Hamas... called it the Al-Aqsa flood. Israel called its response iron swords.
Leave aside the labels, let's talk about the true description of what happened and is happening. Firstly, it is a war to deter the arrogant Netanyahu and the obsessed leaders of his coalition.

It is a war of response to the Israeli belittlement of the Palestinian people, considering them non-existent and that they can be controlled with some services and facilities.

It is a war of response to the Israeli violation of Palestinian dignity, Palestinian rights, and the Palestinian present and future.

It is a war on the legislation of shooting Palestinians according to the desire of the army, the border guards, and herds of settlers, and the intended legislation is being discussed in the decision-making governmental institutions.

These are some of them on the Israeli-Palestinian level, but on the broader level, it is a war that has completely destroyed the remnants of Oslo that no one dares even talk about anymore.

It is a war that tells the Americans that your excessive pampering of Israeli extremism has resulted in new blood, destruction, new orphans, and new displacement, and this time not only at the level of the Palestinians, but also at the level of the Israelis.
War... changed equations and produced new ones.

This war changed our era and opened another new era. It seemed that everything that happened between October 1973 and October 2023 was just a past of peace, and if it had partially stabilized, it was no longer completely viable.

The official who will not escape conviction is everyone who understood the trampling of Netanyahu’s ministers on the heads of worshipers at Al-Aqsa and considered it self-defense. And everyone understood the settlers’ spitting on Christian clergy as being part of Jewish culture, and this is what I did not say, but rather senior officials in Israel said. What prompted the Israeli writer Gideon Levy to say that Israel spat in the face of the world...

This war...is an explosion of a cauldron that has been boiling for years, which was calmly vented until venting no longer had the ability to prevent the explosion.

This war... its hero, and perhaps its victim at the same time, is Netanyahu, and his army, all those who did not do justice to the Palestinians. They left them prey to a brutal military force that did whatever it wanted with them, and they overlooked sieges from which no Palestinian city, village, or neighborhood was spared.

The Palestinians went on the path to peace when they raised the olive branch before the world, and the enemies of peace, truth and justice insisted on dropping it from their hands. What happened at six-thirty in the morning on October 7 was not just a military operation, but rather the explosion of a cauldron that had been boiling for years, and neither relief nor cooling helped.

Many may claim what happened as an achievement on their part, but the truth is that it is an achievement for a besieged people, against an opponent killed by his arrogance, a unique Gazan achievement par excellence.

Salama Maarouf, head of the government media office in Gaza, said on Monday that the Israeli occupation intensified its raids last night on various areas of the Gaza Strip, targeting dozens of residential buildings, citizens’ homes, mosques, facilities, service facilities, and schools used as shelter centers, all of which are civilian objects in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Marouf added in a press statement, contrary to the occupation’s claims that it targeted resistance capabilities, in the last hours the occupation army had committed massacres against 15 families, directly bombing their homes without warning, leaving dozens of martyrs and injuries, the majority of whom were women and children, most notably the bombing of a house for the Al-Zaanin family and the martyrdom of 20 citizens. Other than injuries.

Marouf held the occupation responsible for the massacres it carries out against civilians, which are in addition to the crime of siege and collective punishment that the occupier has intensified during its current aggression, which exacerbates the difficult humanitarian reality in the Gaza Strip. like he said.

He added: This difficult humanitarian reality places responsibility on the international community, and requires urgent intervention from its relevant organizations to curb the occupation, which follows a scorched earth policy in densely populated areas, and does not even pay attention to the shelter centers that fly the United Nations logo.

The Israeli occupation forces continue to close the checkpoints surrounding the occupied city of Jerusalem, for the third day in a row.

According to local sources, the occupation forces continue to close the Qalandiya checkpoints, the Shuafat camp, the checkpoint near the Bilal bin Rabah Mosque, Beit Iksa, and the Al-Jib checkpoint to the movement of Jerusalemites, which led to obstructing the movement of citizens, while allowing entry and exit at the Al-Za’im and Hizma checkpoints only.

In addition, the occupation forces obstructed citizens’ access to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque since the morning hours, and allowed only elderly citizens to enter the mosque.

It is noteworthy that the occupation forces imposed a comprehensive closure on the northern governorates yesterday, in light of the rapid developments in the Gaza Strip.

International and Arab reactions to the attack launched by Hamas against Israel early Saturday. Western countries, including France and the United States, described Hamas' operations as "terrorist", stressing Israel's right to defend itself. While Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, which seeks to normalize its relations with Tel Aviv, called for an end to the escalation and calm.

While the escalation between Israel and Hamas has continued since Saturday, a number of countries, including the United States and France, described the movement’s military operations against Israel as “terrorist.” Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, urged both sides to stop the escalation and calm down. On the other hand, Iran confirmed that it stands “by the Palestinian fighters until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem.”

In the United States, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement issued by the ministry, “There is absolutely no justification for terrorism. We stand in solidarity with the government and people of Israel, and offer our condolences to the families of the Israelis who died in these attacks.”

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement, “Over the coming days, the Department of Defense will work to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism.”

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he strongly denounces the attacks on Israel, describing them as terrorist.

He wrote on the X platform (formerly Twitter): “I express my full solidarity with the victims, their families, and those close to them.”

For his part, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described on social media what is happening in Israel "as horrific news... We are deeply shocked by the launching of rockets from Gaza and the escalation of violence. Germany condemns these attacks launched by Hamas and stands with Israel."

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly wrote in a post on social media: “Britain categorically condemns the horrific attacks launched by Hamas on Israeli civilians. It will always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stressed on the X platform that his country "strongly condemns the current terrorist attacks on Israel. These acts of violence are completely unacceptable. We stand with Israel and fully support its right to defend itself."

Arab positions

The Saudi Press Agency said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for an “immediate cessation of escalation” between Israelis and Palestinians.

The ministry said in a statement, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is closely following developments in the unprecedented situation between a number of Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupation forces, which has resulted in a high level of violence taking place on a number of fronts there.”

Egypt warned of "serious consequences" of escalating tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called in a statement to "exercise the utmost levels of restraint and avoid exposing civilians to further risks."

The Kingdom of Morocco, which maintains relations with Tel Aviv, expressed its “deep concern over the deteriorating situation.”

The outbreak of military actions in the Gaza Strip and condemns the targeting of civilians by any party.”

It called for "an immediate cessation of all acts of violence, a return to calm, and the avoidance of all forms of escalation that would undermine the chances of peace in the region."

However, Morocco's Islamist Justice and Development Party, which was the largest in parliament until the 2021 elections, praised the Hamas attack as a "heroic act" and a "natural and legitimate reaction to daily violations."

In a statement, the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs held Israel “solely responsible for the current escalation due to its continued violations of the rights of the Palestinian people.”

