RT.Com - July 2, 2024
Israel’s top generals want ceasefire in Gaza– NYT
The IDF doesn’t have enough troops or ammo to fight in Gaza and Lebanon simultaneously, officials have told the New York Times
Dozens of senior Israeli generals want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a truce deal with Hamas so they can prepare for a potential war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
With Israel’s war on Hamas about to enter its ninth month, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has lost at least 674 troops, supplies of artillery shells are low, and around 120 Israelis – dead and alive – remain held as hostages in Gaza. Hamas fighters have popped up in areas of the enclave previously cleared by the IDF, and Netanyahu has still refused to publicly state whether Israel intends to occupy post-war Gaza or turn the territory over to a Palestinian government.
Against this background, the 30 senior generals who make up Israel’s General Staff Forum want Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire with Hamas, even if this means leaving the militants in power in Gaza, the New York Times reported.
According to six current and former security officials, five of whom requested anonymity, the generals want time to rest their troops and stockpile ammunition in case a land war with Hezbollah breaks out. Additionally, the generals also view a truce as the best means of freeing the remaining hostages, contradicting Netanyahu’s insistence that only “total victory” over Hamas would bring the captives home.
“The military is in full support of a hostage deal and a ceasefire,” former Israeli National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata told the newspaper.
“They believe that they can always go back and engage Hamas militarily in the future,” he continued. “They understand that a pause in Gaza makes de-escalation more likely in Lebanon. And they have less munitions, less spare parts, less energy than they did before – so they also think a pause in Gaza gives us more time to prepare in case a bigger war does break out with Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah, a powerful Iranian-backed political movement and paramilitary force, entered the Israel-Hamas conflict last October. However, the group waged a limited campaign of tit-for-tat drone and missile strikes on northern Israel, which leader Hassan Nasrallah said in November was aimed at tying up Israeli forces near the border to prevent their deployment to Gaza.
Netanyahu announced last month that he would pull some IDF units out of Gaza and move them to the Lebanese border, stoking fears of an imminent invasion of Lebanon. Tension was further heightened last week when Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that the IDF was “preparing for every scenario” and could take “Lebanon back to the Stone Age.”
The US has reportedly warned against starting even a “limited war” in Lebanon, while Iran has declared that it would “support Hezbollah by all means” in such a conflict.
The Israeli military has not publicly endorsed a ceasefire in Gaza. In a statement to the New York Times, the IDF said it was still working toward the destruction of “Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, the return of the hostages, and the return of Israeli civilians from the south and the north safely to their homes.” Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the report.
Hezbollah to stop fighting with Israel if Gaza cease-fire reached
Hezbollah would stop fighting with Israel if it reaches a full cease-fire in Gaza, the Lebanese group's deputy leader said Tuesday.
"If there is a cease-fire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in an interview with The Associated Press at the group’s political office in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Hezbollah's participation in the Israel-Hamas war has been as a "support front” for its ally, Hamas, Kassem said, and "if the war stops, this military support will no longer exist.”
But, he said, if Israel scales back its military operations without a formal cease-fire agreement and full withdrawal from Gaza, the implications for the Lebanon-Israel border conflict are less clear.
"If what happens in Gaza is a mix between cease-fire and no cease-fire, war and no war, we can’t answer (how we would react) now, because we don’t know its shape, its results, its impacts,” Kassem said during a 40-minute interview.
In recent weeks, with Gaza cease-fire talks faltering, fears have increased of an escalation on the Lebanon-Israel front. Hezbollah has traded near-daily strikes with Israeli forces along their border over the past nine months. The low-level conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Months of internationally brokered Gaza cease-fire talks have repeatedly failed. Hamas has demanded an end to the war, and not just a pause in fighting, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to make such a commitment.
Last month, the Israeli army said it has "approved and validated” plans for an offensive in Lebanon if no diplomatic solution is reached to the ongoing clashes. Any decision to launch such an operation would have to come from the country’s political leadership.
