1). “A Deal Signed in Blood”, Oct 10, 2023, Spencer Ackerman, The Nation, at < https://www.thenation.com/
2). “Biden Will Be Guided by His Zionism”, October 10, 2023, Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, at < https://www.theatlantic.com/
3). “Israel-Palestine war: The Gaza civilian buildings bombed by Israeli army”, Oct 10, 2023, Nadda Osman, Middle East Eye, at < https://www.middleeasteye.net/
4). “How Did Hamas Acquire Advanced Rockets?: Iran agents, Bedouin smugglers, shifting routes critical to dramatic arms upgrade”, Oct 9, 2023, Jonathan Broder, Spytalk, at < https://www.spytalk.co/p/how-
5). “Israel’s Western Allies Have Done Everything Possible to Criminalize Nonviolent Resistance”, Oct 10, 2023, Daniel Finn, Jacobin, at < https://jacobin.com/2023/10/
6). “Palestine Letter: Israel is imposing a blackout on Gaza to hide a massacre”, Oct 10, 2023, Tareq S. Hajjaj, Mondoweiss, at < https://mondoweiss.net/2023/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: The surprising military offensive by Hamas in Israel, starting on Saturday Oct 7, has greatly intensified the ongoing crises faced by the U.S. Empire. Theorists working on the basic outline of World Systems Theory that tried to explain the rise, life, and final decline of a succession of Empires posited a couple of important mileposts in that process. Giovanni Arrighi proposed the Signal Crisis and the Terminal Crisis. The Signal Crisis involved the transition from the dominance of some variant of Productive Capital to the dominance of Finance Capital (for the last couple of cycles the U.K. and the U.S. that was the transition from Industrial Capital to Finance Capital). The Terminal Crisis marks the end of the ability of the Hegemon to maintain its power using Finance Capital and its descent from the high and powerful post of Hegemon to become just another place. Another Theorist, Joshua S. Goldstein, in his book Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age, looked at the struggle for power between the major empires of the last 500 years. He proposed a period of power for Empires at their peak of strength, that he called Strong Hegemony, followed after some period of time by a transition from Strong Hegemony to Weak Hegemony, and later the end of Hegemony altogether for an empire; when the period of Weak Hegemony came to an end.
The situation for the U.S. Empire, that had clearly already made the transition from Strong Hegemony to Weak Hegemony, or in Arrighi's terminology had passed through its Signal Crisis, back in the 1970s when the U.S. was decisively defeated in the South East Asian Wars. At about the same time U.S. Capital was no longer satisfied with the labor / wage / U.S. Style Social Democracy agreements that had marked the “Golden Age of Capitalism” that lasted from the end of WW 2 in 1945 to about the mid 1970s. The response of the Capitalist Elites of the U.S., and many of their allies in the West in the developed countries themselves, was to begin to strip the populace of the Keynesian inspired Social Welfare policies and to begin to press hard on them with NeoLiberal policies featuring serious attacks on the Unions, reducing the Living Standards for working people, private seizures of public goods that was even more drastic than the original enclosures that marked earliest days of Capitalism in Europe. This was at its most pronounced in the U.K. and the U.S. The rest of the developed nations' populations were far too fond of the benefits provided by the various Social Democracies in their societies; and they stoutly resisted any attempts to strip them of their beloved Social Democratic benefits.
The harshest conditions were imposed on the various societies of The Global South. The IMF and World Bank forced many Less-Developed Countries to adopt Structural Adjustment policies that forced poor countries to sell off resources at fire-sale prices and to cut subsidies for the poor members of their populations, subsidies that made life more bearable for them. To add insult to injury, the supposed debts that the IMF was refinancing were usually for funds that corrupt elites had used to buy trophy real estate in upper income neighborhoods in the great cities or luxurious estates in the Global North.
The U.S. Empire was already struggling, as a Weak Hegemon or Post Signal Crisis power, to enforce financial sanctions on Russia, and to spur the Ukrainian rulers to commit the last of their fast dwindling supply of men (including modern day press-ganging of teenagers and men over 50 years of age) to an endless war. The U.S. Empire now, as of Saturday October 7, 2023, faces a major disruption from its ever troublesome Client / Master Israel. Israel, which has long worked as a loyal client in U.S. counterinsurgencies and other struggles in most regions of The Global South, is in the driver's seat as concerns U.S. policies in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA), and the Horn of Africa. Those three regions are the areas of direct interest for Israel, and the U.S. has squandered literally trillions of dollars in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) that was begun by the U.S. CIA / Military forces; after the totally fishy events on September 11, 2001. Various analysts have tried to estimate how much the U.S. spent on the GWOT. The Watson Institute for International Affairs estimates that the U.S. spent over $8 Trillion on the wars that raged in the wake of the events on September 11, 2001. The Watson Institute also estimates that the U.S. Military and Covert Operations agencies (public and private) operated in 85 Countries, directly killed 905,000 – 940,000 people, indirectly caused the deaths of 4.5 million to 4.7 million people and displaced 38 million people. And the Watson Institute's figures are lower than those put forward by other analysts. (See, “Costs of War”, The Watson Institute for International Affairs, Brown University, at < https://watson.brown.edu/
Israel is unique among U.S. Client states (and in Israel's Case stronger than the U.S. in some aspects of the political and military relationship) in the extent of its penetration and power in U.S. society, media, academia, think tanks, and lobbying operations. The U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken is in fact Jewish and a Zionist, and that is not an unusual situation. Many of the U.S. envoys working to solve problems around Israel have been Jews but to the best of my knowledge none have been Americans of Arab descent (other than George Mitchell who was of Lebanese ethnicity but was raised by American Christians who adopted him, Mitchell worked as a U.S. Special envoy to the Middle East). Henry Kissinger was, of course Jewish and a Zionist, and the most prominent other figure was Dennis Ross who worked for over 35 years in a variety of policy and diplomatic roles. Ross was dubbed “Israel's Attorney” and was described as a member of the “Israel Lobby” in the United States, by Mearsheimer and Walt in their influential 2006 paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, expanded into a book of the same name published in 2007.