She added that Qatar calls on "all parties to stop escalation, calm down, and exercise maximum restraint."

Kuwait expressed its "deep concern" about developments between Israel and the Palestinians, and held Israel responsible for what it called "blatant attacks."

About 250 men and women demonstrated in Al-Irada Square in front of the National Assembly (Parliament) in support of the Palestinians. They criticized Israel and the normalization processes of some Arab countries.

The demonstrators raised the flags of Palestine and Kuwait, wore the Palestinian keffiyeh, and raised banners reading: “Kuwaitis against normalization...yes to resistance, no to bargaining.”

The Emirates News Agency quoted the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying that the UAE "calls for the exercise of maximum restraint and an immediate ceasefire to avoid dangerous repercussions."

An official statement issued by the Sultanate of Oman stressed that "the international community must intervene immediately to stop the ongoing escalation and resort to the rules of international law."

China Russia

Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying that Russia is in contact with Israel, the Palestinians and Arab countries regarding the escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He added, "It is self-evident that we always call for restraint."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry urged relevant parties to "remain calm, exercise restraint, and immediately end hostilities to protect civilians and avoid further deterioration of the situation."

The ministry said, "The main way out of this conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine."

"We call on all parties to exercise restraint," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a conference of the ruling Justice and Development Party in Ankara.

"They must refrain from hostilities," he added.

In Iran, the semi-official Student News Agency reported that the advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei congratulated the Palestinian fighters.

Iranian television showed footage of members of parliament rising from their seats and chanting, “Death to Israel.”

The agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying that the attacks indicate the self-confidence of the Palestinians in confronting Israel.

On the other hand, the United Nations Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland said, “This is a dangerous abyss, and I appeal to everyone to step back from the brink.”

international organizations

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said: “This attack has a horrific impact on Israeli civilians. Civilians must never be the target of attack.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on the X platform, “I unequivocally condemn the attack carried out by Hamas terrorists on Israel. It is terrorism in its ugliest form. Israel has the right to defend itself in the face of such heinous attacks.”

The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, said that “the denial of the basic rights of the Palestinian people, especially the rights of an independent, sovereign state, is the main reason for the permanent tension between Israel and the Palestinians.”

He added, "The President urgently calls on both parties to end military hostilities and return, without conditions, to the negotiating table."

Source: France 24/Reuters

Today, Monday, the Israeli occupation forces launched a massive arrest campaign in various areas of the West Bank.

In Salfit, the occupation forces arrested the citizen Talal Awadallah Abu Asba from the village of Rafat to the west, the citizen Hossam Harb from the village of Iskaka to the east of the city, and the young man Ali Suleiman from Marda.

In Bethlehem, Saleh Hassan Salahat (43 years old) and Habib Salah Qassem (38 years old) were arrested after their homes were raided and searched.

The occupation forces also arrested Ali Yousef Diriyah (20 years old) and Ahmed Falah Thawabta (20 years old) from the town of Beit Fajjar, south of the city, after raiding their families’ home.

In Tubas, the occupation forces raided the home of Omar Hamza Daraghmeh and arrested him and his son Hamza.

In Hebron, the occupation forces arrested four citizens from the town of Beit Ummar al-Madina, after raiding and searching their homes. They are: Ahmed Rashid Sabarneh and his son Youssef, Murshid Muhammad Murshid al-Zaqiq, and Ghazi Muhammad Adi.

Rami Ibrahim Haddush, Ahmed Akram Joudah, and Yazan Muhammad al-Titi from the Al-Fawwar camp were arrested after their homes were raided and searched.

The young man, Hamza Ibrahim Al-Hafi (19 years old), was arrested after his house was raided and searched in the city of Tulkarm.

In Nablus, the occupation forces arrested the citizen Maher Al-Qarib, after they raided his house in the northern mountain of the city.

The occupation forces also arrested the citizen Mahmoud Jabr Labib Haj, after raiding and searching his house in the village of Talfit in the south.

In Ramallah and Al-Bireh, the occupation forces arrested the young man Ahmed Tamlih from the Umm Al-Sharayet neighborhood in Al-Bireh.

Reuters International published a report based on many sources in the leadership of the Hamas movement, as well as Israeli officials.

The agency quoted a senior Hamas leader as saying that the plan that was implemented was prepared two years ago, and many training sessions were being conducted on it. On the other hand, there was an indication from the movement’s leadership that it wanted economic facilities and money more than others, which is what prompted the Israeli security services to raise such an assessment of the political level.

He stated that his movement was concerned with this step in order to direct its pre-emptive strike.

The Hamas leader said that the movement refrained for quite some time from participating in any of the previous rounds in order to achieve the implementation of this plan.

He added: Hamas was able to create a complete image that it was not ready for a military adventure against Israel. Hamas used an unprecedented intelligence tactic to deceive Israel for several months, by creating the impression that it was not ready to enter into a conflict with Israel while it was preparing for this huge operation. As quoted by Reuters.

Israeli officials admitted that they believed that Hamas was concerned with facilities and economic benefits and not with the conflict, but this concept collapsed, while an Israeli military spokesman admitted that they were wrong with such estimates.

A senior security official admitted that the Israeli security establishment had been misled, and said: They made us believe that they wanted money, and during this time their training was aimed at implementing this plan when they were ready for it. Pointing out that these exercises did not indicate Hamas' intentions or turn on a red light among the security services about what it was planning.

Meanwhile, the Hamas official said that these exercises were taking place openly and in open areas, and that sometimes the Al-Qassam Brigades included members of Palestinian factions to participate in these exercises, the aim of which was to train for such operations by storming settlements with a surprise attack.

The Hamas official revealed that the main element of the plan was to prevent its leakage, and therefore many of the movement’s senior leaders were not aware of it, and that the 1,000 militants who participated in the surprise attack did not know the exact goal of the exercises they conducted until at point zero.

Speaking to Reuters, an Israeli security official admitted that the serious intelligence failure was the belief that Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was more interested in managing the Strip than engaging in a military conflict, which prompted Israel to reduce its interest in Hamas.

Meanwhile, Israeli sources said that in addition to the intelligence failure, the readiness of the field forces was very weak, and Hamas exploited this point, especially after transferring many forces from the Gaza border to the West Bank to enhance security and control there.

A young Palestinian was shot dead, Monday morning, after a group of Israeli soldiers opened fire on him at a checkpoint in Hebron.

According to the Hebrew channel Reshet Kan, the Palestinian was eliminated after he drove a bulldozer and tried to run over a group of soldiers who were at the checkpoint.

According to the channel, some soldiers who were outside the checkpoint spotted his progress and opened fire on him, killing him immediately.

