Daily Sabah – June 18, 2024
Israel continues to pound Gaza with deadly strikes during Eid
At least 13 Palestinians were killed in deadly Israel strikes in Gaza Tuesday as the Muslims marked Eid al-Adha.
The deaths came despite an Israeli announcement at the weekend of a daily "pause" of military activity to facilitate aid flows coincided with the Islamic holiday.
In central Gaza, witnesses reported gunfire and artillery shelling near the Nuseirat refugee camp, where the civil defense agency said at least 13 people died in two separate strikes on a family home and a commercial building.
Witnesses and the Hamas government media office said there were some strikes and fighting elsewhere in northern and central Gaza.
An Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent reported Israeli strikes near Gaza City, though the intensity had decreased recently.
In Rafah, where the Israeli military has said it would pause fighting along a key route in the city's east, witnesses saw Israeli military vehicles and reported shelling in other areas.
'Tactical pause'
The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion that caused the death of nearly 1,200 people and seized more than 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, in comparison, has killed more than 37,347 Palestinians, the Gaza Health Ministry said, and reduced most of the narrow, coastal enclave to wasteland, with malnutrition widespread.
The United Nations said that aid access to Gaza has been severely hindered by factors including insecurity, the closing of crossing points to the territory and Israeli procedural delays.
The vital Rafah crossing with Egypt has been shut since Israeli forces seized its Palestinian side in early May.
"The idea behind the tactical pause in general is to allow for the U.N. to collect and distribute more aid," said Shimon Freedman, spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body overseeing Palestinian civilian affairs, at Kerem Shalom crossing near Rafah.
Displaced Palestinian Ali Hassan, sheltering in a tent in central Gaza's Deir al-Balah, told AFP that "Eid al-Adha this year is not like previous holidays."
"There is no meat or sacrificial animals, we don't even have clothes for the children," he said.
Hostages 'alive'
In Jerusalem on Monday, thousands of Israelis protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government over its failure to negotiate the release of scores of hostages held in the Palestinian territory since the Oct. 7 incursion.
Demonstrators rallied outside the parliament and near Netanyahu's residence, demanding early elections and chanting "All of them! Now!" calling for the hostages' release, as U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediation efforts toward a truce deal have stalled for months.
"We need to shut down the country in order to make the government fall," said Yaacov Godo, whose son Tom was killed during the incursion, at the start of what activists describe as a week of anti-government action across the country.
The war should have stopped "a long time ago," and the return of the captives would "end this story," Godo said.
Israeli media said another rally was planned in front of the parliament building late Tuesday.
Meanwhile, in a message for Eid al-Adha, U.S. President Joe Biden has called for the implementation of a cease-fire plan he outlined last month, saying it was "the best way to end the violence."
Biden's proposal, which he has described as Israeli, would bring an initial six-week pause to fighting and Hamas would free hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
An Israeli negotiator told AFP that tens of hostages "are alive with certainty," stressing that Israel could not commit to ending the war until all the captives were released.
The Israeli official, requesting anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said Israel had approved Biden's plan though Netanyahu has not endorsed it publicly.
Hamas has insisted on the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and a permanent cease-fire. Netanyahu's far-right coalition partners strongly oppose a cease-fire.
Anadolu Agency – June 19, 2024
Israel rounds up 90 Palestinians in West Bank during Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday
At least 9,280 Palestinians detained by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian figures
The Israeli army detained 90 more Palestinians in military raids across the occupied West Bank during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club stated Wednesday.
Most of the arrests were made in the Hebron governorate in the southern West Bank, the club noted.
The new arrests have brought the total number of Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in the West Bank since last October to 9,280, according to Palestinian figures.
Tensions have been high across the occupied West Bank since Israel launched a deadly military offensive against the Gaza Strip which has killed nearly 37,400 people following an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year.
At least 548 Palestinians have since been killed and nearly 5,200 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied West Bank.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in an interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
World Socialist Web Site – June 19, 2024
Israeli regime preparing for all-out war with Hezbollah in Lebanon
by Jordan Shilton
A drastic escalation of tensions between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon over the past week has brought the prospect of an expansion of war across the Middle East ever closer. Following Israel’s assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander and a retaliatory rocket barrage fired on northern Israel, The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) released a statement Tuesday declaring that operational plans for a war in Lebanon have been approved.
Since the beginning of its genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Israel has exchanged almost daily fire with Hezbollah across the border. To date, Israeli air strikes and shelling have killed over 340 Hezbollah members and dozens of civilians in southen Lebanon, while Hezbollah rockets have killed just 10 Israeli civilians and 15 IDF soldiers. But the exchanges intensified markedly last week after Israel assassinated Taleb Abdullah, the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed since October. Hezbollah responded by striking the Mount Meron air traffic control base in northern Israel with Saturday, prompting the IDF to insist that “no harm to the unit’s capabilities” was caused by the attack.