Another issue is the propaganda blitz, that has been put forward by the U.S. Corporate Controlled Media, since the beginning of the Hamas attacks on the 7h. Last night (Oct 11th) Joy Reid on MSNBC proved the point with a very rare exception to the prostrate Israeli dominated material on the airwaves, by interviewing Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University Professor of Modern Arab Studies, for a few minutes (he replaced the longtime stalwart Edward Said, who suffered through decades of attacks by Zionists, American and Israeli, while working in that post at Columbia University). And in addition the reprisals against those who sympathize with the Palestinians have begun, these are being conducted against anybody bold enough to exhibit and sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza, or who dares to look at what has been going on in Israel for the last 75+ years. One example of this are the positions recently espoused by Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management and the Chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; he has called on Jews to quit donating to the University of Pennsylvania in response to a Palestinian Literary Festival and a lack of condemnation of the Palestinians after the Hamas attacks. Rowan wrote: “It took less than two weeks to go from the Palestine Writes literary festival on the University of Pennslyania’s campus to the barbaric slaughter and kidnapping of Israelis. The polarizing Palestine Writes gathering featured well-known antisemites and fomenters of hate and racism, …. and numerous speakers repeated various blood libels against Jews, whom they referred to as 'European settlers' despite their 3,000-year presence in Israel. It was a tragically prescient preview of the horrific events that took place just two weeks later. ….
“At this watershed moment in UPenn’s history, I call on all Upenn alumni and supporters who believe we are heading in the wrong direction to 'close their checkbooks' until President Magill and Chairman Bok resign. It is time for the trustees to begin moving UPenn in a new direction. Join me and many others who love UPenn by sending the university $1 in place of your normal discretionary contribution, so that no one misses the point.” (Emphasis added)
{See, “Marc Rowan: University Donors, Close Your Checkbooks: Trustees, myself included, have sat in silence as our schools were taken over by ideologues. It’s time to wake up”, Oct 11, 2023, Marc Rowan, The Free Press, at < https://www.thefp.com/p/marc-
It is also worth noting that in the statement by Rowan in the 1st paragraph of this excerpt above he wrote “ …. they referred to as 'European settlers' despite their 3,000-year presence in Israel.”; has at least some validity. Firstly in that the great majority of Jewish Israelis are Ashkenazi Jews, who at the very least spent about 1,800 years living in Europe between the period of the Roman Empire and the beginning of European Jewish settlement in Palestine in the mid – late 19th Century. Genetic analyses and historical research indicate that Ashkenazi Jews are primarily descended from people who lived in the Caucasus and who adopted Judaism in the period around AD 600 – AD 800. That origin story would put the lie to the 3,000 year claim; a claim that only Mizrahi Jews (the Jews who remained in Palestine) and perhaps Sephardic Jews (the Jews of North Africa and Spain) could make. (See, “Ashkenazic Jews’ mysterious origins unravelled by scientists thanks to ancient DNA”, Sep 5, 2018, Eran Elhaik, The Conversation, at < https://theconversation.com/
A number of CEOs and other influential American figures who graduated from or were otherwise associated with Harvard University have condemned a letter posted by “A coalition of 34 Harvard students organizations said they 'hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence' following decades of occupation, adding that 'the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.' ” The names of the students have not been provided, but the Zionists are eager to get the names in order to apply as much economic punishment against them as possible. Axios Reports that:
“Billionaire Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager and Harvard alum, said in an online post Tuesday that he had been asked by 'a number of CEOs' if Harvard would disclose the list of students in the groups that issued a letter that said it held 'the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.' ”
In a post at X (formerly Twitter) included in the Axios article with a link, Ackman wrote “I have been asked by a number of CEOs if @harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members. If, in fact, their members support the letter they have released, the names of the signatories should be made public so their views are publicly known. One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, who, we now learn, have beheaded babies, among other inconceivably despicable acts.” (note the supposed beheading of babies is unproven and based on a report in Israeli news channel i24 that has not been corroborated despite a major effort to find such confirmation, it is a Viral Social Media phenomenon now). Posting tweets in support of Ackman were; Sweetgreen's CEO Jonathan Neman; Jake Wurzak, CEO of DoveHill Capital Management, Michael Broukhim, FabFitFun's CEO; and Ian Bremmer the CEO of the far-right Geostrategy Company, The Eurasia Group. These billionaires are claiming that the identities of the students should be revealed to them, a cabal of powerful vindictive Zionists and Wealthy Israel-First activists; students whose level of personal power and wealth do not begin to rival that of this group of CEOs, and against whom the cabal would take whatever efforts to harm them that they could. Other prominent people associated with Harvard who joined in the condemnation of the Harvard students were; Larry Summers, former Harvard president, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and an arch-enemy of American working people, who consistently advocates for policies that favor the rich; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a Harvard Law School alumnus and consistent reactionary / fascist; and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) another right-wing extremist.
(See, “Pro-Palestinian letter from Harvard students provokes alumni outrage”, Oct 10, 2023, Daniel Trotta, Reuters, at < https://www.reuters.com/world/
The complications just from trying to simultaneously manage the Ukraine War and the Israel-Hamas War will undoubtedly prove extremely difficult for the U.S. ruling class. It is horrifying to think of the consequences should the U.S. become more aggresive with China and provoke some sort of confrontation over Taiwan. Or perhaps the Chinese rulers will feel that this is a golden opportunity for them to become more assertive.
A Deal Signed in Blood, Oct 10, 2023, Spencer Ackerman, The Nation, at < https://www.thenation.com/
An anticipated deal between the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel is set to create a new Middle Eastern order. But as Israel and Gaza return to war, will the security pact do more than entrench the violence of the status quo?
A Mideast Deal Signed in Blood
As Israel and Gaza return to war, will a security pact between the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia do more than entrench the violence of the status quo?
Doha, Qatar—After speaking at a Georgetown University–Qatar conference at the Four Seasons Hotel, Khalid Fahad al-Khater, a senior Qatari diplomat, didn’t want to comment about the forthcoming diplomatic accord between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. When I pressed, he said simply that it would be a “game changer.” And he preferred to leave it at that.
I understood. Al-Khater didn’t want to say anything that might affect diplomatic maneuvering, influence financial markets, or otherwise blow back on him or Qatar. And outside of what we’ve read and heard, neither of us knew the details of what the tripartite deal holds.
But we were academics, politicians, activists, and journalists gathered against the backdrop of negotiations with the potential to transform—or, perhaps more accurately, reaffirm on explicit terms—the power dynamics of the Middle East. Recognition of Israel by the final major Arab power not to do so, without any pathway to Palestinian independence, and backed by an influx of American weaponry, closes the door on a generation’s worth of challenges to the US-backed Mideast order. Speculation was unavoidable. Everyone I spoke with, whether they thought the deal promising or catastrophic, considered it both historic and inevitable. They struggled to make sense of the new status quo they will inhabit. Then, just days later, nearly 1,200 miles but a world away from a luxury hotel in Doha, Hamas began what might be a game changer of its own.