On Monday morning, the boy Adam Al-Julani (16 years old) died as a result of the wounds he sustained last evening during clashes in the Qalandia camp in occupied Jerusalem.

According to the Ministry of Health, with the martyrdom of Al-Julani, the number of martyrs in the camp since yesterday evening has risen to 4.

The Ministry announced the martyrdom of Muhammad Hamid, Amjad Khudair, and Yasser Kasba in the confrontations in the camp yesterday.

US President Joe Biden informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a phone call today (Sunday), that additional American military assistance is on its way to Israel. Today, the Pentagon announced that it will provide ammunition and equipment to Israel and will strengthen American forces in the Middle East in response to attacks launched by the Hamas movement.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement, “The United States government will quickly provide the Israel Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including ammunition.” He added that he directed the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying warships to the eastern Mediterranean, adding that Washington is working to strengthen fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.

He continued: “This includes the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy, in addition to the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, and USS Carney, and the USS Roosevelt.” He said: “We have also taken steps to strengthen the US Air Force’s F-35, F-15, F-16 and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.”

He said that sending American ships, aircraft, and aid to Israel “reflects the strong American support for the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli people.”

This announcement comes after a senior US administration official confirmed yesterday that high-level discussions are taking place between American and Israeli officials regarding military aid.

The White House said that national security officials briefed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the situation in Israel early today, and the President and Vice President will continue to receive updated information on developments.

Biden delivered a speech yesterday in which he pledged to provide support to Israel, Washington's main ally in the Middle East, after the surprise attack launched by Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of more than 700 people on the Israeli side.

An Israeli military official and an American military official said, at dawn today, that Israel has requested from the United States additional smart bombs and interceptor missiles for the Iron Dome system.

For the third day in a row, the Israeli occupation forces continue their aggression against the Gaza Strip, using their brute military force to target the homes of safe citizens, mosques, streets, infrastructure, and others.

The number of martyrs in the Gaza Strip, according to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Health, was 413 martyrs and more than 2,250 injured.

Among the martyrs were 78 children and 41 women, while 121 children and 140 women were injured out of the total number of casualties.

The night, dawn and morning hours of Monday witnessed a series of violent raids that targeted many homes and mosques, as the occupation forces committed a massacre in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, by destroying many homes, leading to the death of 20 citizens.

Here are the latest developments:

- The number of martyrs of the Rafah massacre increased to 21 martyrs.

- The occupation bombed several homes in different areas.

- The occupation bombs targets inside the security passport headquarters in Gaza.

- Injuries as a result of the occupation’s destruction of the Western Mosque in Al-Shati camp.

- Martyrs and wounded as a result of the occupation’s destruction of the Sheikh Ahmed Yassin Mosque, west of Al-Shati camp.

- Israeli raids on agricultural and vacant lands in the Gaza Strip.

- The resistance launches several missiles towards the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip.

- Violent raids on Al-Shujaiya neighborhood.

- Occupation aircraft destroy several homes in central and northern Gaza Strip.

- Martyrs and wounded in the violent bombing of homes in Rafah.

- Violent raids targeted several homes in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.

- Occupation aircraft bombed 3 homes in different areas of the Gaza Strip.

- Israeli raids along the land border strip with the Gaza Strip.

The major French newspapers covered what they described as the unprecedented attack launched by the Palestinian resistance movement (Hamas) from the Gaza Strip on Israel, although they differed in the angle of dealing with it, as Le Monde saw that it aimed to reshuffle the cards in the conflict with Israel, and Le Figaro followed it by saying that it could frustrate The hoped-for reshaping of the Middle East, while L'Obs magazine was concerned with drawing the first lessons from it, while Liberation headlined that it caused a fatal surprise in an endless conflict.

Le Monde began - in an article written by its veteran correspondent Benjamin Bart - that the date chosen by Hamas to attack Israel was not a coincidence, because it brings back to the Arab imagination, through Hamas forces’ penetration of the fortified fence surrounding the Gaza Strip, what was the Egyptian forces’ crossing of the Bar Lev line. It was fortified 50 years ago, which changed the balance of Israeli-Arab power, and was a shock to the Israeli psyche.

Miserable failure

Although it is too early to guess the exact consequences of this new conflict - according to the author - the scale of the attack carried out by Hamas is not at all proportionate to the operations it has carried out since 2007, which means that the Middle East is witnessing a new political and security earthquake, and that the setback that befell Israel, As it happened in 1973, it is characterized by incredible, symbolic brutality.

The writer believed that the fact that the Israeli political and security establishment remained paralyzed, as if it had been in a state of astonishment all morning, indicates a miserable failure, especially since the Israeli intelligence services did not expect anything to come, even though an attack of this size requires months of preparation. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who presents himself as As the protector of Israel's protection and security, he must give this catastrophe a personal dimension, and he must be held accountable after the initial shock and loneliness that should prevail for a few days.

The newspaper concluded that the new war in Gaza will have a regional resonance, and may be a direct blow to the Israeli-Arab normalization process, because the images of the bombing of Gaza promise to incite Arab public opinion and attack its leaders, especially those who have established relations with Israel, and thus Hamas’ message to the countries of the region and Western embassies. It is clear that there will be no stability in the Middle East without Palestine.

The writer commented that the extent of the "bloodshed" committed by Palestinian fighters in the towns on the outskirts of Gaza that they entered promised to restore the "terrorist" stigma to the Islamic movement, and he expected that the Palestinian cause would not emerge from this battle victorious in Western public opinion, but a fair number From the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the diaspora, they will feel solidarity with Hamas 30 years after the Oslo Accords, when Jewish settlement in the West Bank reached the point of no return, and the extremists in power in Israel did not offer them anything but submission, imprisonment or death.

Wrong horse

In the same context, Le Figaro believed that this unprecedented attack could thwart the hoped-for reshaping of the Middle East, but she focused on the extensions of the conflict that the attack could cause, and commented that the Lebanese Hezbollah congratulated Hamas on its “heroic, large-scale operation,” and said “The leadership of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon is in direct contact with the leadership of the Palestinian Resistance at home and abroad and is constantly evaluating events and the progress of operations.”

The newspaper asked: Does this mean that “the pro-Iranian militia has an interest in opening a front against northern Israel?” She responded that perhaps not, because Hezbollah, which recently concluded an agreement to share gas reserves in the Mediterranean with Israel - according to the newspaper - did not make a decision to launch simultaneous attacks against the Jewish state, although there is no doubt about the cooperation between it and Hamas.

However, the newspaper saw that Iran has an interest in the outbreak of “Israeli-Palestinian violence,” and responded to this for a simple reason, which it said Tehran does not hide, which is that the Islamic Republic looks dimly at the continued rapprochement between its new ally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Israel, and it warned by saying that those who conclude an agreement With Israel, they are "betting on the wrong horse."

