World Socialist Web Site – January 6, 2024
Gaza death toll tops 30,000, as US escalates wider Middle East war
by Andre Damon
The Euro-Med Monitor reported Friday that 30,676 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli Forces attacks since October 7, taking into account both those whose bodies have been identified and those who have been missing for more than two weeks, most buried under the rubble of demolished buildings.
This staggering death toll includes 12,040 children, 6,103 women, 241 health workers and 105 journalists. A further 58,960 people have been wounded in the onslaught.
Throughout the Gaza Strip, thousands of bodies remain unburied, including hundreds along roads used by the Israeli occupation forces.
Euro-Med reported that 4 percent of the population of Gaza is either dead, wounded or missing. A similar share of the American population would equate to over 13 million.
To date, 1.9 million Palestinians have been internally displaced, amounting to 90 percent of the population of Gaza. Many have been forced to flee multiple times.
In just under three months, Israel has destroyed or damaged approximately 70 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, Euro-Med reported, including a staggering 247,696 housing units, 318 schools and 169 healthcare facilities.
The ongoing destruction of Gaza is accompanied by growing demands for the permanent displacement of the Palestinian population.
On Wednesday, the Times of Israel reported, “The ‘voluntary’ resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, with a senior official saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption.”
In a statement on Friday, United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths declared, “A public health disaster is unfolding. Infectious diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over. Some 180 Palestinian women are giving birth daily amidst this chaos. People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.”
In a separate statement, the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported, “Children in Gaza are caught in a nightmare that worsens with every passing day.”
Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director, said, “Children and families in the Gaza Strip continue to be killed and injured in the fighting, and their lives are increasingly at risk from preventable diseases and lack of food and water. All children and civilians must be protected from violence and have access to basic services and supplies.”
She added, “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence—while the world watches on.”
But this bloodbath is only the prelude to what is rapidly becoming a major new US war throughout the Middle East.
On Friday, Politico carried an article reporting that Biden administration officials admit that “the war in Gaza has officially escalated far beyond the strip’s borders.”
Politico, citing four unnamed US officials, reported that “Biden administration officials are drawing up plans” for “scenarios that could potentially draw the US into another Middle East war.”
The publication added, “The military is drafting plans to hit back at Iran-backed Houthi militants who have been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea, according to three US officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.” It added, “That includes striking Houthi targets in Yemen, according to one of the officials, an option the military has previously presented.”
The Pentagon planning to attack Yemen was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The US is also seeking to “anticipate and fend off possible attacks on the US by Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria, according to one of the officials,” Politico reported.
Against this backdrop, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left Thursday for a trip throughout the Middle East, including a prominent stop in Israel, to coordinate the next phase of the war.
On the day that Blinken left, the US carried out an illegal missile strike on Baghdad, Iraq on Thursday in the latest escalation of the US-Israeli rampage throughout the Middle East.
The strike targeted Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari, a member of a pro-Iran militia, whom Iraq claimed was a member of its security forces. Iraq’s foreign ministry issued a “strong condemnation” of what it called a “blatant attack” on Iraq’s military headquarters.
In a letter to Congress Friday, Biden justified the attack, declaring, “I directed these discrete military actions consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests.”
In response, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the Iraqi govenrment would move to expel the 2,500 US troops stationed in the country.
“The government is setting the date for the start of the bilateral committee to put arrangements in place to end the presence of the international coalition forces in Iraq permanently,” al-Sudani said in a statement.
The United States, meanwhile, is continuing to mass troops, warships and aircraft in the Middle East. In a statement Wednesday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the United States will not “shrink from the task of defending ourselves, our interests, our partners and the free flow of international commerce.”
Kirby warned, “To accomplish these goals, we have established and will continue to maintain a significant force presence in the Middle East, including significant ‘offensive’ military power.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/06/eatf-j06.html
Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel in ‘response’ to Hamas leader’s killing
Lebanese group says it targeted Meron air base following the killing of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut.
Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has said it targeted a vital Israeli military post with a barrage of 62 rockets as a “preliminary response” to the killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut this week.
This comes as the European Union foreign policy chief met the Lebanese prime minister in Beirut on Saturday, and warned against Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict in a spillover from Israel’s war on Gaza.
“As part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri … the Islamic resistance [Hezbollah] targeted the Meron air control base with 62 various types of missiles,” the Iran-aligned group said in a statement on Saturday of the attacks in northern Israel.
The Israeli military said earlier that about 40 rockets were fired towards the Meron air surveillance base and it responded by attacking a “terrorist cell” that took part in the launches. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Later on Saturday, Lebanon’s Jama’a Islamiya group said in a statement that it had fired two volleys of rockets at Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.
Hezbollah and the Israeli army continued to exchange fire along the border area, with one Israeli attack going deep into Lebanese territory and hitting a house nearly 40km (25 miles) from the border, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Lebanon said.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday said all of Lebanon would be exposed if it did not react to the killing of Hamas deputy chief al-Arouri and warned it would “certainly not go without reaction and punishment”.
Al-Arouri was assassinated in an alleged Israeli attack on Tuesday in a Hezbollah stronghold. Nasrallah has warned Israel against expanding the conflict, saying there would be “no ceilings” and “no rules” to his group’s fighting if Israel chose to launch a war on Lebanon.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday that it was “imperative” to avoid a regional escalation in the Middle East.
“It is absolutely necessary to avoid Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict,” he said, also warning Israel that “nobody will win from a regional conflict”.
“We are seeing a worrying intensification of exchange of fire across the Blue Line,” he added, referring to the current demarcation line between the two countries, a frontier mapped by the United Nations that marks the line to which Israeli forces withdrew when they left south Lebanon in 2000.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that any large-scale bombing in southern Lebanon would lead to a “comprehensive explosion” in the region.
Continuing fighting
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Beirut, said Hezbollah’s attack on Saturday was an expected outcome following Nasrallah’s statements on al-Arouri’s killing.
“The Israelis would have been expecting a response. They would have been on high alert,” he reported.
Khan said that amid the continuing cross-border fighting, Hezbollah had a “very political calculation” to make in Lebanon.
“It doesn’t want Lebanon to suffer as a result of an outright war. But it is talking tough. It says if Israel wants to escalate, then it will respond in kind,” he added.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging near-daily fire since the war in Gaza started in October last year. The violence has largely been contained to the border area.
“Israel is putting immense pressure on Hezbollah positions in the south with air strikes and drones,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported.
“That’s interesting because the more pressure it puts on Hezbollah, there may be a misfire or a miscalculated strike from either side and that could escalate things.”
With no end in sight to Israel’s war on Gaza and amid soaring regional tensions, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on his fourth visit to the Middle East in three months.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/6/hezbollah-fires-rockets-at-israel-in-response-to-hamas-leaders-killing
Middle East Monitor – January 5, 2024
Israel in discussions with Congo to resettle Palestinians from Gaza,
Recalling Nazi Madagascar Plan for Jews
The Israeli government is increasingly adopting the “voluntary” resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza as official policy, with a high-ranking official disclosing that it has engaged in discussions with multiple countries regarding the potential for such moves.
According to the Times of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is discreetly exploring the acceptance of thousands of migrants from Gaza, with the Democratic Republic of Congo being one of the countries under consideration. “Congo will be willing to take in migrants,” said a senior source in the security cabinet, “and we’re in talks with others.”
During a Likud faction meeting on Monday, Netanyahu announced that he is involved actively in arranging for the voluntary migration of Gazans to other countries. “Our problem is finding countries that are willing to absorb Gazans,” he said, “and we are working on it.”
Addressing Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon’s claim that, “The world is already discussing the possibilities of voluntary migration,” the prime minister acknowledged the challenge of finding countries willing to accept Gazans, but emphasised ongoing efforts in that regard. Despite these discussions, the idea of voluntary migration has faced widespread rejection from the international community.
