahmoud Abbas stopped transferring money to Gaza completely, leaving Hamas on the brink of collapse. Instead of letting the PA return to Gaza [after it was kicked out by Hamas in 2006, following elections], Netanyahu saved Hamas by allowing in suitcases full of cash from Qatar. He was actually the mastermind and the architect of this Mafia-style money transfer. 

Did the transfer of Qatari money into Gaza only begin in 2018?

Qatar actually started transferring money to Hamas in 2012, though this was via bank wires and it was very small amounts. This changed fundamentally in 2018, when Netanyahu persuaded his cabinet to approve bigger transfers and change the mechanism of transfer to cash. After that, a car carrying suitcases full of almost $30 million in cash would pass through Rafah Crossing every month from the summer of 2018 until October 2023. 

As far as we know, most of the security establishment was against this move, but it was very important for Netanyahu and he succeeded. The minutes of that cabinet meeting are not and may never be open to the public, but it is clear this was a move designed to weaken the PA.

In your book, you mention a message that Sinwar sent to Netanyahu shortly after the major transfers began. Can you explain what that was?

Israel and Hamas did not communicate with each other officially, but they did engage in secret talks about what Israel calls the “hasdara,” or the arrangement by which Israel allowed Qatari money to flow into Gaza. In 2018, after the suitcases started arriving, the Israeli representative in these talks, the then National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, received a Hebrew note from Sinwar addressed to Netanyahu, which was titled “Calculated risk.” 

I remember being amazed to read about it when the note was published in the Israeli media [in 2022]. Why would the head of Hamas write to the Israeli prime minister, and why did he choose these specific words? What is the “risk”? 

It was a very clever thing to write because both Sinwar and Netanyahu took a calculated risk with this agreement [to continue weakening the PA and eliminating the possibility of a negotiated solution]. Netanyahu knew that Hamas was not going to use the money for the welfare of Gaza’s children or for modernizing the Strip, but rather for building tunnels and purchasing weapons, turning Gaza into a Spartan state at war with Israel. Yet still he did it for the sake of eliminating the possibility of a two-state solution. 

The Israeli security establishment repeatedly warned Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing for the next round of fighting. Throughout 2023, he received a number of specific warnings that Hamas was planning to launch an attack on Israel to kill and kidnap people. But nobody, including Netanyahu, thought it would be as big as it was.

In August 2023, when Israelis were demonstrating against the judicial overhaul, Palestinians in Gaza were demonstrating against Hamas. Sinwar was afraid of losing power in Gaza, so Hamas put down these protests with clubs and weapons. Public opinion polls in September and October 2023 in Gaza showed that over 50 percent were in favor of the two-state solution. This means Hamas had failed: despite half of the population in Gaza living most of their lives under its fundamentalist doctrine, the majority remained in favor of dividing the land. 

With the [October 7] attack, Sinwar helped Netanyahu by eliminating any opposition to his rule inside Israel and the possibility of peace talks in the near future. Sinwar knew that Hamas wasn’t going to conquer Israel on October 7; he didn’t think he was starting a war to eliminate the Zionist project. It was a show of force. And he knew what the response would be.

Most Palestinians view Hamas as a resistance movement and an integral part of Palestinian political life, whether or not they personally support it. In your book, you call Hamas the enemy of the Palestinian national movement. Isn’t this a bit patronizing?

I think Hamas is part, maybe even a big part, of the Palestinian national movement. But I think it is the enemy of the segment inside the Palestinian national movement that wants to end the conflict and the occupation.

Even inside Hamas, you find different approaches and views. It is not a monolithic organization. In recent years, there has been a debate over the way the organization should continue its fight and who to align with — Egypt, Iran, Turkey, or Qatar. Sinwar, who was a rational politician, is not synonymous with Hamas, just as Netanyahu is not synonymous with Likud. 

But Sinwar was willing to put the lives of more than 2 million Gazans at risk. He deals in death. There have been quite a lot of quotes from senior Hamas officials explaining that Gazans are expected to shed their blood for the Palestinian cause. When Sinwar said [in 2022] that a good Palestinian is one who grabs a knife and stabs a Jew, he did not believe this was the path to ending the Zionist project. He knew that such actions would make the conflict even more entrenched and permanent. It is clear that Sinwar was an enemy of all who value justice and peace.

In the second part of the book, titled “The Pariah State: On the First Days of the Fighting in Gaza,” you say that Israel’s current onslaught is the continuation of Netanyahu’s policy. Can you elaborate on this? 

I think that in order to understand the war you need to understand its first 20 days. This was the “Dresdenization” of Gaza: an aerial bombing campaign before the ground operation started. 

On the evening of October 7, Netanyahu gave his first speech to the nation, during which he said — using a biblical term — that Israel is going to turn Gaza “into rubble.” The prime minister reportedly told Biden around this time, who expressed reservations, that Israel is going to do what the Americans did in Japan and Germany during World War II, meaning a strategic campaign of bombing entire cities. 

This Dresdenization was something that didn’t serve any political or strategic logic: it didn’t give any thought to the future of relations between the nations. During those first 20 days, Hamas’ fighters and the movement’s leadership were in tunnels underground; Israel’s Air Force bombed thousands of innocent civilians. It did not help Israel gain control of Gaza, and it made it more difficult to free the hostages. It served the logic of revenge, which is the logic of Sinwar and Netanyahu. 

The Dresdenization of Gaza helped Netanyahu. With it, he received the approval of the vast majority of Israeli society, and this is a stain on Jewish-Israeli society. This was a massacre, genocide, a crime against humanity — I don’t think the word is important. And this crime helped Netanyahu eliminate internal opposition. Domestically, Netanyahu’s policy made the Israeli public complicit in the crime. 

And what is Netanyahu’s policy toward Hamas now, after more than a year of war and the killing of Sinwar?

I think Netanyahu’s policy today remains the same as it was before the war. He is trying to strengthen Hamas, or more precisely, the interest that Hamas represents — that is, weakening support for a two-state solution, and keeping us all in a state of endless war. Sinwar and Hamas were not the main issue for him; his central interest is never-ending war, and Hamas was a tool to maintain the conflict while Israel had the upper hand.

Among the Israeli left, especially the Zionist left, many people are now saying that, after October 7, the “conception” [the word used to describe Israel’s policy of keeping Hamas in power while limiting its military capabilities] has been proven a failure. I try to explain that the “conception” worked. I don’t think anything fundamental has changed since October 7; the excel sheets of victims have become much longer, especially among Palestinians, but I don’t think that something fundamental has changed. 

Hamas is an ideology deeply embedded in the region’s social and political landscape. Its politics are driven by the realities on the ground. The rhetoric of “destroying Hamas” and Netanyahu’s claims of achieving “total victory” are just spin for the public. The key question is not how many weapons exist in Gaza — there will always be more — but rather the social and political conditions that prevail there. Not how many Kalashnikov rifles there are, but whether people are willing to use them. 

[After the past year,] we are talking about maybe 20-25 years of reconstruction in Gaza, meaning two generations of children in Gaza will grow up in tents and refugee camps. They will not have the opportunity to learn poetry and computer science; instead, they will struggle for basic survival: food, a warm room, a soft bed. Thousands of children will never feel the embrace of their parents. It’s heartbreaking. These are the conditions that fuel resistance and perpetuate segregation. The recruitment offices of Hamas will remain busier than ever.

I think one of the things both Sinwar and Netanyahu wanted was achieved: support for the two-state solution is at the lowest rates in the history of this conflict on both sides. Now, the question is what will happen in Ramallah: what is the plan of the PA and the PLO? 