As for Loops magazine, it described the “catastrophic situation” in Israel as the most dangerous since the October 1973 War, and said that Israel is in a state of shock and astonishment at this “terrorist” attack, and said, “Israel is preparing for a long war and perhaps a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip,” as researcher David imagines. Successor.

Political science professor Hosni Obeidi, director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva, confirmed that the attack this time will lead to the weakening and marginalization of the Palestinian Authority, because the Palestinian movements have been entered by a new generation determined to take its fate into its own hands, in the face of an Israeli government dominated by the right. Extremist religion and the resigned international community.

For its part, Liberation saw that Hamas's massive attack on Israel caused a deadly surprise in an endless Israeli and Palestinian conflict, and linked it to the October War, which it saw as a strong symbol that fuels fear of a new cycle of "terrible violence," noting that the Hamas attack will put the Israelis in the same situation. Mentality.

Deadly episode

After a quick review of some of the events, the newspaper said - in an editorial written by Dov Alfon - that this is an unnecessary deadly episode in a conflict that feeds on conflicting historical narratives, fostered over the years by two extremely hostile societies, with little in common except a deep sense of injustice. History and exposure to harm.

According to the writer, Israel believed that the withdrawal of all its soldiers and all its settlements from Gaza in 2005, after 38 years of occupation, would put an end to its problems with the 1.6 million Palestinians there, and it was even looking at the continuous launching of rockets from there since Hamas ruled the Strip. It is an act of anger that invites violent retaliation from time to time, but most of the time it is silently tolerated as a symptom of illness best left undetected.

The writer believed that the feeling of the people of Gaza that they are victims stems directly from the miserable living conditions in a crowded, besieged, and poor coastal strip that is only a few kilometers wide. The Israeli soldiers and settlers may have left, but Israel continues to close its borders with Gaza, and is blockading its coasts due to fears of weapons imports. , and controls the airspace, which means that Gaza is still effectively “occupied” and thus the “resistance” maintains its legitimacy.

The newspaper concluded that the geopolitical changes witnessed in recent months place before Hamas and its “Iranian sponsors” - according to the writer - an untenable possibility, which threatens the birth of a “new Middle East” that will leave Iran without legitimacy in the Arab world, which will abandon the people. Palestinians, and Hamas will have succeeded in its bet and slowed down this progress, which will embarrass Israel’s new allies and increase the solidity of the positions of the Israelis and Palestinians in the conflict.

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel struck a blow to US President Joe Biden’s efforts to secure a grand bargain that normalizes relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as the fighting is set to reshape the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike many of his predecessors, Biden has made no direct effort to foster peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Mindful of US failures in this area over many years, his administration has tried to keep a path to a two-state solution open while de-escalating tensions in the region. Formal diplomatic relations between former foes Israel and Saudi Arabia has been the grand prize. 

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last month that the US approach to the Middle East had brought historic calm, pointing to American efforts to help broker a truce in Yemen’s eight-year war as one way the US approach had been successful. “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” he said, adding: “the amount of time I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today, compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11, is significantly reduced.” The brazen Hamas assault — the worst attack inside Israel since 1948 — may reveal this approach to be misguided. As talks to improve relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel gained momentum, particularly over the summer, tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories quietly soared. 

The occupied West Bank has endured the worst cycle of violence since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, of 2005, with Israel conducting almost daily raids there. US efforts to convene talks among the parties in Egypt and Jordan to calm the tensions have done little to stop the killing. Biden administration officials on Sunday said it was too soon to say how their normalization efforts would be affected. 

They pledged to press ahead with brokering diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which they said remained the best path to improve the lives of those in the region. 

US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Sunday that there were still challenging issues to work through, “but the result would be, if we were able to get there, a much different path for the region and for the future.” “That’s in stark contrast to the path that’s offered by Hamas: a path of violence, killing, horror, terror, a path that offers absolutely nothing to the Palestinian people.”  Before the surprise attacks US officials were working with Israel and Saudi Arabia to determine Palestinians’ demands and what Israel might be willing to offer. 

Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, was not involved in any of the discussions, and all of the parties appear to have underestimated the extent to which the group could play spoiler. Much will depend on how long the fighting goes on, the scale of Israel’s response, and whether other players get involved in the conflict. “You have to just be realistic, the Israeli-Saudi piece of this is now a footnote,” said Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “As committed as the administration, and the Israelis and Saudis may be, we’re about to enter an extraordinary period between Israelis and Palestinians.” 

US officials were on Sunday still trying to determine the motivations behind the attack and how big a role Hamas supporter Iran may have played. Blinken said the militant group may have sought to derail the talks. “To the extent that this was designed to try to derail the efforts that would be made, that speaks volumes,” Blinken said on ABC. “Right now the focus is on dealing with this attack, dealing with Hamas.” 

The broad contours of the agreement under discussion include a US-Saudi defense pact and US assistance with Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear program in exchange for Israel taking steps to improve conditions for the Palestinians. The defense pact would probably require a vote from Congress, where the ongoing fighting could complicate what already are challenging political dynamics for any such vote. The House of Representatives is without a speaker after the ousting of Republican Kevin McCarthy. 

The deal is the centerpiece of an approach Sullivan said intended to “depressurize, de-escalate and ultimately integrate the Middle East region”. 

The US has also sought to decrease tensions with Iran. Washington and Tehran swapped prisoners last month in what officials said could be a confidence-building measure towards talks on Iran’s nuclear program and its destabilizing behavior in the region.

But Iran is Hamas’s main backer and American officials are assessing the extent to which it may have been involved in supporting or directing the weekend attacks. US and Israeli officials are trying to dissuade Iran-backed Hizbollah from joining the fray in Lebanon, which could significantly widen the conflict. Saudi Arabia reacted swiftly to Hamas’s attacks but did not directly condemn them. Riyadh urged “an immediate end to the escalation between the two sides, the protection of civilians and self-restraint”. 

It has warned that “matters could explode due to the continuation of the occupation and deprivation of Palestinians’ legitimate rights and repeated provocations against its holy sites”. The statement indicates Riyadh’s frustration with Israel, analysts said. “The Gulf states have been more supportive of the Palestinians than I had anticipated, but there’s definitely a sense that the Israelis have allowed the situation to drag, that this particular government in Israel has made the systemic problems of the Israeli Palestinian conflict worse,” said Michael Stephens, senior fellow at Foreign Policy Research Institute.

He added that the Saudis have felt “let down” by Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the most rightwing government in Israel’s history. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are less likely to have room to maneuver on the question of the Palestinians, analysts said. 

Israel will be unable to grant too many concessions to them, especially given the mounting death toll, currently more than 600 Israelis and 300 Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the unresolved question of at least 100 Israeli hostages, which includes Americans. 