Early Saturday morning, Hamas launched an air-sea-land surprise offensive from Gaza into Israel. Its operation responded to an extraordinarily violent year that followed the rise of Israel’s most-extreme-ever right-wing government: a year when Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 200 Palestinians; locked thousands more to languish in military prisons; intensified assaults on West Bank villages like Jenin and Huwara; kept 2 million Palestinians under a blockade of Gaza that has left only an estimated 4 percent of households able to access clean drinking water; and attacked Palestine on symbolic levels, as when the anti-Palestinian Justice Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led multiple intrusions into the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem with the express aim of bringing one of the holiest sites in Islam under Israeli sovereignty.
The physical breach of Gaza’s 16-year blockade stunned Israel. The robust Israeli surveillance apparatus missed what was clearly a well-prepared operation, one roughly timed for the 50th anniversary of another war that began with an Israeli intelligence failure. As Hamas took both Israeli civilians and soldiers as hostages, apparently to barter for the imprisoned Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “war, not an operation.” Terrified Israelis who seek only to live in safety ended the joyful holiday of Simchat Torah in horror, mourning what as of this writing is 900 dead, including at least 260 people killed at a rave in the Negev Desert shot up by Hamas. Palestinians who seek only to live in freedom—termed “human animals” by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday—mourned at least 560 people dead as they braced for the terrible reprisal Netanyahu has promised, which may include a reinvasion of Gaza.
At a minimum, the war complicated the timetable for a deal between Jerusalem and Riyadh, though no one I spoke with believes the deal is off. Even if the Hamas offensive is unrelated to the deal, it underscores the extreme danger to Palestinians that the deal represents. While the deal is likely to be the game changer al-Khater predicted, it reinforces the terms of the repressive US-backed status quo that has produced a wasteland for Palestinians and called it peace. It risks more periods of bloodshed like the one that began on Saturday.
The deal’s unfinalized terms are not yet public. But the contours of what Mideast leaders are already publicly discussing would be historic. Saudi Arabia, now the most powerful Arab state, would recognize Israel, opening an economic relationship and a political normalization that Israel has dreamed of for decades. The United States would broker the deal through expanded arms sales, security guarantees, and, most desired by Riyadh, a nuclear-energy program that would permit the Saudis to enrich uranium on their own soil—which experts fear could presage a Saudi nuclear weapon. Two weeks before Hamas launched its offensive, Netanyahu said the deal would “truly create a new Middle East.” That same week, President Joe Biden extended to Netanyahu a long-desired invitation to the White House.
It is not lost on anyone, least of all the Palestinians, that in 2002, then–Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz conditioned recognition for Israel on Palestinian statehood. Now–Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has removed that condition. During a September 20 interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, MBS, as he’s known, committed only to “a good life for the Palestinians,” words that several of my interlocutors interpreted as Riyadh accepting indefinite occupation. But in the hours after Hamas overran the Erez crossing and briefly took territory across the border in Sderot, the Saudi foreign ministry said it had “repeatedly warned of the consequences…of the occupation.” Its statement was a deflection that the Saudis boxed themselves into by pursuing normalization with Israel while the occupation persists.
The idea of Saudi Arabia being a bulwark against Israeli violence is not a credible one. MBS’s deep-pocketed attempt to portray himself as a reformer has not covered up the violence of his regime. As defense minister, he was an architect of the devastation of Yemen. In 2017, he consolidated his rule by locking hundreds of Saudi notables, including his relatives, in a Ritz-Carlton for what became known as the “Night of the Beating.” The CIA named him personally accountable for the gruesome murder and dismemberment of mildly critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Much as MBS would like to be known for decarbonization, allowing women to drive, and building a Red Sea megacity, Saudi Arabia under MBS is a place where people can be killed for tweets. A man whose nicknames include Father of the Bullet and Mister Bone Saw is unlikely to find apartheid intolerable. And soon, thanks to the United States, he may be in position to go nuclear.
Nor is MBS likely to encounter significant internal pressure, some think. “The old guard, including the religious establishment, will likely not be supportive, but in a country where dissent is not tolerated, such sentiments will have to remain private,” says Safwan Masri, the dean of Georgetown University–Qatar. “The median age in Saudi Arabia is 29, and young Saudis care more about the social liberalizations and economic opportunities championed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”
Indeed, the logic of the deal involves looking past the Palestinians as vestiges of an outdated order. It builds upon and surpasses the Trump administration’s 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized Israeli relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Israel-UAE normalization came through billions in US arms sales, and now the Israeli weapons-export sector is reaping the same from its new diplomatic interlocutors, even as Saudi Arabia has loomed as the grand prize for Israel. The commercial and security ties represent a formalization of a US-backed Middle Eastern security order centered around opposition to Iran—whose assertiveness found new opportunity in the region after the 2003 US occupation of Iraq brought chaos. Both the Abraham Accords and a Saudi-centric successor represent a bet that fears of Iran and trade prospects within an anti-Iranian belt spanning the peninsula are enough to cement a regional order, all under US auspices.
“The lie at the heart of American-led normalization is that this is peacemaking, and is somehow a substitute for dealing with the core Israeli-Palestinian issue, or, even more illogically, is a positive contribution in that arena,” says Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the US/Middle East Project. “The accords, as choreographed by the US, intentionally keep in place an Israeli-Palestinian status quo which is antithetical to peace and security for all, including to equality and rights for the Palestinians. It is part of an architecture which encourages Israeli hubris and which has nurtured the very failings in the Israeli system which came into play so powerfully during the attacks carried out by the Gaza-based resistance movements.”
When the US champions resistance to occupation in Ukraine, it does so from the position, however cynically, of supporting a threatened democracy. There is no such veneer when it comes to a US-Saudi-Israel deal. Israel is an apartheid state whose government is working hard, against the wishes of enormous numbers of its citizens, at crippling its own democratic institutions, even as those institutions are unaccountable to its millions of Palestinian subjects. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that holds an abundance of capitalism’s most important commodity. It didn’t take long for Biden to unravel his promise to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah,” as continued dependence on hydrocarbons and rising gas prices stemming from US sanctions on Russian oil brought Biden to fist-bump MBS in Riyadh last year. That’s largely what prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to say, shortly before Biden’s trip, that, notwithstanding human-rights concerns with Saudi Arabia, “we are addressing the totality of our interests in that relationship.”