Some Israeli officials have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the standoff and hope to avoid war. At the same time, they have warned that the scenes of destruction seen in Gaza will be repeated in Lebanon if war breaks out.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is far more powerful than Hamas and is believed to have a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
Kassem said he doesn't believe that Israel has the ability or has made a decision to launch a war at present. He warned that even if Israel intends to launch a limited operation in Lebanon that stops short of a full-scale war, it should not expect the fighting to remain limited.
"Israel can decide what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war,” he said. "But it should expect that our response and our resistance will not be within a ceiling and rules of engagement set by Israel... If Israel wages the war, it means it doesn’t control its extent or who enters into it.”
The latter was an apparent reference to Hezbollah’s allies in the Iran-backed so-called "axis of resistance” in the region. Armed groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere - and, potentially, Iran itself - could enter the fray in the event of a full-scale war in Lebanon, which might also pull in Israel’s strongest ally, the United States.
German intelligence official, Hezbollah deputy meet in Beirut
Kassem and the vice president of Germany's intelligence service, Ole Diehl, met in Beirut amid growing tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Hezbollah sources confirmed the meeting to dpa following reports in local media.
Further details were initially not known.
Germany's intelligence service did not provide any more details, explaining it generally does not comment publicly on matters relating to any intelligence findings or activities.
According to local media, the deputy German intelligence chief was accompanied by the director of the German intelligence station in Beirut.
In this context, sources indicated to al-Akhbar, a newspaper very close to Hezbollah, that the discussions in the meeting did not lead to any serious results. It also said the Germans were unable to persuade Hezbollah to cease its operations or to promote the idea of "front separation."
According to an AFP tally, at least 481 people have died in Lebanon as a result of the Israel-Hezbollah clashes since Oct. 7, including 94 civilians.
On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to Israel.
Yemen's Houthis say they attacked 4 ships linked to Israel, US, UK
Group says it used cruise missiles to attack vessels, achieved direct hits
Yemen's Houthi group announced Monday that they carried out military operations targeting four ships in the Red, Arabian and Mediterranean Seas and Indian Ocean in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
In a statement, the group's military spokesman Yahya Saree said its fighters targeted vessels “linked with the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel” with cruise missiles and achieved direct hits.
It noted that it attacked the Israeli ship MSC Unific in the Arabian Sea, the American oil tanker Delonix in the Red Sea, the British landing ship “Anvil Point” in the Indian Ocean and the vessel Lucky Sailor in the Mediterranean Sea, without specifying which country it was associated with.
The Houthis have been targeting ships that are Israeli-owned, flagged, operated or headed to Israeli ports with missiles and drones in solidarity with Gaza, which has been under a devastating Israeli onslaught since Oct. 7.
With the US and UK launching retaliatory airstrikes against Houthi sites inside Yemen, the Houthis declared that they consider all American and British ships military targets.
Killing The Word: Gaza Journalists Go Down One by One
by Dr Marwan Asmar
The latest journalist to be killed in Gaza is Mohammad Abu Sharia. News of his death hikes the number of journalists to be killed by Israeli warplanes and army since 7 October to 153.
Abu Sharia, a media man with the local Shams News agency, was seriously injured in a strike targeting his home, Saturday, and succumbed to his wounds on Monday, Gaza’s government media office stated according to the Anadolu.
The killing of journalists in Gaza has been systematic over the past months as part of Israel’s “muzzling policy to silence the voice of the truth,” stated one tweet online.
The Israeli army has deliberately targeted journalists and media institutions in Gaza to try and cover up their atrocities in different parts of the Gaza Strip that resulted in the mass killing of civilians and the destruction of the homes, houses, buildings and headquarters of the Gaza Strip.
PressTV reported that Abu Sharia headed the editorial department in the Shams agency and lived in the Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City before the Israelis bombed his house.