How would you characterize the impact of the war on Israeli society?

In the second part of the book, I tried to deal with the question of morality, and what happened to the values of Jewish Israelis. I sought to understand the connection between the strategy of revenge and the strategy of denial.

Since October 7, Israel has been committing multiple war crimes in Gaza, which soldiers are photographing and filming and posting all over social media. I saw the photo of two soldiers who bombed the Central Archives of Gaza City just for fun, which left a mark on me because I spend most of my time in archives. You can see there is a policy of starvation, there is a policy of indiscriminate bombing, there is a policy of torture. 

People know, but they don’t know: this is the strategy of denial. Most Israelis do not read Haaretz or Local Call (+972’s Hebrew-language partner site), but they could go onto social media or visit any international outlet. I was amazed, during the bombing campaign at the start of the war, how people simply closed their eyes. But the denial is very important for us, the “chosen people,” to grant legitimacy to what we are doing in Gaza and what we are not doing for the hostages. 

I think that nearly 60 years of occupation has changed the heart of the average Israeli. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Orthodox Jewish intellectual and Hebrew University professor, said as early as 1968 that the occupation is a corrupting force. The occupation has truly corrupted us. 

When World War II ended in 1945, the [concentration] camps opened and the world was exposed to the most brutal form of extermination in history. I think something of this kind will happen when the gates of Gaza are opened. When that happens, the Israeli public will need to decide which road they’re going to take: responsibility or denial. I believe they will choose denial. And this is why I think Netanyahu won the war.

The UN Security Council discussed, in a session held on Tuesday evening, the catastrophic conditions and famine in the Gaza Strip.

The session was held at the request of Algeria, Guyana, Slovenia and Switzerland, following a recent report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee (a team of leading independent international experts in food security, nutrition and mortality), which warned of an imminent and significant possibility of famine in northern Gaza due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Strip.

The Council heard briefings from officials from the UN Human Rights Office, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

In her briefing, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris said that the humanitarian and human rights conditions of Palestinian civilians across Gaza are catastrophic.

She pointed out that the figures documented by the United Nations Human Rights Office indicate that nearly 70% of the martyrs in Gaza are women and children, adding that it is likely that "many of the dead and wounded are still under the rubble."

The UN official referred to the displacement of nearly 1.9 million people, "many of whom have been displaced multiple times, including pregnant women, people with disabilities, the elderly and children."

She said that Israeli raids on shelters and residential buildings kill an unreasonable number of civilians, "proving that there is no safe place in Gaza."

Rein Paulsen, Director of the FAO Office of Emergency and Resilience, spoke to the Council about the dire food security situation in northern Gaza.

He stated that "the Famine Review Committee found a strong possibility of famine occurring or imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip."

He stressed that "agricultural food systems have collapsed", and that "nearly 70 percent of agricultural land, which contributed about a third of daily consumption, has been damaged or destroyed since the war began last year", calling for a ceasefire.

He said FAO was ready to step up its efforts to respond to and mitigate the famine, but “we cannot forget that peace is a prerequisite for food security, and the right to food is a basic human right.”

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that you do not have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, in a new affirmation of his absolute support for Israel.

For his part, Israeli President Isaac Herzog told Biden, who received him at the White House today, "You are definitely a Zionist and I thank you for being a special friend of Israel." Herzog noted that he had a meeting that he described as constructive with the American president.

"There is a great commitment and effort to move forward. I sincerely hope that we will see certain results in the foreseeable future, in the next few days, in some of these efforts," Herzog told reporters after the meeting.

This is not the first time Biden has repeated the phrase "You don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist," as he repeated it in mid-July in an attempt to attract Jewish voters in the United States before announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race in favor of Kamala Harris.

During Biden's term, which ends next January, Israel has received unlimited support in light of the ongoing war of extermination it is waging on the Gaza Strip and later including Lebanon.

US President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the selection of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as Washington's ambassador to Israel.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (AFP) Trump said in a statement that Huckabee "loves Israel and the people of Israel, and the people of Israel love him back. Mike will work tirelessly to restore peace to the Middle East."

The US president-elect is proceeding with selecting officials for his next administration, appointing to key positions people close to him who are known for their hardline approach towards China, such as influential Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is likely to take over as Secretary of State.

Rubio also calls for tightening US sanctions on Iran over progress in its nuclear program.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday that the Israeli occupation army is investigating whether its soldiers violated international law by killing hundreds of Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, but it ruled out that this would lead to condemnations.

Human rights organizations confirmed that these investigations are only used to cover up illegal acts.

This comes as the Israeli army continues to commit crimes of genocide against Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip in particular for 39 days and throughout the Gaza Strip for more than a year.

Haaretz said that hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the ground invasion of the northern Gaza Strip on October 5.

"The United Nations estimates that in the five weeks since the start of the invasion, more than a thousand people were killed in the area, including the cities of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia," she added.

She explained that "the vast majority of these were killed in attacks on residential buildings, temporary shelters and public buildings where civilians were hiding who insisted on staying in northern Gaza despite Israeli army orders to move south."

She pointed out that "unlike what happened in the first months of the war on Gaza, the Israeli army barely publishes information about the objectives of the invasion of the northern Gaza Strip, and the army did not publish photos or video clips documenting the confiscation of combat equipment or the discovery of Hamas tunnels in the area."

The newspaper said that "the army - apparently - also faces a problem in justifying the wide scope of the killings" there.

She revealed that the army claims that its investigation mechanism is currently investigating at least 16 attacks by its forces in the northern Gaza Strip between October 21 and November 2.

"Such an investigation is carried out in cases where there is suspicion that the policy of using fire was disproportionate or went beyond what is permitted by international law," she explained.

"The investigation mechanism will refer its recommendations to the military prosecutor, who will decide whether or not to open a criminal investigation," she added.

But human rights organizations, according to Haaretz, say that based on previous experiences, “the investigations will not lead to criminal investigations, and are only used to cover up illegal actions.”

These organizations add that these "investigations take years compared to days to weeks in other armies, and most of them are closed without a decision to open a criminal investigation against those involved."

She pointed out that "the investigation mechanism in the Israeli army was established to confront the demands of international bodies to investigate soldiers suspected of committing war crimes, as international law stipulates that if a comprehensive investigation is conducted in Israel, the case cannot be investigated simultaneously outside the country."

The Israeli occupation army claimed, on Tuesday evening, to have destroyed missile production sites and weapons warehouses belonging to Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

"In an intensive effort over the past few months, the IDF has destroyed most of the missile production sites and ammunition depots established by Hezbollah under the (southern Beirut) suburb," the army said in a statement via the X platform.

The Israeli army claimed that "Hezbollah has established, in the past twenty years, dozens of production sites and ammunition depots in the heart of the Dahiyeh area, the party's center of power."

He continued his claim that "the targeted sites contained hundreds of missiles and rockets of various types that were intended to cause serious damage to the State of Israel, and were systematically hidden under civilian buildings."

He claimed that “one of the main sites that was attacked, was already exposed in 2020 at the United Nations, and was established in the heart of the Choueifat neighborhood, under a complex of five residential buildings housing about 50 families, and is located about 85 meters from a school.”

As of 17:40 (GMT), there was no immediate comment from Hezbollah regarding the Israeli army’s statement, but in previous statements it denied the existence of weapons depots or missile sites within residential neighborhoods in the Beirut suburb.

The Israeli claim comes at a time when Hezbollah is carrying out intensive missile attacks on northern and central Israel, causing casualties, deaths, and widespread fires, and millions fleeing to shelters in fear of the intensity of the shelling.