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, must also be sensitive to the reaction of the Arab street. Saudi Arabia hosts millions of Muslim pilgrims each year at Islam’s two holiest sites and its stance on Palestinian statehood is of particular importance. “If Saudi Arabia had concerns about popular reactions to such a deal, it must be extremely worried now about any pressure from the US to move ahead, as popular sentiment is strongly pro-Palestinian in the kingdom and much of the Middle East,” said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East Program director for International Crisis Group. 

Hiltermann said that, while trade, technology sharing and diplomatic discussions were possible, there were “clear limits on anything one would associate with a real peace”. 

Countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Morocco that normalized relations with Israel under the Trump administration “are beginning to find themselves in the type of cold peace that has prevailed between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan for the past decades,” he said.  

Even before Saturday’s attack, the UAE was increasingly wary of how it engaged with Netanyahu’s far-right government and concerned about the violence in the West Bank. In a strongly worded statement, the ministry of foreign affairs said of the latest events: “Attacks by Hamas against Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza strip, including the firing of thousands of rockets at population centers, are a serious and grave escalation. 

The Ministry is appalled by reports that Israeli civilians have been abducted as hostages from their homes . . . “The international community must remain resolute in the face of these violent attempts to derail ongoing regional efforts aimed at dialogue, cooperation, and co-existence, and must not allow nihilistic destruction to overtake a region whose people have already suffered enough war and trauma.”

BYSERAJ ASSI

The tragic scenes unfolding in Palestine and Israel are a chilling reminder of the horrors that occupation creates — and the urgency of dismantling Israel’s blockades and apartheid system.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, under a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza, dozens in the Palestinian militant group Hamas broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip, breached the security barriers, and stormed into nearby Israeli towns, killing hundreds and holding others hostage in an unprecedented surprise attack.

It was a massive operation, hailed by Hamas as “Al-Aqsa Storm.” Saleh al-Arouri, an exiled Hamas leader, said the operation was a response “to the crimes of the occupation.” Hamas urged all Palestinians to join the battle, declaring: “Today the people are regaining their revolution.”

Israel immediately declared a state of war, launching air attacks on Gaza in retaliation, killing over four hundred Palestinians, most of them civilians. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “take mighty vengeance” against Palestinians, calling Gaza a “city of evil” and vowing to turn it into “cities of ruins.” Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant has already approved a sweeping call-up of reservists.

The tragic scenes unfolding in Gaza and Israel are a chilling reminder that occupation and oppression bear a price. For the truth is that when you imprison two million people in 140 square miles, placing them under a merciless siege with no end in sight, with no way in or out, with drones and rockets buzzing overhead night and day, with constant surveillance and harassment, with scant control over their day-to-day lives — ultimately, the dispossessed will rebel.

The violence was not unprovoked, as the mainstream media has depicted it. It has been brewing and festering in every corner of the country.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian town of Jenin is still reeling from the devastation of a recent unsparing Israeli attack, which left the town a razed ghost land. The small town of Huwara has yet to recover from the deadly horrors unleashed by settlers on its residents.

So far this year, Israel’s military forces have killed over two hundred Palestinians in the West Bank.

To make life hell for Palestinians, settler mobs and far-right gangs, backed and emboldened by Israel’s ultranationalist government, have been sowing terror and wreaking havoc among Palestinians, burning villages and houses, lynching and killing civilians with impunity.

In Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers and security forces have allowed the settler mobs to run amok, evicting Palestinian families by force and occupying their homes. During the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, settlers stormed into the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem, staging provocative tours, harassing and beating worshippers, and spitting on Christians.

Palestinians in Gaza have been languishing under siege. Squeezed in a narrow strip of land known as the world’s largest open-air prison, Gazans have been under a vicious blockade for nearly two decades, subjected to Israel’s repeated air strikes and raids, military operations and collective punishment. The majority of its two million people still scrape by in cramped refugee camps under unlivable conditions. Former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) military chief Benny Gantz, referring to Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, has boasted of “bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age.” The IDF describes its tactic in Gaza as “mowing the grass.”

For decades, Israel has demanded the unquestioning surrender of its victims and refused to accept defiance in any form. The message has been unequivocal: democratic tactics are futile. Even when Palestinians embraced nonviolent resistance — strikes, demonstrations, etc. — they were met with brutal force by Israel.

The first intifada, a popular Palestinian uprising that broke out in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza in 1987, was brutally crushed by Israeli forces, giving birth to Hamas and other militant groups. In September 2000, Gaza became the symbolic battlefield of the second intifada, when twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Dura was shot dead in his father’s arms at crossroads near Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, becoming the iconic image of the uprising. Over five thousand Palestinians were killed by Israel during the first and second intifadas.

In 2018, when Gaza refugees staged the “Great March of Return” to commemorate the annual anniversary of the Nakba (or “catastrophe,” the mass displacement of Palestinians at Israel’s founding), Israeli forces responded by killing over 150 demonstrators and injuring ten thousand others, including children and journalists, over a six-week span. A United Nations report later concluded that Israeli soldiers and leaders committed crimes against humanity and intentionally used live ammunition against civilians.

Israel’s unbridled brutality in Gaza has produced a generation of Palestinians who have lost faith in nonviolent resistance, thus rendering the latest explosion as tragic as it was inevitable. The young Palestinian men who stormed into Israel from Gaza this weekend acted out of desperation, seeing no way out of the yoke of oppression and the inhumanity of the blockade.

The West Bank, too, is on the verge of explosion. Like Gaza, the West Bank is under siege, with more than half a million people living in over 140 Jewish-only settlements built by Israel on Palestinian lands and homes. Some 3.5 million Palestinians reside in segregated cantons behind Israel’s “apartheid wall” and the newly constructed “Apartheid Road” — and in towns and cities penned between Jewish settlement blocks and a network of segregated roads, security barriers, and military installations. For Palestinians who live there, apartheid signifies not merely segregation, but the inhumanity of life under occupation: the beatings, shootings, killings, assassinations, lynchings, curfews, military checkpoints, house demolitions, evictions, deportations, disappearances, uprooting of trees, mass arrests, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial.

The ongoing explosion in violence is the ugly reality of Israeli apartheid, the culmination of decades of occupation of a stateless people deprived of basic human rights and freedoms. Unless the root causes are dismantled — the siege lifted, the apartheid system and occupation ended — violence will continue to tragically haunt Palestinians and Israelis for years to come.

Seraj Assi is a Palestinian writer living in Washington, DC,

It took Hamas’s deadly attack today to remind Israel, the United States, and the world that Palestine still matters.

The militant group based in occupied Gaza launched aerial attacks and broke through the heavily secured fence into the State of Israel. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, a historic scale of violence for the country. The Israeli counterattack will inevitably lead to more death and destruction for Palestinians and a tightened occupation.