Abu Sharia was initially taken to the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in central Gaza City, before he was transferred to the Indonesian Hospital due to the seriousness of his injuries, Press TV reported but didn’t make it there.
The killing of journalists in Gaza has been the biggest number in recorded history of any conflict, says one British journalist. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the war in Gaza has become “the deadliest for journalists” since it began documenting journalist killings worldwide in 1992.
A salute must be made also to the women journalists covering one of the deadliest wars ever experienced in Gaza, the Palestinian territories and the region. One writer points to such local names as Maha Husseini, Hind Al Khoudary, Bisan Owda and more. They are reporting under extreme extreme conditions of “bombardment, displacement, grief and trauma,” in pursuit of getting out the word to the world.
These names of such journalists like Hanneen Harara reporting on the killing of her 12-member family in Nuseirat, Shurooq al-Aila, Nafith Okasha, Sari Mansour, Hassouna Saleem, Mahammed Abu Hatab, Salem Abu Tayur, Ayat Khudoura are just few of those who were killed in line of active duty of reporting.
Strange in this war is that the journalists were local people, born and bred. We have been receiving news about the Gaza genocide and ethnic cleansing through their eyes and no one else’s. It is they, and up till now who are reporting on the war against Gaza and its people.
No western journalist has been able to enter Gaza and cover this war independently. Of the few that were allowed to enter Gaza for a short while, did so as embedded journalists with the Israeli army which meant they were heavily censored and were not allowed to report on their own free will.
Ayat Khudoura, a young journalist from Biet Lahia in north Gaza may have predicted her death in the last video she made because of the terrible bombardment that the north was being subjected to.
“…I am still alive, but it’s only a matter of time for us in Gaza, there is no safe place here…. We are humans like everyone else in the world, we had big dreams. This might be my last video. Today, the occupation fired phosphorus at Biet Lahia and terrifying sound bombs. Me and a few members of my family stayed at home. This is very scary, It’s terrifying and very difficult. God have mercy.”
Alas, Khudoura was right. That was her last video. She was killed in an Israeli airstrike with her grandmother, her brother Ayoub, her sister Souad, and her brother Adham.
If journalists are not targeted on their own, they are targeted with their families with the express aim to shoot, bomb and kill and rob them of their lives and livlihoods.
Like the case with Abu Sharia, Muhamed Yaghi was targeted and killed with his wife and daughter last February. He was journalist no. 131 to be killed with his family and so continued the killing spree.
If journalists were not directly targeted for the time being then their families were. Before being forced out of Gaza, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief Wael Al Dahdouh was targeted and before that they killed his son, wife and daughter.
He was among many other journalists to have suffered. Abu Tayur was killed with his son but with journalist Mahmoud Abu Salama, the Israelis targeted his sister and her child, while journalist Abu Hatab lost 10 members of his family through an Israeli airstrike.
And the numbers keep growing by the day. Journalists and their families appear to be targeted through a controversial AI Levander system used by the Israeli army to identify what are termed as suspected militants and has been the cause of such killing and bombings that wiped out whole squares of houses and homes in communities of people.
They were seen as militants and therefore legitimate targets regardless of political affiliations. The AI Lavender, essentially a wide database, generated quick “kill lists” that jumbled people together and extended the militants with ordinary people and women and children.
Thus, journalists and their families, relatives and friends, and because of the datebase that was generated daily and instantly, served as targets for Israeli warplanes and target bombing and that explains why so many journalists have been killed in this war; and with the targeting likely to continue till the duration of this war.
Dr Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based journalist covering Middle East Affairs
https://countercurrents.org/2024/07/killing-the-word-gaza-journalists-go-down-one-by-one/
‘For the resistance’: Tulkarem residents face Israeli airstrikes and assassinations
Members of the Tulkarem resistance in the northern West Bank remain defiant as community members rally around them after an Israeli airstrike assassinated one of their leaders.