The additional incentive for the United States to foster the deal is its extensive, bipartisan paranoia over losing geopolitical primacy. MBS rolled out the red carpet for Chinese Premier Xi Jinping in December, a trip widely understood as an unveiling of Chinese power in the Middle East and an embrace widely understood as a rebuke to Biden. The month before, senior US officials told a regional security conference in Bahrain not to “hedge” against the US with China, as only the US could integrate its Middle Eastern clients’ militaries through the American defense technology it exports. That is true, but the Saudis will still hold a naval exercise with the Chinese in Zhanjiang this month. And it was Chinese diplomacy, not US security architecture, that produced détente between Riyadh and Tehran in March. Instead of pivoting to the possibilities for regional peace that such a détente offers, the Biden administration is looking to outdo China in a grand diplomatic gesture that anchors the US in the region on the terms of the status quo ante. The substance of it matters less than the fact of it.
The deal would certainly secure the US position in the Mideast as the security broker to the region’s two strongest powers. Among its most important reported aspects is the prospect of an expanded guarantee to Saudi Arabia to come to its aid militarily if attacked. It’s worth remembering that even without that explicit guarantee, the US went to war with Iraq in 1991 in no small part to defend the Saudis. But an explicit security guarantee would risk US involvement in a potentially catastrophic war with Iran. Iranian behavior strongly suggests the Iranians will consider an enhanced security relationship between its three geopolitical enemies as provocative, particularly if it carries the potential for MBS to go nuclear. Already, The Wall Street Journal has reported an Iranian role in the offensive, partially predicated on disrupting the deal, although this account is disputed by the Biden administration, Hamas, and Iran.
Another China-centric consideration for the United States is the Saudis’ flirtations with pricing oil in Chinese currency. An August Wall Street Journal piece on normalization floated getting Saudi Arabia to keep the petrodollar as an aspect of the deal. That would reap the US a material benefit from the deal beyond expanded arms sales. But some economists think that pricing oil in renminbi is a bluff—one that allows Saudi Arabia to present the continued life of the petrodollar as a tough concession it has made.
“Saudi Arabia could sell its oil in yuan instead of dollars, but it is likely to do this only for a small portion of its exports to China, which in turn count for just 20 percent of Saudi Arabia’s total exports,” says Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, CEO of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, an economic think tank focused on the Middle East. Whatever else MBS can accomplish, dethroning the dollar is neither achievable for him nor in his interests. “Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical clout depends in large part on the fact that it is a country that earns petrodollars and spends them freely on American assets in liquid markets. Unless China liberalizes its capital markets, which looks increasingly unlikely, Saudi Arabia won’t be able to replicate the beneficial economic interdependence it currently enjoys with the United States.”
All that underscores how the deal reinforces the existing rules of the current Mideast order. A generation ago, resistance to the unofficial tripartite force of America, Saudi Arabia, and Israel spurred the creation of Al Qaeda. After the devastation of a still-ongoing War on Terror, the formalization and expansion of those ties risks provoking a new wave of violent challenge, perhaps taking unexpected forms, even as their architects consider them to herald a new era of regional peace.
The deal “will probably hasten the inevitable confrontation between the masses [and the regimes]—I wouldn’t say next year, or the year after, but I would say in a few years, there will be a huge backlash, because the Israelis are not going to stop,” says Sami al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs in Istanbul, who is Palestinian.
Biden’s Saturday afternoon address on the attack did not mention Palestinian lives, only “Hamas terrorists.” On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin moved the destroyers and warplanes of the USS Gerald Ford carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean. Western governments lined up to condemn Hamas and not the Israeli occupation. Gallant, the Israeli defense minister whom Austin was in contact with throughout the weekend, said on Monday that he has ordered that Gaza be under a “full siege,” with no electricity, gas, water, or food permitted into the Strip, all while he called Palestinians subhuman. Netanyahu chillingly pledged a response that would “change the Middle East,” after telling Palestinians to flee Hamas-controlled parts of Gaza, whose borders Israel and Egypt have sealed, before he turns them “into ruins.”
“It’s the hardest time,” says Levy, referring to the anguish of Israelis and the forthcoming Israeli assault on Gaza. “But,” he continues, it’s “the most important time to remind ourselves that security for Israelis and security for Palestinians are intertwined, and you will not get one without the other. Even against the backdrop of the painful scenes, Israel is the occupying party which makes Palestinian lives abnormal every day in denying them the most basic rights and freedoms and predictability of life which we take for granted.”
The looming bloodshed could put pressure on even an unaccountable figure like MBS. Asked if MBS can produce a deal while the Israeli military pummels Gaza, a Saudi analyst who requested anonymity during a sensitive moment says only that it would “be difficult,” and that the Saudis need a “cease-fire” before the deal can proceed. “Things will be on ice for a while,” a Saudi official told The Wall Street Journal.
“The Israel-Saudi deal may be delayed, but I believe it will happen,” says Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown–Qatar. If anything, the war creates an opportunity for MBS to increase the price on Biden, who Kamrava thinks will pay to have a major deal secured by the 2024 election. “Whether the Saudi government can bear the domestic political costs of normalization with Israel in the likelihood of massive Palestinian loss of life and indiscriminate Israeli destruction of lives and property in Gaza remains to be seen,” Kamrava continues.
Al-Arian thinks the outbreak of war means the deal won’t happen until at least 2025, as MBS has no incentive to give Biden a major diplomatic victory and would get better terms from his favored candidate, Donald Trump, unless Biden wins reelection anyway. But while the deal might change certain regional dynamics, “it’s not going to change the calculus of Palestinian resistance or Palestinian aspirations for self-determination, freedom, independence, and liberation,” he says. Netanyahu and the Israeli right might hope that a US-backed deal with Saudi Arabia represents a green light for a 1948-style mass deportation. But al-Arian considers that a delusion.
“If we have to die,” he says, “we’ll die in our homes. We’re not going anywhere.”
Spencer Ackerman
Spencer Ackerman, a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award–winning reporter, is the author of Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump.
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Biden Will Be Guided by His Zionism
Franklin Foer 8–10 minutes The Atlantic, October 10, 2023
at < https://www.theatlantic.com/
The president is committed to supporting the Jewish state, but the conflict threatens his other regional priorities.