After clashes with factions in Lebanon, most notably Hezbollah, which began the day after Israel launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, resulting in the killing and wounding of more than 146,000 Palestinians, Tel Aviv expanded the scope of the genocide since September 23 to include most areas of Lebanon, including the capital Beirut, through air strikes, and also began a ground invasion in the south.

The Israeli aggression on Lebanon resulted in a total of 3,287 martyrs and 14,222 wounded, including a large number of children and women, in addition to about 1.4 million displaced persons. Most of the victims and displaced persons were recorded after September 23, according to Anadolu Agency’s monitoring of official Lebanese data until Tuesday evening.

Every day, Hezbollah responds by launching missiles, drones, and artillery shells targeting military sites, intelligence headquarters, military gatherings, and settlements. While Israel announces some of its human and material losses, military censorship imposes a strict blackout on most of the losses, according to observers.

A number of citizens were suffocated by toxic gas, Tuesday evening, during the Israeli occupation forces' storming of the town of Al-Khader, south of Bethlehem.

According to local sources, the occupation forces stormed the vicinity of the Grand Mosque and the areas of "Al-Tall" and "Al-Bawaba" in the town, amidst the firing of live bullets, sound bombs and toxic gas towards homes and vehicles, which led to a number of citizens suffering from suffocation, and some vehicles being damaged.

It is noteworthy that the occupation forces have recently escalated their daily raids on the town of Al-Khader and their attacks on citizens and their property.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Washington on Monday with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs and close associate of Israeli Prime Minister Ron Dermer.

According to the statement issued by the spokesman Miller, a copy of which was received by Al-Quds.com, “Secretary Blinken and Secretary Dermer reviewed the steps taken by Israel to improve the dire humanitarian situation inside Gaza in response to the letter sent by the Secretary and Secretary of Defense Austin on October 13.”

“Secretary Dermer briefed Secretary Blinken on the operational changes made by the IDF and COGAT, as well as the policy decisions taken by the Government of Israel to address the measures outlined in the letter. The Secretary emphasized the importance of ensuring that these changes lead to a real improvement in the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, including through the provision of additional assistance to civilians throughout Gaza,” he added.

According to Miller, Secretary Blinken also stressed the importance of Israel taking every possible step to minimize harm to civilians, “and the Secretary stressed the importance of ending the war in Gaza and returning all hostages to their homes.

He stressed that charting a path forward in the post-conflict period that provides governance, security and reconstruction is the only way to ensure lasting peace and stability for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Miller concluded his statement by noting that "the two ministers discussed ongoing efforts to reach a diplomatic solution in Lebanon that will allow Lebanese and Israeli civilians to safely return to their homes. The Secretary affirmed the United States' unwavering commitment to Israel's security against threats from Iran and Iran-backed groups."

1. ⅕Saudi Arabia renewed its call on the countries of the world to join the international coalition to implement the two-state solution launched by the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee headed by Saudi Arabia and in cooperation with the European Union and Norway, stressing its support for “the brothers in Palestine and Lebanon, to overcome the catastrophic humanitarian consequences resulting from the Israeli aggression.”

The Saudi position came during a cabinet session chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Prime Minister, in Riyadh on Tuesday. The council praised the summit’s outcomes, which will contribute to strengthening joint action and continuing cooperation with the international community to stop the war on the Gaza Strip, and achieve security and stability in the region.

The Council also welcomed the signing of the “Tripartite Mechanism Document to Support Palestine” between the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States, and the African Union Commission, following its discussion of the contents of the extraordinary Arab and Islamic summit held in Riyadh on Monday, and the overall meetings of the Saudi Crown Prince with leaders of a number of sister countries.

At the beginning of the session, the Saudi Crown Prince informed the Council of Ministers of the content of the two messages received by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, from Omar Sissoco Embalo, President of Guinea-Bissau, and Ousmane Azali, President of the Union of the Comoros.

The Crown Prince also briefed the Council on the content of his talks with Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, and what the phone call with US President-elect Donald Trump included, which emphasized Saudi Arabia’s aspiration to strengthen the historical and strategic relations between the two countries.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman chairs the Saudi Cabinet session in Riyadh (SPA)

The Council of Ministers reviewed Saudi Arabia's contributions and initiatives in support of international multilateral action, to be more effective and rapid in addressing the challenges of the present and the future and responding to urgent issues at the global level; in a way that consolidates development and prosperity, and strengthens common cultural and social ties.

The Council referred to what Saudi Arabia stressed during its participation in international meetings held in recent days, regarding the importance it attaches to enhancing cooperation with all countries of the world, consolidating aspects of joint coordination in various fields, and continuing its humanitarian and development role in helping the most needy countries and peoples affected by natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

Salman Al-Dosari, Saudi Minister of Media, explained that the Council of Ministers affirmed Saudi Arabia’s interest in supporting cultural communication between different cultures around the world, expressing in this context his thanks to everyone who contributed to the success of the “Arab Week at UNESCO” initiative launched by the Kingdom at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in the French capital, Paris.

On the local front, the Council members appreciated the Crown Prince’s reception of the Saudi medical team that successfully performed the world’s first complete heart transplant using a robot, and his continuous support for national competencies and enabling them to achieve leadership in all fields, based on the fact that the human being is the focus and foundation of development.

The Council of Ministers praised the (tenth) edition of the “Biban 24” Forum, which was held in Riyadh, for signing agreements and launchings worth more than 35.4 billion riyals ($9.44 billion) to support entrepreneurship in a number of sectors, and achieving national targets in raising the contribution of small and medium enterprises to the gross domestic product.

The Council praised the results of the summit, which will contribute to enhancing joint action (SPA)

The Council reviewed the topics on its agenda, including topics that the Shura Council participated in studying. It also reviewed the conclusions reached by the Political and Security Affairs Council, the Economic Affairs and Development Council, the General Committee of the Council of Ministers, and the Experts Authority of the Council of Ministers in this regard.

The Council issued a number of decisions, including approval of a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Economy and Planning in Saudi Arabia and the Federal Ministry of Labor and Economy in Austria for cooperation in the economic field, an air transport services agreement between the Government of Saudi Arabia and the Government of Mozambique in the field of air transport services, and a memorandum of understanding between the Government of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Development Bank for cooperation in implementing the initiatives of the Petroleum Demand Sustainability Program.

The Council authorized the Minister of Education to set the rules and regulations regarding the Saudi School Sports Federation, while the Council decided that the implementation of the Official Communications Regulations and the preservation of documents and their information would be advisory for a period of one year from the date of its entry into force. It approved the final accounts of the Environment Fund and the King Fahd National Library for two previous fiscal years, and approved promotions to the (fifteenth) and (fourteenth) ranks.

The Council of Ministers also reviewed a number of general topics on its agenda, including annual reports from the Ministries of Commerce and Transport and Logistics Services, the Eastern Province Development Authority, the Control and Anti-Corruption Authority, the General Authority for Competition, the Capital Market Authority, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, the National Program for the Development of the Information Technology Sector, and the Strategic Office for the Development of Al-Baha Region. The Council took the necessary measures regarding these topics.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed the importance of improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza during a meeting with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in Washington on Monday, the State Department said.

The ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that Dermer briefed Blinken on the operational changes and policy decisions Israel had made based on a letter sent by the United States in October.

Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said that the development of relations between Tehran and Riyadh is on the right track.

Iran's official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday that Aref met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman yesterday in Riyadh, on the sidelines of the extraordinary joint summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League.

During the meeting, Aref discussed strengthening bilateral relations and expanding economic, cultural and political cooperation between the two countries.