Here’s what you need to know.

It comes after nearly two decades of the US and world leaders overlooking the more than 2 million people living in Gaza who endure a humanitarian nightmare, with its airspace and borders and sea under Israeli control. The attack comes amid an ongoing failure to grapple with the dangerous situation for Palestinians in the West Bank where Israel’s extreme-right government over the past year has escalated the already brutal daily pain of occupation.

Instances of Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers antagonizing Palestinians through violence are on the rise, from the pogrom on the city of Huwara to a new tempo of lethal raids on Jenin. Israeli government ministers have been pursuing annexationist policies and sharing raging rhetoric; both incite further violent response from Palestinians and appear at a time when new militant groups have emerged that claim the mantle of the Palestinian cause. The now-regular presence of Israeli Jews praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, have further pressurized the situation. A Hamas commander cited many of these factors in his statement.

But the ongoing reality of the occupation has not featured prominently in US or Arab leaders’ engagement with the region in recent years, even as circumstances for Palestinians worsened.

The question must thus be asked to the Israeli government, the Biden administration, and Arab leaders: How did they forget about Palestinians? How did they so brazenly ignore Gaza?

President Joe Biden has not reversed his predecessor Donald Trump’s policy of putting aside the question of Palestine and instead has exerted immense capital on the normalization of Israel’s relations with Arab states, no matter how extreme the policies of the Israeli government.

In the current US-led diplomatic equation, there is no space for Palestinians, except for talk of minor concessions to ease daily humiliations. Biden said recently, as many of his surrogates often do, that the US remains intent on “preserving the path to a negotiated two-state solution.”

But negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization have been frozen since 2014 under President Barack Obama, and most Palestinian analysts at this point acknowledge that US administrations since President Bill Clinton have engaged in a failed, asymmetrical process that never would have allowed for the conditions of an independent, sovereign state of Palestine.

And so the symbolism of Hamas breaking through Israeli security barriers and wreaking havoc on Israel — including the kidnapping of at least one Israeli soldier as well as civilians — will resonate across Palestine, the Arab world, and beyond.

Israel’s conflicts with Hamas, along with the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel conflict, have largely been rocket and artillery exchanges. Even in decades of large-scale Arab-Israeli wars, the battles were fought outside. “No Arab army has entered the territory of Israel since the 1948 war,” the preeminent Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University told me. “This is a huge strategic surprise.”

Israel and the United States have wished away Palestinians. The terrible bloodshed of today’s attacks underscores the cost of doing so.

How Biden missed the plot on Gaza

I’ve been to several Mideast policy conferences this month and spend probably too much of my time interviewing Washington experts and attending lectures on Middle East history.

Palestinians are hardly represented in panels and keynotes. The Biden administration’s key players bring up Palestine as a secondary issue. Gaza does not come up anymore.

But it remains central to how Palestinians and Arabs see Israel-Palestine and the Middle East — and how many Arabs perceive the US role in the world.

Trump exacerbated the hopelessness for Palestinian political rights by cutting the Palestinians entirely out of the process, and instead helped seal normalization deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. But the autocratic Arab leaders who made “peace” with Israel never represented their own citizens.

With Biden’s Middle East team prioritizing a long-shot deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Biden’s inner circle has avoided talking about Gaza entirely. It’s all the more surprising because the two-week war between Israel and Hamas in May 2021 should have been an indication of Palestine’s enduring centrality to Middle East affairs. But as far as I can tell, there has been no policy reckoning in Washington about that war. No policy reviews.

There was complacency. “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said only last week.

It’s not even the first time that someone like Sullivan, who also served as a senior official in the Obama administration, has worked with his Egyptian counterparts to negotiate an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, as he is likely doing now. But now it’s clear that he and others treated Gaza peacemaking as a sideshow. It is not integral to Biden’s approach.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which Hamas administers some level of control over, remains as acute as ever. But because the US has long designated Hamas, the Palestinian militant political group with an Islamist worldview, as a terrorist organization, US officials can’t contact them and must work through third countries. It means that the US knowledge base and expertise on Gaza is not just low — it’s absent.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s leadership, with Chair Mahmoud Abbas still hanging on at 87 years old, lacks legitimacy among Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority, the body that exercises some administrative control over the occupied West Bank and that Abbas also runs, is seen by Palestinians as a collaboration arm of the Israeli occupation. A grassroots movement of Palestinian youth who engage in violent resistance against the Israeli security state, against settlers, and against civilians has emerged.

Between the radical Israeli government and the sclerotic Palestinian leadership, the Biden administration chose to continue the path of Trump’s normalization deals, with Saudi Arabia as the prize. Biden’s team still states an allegiance to the pursuit of a Palestinian state while doing little more, all which exposes the emptiness of the two-state solution.

What this means for Palestinians

Early on Saturday, Hamas sent bulldozers through the barriers that have hemmed in Palestinians in Gaza from Israel and the rest of the world. That image of resistance to the occupation will be widely circulated in the Arab world, and will endure long beyond this war. Its symbolic power cannot be underestimated.

Gaza is in essence a refugee camp (about 70 percent of those living in Gaza come from families displaced from the 1948 war) and an open-air prison, according to human rights groups. The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.” Israel has blockaded Gaza since Hamas assumed control of the territory in 2007, and neighboring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.

Between them, Israel and Egypt monitor the entry and exit of all people, vehicles, and goods. They have not allowed enough construction materials and humanitarian items into the occupied Gaza Strip to enable the battered territory to rebuild from recurring episodes of deadly Israeli bombardments that are allegedly meant to target Hamas, but that often include civilian death tolls in the very dense territory.

The current Israeli government has aggravated these realities, Khalidi explained, by increasing pressure on the Palestinians on multiple fronts: in Jerusalem, squeezing Gaza, assaults on Palestinian villages by settlers, with settler-politicians leading ministries in the Israeli government; and with annexationist policies like the recent major policy change putting the Israeli civilian government (not the Israeli military) in charge of the occupied West Bank. Hamas’s attacks on Israel won’t change life for Palestinians, and Israel’s government will now use the full force of its advanced military in response. And given Israel’s state of emergency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now in talks with the opposition parties to pull together a unity government for the country. But even if some of the most extreme settler voices currently in the Israeli cabinet are replaced by more mainstream Israeli voices, harsh policies against Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza will continue.

“This pressure being put on Palestinians — it just assumes that they’re insignificant and they will tolerate any degree of humiliation, and that’s just not true,” Khalidi told me. “If you had lifted the siege of Gaza, you would not have had this happen.”

Now Israelis are experiencing terrible loss and a tremendous sense of danger, and Palestinians living in Gaza will endure more violence, including Israeli troops entering the territories and the extensive bombardment of alleged military sites that typically have a significant civilian toll.