October 10, 2023, 8:37 AM ET
Updated at 4:28 p.m. ET on October 10, 2023
On Sunday morning, Joe Biden got on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu. After the barbaric attack launched against Israel the day before, the Israeli prime minister was able to offer a granular account of what was already known about the unfolding catastrophe. According to two Biden-administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, he gave Biden a vivid set of details about the assault on the music festival in the south of his country. The death toll, he reported, was well over 200—part of the more than 800 Israelis already reported killed in the Hamas assault. Netanyahu’s anger and despair poured through the phone.
Biden and Netanyahu have known each other since the 1980s. Their shared history includes navigating rocket attacks, terrorist assaults, and ground wars. But the president’s aides reported that Biden instantly understood Hamas’s invasion to be different in scale and kind than anything in his political memory, and Netanyahu’s raw account of the carnage stoked Biden’s feelings of anger.
Back in May 2021, when Israel retaliated against a Hamas fusillade by pounding Gaza, Biden quickly began privately outlining his strategy for arriving at a cease-fire. That’s not the case this time. His aides say that he is well aware that the coming Israeli offensive could take months. In a statement delivered on Tuesday afternoon from the State Dining Room, Biden expressed unconditional support for Israel, declaring Hamas's attacks as “pure, unadulterated evil,” and there is no reason to think he has conveyed anything different to Netanyahu in private.
A string of knotty questions will surely arise: How will the administration respond to the inevitable civilian casualties in Gaza? Will Biden sanction an Israeli strike on Iran, if that’s where the intelligence ascribes responsibility? In the immediate aftermath, the administration has begun to ponder the implications of the war for American foreign policy, and the ways in which the crisis might present opportunities.
Biden arrived in office with the hope of removing the Middle East from the central place it has occupied in American foreign policy for much of the 21st century. Brett McGurk, the National Security Council official with responsibility for the region, liked to tout the slogan that guided his work: “No new projects.” His task consisted of keeping the Middle East off the president’s desk as Biden sought to end the war in Afghanistan, restore broken alliances, and focus the nation’s gaze on China.
But the administration understood that there could very well be a moment when a crisis intruded and pulled the president’s attention back into the region. This year, Biden made a Saudi-Israeli deal his signal diplomatic initiative. There were two primary reasons he staked his prestige on pursuing an agreement. The first was a worry that the Saudis might be slipping out of the American orbit, as evidenced by their reluctance to impose sanctions on Russia, while staking out friendlier relations with China.
The second was concern for Israeli democracy. Biden saw a deal as a chance to preserve the prospects of a two-state solution, which would be a Saudi condition for moving forward with an agreement. Some in the administration hoped for a bank shot here: Bibi seemed to want a deal badly enough that he would be willing to make the concessions to Palestinians that the Saudis demanded. To deliver on those promises, he would likely be forced to end his alliance with the far right, which had dragged Israel in an undemocratic direction.
Biden’s thinking defied political logic even in a time of relative quiet in the region. But within hours of the Hamas attack, that possible deal is roundly considered to be moribund. Israel will now be focused exclusively on wartime objectives. The Saudis might feel obliged to walk away once Palestinian casualties rise. At the very least, the war wrecks the administration’s timeline. Biden was hoping that he might be able to get a treaty in front of the U.S. Senate before the onset of the coming campaign season. (The Senate would have to approve a defense agreement with the Saudis, a core component of the developing deal.) Putting aside all of the other geopolitical reasons the deal might not happen now, the delay itself makes it impossible, given that the administration would never risk dooming a treaty by sending it to the Senate in the middle of an election year, when politicians of all stripes will be anxious to avoid guaranteeing the security of Saudi Arabia.
But the administration's conversations with the Sunni states over the weekend have given officials a bit of hope that a deal of some sort might be viable on the other side of the war. When the White House and the State Department first heard from the likes of Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, their diplomats mouthed traditional justifications for Palestinian violence. Their position shifted, however, over the course of the weekend, as they consumed the news of mass civilian casualties, the kidnapping of women and children, and corpses paraded through the streets of Gaza. Privately, some of the Arab states confessed their disgust with Hamas and its brutal tactics. Even if relegated to diplomatic phone calls, professions of revulsion—and even sympathy for the Israeli public—are unprecedented. Of course, these outbursts of emotion might prove ephemeral as the battlefield shifts to Gaza and away from gunned-down teenagers in the desert, but they raised hopes within the administration that the U.S. might be able to diplomatically isolate both Hamas and its Iran backers in the short term while preserving the possibility of integrating Israel within the fabric of the region in the long term.
Zionism is one of Biden’s primary commitments. It’s not a belief that he acquired in the course of his political career, but something he says that he learned from his father at the dinner table, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. His father would tell him, “If Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.” Biden first met Nancy Pelosi in the early 1970s, when he visited San Francisco to raise money for the Jewish state—Pelosi lent him her Jeep so that he could go from synagogue to synagogue.
Biden’s Zionism will shape how his administration frames the moment politically. Despite Israel’s recent slide away from democracy—and despite the rising criticism of the Jewish state within his own party—Biden remains a true believer, who doesn’t haven’t any qualms linking its struggle for existence to a global struggle against barbarism.That’s part of the reason his aides have discussed rhetorically linking Israel’s war to the Ukrainian cause—and to the defense of Taiwan.
This framing, some aides believe, would help Biden break through the legislative deadlock on Capitol Hill. Military aid to Ukraine has foundered because of a small faction of Trumpist opposition, whose votes are being courted by the two men now vying to be speaker of the House. By linking Israel to Ukraine and Taiwan, the administration has a chance to put most congressional Republicans in a politically impossible position, where—the conventional wisdom goes—they will have no choice but to support an ally under attack. It might also be the administration’s best chance for reviving broad bipartisan support for Ukraine.
Any president would express robust support for Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas attack. But the question is how those feelings of solidarity survive through the slog of war. Biden’s aides say that his spiritual commitment to Zionism means that he’s going to be an exceedingly generous ally in those ugly moments, although it’s not hard to foresee how those moments, especially if they entail a confrontation with Iran, will test the solidarity with Israel he so dearly professes.
The Gaza civilian buildings bombed by Israel
Israel is carrying out a widespread, systematic bombing campaign of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, following the Hamas-led attack of 7 October.
Air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip began on Saturday and have continued since then. On Monday, Israel cut off all electricity, food, gas and water in Gaza, severely hindering medical teams’ efforts to save wounded patients.
On Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry said that at least 770 Palestinians had been killed and 4,000 wounded in the strikes.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has referred to Palestinians as "human animals" and called for a "complete siege" of Gaza, with Israel calling up 300,000 reserves and mobilising its forces along the Strip.