The US State Department yesterday slammed recent statements by far-right Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir advocating the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians out of Gaza, calling the rhetoric “inflammatory and irresponsible”, Reuters has reported.
The comments from the ministers appeared to underscore fears in much of the Arab world that Israel wants to forcibly displace and ethnically cleanse the occupied Palestinian territories, just as Zionist terrorist gangs did in historic Palestine in 1948.
While reports have emerged of offers for Arab forces and governments to administer Gaza, such as the Palestinian Authority or a combined force of Arab states, the predominant view on the part of Israel’s far-right government has been for Israel itself to re-occupy the Strip, expel its Palestinian population and resettle the land with Israelis and Jewish settlers.
Israel is continuing with its brutal military offensive in Gaza despite global calls for a ceasefire in the 11-week-old war. The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October against Israeli military bases and settlements in the vicinity of Gaza, during which 1,139 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed . . . The operation was in response to “daily Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people and their sanctities,” said Hamas, notably Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem. Around 240 Israelis were captured during the operation, 110 of whom have already been exchanged for some of the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel.
Palestinian health authorities say that more than 22,000 people have been killed in Israeli air and artillery strikes since 7 October, most of them children and women. Israeli bombs have laid much of the occupied Palestinian territory to waste. Thousands more Palestinians are buried under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure. Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times. A humanitarian catastrophe is engulfing Gaza, with famine looming.
The Countercurrent – January 6, 2024
The End of the Balfourian Era!
by Dr Salim Nazzal
A friend commented on the evening of October 7th 2023 with these words: “The Balfourian era is over today!”
He was referring to the British foreign minister Arthur Balfour, who decided in 1917 to grant Palestine to European Jews without consulting the opinion of the country’s natives
Balfour died physically a long time ago, but the illegitimate Balfour child was planted, grew up, and grew in the land of Palestine like a thorn in the middle of a flower garden.
A French journalist described Israel to me years ago by saying that Israel is like a snake in the house garden, you are not able to kill it and you are not able to live in peace with it.
Whatever the analogies and metaphors, the fact is that Israel is the last colonial plantation in the world after the disappearance of the apartheid system in South Africa.
Since the time of Balfour, much water has flowed under the bridge. The imperial powers have shaped the Middle East between two equations. First, the Sykes-Picot equation that divided the region, and the second, the Balfour equation.
Since those times, the struggle in the region has focused on canceling the effects of these two equations, but without success.
On the contrary, Israel has expanded more and has become so powerful that it has become an imperial extension in the heart of the Middle East, and this is what explains Biden’s saying that if there were no Israel, it would be necessary to create it in order to protect American interests.
But the storm of October came to change a lot of the climate of the Balfourian stage. The war proved that Israel is not able to protect itself in the face of a few thousand fighters, so how can it protect American interests? On the contrary, Israel has become a burden on America and the West.
The leaders of Israel realized this, so they began to play the game of culture by saying that they are defending Western culture in the face of (the barbarian world), and this is a new old game that Herzl started by saying that he is seeking to build a wall to protect the West from barbarism.
Using the war of cultures is an Israeli policy par excellence, its goal is to create a rift between the Islamic East and the West in order to benefit from it.
But if the governments of the West support Israel, the Western peoples are not all. The youth generation in the West has risen up to demonstrate against the genocide war waged by Israel, and a public opinion poll in America indicates that 51% of the youth generation supports the removal of the entire racist Israeli entity. These are developments that would not have been possible before October 7th.
There is no doubt that the war is complex and may take a long time. There is no doubt that Israel still enjoys broad support from Western governments. But the world after October 7th is not the same as it was before. This war has launched the end of the Balfourian era towards a new stage in the history of the Middle East.
There are events of weeks that may have an impact that extends for decades, as there are events of decades that may have no effect.
Dr Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad. Palestine in heart.
https://countercurrents.org/2024/01/the-end-of-the-balfourian-era/
|
Published since July 2008 |
Your donation
is tax deductable.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