BY SHATHA HANAYSHA
On Monday, July 1, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the killing of a child and a woman and the injury of 4 Palestinians by the bullets of Israeli forces during a raid on Nur Shams refugee camp and Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
During the raid, which started on Sunday, June 30, Israeli aircraft bombed a house in Nur Shams, assassinating Saeed Ezzat Jaber, 24, one of the leaders of the Nur Shams Brigade.
The Nur Shams Brigade is an armed resistance group affiliated with the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“They cannot overpower us on the ground, so they resort to bombing and missiles with warplanes,” a member of the Nur Shams Brigade told Mondoweiss. “My message to the occupiers is that if they fight us from the sky, we will come out to them from below the earth.”
On Sunday afternoon, the Israeli aircraft bombed a house in the Al-Manshiyya neighborhood in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem, resulting in the killing of a young man and the injury of five others, two of whom are in critical condition.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army radio reported that a drone bombed an apartment it had been monitoring for some time, believing that members of the Nur Shams Brigade had been present. Local sources, however, said that the bombing was carried out by a missile from an Israeli warplane and that it targeted a three-story house.
Photos captured by Mondoweiss during the funeral of the martyred Jaber showed injuries to members of the Nur Shams Brigade who were present inside the house that was bombed and survived the assassination attempt.
One member of the Nur Shams Brigade told Mondoweiss that the airstrike was a cowardly assassination operation.
“After assassinating commander Saeed Ezzat, the occupation announced that its operation had failed because it did not succeed in killing the Brigade’s leader, Abu Shuja,” he said. “The occupation thinks that by killing us, it defeats us. But this is a victory for us. The occupation cannot overpower us on the ground, so it resorts to bombing and killing from the air.”
The Israeli army released a video of the moment the house was bombed in the al-Manshiyya neighborhood, one of the most densely packed neighborhoods in Nur Shams. The bombing caused damage to over 10 houses surrounding the targeted house.
While touring the neighborhood, Mondoweiss observed that dozens of homes were damaged. Some of the houses had their contents completely destroyed, and windows were shattered over residents’ heads.
Ali Abbas, who lives in al-Manshiyya, said that he woke up at exactly 2 p.m. to the sound of the bombing.
“We couldn’t comprehend what had happened,” he told Mondoweiss. “Dust filled the place, and the windows shattered over our heads. It was a powerful strike. We didn’t understand what had happened in the neighborhood. When we went out into the street, we found a three-story building completely bombed.”
Taghreed Amarne, another resident, told Mondoweiss that her house was only one meter away from the house targeted by the army, stating that she had been sleeping and woke up to find the rubble of her home and its furniture over her head, causing her to panic.
“There is no safety. I was in the bedroom, and my husband — he’s a man in his seventies. I started running like crazy looking for him over the glass,” Amarna said. “I give my home as a sacrifice to the resistance. What matters is that the fighters are safe. Money and houses can be replaced. I am not sad about my home. We are saddened by the loss of our young men. I don’t care about the house. We will remain steadfast in our homes, and we will not leave them until liberation.”
“We are like a miniature Gaza,” she adds. “Just as the Israelis bombed houses on them, today they bombed ours. They bombed us while feeling safe in their homes…but this will not make us retreat or leave our homes. On the contrary, what happened today made me hold onto my home even more because I know I am in the right.”
Resistance strikes back
Early on Monday, Israeli forces also stormed the city of Tulkarem, besieging the entrances to the Nur Shams refugee camp and deploying snipers on residential buildings. Palestinian resistance engaged in armed clashes with the invading forces.
Israeli military vehicles headed towards Nur Shams, imposing a siege on the camp. Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers destroyed infrastructure within the camp and along the adjacent street. They also began to sabotage and excavate main roads in Tulkarem.
Israeli soldiers raided several homes and high-rise buildings surrounding the camp, deploying snipers on rooftops. Confrontations erupted at the entrance of Tulkarem refugee camp as military vehicles passed nearby, accompanied by the sound of explosions in the area.