As of Monday, the Israeli air force had dropped some 2,000 munitions and more than 1,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza, the army said, having shelled 20 high-rise residential buildings, mosques, hospitals, banks and other civilian infrastructure.
Mosques
At least 10 mosques have been demolished in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza so far, according to the Islamic affairs ministry in the enclave.
One of the most prominent to be hit is the Ahmed Yasin mosque, located in al-Shati refugee camp.
The al-Abbas mosque, located in the mainly residential al-Rimal neighbourhood, was also demolished.
Other mosques that have been heavily damaged, or completely flattened, include al-Sousi, al-Yarmouk, al-Amin Muhammed, Mohammed al-Habib and the al-Gharabi mosques.
Palestine’s interior ministry spokesperson said that Israel is increasing its aggressive bombardment of Gaza and that “most of the targets are towers, residential buildings, civil service facilities and mosques”.
Radio station and Islamic ministry offices
Palestine’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Gaza announced on Monday that Israeli bombing destroyed the headquarters of the Holy Quran radio station.
They also reported that their ministry offices were heavily damaged.
Banks
The Islamic National Bank of Gaza was bombed during live television coverage of Israel’s bombardment.
A correspondent for Al Jazeera was reporting live on the strikes, when in the background large plumes of smoke and fire emerged from the bank following the bombing.
Further footage showed a second bank in the Rimal district of Gaza City being struck.
Universities
Three universities have been badly hit.
The Islamic University of Gaza was severely damaged, with video footage showing the smoking building.
The university has around 17,000 students and was one of the first higher education institutions to be established in the Gaza Strip.
Residential buildings
A year after it was last bombed, the Palestine Tower, a 14-storey residential building in the middle of Gaza City with panoramic views, has been flattened.
Survivors told Middle East Eye that they had saved and borrowed thousands of dollars to rebuild their homes after Israel’s last bombing.
Residents of al-Rimal and Tal al-Hawa neighbourhoods evacuated their homes after warplanes bombed residential towers consecutively.
The Jabalia camp in northern Gaza has been totally wiped out after an Israeli air strike ripped through the crowded residential area, killing and wounding dozens of people.
Ambulances and civil defence teams were forced to evacuate the camp as Israeli air strikes continued.
The camp, one of Gaza's largest, became a charcoal-coloured, unrecognisable mess after the local market and homes were levelled, with damaged cars and personal belongings littering the streets.
Videos and photos of the scene showed bodies strewn amidst the rubble, with people frantically searching for their loved ones.
The mostly residential al-Yarmouk neighbourhood was reduced to rubble, with large apartment blocks seen crumbling in video footage shared online.
Hospitals
Numerous hospitals and medical centres have been attacked.
Palestine's health ministry announced that the children’s section of the Shifa hospital complex had been damaged by Israel's bombing and that the shelling had caused parts of the ceiling to collapse and fall.
It also said that the Beit Hanoun Hospital had been rendered out of service due to constant Israeli bombing in close proximity to the building.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the humanitarian organisation also known as Doctors Without Borders, said that Israeli forces struck Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, as well as an ambulance in front of the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza.
The group asked all parties to respect healthcare buildings and infrastructure, which they said “must remain a sanctuary for people seeking treatment”.
MSF said it had been providing surgical and inpatient care in Gaza’s al-Awda hospital since Saturday, but that the group had faced difficulties due to Israeli bombardment.
The Palestinian health minister, Mai al-Kaila, appealed to the international community “to take urgent action to stop the occupation’s aggression against treatment centres” in Gaza.
In a statement published on Monday, the doctor called on Israel to stop attacking ambulances, medical centres and medical crews in the besieged Strip.
“The occupation deliberately bombs hospitals and kills crews. This is a clear violation of all international laws and norms,” al-Kaila said.
How Did Hamas Acquire Advanced Rockets?
When Hamas opened its surprise attack on Israel just before dawn last Saturday, it unleashed sustained salvos of some 200 rockets and missiles each at Israeli cities and towns. By mid-morning, the militants had fired a total of some 2,500 projectiles that quickly overwhelmed Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
At the same time, Hamas also launched scores of armed drones that dropped powerful explosives on Israeli tanks and troops guarding the Gaza border while hundreds of its fighters smashed through the fortified border on foot and others landed on Israeli beaches in small boats and dropped from the air in paragliders.
As Israelis ponder how the Mossad, Shin Bet and Aman military intelligence missed Hamas’ preparations for its wide-ranging assault, another question is: How did Israel fail to prevent Hamas’ from amassing an unprecedented stockpile of weapons—and some advanced ones at that?
Long Time Coming
It’s no secret how Hamas, under an Israeli military blockade since 2007, has generally managed to stock its arsenals with such lethal military hardware. According to numerous independent analysts and regional experts, Iran, wearing the mantle of anti-Israel leadership in the Muslim world, has been providing Hamas with millions of dollars in funding, weapons and missile training since they first established ties in the 1980s.
In 2014, Gen. Ahmad Hosseini, then the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps missile force, acknowledged the key role Tehran played in developing Hamas’ missile program. Years earlier, he recounted, Hamas engineers had been “armed and trained by Hezbollah (Iran’s proxy force in Lebanon). . . Some of them even came to Iran for training.” Hosseini added that the father of Iran’s own missile force, the late Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, “armed them and guided them.”
Initially, Iran’s Quds Force, together with Hezbollah, instructed Hamas engineers in making rockets from common materials like pipes, fertilizer and sugar, said Ido Levy, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank, in a 2021 paper. This, he wrote, enabled Hamas to begin domestic production of its short-range Qassam rocket, which the militants fired at Israeli towns just north of the Gaza Strip.
Later, Iran began smuggling the components of its own home-manufactured Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 ballistic missiles, with ranges of 27 miles and 47 miles respectively, into Gaza by hiding them aboard ships with cargoes bound for European ports on the Mediterranean.
According to Fabian Hinz, an expert on Middle East missile proliferation with the London-based International Institute for Strategic studies, the ships disembarked from Iranian ports, sailed around the Arabian peninsula and made their way up the Red Sea to Port Sudan, where the missile components were offloaded to warehouses operated by Iran’s Quds Forces with the approval of Sudan’s Islamist President Omar al-Bashir,
While the Iranian cargo vessels continued through the Suez Canal to their destinations, Iranian agents in Sudan moved the missile components overland through Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula, where nomadic Bedouin tribesmen working with Hamas smuggled them into Gaza through tunnels dug under the Gaza-Egyptian border. Iranian-trained Hamas engineers then reassembled the parts into operable missiles, which were fired at the cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Tel Aviv farther up the Mediterranean coast when hostilities with Israel erupted in 2012.