Global powers have been ignoring Gaza, but some in Israel haven’t forgotten.

“The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza,” writes the Israeli journalist Haggai Mattar in 972 Magazine. “The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.”

By Jonathan Guyer who covers foreign policy, national security, and global affairs for Vox. From 2019 to 2021, he worked at the American Prospect, where as managing editor he reported on Biden’s and Trump's foreign policy teams.

Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, said on Sunday evening that members of the brigades succeeded today in capturing more Israeli soldiers and returning them to the Gaza Strip.

In his speech, Abu Ubaida pointed out that the occupation soldiers were killing their soldiers, some of whom were captured by the Qassams, to prevent them from being captured alive.

He pointed out that Phalange members are still engaged in clashes with the occupation forces, and that some of them have returned to their bases safely.

Hazem Qassem, spokesman for the Hamas movement, said on Sunday evening that the United States’ announcement of bringing an aircraft carrier to the region to support the occupation in its aggression against our people is an actual participation in the aggression and an attempt to restore the morale of the occupation army, which collapsed after the Al-Qassam Brigades attack.

Qassem added in a brief statement: These movements do not frighten our people or their resistance, which will continue to defend our people and our sanctities in the Al-Aqsa flood battle.

Israeli occupation forces wounded a young Palestinian and arrested another, Sunday evening, in occupied Jerusalem.

According to local sources, the Israeli occupation forces severely beat the young man Firas Al-Atrash in the city of Jerusalem, which led to injuries, while they arrested Al-Maqdisi Samer Al-Safadi from the Bab Al-Asbat area.

In the same context, dozens of citizens suffered from suffocation and were injured by rubber-coated metal bullets during confrontations with the occupation in the villages of Beit Daqo and Beit Ijza, northwest of Jerusalem. Confrontations also broke out near the Qalandiya military checkpoint, which has been closed for two days.

Also, the occupation forces established a military checkpoint in the town of Beit Hanina, north of occupied Jerusalem.

The head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority, Qaddoura Fares, called on Sunday evening the United Nations and all its affiliated agencies, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to take immediate action to assume their humanitarian and moral responsibilities towards male and female detainees in Israeli occupation prisons.

Fares said, in a press statement, “The data that reaches us from inside prisons and detention centers is worrying and dangerous, as tension are the master of the situation, as retaliatory measures are being imposed on them that include all aspects of life, which began in the prisons of: Ofer, Negev, Megiddo, and Damoun. This is done by implementing punitive and taunting steps, such as reducing the duration of the spree, preventing going out to shower in sections outside the rooms, distributing food, letting out only one prisoner to do this task in a short time, canceling visits by families and lawyers, and resorting to automatic extensions for new detainees for eight days, according to a decision issued by the Minister. Israeli Yariv Levin, seizing electrical appliances, withdrawing television channels, and other measures that became a fait accompli in less than 48 hours.”

Fares stressed the necessity of sending a full international protection mission to Israeli prisons and detention centers, closely monitoring the practices of the prison administration and intelligence, and not allowing them to monopolize our detainees.

He warned against continuing to exploit the ongoing war to harm male and female detainees, and that resorting to reactions and exaggeration in measures on the ground will be met with confrontation and confrontation, whatever the cost.

Fares saluted the male and female detainees inside the occupation prisons, and praised their patience, steadfastness and sacrifices, stressing that “we are living in a new phase,” and expressed his hope that they would all be liberated from the occupation prisons soon.

This Sunday evening, a young Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli occupation forces, during clashes that broke out at the northern entrance to the city of Jericho.

According to local sources, the young man, Abdel Halim Abu Sneina, was martyred after being hit by two bullets in the chest and abdomen.

Confrontations had broken out in Jericho at the southern entrances near Aqabat Jabr camp, and the northern entrance near Ain al-Sultan camp.

On Sunday evening, the Israeli occupation forces arrested a young man from Tubas.

According to local sources, the occupation arrested the young man, Ahmed Imad Sawafta, from the city of Tubas, while he was passing through the Hamra military checkpoint.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said the realization of an independent, and geographically integrated Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, with (East) Jerusalem as the capital, could not be delayed any longer.

“Lasting peace in the Middle East is only possible through a final settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” Erdogan said at the opening ceremony of Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church in Yesilkoy on the European side of Istanbul. It is the first-ever church built in the Turkish Republic era.

Erdogan said Türkiye is ready to do its part to stop the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reduce the tensions that escalated on Saturday.

“The Palestine issue stands as the root cause of the problems in our region. Our region will remain craving peace unless a just settlement is reached,” the Turkish president added.

Erdogan also emphasized that any steps that will escalate tensions in the region, “lead to more bloodshed and deepen the problems should be avoided.”

Türkiye also intensifies and continues its diplomatic efforts to restore peace, he added.

Palestinian group Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, saying the unprecedented attack was in response to the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased settler violence. It said it fired rockets and captured many Israelis.

In retaliation, the Israeli army initiated Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas, launching air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Fighting continued into its second day on Sunday and Israel declared a state of war.

An Israeli lawmaker has told Al Jazeera that his party warned about events like Saturday’s Hamas attack on Israel if the country’s government continued its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.

Hamas launched a multipronged assault at dawn on Saturday with thousands of rockets fired at Israel, and the Gaza-based group’s fighters infiltrating Israeli towns and illegal settlements.

The attack left at least 600 Israelis dead, including dozens of soldiers, with bodies strewn on roads. Meanwhile, at least 313 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,700 others wounded in Israeli bombardments of the besieged Gaza enclave.

Ofer Cassif, a member of the Knesset and leftist Hadash coalition, said he warned the situation would “erupt” if the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not change its policies towards Palestinians. Hadash has four seats in the 120-member Knesset.

“We condemn and oppose any assault on innocent civilians. But in contrast to the Israeli government that means that we oppose any assault on Palestinian civilians as well. We must analyze those terrible incidents [the attacks] in the right context – and that is the ongoing occupation,” Cassif said.

“We have been warning time and time again… everything is going to erupt and everybody is going to pay a price – mainly innocent civilians on both sides. And unfortunately, that is exactly what happened,” he said.

“The Israeli government, which is a fascist government, supports, encourages, and leads pogroms against the Palestinians. There is an ethnic cleansing going on. It was obvious the writing was on the wall, written in the blood of the Palestinians  – and unfortunately now Israelis as well,” he added.

More than 20,000 Palestinians have left Gaza’s border region to head further inside the Hamas-controlled territory to seek refuge in UN schools, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

The South African government has called for an immediate cessation of violence between Israel and Palestine.

“South Africa expresses its grave concern over the recent devastating escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) said in a statement Saturday night.