"The development of political relations between the two countries is on the right track. We hope that this relationship will continue seriously in the economic, cultural, scientific and technological fields," Aref said.

Aref stressed that these positive developments in the political field on the Tehran-Riyadh line will benefit the two countries and the region.

The Iranian First Vice President said that developing such relations is an "irreversible path."

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has said that the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza is insufficient to address the "catastrophic" situation in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Almost simultaneously with this announcement, the Israeli army indicated the opening of a new crossing at Qarara/Kissufim to bring humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, on the eve of the deadline set by the United States for the Israeli authorities to allow increased aid, according to Agence France-Presse.

Asked about the US warning, UNRWA official Louise Waterridge declined to comment at a news conference, but stressed that the situation in the Gaza Strip "is simply catastrophic."

She explained from Gaza that aid had reached its lowest levels in months, "and the average for last October was 37 trucks per day across the entire Gaza Strip, and this is not enough at all for a population of 2.2 million people who need everything."

“While we receive testimonies of people on the ground begging for crumbs of bread or water, the UN is still denied access to this area,” she said, stressing that no food has been allowed into the besieged area in northern Gaza for a whole month, and that all requests made by the UN to access the area “have been denied.”

She noted that "attempts" had been made since then, and the World Health Organization had carried out limited medical evacuations, adding, "But I can tell you that as of this week, I was supposed to do two missions in the north" and they were "rejected."

Last Saturday, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini warned of the possibility of famine in the northern Gaza Strip, which has been under siege under the weight of the occupation since October 5.

Lazzarini expressed his regret that the possibility of famine "is not surprising," noting that Israel has used hunger as a weapon, depriving people in Gaza of basics, even food to survive, amid growing international and UN warnings of a famine in northern Gaza.

For its part, the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in the occupied Palestinian territories also expressed its concern today, writing via the X platform, “As the situation in northern Gaza deteriorates, the lack of access to appropriate medical care continues to affect civilians.”

This comes as Israel continues its war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving more than 146,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and worsening famine.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition leaders are delighted with the new appointments of members of US President-elect Donald Trump’s team, who are clearly pro-Israel, political circles in Tel Aviv confirm that the main message that Israel will hear from the incoming Trump administration is a firm demand to end the war, indicating that Trump is betting that Netanyahu will also make bold decisions to resolve the conflict.

These circles said that Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, who is spending a four-day visit to the United States to meet with a number of senior officials in President Joe Biden's administration, first met with President-elect Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. According to the American website "Axios" and its correspondent in Tel Aviv, Barak Ravid, Dermer conveyed messages from Netanyahu to Trump and informed him of Israel's plans regarding Gaza, Lebanon and Iran over the next two months before the president-elect takes office in the White House. He said that Netanyahu is interested in knowing what the new president expects and wants because he wants to work closely with him.

“One of the things the Israelis wanted to work out with Trump was what issues the president-elect would prefer to see resolved before January 20, and what issues the Israelis would prefer to wait until he takes office,” one US official told the news site. Netanyahu specifically chose Dermer for the job because he is personally known to Trump and members of his team. He is American by birth. He served as Israel’s ambassador to Washington during Trump’s first term. He has built close ties with all segments of the Republican Party and has clashed with Democratic Party leaders. He has worked closely with Trump and maintained ties with him after his 2020 election defeat.

In this context, and in light of the enthusiasm shown by the extreme right and considering Trump’s election an opportunity to annex the West Bank to Israel and impose Israeli sovereignty over the settlements, the Times of Israel newspaper said that at least two officials on Trump’s team from the previous term warned senior Israeli ministers against assuming that the president-elect would support Israel’s annexation of the West Bank in his second term.

“I think it’s important for those in Israel who are celebrating President Trump’s victory to do so because of the strong support President Trump has for Israel, as evidenced by the many historic things he has done during his first term,” the newspaper quoted Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s former Middle East envoy, as saying. “But to some Israeli ministers who think that extending Israeli sovereignty into Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is now a done deal, take a breath. Hold on. If I were an adviser to these ministers, I would recommend that they focus first on working closely with Prime Minister Netanyahu to enable him to strengthen Israel’s relationship with the United States and allow him to work on the enormous threats and challenges that Israel now faces. There will be time to have a discussion about Judea and Samaria, but the context and timing are important.”

Sirens sounded continuously in various areas in northern Israel, and the army reported that a number of drones were spotted in the area. This coincided with raids targeting sites in Lebanon - including the Akkar region - the farthest point that Israeli missiles have reached since the start of its war on Lebanon.

The Israeli army announced that its helicopters were chasing a number of drones spotted in the skies of Acre coming from Lebanon.

Yedioth Ahronoth reported an explosion in a march near a community center in Nesher, east of Haifa.

This came after the Israeli Home Front Command announced the activation of sirens in Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings, and in the western Galilee and the northern coast.

The Israeli army said earlier that its defenses intercepted a march south of the occupied Syrian Golan coming from the east.

The Israeli army also confirmed earlier that it intercepted a march that infiltrated from the east into the Wadi Araba area in southern Israel.

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority also said that air interceptions took place in Eilat, southern Israel, while the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said that it had attacked a military target south of the occupied territories and another north of them with drones.

Israeli raids

On the other hand, Israeli raids continued on several towns in southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health said that eight people were killed and 14 injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a residential building in the town of Ain Yaacoub in the northern Akkar Governorate last night.

A security source told Agence France-Presse that the building destroyed by the raid was inhabited by a displaced family from southern Lebanon, noting that the targeted person was one of its members and a member of Hezbollah.

The head of the union of municipalities in the region - to which the town belongs - confirmed to the agency that the raid targeted "a two-story house inhabited by displaced people," adding that this was the first time that this area, which is more than 100 kilometers from Lebanon's southern border, had been targeted.

The Ministry of Health also announced the martyrdom of 7 people in an Israeli raid on the Sidon district in southern Lebanon.

Al Jazeera's correspondent said that Israeli raids targeted, during the past hours, the surroundings of the towns of Kfar Reman and Siddiqin, and the towns of Shama, Majdal Zoun, Dabaal, Jabal al-Batm, and Zebqin in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army issued new warnings to residents to evacuate a number of buildings in the southern suburb of Beirut.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz said there would be no ceasefire and no respite in the strikes against Hezbollah.

Katz, who held a meeting with the Public Defense Forum on Monday, added that Israel will continue to strike Hezbollah with all its might until the war's goals are achieved.

Katz pointed out that Israel will not agree to any arrangement that does not guarantee its right to reject and prevent what he called "terrorism" on its own, and to achieve the goals of the war in Lebanon of disarming Hezbollah, withdrawing it beyond the Litani, and returning the residents of northern Israel safely to their homes.

This evening, Tuesday, a young man was killed after being shot by the Israeli occupation forces, near the town of Deir Sharaf, northwest of Nablus.

The Ministry of Health stated in a brief statement that the General Authority for Civil Affairs informed it of the martyrdom of the young man Walid Ashraf Muhammad Hussein (18 years old) by the bullets of the occupation forces.

During his first term, President-elect Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, imposed tough economic sanctions on Tehran, and ordered the killing of the mastermind of the Revolutionary Guard’s foreign operations, Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Last Friday, the Justice Department revealed details of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump before the last presidential election.

But despite this fraught history between the two countries, many former officials, experts and even newspapers in Iran have publicly called on the government to improve relations with Trump after his landslide election victory, according to the New York Times.

For example, the Iranian newspaper Shargh published an editorial saying that Iran’s new, more moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, should “avoid the mistakes of the past and adopt a pragmatic and multidimensional policy.”