Rocky Relations
Iran’s relations with Hamas soured in the wake of the 2011 civil war in Syria, when Tehran supported Syrian leader Bashar al Assad while Hamas backed the Sunni Muslim rebels. Hamas also sided with Saudi Arabia in its war against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels Yemen.
But as the door for Iranian missile assistance closed, another opened with the outbreak of Libya’s civil war in 2011 and the rebels’ looting of the government’s armories. In the ensuing years, Israeli intelligence sources say, Hamas worked with Libyan arms dealers to smuggle missiles into Gaza. In June 2012, Egyptian security forces seized 138 Soviet-made Grad rockets brought in from Libya and headed for Gaza.
In 2014, Sudan’s Bashir, facing his country’s economic collapse, shut down the Sudanese smuggling channel and severed relations with Iran in hopes of winning financial aid from Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s regional archrival. In response, Iran, together with Hezbollah, opened up another maritime smuggling channel. Evading Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, the Washington Institute’s Levy notes that Hezbollah boats pushed floating palettes filled with missile components and missile manufacturing machinery into the sea off the Gaza coast, where they were retrieved by Palestinian fishermen.
In 2017, relations between Hamas and Iran improved significantly after Tehran, seizing upon the militant groups’ appointment of pro-Iranian leader Yahya al Sinwar, brokered a reconciliation between the Assad regime and Hamas. With Iran’s support back on track, Sinwar said Iran once again was Hamas’ “largest backer financially and militarily.”
Since then, Iranian officials also have highlighted their role in the modernization of both Hamas and Hezbollah’s rocket and missile forces.
“All the missiles you might see in Gaza and Lebanon were created with Iran’s support,” boasted Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace force, in 2021. “Today, the Palestinians fire rockets instead of throwing stones.”
“The magnitude of (Hamas) bombing is much bigger and the precision is much better in this conflict,” Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, told the Times of Israel. “It’s shocking what they’ve been able to do under siege.”
Iran has denied any involvement in the Hamas attack on Israel, but Israeli officials brushed off Tehran’s disclaimer.
Israeli intelligence officials maintain this renewed Iranian support has been reflected in the advances Hamas has made in its rocket and missile production in recent years. By manufacturing rockets and missiles based on Iranian designs, the Israelis say the Hamas arsenal now includes weapons that have longer ranger, deadlier warheads and improved accuracy. Thanks to Iranian support, these officials add, Hamas also has improved launchers that can fire sustained barrages of more than two dozen missiles per minute, overwhelming Israel's Iron Dome air defenses and causing greater damage and casualties.
Swollen Armory
In 2021, Israel estimated that Hamas had amassed as many as 15,000 rockets and missiles in its arsenal, Levy said. In the two years before the latest eruption of violence, it’s almost certain the size of the Hamas missile arsenal has grown.
Israel says Hamas fired some 3,000 rockets and missiles into Israel so far, while Israeli air strikes against Gaza have targeted what officials say are some of the group’s missile manufacturing facilities.
But while some analysts say Hamas is running out of such munitions, its leaders sound unbowed.
On Monday, Hamas threatened to execute Israeli civilian hostages for every Israeli strike that hits civilian targets in Gaza without warning.
"We declare that any targeting of our people in their homes without prior warning will be regrettably faced with the execution of one the hostages of civilians we are holding," Hamas spokesperson Abu Obaida said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said more than 100 people had been taken hostage by Hamas during the deadly cross-border incursion over the weekend.
Cohen warned Hamas against harming the hostages, saying, "This war crime will not be forgiven.”
Israel’s Western Allies Have Done Everything Possible to Criminalize Nonviolent Resistance
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz offered a devastating judgement on the country’s leader after the biggest crisis in living memory erupted last Saturday:
The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s cabinet allies Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir are both far-right politicians from settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Earlier this year, Smotrich claimed there was “no such thing” as the Palestinian people, while the US State Department rebuked Ben-Gvir for his “racist, destructive comments” about the supposedly inferior status of Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Haaretz editorial accused Israel’s longest-serving prime minister of deliberately seeking a violent confrontation with the Palestinians:
In the past, Netanyahu marketed himself as a cautious leader who eschewed wars and multiple casualties on Israel’s side. After his victory in the last election, he replaced this caution with the policy of a “fully-right government,” with overt steps taken to annex the West Bank, to carry out ethnic cleansing in parts of the Oslo-defined Area C, including the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley. This also included a massive expansion of settlements and bolstering of the Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as boasts of an impending peace deal with the Saudis in which the Palestinians would get nothing, with open talk of a “second Nakba” in his governing coalition.
Haaretz could have broadened its indictment to include the Western governments that have egged on Netanyahu and his allies at every turn. No matter how often the leading members of Israel’s political class insisted that they would never allow a Palestinian state to come into being, the United States and the most powerful European countries continued to support Israel unconditionally while pretending that there was some kind of meaningful peace process in existence.
At the same time, US and European leaders did everything in their power to block or even criminalize nonviolent forms of pressure on Israel, while telling Palestinians that they must not under any circumstances use violent methods against the occupation of their land. Now the same leaders have given Netanyahu a blank check to wage war on Gaza, when they know from past experience that this will result in massive, lethal violence against civilians.
Burning Bridges
Let’s remember how Israel’s Western allies have responded to various forms of nonviolent action by Palestinians and their supporters in recent years. In 2021, the Palestinian Authority (PA) asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in the occupied territories, including the attack on Gaza in 2014. The US government immediately condemned the move, and Joe Biden’s secretary of state Antony Blinken issued the following statement:
[T]he United States believes a peaceful, secure and more prosperous future for the people of the Middle East depends on building bridges and creating new avenues for dialogue and exchange, not unilateral judicial actions that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution.
We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.
This statement was a calculated insult to the intelligence of those who had to read it. Blinken knows perfectly well that there are no “efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution” that might be “undercut” by an ICC investigation. In practice, the Biden administration wants Israel to be shielded from any legal accountability for its actions from here to the end of time.