It said: “The new conflagration has arisen from the continued illegal occupation of Palestine land, continued settlement expansion, desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Christian holy sites, and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.”

On Saturday, Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood saying the surprise attack on Israel was in response to the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased settler violence. It said it fired rockets and captured many Israelis.

In turn, the Israeli army initiated Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

South Africa said the region is in desperate need of a credible peace process that delivers on the calls of a plethora of previous UN resolutions for a two-state solution and a just and comprehensive peace between Israel and Palestine.

Pretoria said it is working together with the international community to ensure a lasting and durable peace that produces a viable, contiguous Palestinian State, existing side-by-side in peace with Israel, within the 1967 internationally recognized borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The Water Authority held the Israeli government responsible for the current situation and the consequences of the brutal aggression against Gaza, which left hundreds of martyrs and thousands of wounded among our people in the Gaza Strip, and left behind massive destruction.

In a statement issued on Sunday evening, the Water Authority considered that the Israeli government’s attempt to stop basic services, such as electricity and water, from citizens in the Gaza Strip as collective punishment, is a serious war crime that will have dire consequences on the ground.

It expressed its deep concern about the repercussions of the severe shortage in water supply to the residents of the Gaza Strip during this difficult period, as the percentage of the total decrease in supply to date throughout the Gaza Strip has reached an estimated 40%.

It said that this decrease in supply came as a result of a number of reasons, the most important of which is the Israeli government’s implementation of its decision to cut off the water supply supplied by “Makrot,” which led to stopping the supply of water supplied to the Central Governorate, and reducing the quantities supplied to Khan Yunis Governorate and Gaza City by about 40%. .

It explained that the power outage seriously affected the operation of desalination plants and wastewater treatment plants. To date, the desalination plants in both northern Gaza and the central governorate have stopped working completely, while the quantities of water from the southern desalination plant have decreased to about half. Sewage treatment plants are completely stopped, and the power outage has led to the cessation of the main water wells or a decrease in pumping rates from these wells.

The statement indicated that the water crisis is expected to worsen in the coming period in Gaza, as a result of the brutal Israeli aggression, which every time inflicts heavy losses on the water and sanitation infrastructure by targeting water facilities directly or indirectly, by destroying the streets, and thus the infrastructure. Water and sanitation infrastructure or due to power outages.

The statement recalled that the losses incurred by the water and sanitation sector as a result of the May 2021 aggression exceeded $40 million.

It stressed that the Israeli practices of stopping basic services, especially disrupting water and sewage systems, will exacerbate the difficult humanitarian situation in Gaza, and will have long-term repercussions on all health, economic, social and environmental aspects of life, and will require double and major efforts that may extend for years and huge investments to repair and restart them. If the treatment plants stop working, it threatens the occurrence of a serious health hazard resulting from torrents of wastewater, and if they worsen, they will lead to the spread of epidemics and diseases among citizens, in addition to re-polluting the groundwater reservoir and re-polluting the sea in Gaza.

The head of the Water Authority, Mazen Ghoneim, called on the international community to take firm positions and practical steps to pressure Israel to stop this Israeli trend that is contrary to all laws, laws and principles of humanity, which is to use water as a weapon or collective punishment against the people of Gaza, which will have dire consequences that would To affect all aspects of life and development, calling for the necessity of restoring electricity services and providing the fuel necessary to operate desalination plants and treatment plants.

He also called for the need to provide protection for technical crews to carry out the necessary maintenance and operation work in water and sanitation facilities.

He warned against the continuation of these serious Israeli violations that may lead to returning the water situation in the Gaza Strip to its previous disastrous situation, which threatened to make life in the Strip impossible to continue, and to destroy all the great and strenuous efforts made by the Palestinian government with international partners and supporters during the past years following the aggression. The year 2014 in Gaza, which led to success in overcoming challenges and creating strategic projects in which the volume of investment reached approximately one billion dollars.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke over the phone amid recent tensions between Israel and Palestine, Turkish diplomatic sources said Sunday.

Fidan and Blinken discussed the latest developments in the region, the sources added.

This was the second phone call between the two since tensions escalated between Israel and Palestine on Saturday.

Palestinian group Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa deluge, saying the unprecedented attack was in response to the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased settler violence. It said it fired rockets and captured many Israelis.

In retaliation, the Israeli army initiated Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas, launching air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Fighting continued into its second day on Sunday, and Israel declared a state of war.

This evening, Sunday, President Mahmoud Abbas made a phone call with King Abdullah II of Jordan and another with the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, as he stressed the necessity of working with all parties to ensure the cessation of the Israeli aggression against our people everywhere, specifically in the Gaza Strip. Gaza.

President Mahmoud Abbas stressed the importance of delivering relief and medical aid to our people in the Gaza Strip. He also reiterated that the only solution to all the escalation taking place in the region is the political solution by ending the Israeli occupation of the land of the State of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital.

For his part, the Jordanian King affirmed making every effort and making contacts with all international and regional parties in order to stop the ongoing escalation and ensure the arrival of aid to the Gaza Strip, reiterating his support for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people until they achieve their full legitimate rights.

For his part, President Sisi affirmed making every effort and making contacts with all international and regional parties in order to stop the ongoing escalation and ensure the arrival of aid to the Gaza Strip, reiterating his support for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people until they achieve their full legitimate rights.

This evening, Sunday, President Mahmoud Abbas made a phone call with leader Ahmed Helles, member of the Fatah Central Committee and Commissioner of Mobilization and Organization in the Southern Governorates, in order to follow up on the situation in the Gaza Strip, in light of the continuation and escalation of the Israeli aggression.

President Abbas reaffirmed the right of our people to defend themselves and protect their children from the aggression of the occupation, stressing the necessity of providing all possible medical and humanitarian needs for our people in the Gaza Strip.

President Abbas stressed the need to protect the internal front and strengthen national cohesion in the face of the challenges resulting from the continued Israeli aggression against our people in all their locations, in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.

On Sunday evening, Israeli occupation forces stormed the villages of Rummana and Zabuba, west of Jenin.

According to local sources, the occupation forces stormed Al-Qaryatayn, launched a massive inspection campaign, deployed an infantry squad at the Al-Qaryatayn junction, and set up a military checkpoint.

Sources added that the occupation forces carried out military training among the olive groves on the lands of Al-Qaryatayn.

This Sunday evening, a young man was killed as a result of being shot by Israeli occupation forces, during clashes that broke out at the northern entrance to the city of Jericho.

According to local sources, the young man, Abdel Halim Abu Sneina, was martyred after being hit by two bullets in the chest and abdomen, during confrontations at the northern checkpoint of the city of Jericho.

Confrontations had broken out in Jericho at the southern entrances near Aqabat Jabr camp, and the northern entrance near Ain al-Sultan camp.