Many in Pezeshkian’s government agree with that view, according to five Iranian officials who asked The New York Times not to publish their names.

Officials said Trump likes to make deals where others have failed, and his huge dominance in the Republican Party could give any potential deal more staying power. That could give a chance for some kind of permanent deal with the United States, they said.

Trump displays a memorandum he signed to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal on May 8, 2018 (AP)

For his part, one of the prominent politicians, the former political advisor to the Iranian government, Hamid Aboutalebi, wrote in an open letter to the Iranian president: “Do not miss this historic opportunity to change relations between Iran and the United States.”

Abu Taleb advised Pezeshkian to congratulate Trump on winning the elections and to communicate with him in a new tone, confirming that his country seeks to follow a practical policy that looks forward to a better future with the United States.

Iran will seek to achieve whatever serves its “interests,” government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) on Tuesday, in response to a question about the possibility of holding direct talks with the administration of US President-elect Donald Trump.

However, the crucial decisions in Tehran are made by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who banned negotiations with Trump during his first term.

Experts say that even if Pezeshkian wanted to negotiate with Trump, he would have to get Khamenei's approval.

Openness towards Trump

Iran showed some openness to Trump on Saturday, calling on the US president-elect to adopt new policies toward it, after Washington accused Tehran of involvement in a plot to assassinate him. Iranian Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif urged Trump to “change” the “maximum pressure” policy he pursued with Tehran during his first term.

“Trump must show that he is not following the wrong policies of the past,” Zarif told reporters. Trump said after casting his vote last week that he “does not seek to harm Iran.”

"My conditions are very easy," he added. "They cannot have nuclear weapons. I want them to be a very successful country."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Thursday that Trump's victory represents "an opportunity to review and reconsider Washington's previous incorrect approaches."

For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran respects the choice of the American people in electing their president, and that the path forward for Iran and the United States begins with mutual “respect” and “building trust.”

"Negotiating with Trump is treason"

Negotiating with Trump would be a political challenge for the new Iranian government, said conservative analyst Reza Salehi in Tehran.

Conservatives have already expressed their dismay at the prospect, saying that any negotiation with Trump would be a “betrayal of General Qassem Soleimani,” whose assassination the president-elect ordered in 2020.

Hamshahri, a conservative newspaper run by Tehran’s municipal government, ran front-page pictures of Trump in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, with the caption: “The killer is back.” However, Salehi said: “I oppose this position and say that Trump will benefit Iran compared to his predecessor.”

"He's interested in making deals; he's interested in ending wars, and he's against starting new ones," he added.

The former US envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, during the first Trump administration, told CNN on Thursday that the president-elect “has no interest in regime change in Iran” but that he “also believes that the primary driver of instability in the Middle East is the Iranian regime.”

Policies that please Iran

Many of Trump’s stated foreign policy goals — ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, ending the war in Ukraine, and an “America First” agenda — appeal to Iran, the five Iranian officials told The New York Times.

They pointed out that ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon could help avoid a wider war between Israel and Iran, which supports Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Ending the war in Ukraine could also ease pressure on Iran to supply Russia with weapons.

Trump's "America First" domestic policy may mean that she will take less interest in the affairs of other countries and focus more on her own domestic affairs.

“The American people, including most Muslims, have spoken loudly and clearly to reject a shameful year of American complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the massacre in Lebanon,” Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote to Trump on Twitter a few days ago.

He added: "We hope that the next administration led by Trump and DeVance will stand against the war as it pledged, and will take into account the clear lesson provided by the American voter on the necessity of ending wars and preventing new ones."

For his part, former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said in an interview from Tehran that his advice is to “turn the fear of Trump’s threats into a good opportunity to improve diplomatic relations with him.”

"Trump likes to take credit for resolving crises, and one of the main crises now is the crisis between Iran and America," he said.

Abtahi stressed that there are two competing strategies under discussion in Iranian policy circles: one that calls for Iran to move forward defiantly and strengthen its proxy militias in the Middle East, to deter the United States and Israel, and the other that calls for negotiating with Trump.

Iranian analyst Rahman Ghahramanpour said that Tehran does not have many options.

“Maintaining the status quo with the United States for another four years is unsustainable,” he continued. “The economy is deteriorating under sanctions and mismanagement, inflation is soaring, and domestic discontent remains high.”

"We don't want more sanctions, more instability. But at the same time, the comprehensive agreement with Trump must be made in a way that saves our face domestically. This will be the biggest challenge," Ghahramanpour added.

Yesterday, Monday, the international team of lawyers assigned by the Palestinian Bar Association to the Office of the International Prosecutor and the International Criminal Court included the name of the new Israeli Minister of Defense, Yisrael Katz, on the list of those accused of committing war crimes and genocide in the Gaza Strip, and that he should be included in the arrest warrants.

The team requested the Office of the International Prosecutor to amend its request as a summary procedure in the matter of issuing an arrest warrant against the accused (No. 4), the dismissed Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, by adding a new request that includes an arrest warrant for the accused (No. 20), Israel Katz, in addition to the two accused, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (No. 2) and Galant.

The head of the international lawyers' team, Dr. Faisal Khazal, said in a statement, a copy of which was received by "Ya" yesterday: "Since the date that Yisrael Katz (accused No. 20) assumed his position as Minister of War in the occupation government, there have been acts of genocide against unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip in various forms of deliberate killing with premeditation and deliberation, in operations to take innocent lives from November 5, 2024 until the date of filing this annex No. 14 on November 11, 2024, as the crimes committed by Galant from October 2023 until the date of his dismissal on November 5, 2024 are the same crimes that are similar in terms of the size of the crime, its heinousness, the method of its commission and all its dimensions to the crimes committed by Katz from the date he assumed his position on November 5, 2024 until the present date."

Khazal concluded his statement by saying: “The crimes committed by Galant, on the basis of which the international prosecutor and his esteemed assistants requested the issuance of an arrest warrant against him, have continued in the same manner in terms of the way crimes were committed against unarmed civilians by Yisrael Katz, who replaced the accused Yoav Galant in all his job descriptions, powers and influence that grant him the same authorization to commit identical and similar crimes in terms of execution and continuity, and he is subject to the same accusation and the extent of the crime, since justice must not be deficient in the execution process, nor must it discriminate between one accused and another, or grant one of them advantages that the other does not enjoy, or immunity that enables him to escape punishment for committing crimes punishable by law.”

The efforts led by the State of Qatar in its mediation role for more than a year, along with Egypt and the “opposing mediator” the United States, have not succeeded in putting an end to the war of extermination waged by the occupying state on the Gaza Strip, in light of the intransigence shown and still shown by the Prime Minister of the occupation, Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants to achieve through negotiations and politics what his army has not achieved in the field in terms of declared goals, at least.

No one knows exactly what the two Arab mediators are facing or hearing, whether from the aggressor state, Israel, or from the third “mediator,” the United States, or more precisely, the “opponent,” without anyone coming out in public to call things by their names and announce the party that is causing the obstruction of the negotiations that Netanyahu has exploited for thirteen months as a cover for his open massacre.

Political writers and analysts who spoke to "I" dot com believe that what the media reported about Qatar's intention to freeze its mediation, and even ask the Hamas leadership to leave its territory, is an eloquent political message to free itself from the pressures being exerted on it to push it in turn to pressure the Hamas movement to accept the Israeli conditions to end the war, but Qatar denied that it had withdrawn from the negotiations. It also denied that it had asked the Hamas leadership to leave Doha.