Journalists’ cameras captured the towing of an Israeli military armored vehicle, a Panther-model troop, which had been hit by a homemade explosive device in Nur Shams.
The same model of military vehicle was destroyed in Jenin last week when the Jenin Brigade conducted a ﾓdouble ambushﾔ that killed an Israeli officer and injured 16 other soldiers.
The al-Quds Brigades in the West Bank announced through its Telegram channel that its fighters in the Tulkarem Brigade continued to confront the Israeli forces that stormed the Nur Shams camp from the early hours of the morning.
In its statement, the Brigade announced that its fighters had damaged Israeli military vehicles during the raid, stating, “The world saw today on its screens how we turned their military pride and armored carriers into a laughing stock, dragged away in defeat.”
Israel's Gaza war displaced 1.9M Palestinians: UN
UN humanitarian coordinator says Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza has said that 1.9 million people were now displaced in the territory, adding she was "deeply concerned" by reports of new expulsion orders for Khan Younis.
"Over 1 million people have been displaced once again, desperately seeking shelter and safety (and) 1.9 million people are now displaced across Gaza... I'm deeply concerned about reports of new evacuation orders issued in the area of Khan Younis," Sigrid Kaag told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
The United Nations has estimated that up to 250,000 people are impacted by the Israeli military order for civilians to leave Al Qarara, Bani Suhaila and other localities near the territory's second city of Khan Younis.
"Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering. Their homes life shattered, their lives upended. The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery," Kaag added.
She said that not enough aid was reaching the war-torn enclave and that the opening of new crossings, particularly to southern Gaza, was necessary to avert a humanitarian disaster.
Kaag said the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt should be re-opened and also pleaded with the international community to do more to fund relief efforts.
Battle after expulsions
Israel's Gaza war started on October 7 after Palestinian resistance forces attacked southern Israel and killed 1,195 people, according to anﾠAFPﾠtally based on Israeli figures.
Israel's war has killed at least 37,925 people, mostly children and women, according to data from the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.
Israel has not specifically said there will be a military offensive in southern Gaza, but so far nearly every military order has heralded major battles.
https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/israels-gaza-war-displaced-19m-palestinians-un-18179318
Islamic Jihad fires multiple rockets as Israeli tanks move deeper into Gaza
Violence flared in the occupied West Bank as Israel killed more Palestinian people in the city of Tulkarm.
The Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad has fired a barrage of rockets into Israel as fighting raged in Gaza, and Israeli tanks advanced deeper in parts of the enclave, residents and officials said.
The armed wing of the group said its members fired rockets on Monday towards several Israeli communities near the fence with Gaza in response to "the crimes of the Zionist enemy against our Palestinian people".
The volley of around 20 rockets caused no casualties, the Israeli military said.
Violence also flared on Monday in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Health Ministry said that Israel killed a woman and a boy in the city of Tulkarem.
A day earlier, an Israeli strike in the same area killed an Islamic Jihad member.
Israeli tanks deepened incursions into the Shujaiah suburb of eastern Gaza for a fifth day, and tanks advanced further in western and central Rafah, in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt, residents said.
Hamas said its fighters had lured an Israeli force into a booby-trapped house in the east of Rafah and blown it up, causing casualties.
Ceasefire efforts stalled
The Israeli forces announced the death of a soldier in southern Gaza without providing details.
Israel's Army Radio said the soldier was killed in Rafah in a booby-trapped house - a possible reference to the incident reported by Islamic Jihad.
Also, in Rafah, the Israeli forces said that an air strike killed a Hamas member who fired an anti-tank missile at its troops.
Arab mediators' efforts to secure a ceasefire, backed by the United States, have stalled.
Hamas says any deal must end the war and bring a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in the war until Hamas is eradicated.
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
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Prof. Arthur Scott
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