After the formation of Netanyahu’s new government with his partners Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, Blinken told a J Street conference in December 2022 that US support for Israel was “sacrosanct.” As Peter Beinart noted, Blinken’s speech gave Netanyahu a green light to do whatever he wanted in the occupied territories:
Blinken didn’t even pledge to undo the gratuitous humiliations imposed on the Palestinians by Donald Trump. He didn’t promise to reopen the PLO mission in Washington or the US embassy in East Jerusalem, which was established in 1844 before being closed in 2019 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a man who once called Barack Obama an ISIS sympathizer. Blinken didn’t say that settlements violate international law — another longstanding US position that Trump overturned and the Biden administration has failed to restore.
In the same month as Blinken’s J Street speech, there was another attempt to hold Israel accountable through the international legal framework. The UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion on “the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.” The United States voted against the referral, along with European states like Britain and Germany. In July of this year, the British government submitted a forty-three-page legal document to the ICJ urging it not to hear the case at all.
Speaking to the Guardian, a senior Palestinian source described the document as “a complete endorsement of Israeli talking points.” Antony Blinken had previously objected to the ICC case on the grounds that the Palestinians “do not qualify as a sovereign state.” Now his British allies turned that argument on its head by presenting the occupation as a “bilateral dispute” between states. The only consistent principle at work was the demand that Israel should enjoy complete impunity.
Clampdown
Israel’s backers in Europe and North America are equally hostile to the idea of pressure being applied through civil society. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is an attempt to compensate for the refusal of governments to impose any sanctions on Israel for its oppression of the Palestinians. However, there have been repeated attempts to outlaw that movement, from France to the United States.
Most recently, the UK parliament passed a bill that bans public bodies such as local councils from making any decisions about procurement or investment based on “political or moral disapproval of foreign state conduct.” In theory, this would oblige councils to do business with any state in the world, not just Israel, regardless of “political or moral disapproval.” But the bill allows the British government to grant a waiver from this rule in almost every case, with the exceptions of “(a) Israel, (b) the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or (c) the Occupied Golan Heights.”
In other words, the British authorities make no distinction in law between Israel as it was before the 1967 war and the occupied territories beyond the so-called Green Line. This is certainly the way the way Israeli politicians see things: they have made it clear time and time again that they consider the West Bank settlements to be an integral part of the Israeli state and have no intention of dismantling them at any point in the future.
The hostile, authoritarian response to legal and civil society initiatives from Israel’s Western allies shows us what they really want from the Palestinians. They don’t just want the Palestinian national movement to refrain from using violence against Israeli civilians, or even to refrain from using violence at all. They want it to renounce any form of action whatsoever that might compromise their ability to support the occupation and all the violence needed to enforce it.
Having encouraged Netanyahu along the road to disaster, politicians in Washington, London, and other Western capitals are now supporting his attack on Gaza in the name of “Israel’s right to defend itself,” which Israeli governments have always interpreted as the right to use violence against civilians on a massive scale. The attack has already killed hundreds of Palestinians and will kill hundreds or even thousands more if it is allowed to continue. Stopping that onslaught is the main priority today.
Palestine Letter: Israel is imposing a blackout on Gaza to hide a massacre
I pack some of my clothes, identifying documents, belongings, and batteries to charge my phone and stay connected to the situation around me. My family and I are evacuating our home in the al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood east of Gaza. I definitely need a larger bag to fit my life into it.
In the afternoon of the second day of the attack, the Israeli army sent a message to my eldest brother — we all live in the same building — telling him that he must evacuate the building and head to the center of Gaza City.
I live on the ground floor. My elderly mother, who is blind, lives with me and my wife alongside our nine-month-old boy, who has already witnessed two Israeli wars in his short life.
“We need to evacuate right now while we have time,” my brother Hani tells me. “If night falls and we’re still here, we’ll be in danger.”
I try to tell him that we should stay — I think no place in Gaza is safe from Israel’s warplanes. But we’re both right.
I make dozens of calls to people to find an apartment for my family, but I don’t want to go to another residential tower — I have already reported on how many of them are the first sites to go in an Israeli airstrike.
Everyone I call tells me that if I manage to find somewhere safe, I should take them with me too. Everyone’s desperate for somewhere, anywhere safe.
I put my suitcase in the car and help my mother into the backseat. We’re going to my father-in-law’s house, which is in the western part of al-Shuja’iyya. As the bombardment of the neighborhood continues, we make our way west. Smoke rises up behind us, filling the air and plunging us into darkness.
All around us, it looks like another Nakba. People are carrying bags on their backs, fastening furniture on top of cars, and fleeing on foot in every direction. They don’t know if they will even be able to return to find their homes intact. Neither do I. Before I left, I stood in the middle of my home and said goodbye to every corner and every stone.
Slowly, the smoke begins to clear, giving way to light. We can tell we’ve moved away from the area from the smell of it.
Yet in these circumstances, I’m considered lucky. I’ve been able to find a place for my family. Thousands of people in Gaza do not have this option. They go to UNRWA schools, which are not equipped to house so many people. They don’t even have anywhere to use the bathroom or the shower.
My father-in-law, who is a journalist and a retired director in the Information Ministry, knows the circumstances of my work. He prepared an office for me to keep working.
I go online and continue to follow the news. But sometimes I wish that I didn’t have to.
The first thing I see is a video of a woman in al-Shifa’ hospital — the main hospital in Gaza City. She is wearing a white coat, which means she is a doctor or nurse. She is running out of the hospital, raising her two hands in the air, her fingers drawing the “victory” sign as she cries. I later learn that she is a doctor who had gone into a dying patient’s room, only to realize that he was her husband — he died while she had been treating other patients. The shock of it all pushed her to run out of the hospital, crying and screaming in front of dozens of cameras.
“My husband was killed, my husband was killed, my husband was killed,” she repeats, V sign still in the air.
The next video I watch is so horrific that I can’t look away. A man in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza searches beneath the rubble of his home for his family. He is holding severed body parts — part of a child’s head, some fingers, and other bits of flesh mutilated beyond recognition.
“This is my family,” the man opens his hand, showing the parts he collects. “This is what remains of my children. I can’t find any more of them.” He is screaming.
We’re only at the beginning of one of the most protracted and brutal wars in Gaza’s history. I dread the upcoming days. This might be our time to leave this world, torn apart in a random Israeli airstrike.
The next day, electricity, internet, and water are all cut off. I start to feel that, step by step, we’re being cut off from the outside world until it doesn’t exist. Israel wants to intentionally cause a blackout, so we can’t report on the massacres it commits in Gaza. They’re preparing for something huge, and without a way of telling the world, no one will know until it’s too late.
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