Several experiences and close relations with America and Europe

Dr. Omar Rahhal, writer, political analyst and director of the Shams Center for Human Rights, stressed the importance of the Qatari role in the negotiations, considering that Qatar represents the Palestinians and the resistance as “trustworthy brothers.”

He explained that Qatar has close relations with the United States and Europe, in addition to its distinguished relations with the Palestinian resistance, which makes it a trusted mediator for all parties in the ongoing negotiations with the occupation.

Rahhal pointed to Qatar's previous experiences in negotiating and resolving conflicts, whether in Darfur, with the Taliban, or in Lebanon, in addition to its efforts in other conflicts, which gave it extensive experience and prudence in bringing viewpoints closer together and proposing solutions acceptable to the conflicting parties.

He added: "These experiences give it a strong balance in negotiating at the regional and international levels.

Regarding Hamas’s denial of receiving any messages from Qatar asking it to leave Doha, Rahhal said: “Politics is changeable and everything is possible,” noting that Qatar aims to maintain a strong regional role, which makes the presence of the resistance on its territory supportive of these ambitions.

He also expected that the new US administration headed by Trump might exert pressure on Qatar to remove Hamas from its territory, considering this one of the means of pressure to achieve its interests and impose a settlement that suits the US and Israeli vision.

US and Israeli pressure on Qatar

For his part, Oraib Al-Rantawi, Director of the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies, pointed to the challenges facing Qatar as a result of American and Israeli pressure on it, which in turn pressures Hamas, with the aim of pushing it to make concessions and accept Israel’s conditions in the negotiations over Gaza.

“This is not the first time that Qatar has been subjected to pressure from the United States and Israel in the context of its mediation between Hamas and Israel, and it will not be the last, as Washington and Tel Aviv, as part of a negotiating-blackmailing tactic, seek to push Qatar to pressure Hamas to accept extremely difficult Israeli conditions. This pressure, which relies on direct and indirect threats, comes at a sensitive time regionally and internationally, with the approach of a new round of negotiations regarding the future of Gaza,” he said.

Rantawi stressed that Qatar is considered one of the main regional players seeking to keep the door of dialogue open, as it has provided multiple mediations over the years in the Gaza file. However, this mediation places it in a sensitive position, especially since many parties, including Israel and the United States, want Qatar to take a firm stance in pressuring Hamas to accept the “surrender” conditions imposed by the Netanyahu government.

Qatari Foreign Ministry puts an end to rumors

He pointed out that the recent period witnessed a series of media leaks and rumors about Qatar withdrawing from its mediation role, with threats to expel Hamas leaders or close their offices. However, official statements, especially by the Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman, put an end to these rumors and confirmed that Qatar's role as a mediator still exists, but with conditions.

He believed that the timing indicates a correlation between the pressures on Qatar and the political transformations in the United States, noting that with Trump’s return to the political scene and his victory in the presidency, Qatari fears of a less flexible American policy are renewed, as Qatar had previously suffered from direct threats to its existence during Trump’s first term in office, including a blockade imposed on it by the Arab “siege quartet,” which was only ended by generous Turkish and Iranian support.

He believed that with Trump’s return, the anti-Qatar lobby in the United States may gain new momentum, especially since there are currently 14 members of Congress calling for sanctions on Qatar, including the expulsion of Hamas leaders from Doha and the extradition of some of them. These calls may increase after the Republican victory in the elections.

According to Rantawi, the recent Qatari leaks came as a message from Qatar expressing its rejection of exploiting its mediation as a cover to pass pressure on the Palestinians. The Qatari leadership is fully aware that its mediation in the Gaza file is desired, especially by the American and Israeli sides, but it is also aware that some parties see this mediation as a tool to ensure Hamas’s submission and acceptance of the Israeli conditions.

A constructive role, not a tool for pressure and submission.

He explained that Qatar believes that its role as a mediator should be constructive and serve the goal of achieving a balanced solution, not as a tool for pressure and submission. This is why Qatar is hinting that it may suspend its role as a mediator if it feels that the pressures are unfair, while it is ready to resume the role if mediation serves a peaceful solution.

Al-Rantawi pointed to the potential repercussions on Hamas and the future of its presence in Doha since the beginning of the last conflict in October 2023, as talk has begun to increase about the possibility that Hamas will be forced to leave Qatar, and this may depend on the results of the negotiations and the length of the crisis.

He added: "If American and Israeli pressure continues, Qatar may be forced to reduce direct support for Hamas, which may push the movement to reconsider the presence of its leaders in Doha."

He said that Hamas has limited options outside Qatar, as countries like Lebanon and Iraq, despite their apparent sympathy, are unable to provide a safe environment due to security and political complexities. As for Iran, it may be a refuge, but moving there may further isolate Hamas and raise concerns about its relationship with other regional parties.

Turkey and Algeria may accept a symbolic presence for the movement, but without providing full support due to their complex regional interests. Therefore, Hamas may have the option of distributing leadership geographically and adopting a decentralized pattern of action.

Qatar's prominent role in supporting the Palestinian people

In turn, former Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Hatem Abdel Qader praised the prominent role played by Qatar in supporting the Palestinian people, especially in the city of Jerusalem, and in its continuous efforts to mediate to stop the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, which is witnessing crimes and genocide.

Abdul Qader stressed that Qatar has sought from the beginning to alleviate the suffering of the Gaza Strip, whether by mediating a ceasefire or by sending humanitarian and relief aid, and attempts to break the siege imposed on the Strip.

He pointed out that Qatar's efforts to support Gaza were not limited to the current crisis, but extended to before October 7, through reconstruction projects and humanitarian aid provided by the Qatari Committee to Support the Strip, which contributed to alleviating the suffering of its residents.

Abdul Qader explained that what is being circulated about Qatar's withdrawal from mediation is inaccurate, stressing that Doha will not abandon the Gaza Strip, and will continue its efforts in cooperation with Egypt and in coordination with the Palestinian Authority to stop the fire and lift the siege.

He stressed that Qatar will not back down from this "historical responsibility" in supporting the Palestinian people and backing them until the aggression stops and Israel withdraws from Gaza.

Abdul Qader denied the existence of any Qatari request for Hamas to leave Doha, pointing out that external pressures, especially American, may increase, but Qatar will remain committed to its message of support for the Palestinian people, including Hamas as part of it.

Abdul Qader added: "The talk about closing the Hamas office in Qatar is exaggerated and inaccurate, stressing the movement's continued presence in Doha and Qatar's continued mediation to end the aggression on the Gaza Strip.

Qatar does not have real means of pressure on Israel

For his part, writer and political analyst Dr. Suleiman Abu Sitta stressed the important role played by Qatar in mediating between Hamas and Israel.

Abu Sitta explained that there is a fundamental obstacle related to the positions of the two parties involved in the negotiations. On the one hand, the Palestinians, represented by Hamas and the resistance factions, stress the need to achieve a comprehensive and final cessation of the war and a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a precondition for any agreement.

Abu Sitta believes that any deal that does not include ending the war means that Israel will continue its policy of escalation and destruction against the Gaza Strip.

He added: As for the Israeli side, specifically the Netanyahu government, it wants to conclude a deal without ending the state of war. According to Abu Sitta, this position reflects an inconsistent political will within Israeli society, as there are internal parties that reject this approach and demand an end to the war.

Abu Sitta believes that Israel's acceptance of a ceasefire and the start of reconstruction in Gaza may facilitate the position of the Palestinian resistance, opening the way for possible agreements, but Israeli intransigence remains a major obstacle.

Regarding Qatari mediation, Abu Sitta pointed out that Qatar is making efforts to reach an agreement, but is facing difficulties as a result of the intransigence of the Netanyahu government. Qatar lacks real means of pressure on Israel, which led to recent statements indicating the failure of mediation so far.

In the context of the negotiations, Abu Sitta confirmed that Hamas showed flexibility and accepted several proposals, including settlement stages supported by the United States, but requiring real guarantees for a ceasefire, which has not yet been achieved and which the mediators have not been able to achieve.

Despite the Qatari announcement of the possibility of suspending mediation, Abu Sitta believes that these statements may be a Qatari tactic to pressure for an end to the war, citing previous experiences such as the Shalit deal, which succeeded thanks to the intervention of European roles after the failure of the Arab role.

Challenges Facing Qatar as Trump Returns

Abu Sitta pointed out that Qatar is facing additional pressures with the possibility of the return of former President Donald Trump, who may renew his tough stances towards it, putting it in a difficult position.

He pointed out that Qatar may feel that its association with Hamas threatens its strategic interests, which prompts it to issue such statements as an indication of its neutral position.

Abu Sitta denied the existence of a Qatari request for the Hamas office to leave Doha, indicating that this exit is not in Qatar’s interest, because moving it to Tehran, for example, may harm the chances of Qatari mediation. Accordingly, these leaks may be an implicit means of pressure, without any actual intention to implement them.

Qatar is tired of being blamed

As for the Jerusalemite writer and journalist Daoud Kuttab, he believes that Qatar has taken a smart and effective step by announcing the suspension of its mediation in the negotiations regarding the exchange deal and ceasefire.

The book said that this decision came after Qatar appeared to be tired of attempts to blame it for the lack of progress in the deal. While Qatar confirmed that mediation was suspended due to the parties’ lack of seriousness, thereby indicating the lack of seriousness on the Israeli side in particular, it is thus avoiding bearing unfair blame.

The book believes that this Qatari tactic reflects a policy similar to the occupation’s tactics, as it says one thing and does the opposite, a method that puts the ball in the court of the Israeli occupation and its American allies.

This decision is also considered a test of Qatar's neutrality and its positive role in bringing viewpoints closer together.

Regarding Donald Trump's return to the political arena, the book believes that his position on Hamas may be completely different from that of President Biden, who described himself as a "Zionist."

According to the book, Trump is not an ideological figure, and is not very committed to issues such as ideological support for Israel. Rather, he usually focuses on finding solutions and is willing to negotiate with any party if it achieves his goals, as he showed when he met with the North Korean leader previously.

The book pointed out the challenges that Trump might face in this context, as many of the major donors to his election campaign are supporters of the extreme Zionist right, which means that taking any balanced or lenient position towards Hamas might be met with strong opposition from those around him.

In Gaza, everyone is living in famine, young and old... and hunger has no mercy on anyone

Umm Abdullah: From the early morning hours, I stand at the soup kitchen until one in the afternoon to get a bite to eat for my children.

Hoda Bashir: By God, my children cannot stand hunger. How long will we continue with this injustice? They even deprived us of food.

Umm Shaaban: Our whole life depends on the Tekke. If it closes, my children will starve to death. I don’t have money to buy food.

“We can’t eat, drink, or even live,” Umm Abdullah Sharkh said, describing the tragedy she is experiencing in light of the lack of vegetables and food supplies in the Gaza Strip’s markets.

It is no longer the Israeli bombing that terrifies the citizens of the Gaza Strip, but hunger has become more deadly. Famine has spread from the north to the south, and hunger has begun to devour the bodies of the citizens gradually in front of a world that has not and will not move a finger to stop the genocide against them.

Umm Abdullah told Al-Quds.com: “From the early morning hours, I stand at the takiya until one o’clock in the afternoon to get a bite to eat for my children.”

She added: "I depend on it completely, and if it weren't for the food from the hospice, my six children would go to bed hungry."

Umm Abdullah has to bring her young child with her to the hospice, and they line up together. She says: “My son stands in the same line as me, so that we can get enough food for all of us.”

Vegetables are not available in the markets, and when they are available, their price is very high, and citizens cannot buy them in light of the lack of sources of income. Umm Abdullah says: “I want to buy vegetables and food for my children, but I can’t. Everything in the market is expensive.”

He added: "Even a loaf of bread costs twenty shekels, and we can no longer afford it."

What about your wish? Umm Abdullah answers: “I wish we could live a decent life and eat healthy food like the rest of the world.”

Everyone is living in famine in the Gaza Strip

In Gaza, everyone is living in famine, young and old, because hunger has no mercy on anyone. Hoda Bashir tells Al-Quds.com: “By God, my children cannot bear hunger,” and she cries, wondering: “How long will we continue with this injustice?” She adds: “They even deprived us of food.”

Hoda and her ten children were displaced from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah. She is the sole breadwinner for them. She says: “If I wanted to buy a kilo of tomatoes, it wouldn’t be enough to feed my children. Everything in the market is expensive, and I don’t have the money to buy it.”

And about the most painful situation? Hoda answers: “When my daughter, who has special needs, woke up at dawn, she asked for food, but I couldn’t find anything to satisfy her hunger. She cried a lot, and I tried to calm her down by telling her that I would bring her food in the morning, but to no avail.”

She continues: “I had a can of peas and put them out for her to eat with a spoon, because there was no bread.” She adds: “Even the price of bread has gone up, and I can no longer afford to buy it.”

Like others, Hoda depends on the charity soup kitchens for food, but she is not able to get it every time, due to the overcrowding of the displaced. She says: “I stand in line at the soup kitchen for hours to be able to bring a plate of rice, but it is not enough for my ten children, and many times I am not able to get it.”

I found nothing but dukkah, thyme and some canned food.

Hoda was able to collect a small amount of money and decided to go shopping to buy what would benefit her children’s health, but she was shocked when she found it empty of food items. She continues: “I found nothing but dukkah and thyme, and some useless canned food.”

He continued: “My children are malnourished, their bodies are thin and their structure is weak.”

The same situation is experienced by Umm Shaaban, who was displaced from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. She told “I” and “Al-Quds” Dot Com: “There is nothing but that my children and I feel very hungry, and I am not ashamed to say that, as hunger has eaten away at our bodies and we are unable to perform our tasks in living.”

Umm Shaaban waits for four hours in the queue at the Tekke to get a plate of food. She continues: “I keep waiting for my turn until it arrives. Sometimes I get food and many times it runs out and they compensate us with canned food.”

Umm Shaaban lives in a tragic situation inside her tent, as she does not have a steady source of income to support her eight children. She adds: “Our whole life depends on the hospice. If it closes, my children will die of hunger.”

He continued: "I don't have money to buy expensive food."

All Gazans dream of stopping the Israeli war on them, demanding that the entire world end the genocide against them, allow them to return to their homes, open the crossings, and allow aid to enter.

Medical sources announced today, Tuesday, that the death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 43,665, the majority of whom are children and women, since the start of the Israeli occupation aggression on October 7, 2023.

The same sources added that the number of injuries has risen to 103,076 since the beginning of the aggression, while thousands of victims are still under the rubble.

She pointed out that the occupation forces committed 5 massacres, which resulted in the death of 62 citizens and the injury of 147 others.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state, The New York Times reported late Monday.

Three people were quoted as saying the decision was not final, but Trump appeared to have settled on Rubio, a loyalist whom Trump passed over as his vice presidential running mate.

Rubio has been consistently named over the past week as one of the front-runners to be America's top diplomat, along with former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell.

Asked if he was destined for a high-level Cabinet position, Rubio told CNN last week, "I'm always interested in serving this country."

The nomination of the hardline senator, who has Cuban heritage, would cap a marked shift in his relationship with Trump.

In 2016, when they were running for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio called Trump a "conman" and "the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency."

Rubio was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, and graduated in political science from the University of Florida in 1993.

US President-elect Donald Trump has also chosen Republican Representative Mike Waltz from Florida to be his national security adviser.

By selecting Waltz, Trump is choosing a Special Forces veteran to oversee what promises to be a realignment of the United States’ posture around the world, including the nearly three-year war in Ukraine and the expanding conflict in the Middle East.

Waltz has not played a central role in Trump’s day-to-day campaign, but he has been close to the president-elect and his team since their first term. At the Republican National Convention this summer in Milwaukee, Waltz delivered a powerful speech from the podium praising Trump’s fitness as commander-in-chief while criticizing President Joe Biden’s legacy at the Pentagon and the bloody and confusing withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

This kind of movement between policy and policy planning, coupled with the ability to make the case for Trumpism in a clear and straightforward way, is the kind of double whammy that eluded some of Trump’s former national security advisers in his first term in office, including H.R. McMaster and John Bolton.

Waltz will enter a White House that will be handed the file on the ongoing war in Ukraine on the first day, dozens of nervous allies in Europe to deal with, Trump’s promised plan to end the war on his first day in office, and an ally in Israel that is waging war on several fronts, including directly – for the first time – with Iran.

A longtime China hawk, the 50-year-old retired colonel from the Green Berets and National Guard will also lead the charge in formulating plans to counter China’s massive military buildup, which Trump and his team have made a key part of the campaign.

Waltz, who spent time as a policy official at the Pentagon and the White House, has also been front and center in the military’s culture wars and in criticizing Biden’s foreign policies from his perch on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.

As a congressman, Waltz was a frequent visitor to the White House during Trump’s first term, advising him on national security issues behind the scenes, and quietly became one of the then-president’s closest advisers on defense issues. Before being tapped as national security adviser, he was also a top candidate to be Trump’s defense secretary.

Scenes of women, children and men standing in queues in front of the Tekayas in Gaza to get a hot meal, nothing more than soup to satisfy their hunger and sustain them, bring back to my painful memory similar images that I and my contemporaries experienced when we were children standing in queues in front of UNRWA restaurants to get a hot meal or a cup of milk to drink under the threat of the school principal’s stick, who kept his tongue out to convince us that the agency’s milk, fish oil pills and polio vaccines were not a conspiracy to control births by the agency.

After the return of "Abu Ammar", may God bless his soul, in the nineties of the last century, we had a port, an airport, media and a parliament, carried on the dreams of peace, before hopes were dispelled and dreams were shattered in the abyss of the enemy's retreat from the peace of the brave. A peace that we thought was water before it turned into a mirage and a barren, desolate land in which waterfalls of blood flowed, and hopes were shattered on its wings on piles of rubble, as if it were a peace built on the sand in Gaza, which was with Jericho first and last, after the tendencies of arrogance and expansion were revealed and are drawn today by the fangs of planes and the tracks of tanks in Gaza and Lebanon, before we move to what is beyond Beirut and Sana'a, as long as there is no one to curb its rage or stop its rush.

In the course of the eighty years of struggle, mistakes were made that poured wheat into the enemies’ mill, some of which resulted from poor performance, and others due to the mortgage to supra-Palestinian agendas, during which elections were postponed, the counters were played with, religion was mixed with politics, and there was a tendency towards deceptive readings of the imminent demise of the enemy state, which are closer to wishes and imaginations than to facts and analyses.

It is true that our enemy is a criminal murderer whose mission is to lie in wait for us, undermine our dreams, and stifle our hopes. He is the cause of all the genocide that has befallen our people, the likes of which history has never witnessed. However, wisdom and national responsibility require that every party in the national scene determine its share of responsibility for the depressing situation we have reached and the bad turn of events that have befallen our people, far from slogans that deceive their promoters more than they raise the costs for their occupiers.

Fathers eat sour grapes, but children set teeth on edge!

Stop the crime of the century now..!

The Israeli army announced today, Tuesday, that its forces arrested two Palestinians on the pretext that they carried out a run-over operation near the town of Al-Khader, west of the city of Bethlehem, yesterday, in which two soldiers were injured among Israeli forces carrying out a military operation.

According to a statement by the Israeli army, its forces, police forces and the Shin Bet pursued two suspects who fled the scene of the attack on two soldiers, and that "the suspects surrendered themselves to the security forces, who arrested them" and transferred them to the Shin Bet to continue their investigation.

The statement added that two soldiers were moderately and slightly injured as a result of the run-over, and were taken to the hospital.

The Israeli army said in a statement yesterday that its forces were pursuing a Palestinian vehicle in the Bethlehem area in the occupied West Bank, claiming that it "broke through a military checkpoint and carried out a run-over operation" near the town of Al-Khader.

The Israeli army added that the vehicle withdrew from the scene, and said that "large forces are pursuing it and combing the area."

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation ("Kan 11") reported that the occupation army set up a military checkpoint near the town of Al-Khader as part of "field activity."

Local sources reported yesterday that the occupation forces sent military reinforcements to the area, closed some roads, and set up military checkpoints. The occupation forces also renewed their storming of the town of Al-Khader, and sent military reinforcements to the town, and were stationed around the Great Mosque, the Balou’ Triangle, the Old City, and the Gate.

The sources confirmed that the occupation forces "fired live bullets at vehicles and citizens, claiming to be chasing the perpetrator of a run-over attack on soldiers at the Balou' Triangle," and explained that "the town is now living under a tight siege with it being completely closed off, in addition to the occupation soldiers firing live bullets at anyone moving in the town."

Several injuries were recorded in an American-British aggression carried out on Tuesday in Yemen, where a civilian car was targeted in the Al-Sawma’a district in Al-Bayda governorate in the center of the country, according to what the Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah channel reported.

Yemeni security sources reported that the American-British enemy aircraft targeted a civilian car in the Al-Sawma’a district in Al-Bayda governorate, destroying it and killing those inside.

This comes hours after US and British forces launched a bombing campaign targeting Al Hudaydah Governorate.

The bombing came after intensive flights of aircraft over a number of provinces controlled by the Houthis in Yemen.

Houthi-affiliated media reported that American and British airstrikes targeted Amran and Saada governorates, at dawn on Monday.

Houthi media reported that 7 airstrikes targeted Harf Sufyan district in Amran.

Two airstrikes targeted Al-Rahba area in Al-Safra’a district in Saada.

On Sunday, an American-British bombing targeted the "Jarban Camp" in the Sanhan District, southeast of Sana'a, which is used by the Houthi missile force and experts from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Jewish students, in solidarity with Palestine, held a demonstration yesterday, Monday, in support of the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, outside the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Albanese is known for her human rights stances against the genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for more than a year, which has left tens of thousands of civilian martyrs and wounded and an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

On November 5, Albanese said, “What is happening in Gaza, the systematic starvation with the aim of destruction, is not war, but should be called genocide.”

Students in solidarity with Palestine gathered in front of the college building in support of Albanese and against the protest carried out by a group calling itself the "Campaign Against Anti-Semitism," chanting slogans such as "Free Palestine," "Stop the Genocide," and "No Peace Without Justice."

Pro-Israeli protesters gathered outside the School of Oriental and African Studies ahead of a scheduled speech by Albanese at the college on Monday, holding up signs reading "Stop Francesca" and chanting slogans against her being accepted at British universities.

Some of the demonstrators also carried banners targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), whose activities Israel recently decided to ban.

British police were seen taking extensive security measures during the counter-protests.

With American support, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving more than 146,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.