ON Tuesday, Hezbollah released drone footage of military sites and civilian infrastructure in Haifa in what was seen as an exposure of the limits of Israel’s much-vaunted air defences in the north. Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded in a statement, “We are getting very close to the moment of deciding on changing the rules of the game against Hezbollah and Lebanon. In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely beaten.”
Later in the day, the IDF issued a statement indicating that an offensive into Lebanon is looming. “As part of the assessment of the situation, operational plans for the attack in Lebanon were approved and implemented and decisions were made to continue accelerating the readiness of the forces in the field,” it declared.
The Biden administration dispatched its special envoy for the Middle East, Amos Hochstein, to the region, where he held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and President Isaac Herzog Monday, before travelling on to Lebanon Tuesday. Herzog reportedly discussed with Hochstein “the urgent need to restore security to the northern border,” a euphemism for destroying Hezbollah.
While media reports presented Hochstein’s trip as an attempt to “deescalate” the conflict, the reality is that American imperialism is playing the most provocative role in propelling the Middle East towards a catastrophic region-wide war. Washington appears to be temporarily applying the brakes on its Israeli ally above all because it would prefer to have more time to cobble together an anti-Iranian alliance that includes the Arab Gulf states for war against Tehran. If its attack dog launches a war in Lebanon, however, American imperialism will undoubtedly back it to the hilt.
The entire Israeli political establishment wants war in Lebanon. The zionist agenda of a greater Israel, to be realised through the genocide in Gaza and further expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, also necessitates the crushing of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Netanyahu and his far-right government are determined to continue the genocide in Gaza and at the same time unleash a war on the northern front. Giving his fascist allies Bezalil Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir free reign, Netanyahu has overseen an explosion in settler vigilante violence in the West Bank and a military dragnet of raids and arrests that have claimed the lives of over 500 Palestinians and led to the detention of thousands.
National Unity leader Benny Gantz, who quit Netanyahu’s war cabinet June 9, favours concluding an agreement with Hamas to facilitate the waging of war in Lebanon. Chili Tropper, another National Unity member who quit the war cabinet with Gantz, recently told the New Yorker, “We want to strengthen the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and not destroy it like the government is doing. In Gaza, we propose to work with local Gazan forces. We have proposed the most far-reaching deal to bring the hostages home, not only because that is the right thing to do but so that we can then shift the focus of the war away from Gaza to the north.”
Netanyahu, who requires the continued support of his fascist allies to remain in power and avoid being criminally prosecuted, aims to cut the ground from under his rivals by expanding the war. By creating “facts on the ground,” he hopes to strengthen his political position.
Gantz, who was a war criminal long before he joined Netanyahu’s gang of genocidal murderers last October, fully endorses the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The National Unity members of the war cabinet backed last month’s offensive on Rafah, which displaced over 700,000 people. His faction has never criticised the horrific death toll among the Palestinians, more than 37,000 of whom have been massacred by the IDF. AS Tropper’s comments make clear, they are no less enthusiastic about a war in Lebanon.
American imperialism has fully endorsed and been complicit in the genocide from the outset. It views Israel’s “final solution” of the Palestinian question as a key component of the preparation of a region-wide war targeting Iran. This is why the Biden administration approved Israel’s provocative strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus in early April, which claimed the lives of senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members and forced the Islamic Republic to retaliate with a drone attack on Israeli bases that Tehran telegraphed to avoid an uncontrolled escalation. Washington hopes with this war to secure its hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East and strike a blow against its geostrategic rivals, including Russia but above all China.
Under both Trump and Biden, Washington has worked to bring together an anti-Tehran axis of states in the region, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This broader strategy is complicated by Netanyahu and his fascistic allies, whose refusal to even accept a token role for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and strike an agreement with Hamas to free the hostages make it much harder for Washington to persuade Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf Sheikdoms to join its anti-Iran alliance.
The Biden administration is therefore keeping its options open. During his visit to Israel, Hochstein met not only with Netanyahu and other government officials, but also with Gantz and opposition leader Yair Lapid, who has remained outside the war cabinet but also backs the genocide.
While it remains to be seen how the factional disputes over the best tactics for waging war in the Middle East will play out, there is no doubt about US imperialism’s push towards a region-wide conflagration–one that may erupt sooner rather than later if its Israeli attack dog invades Lebanon. While Hochstein was in the region being briefed on how Israel intends to “restore security,” launch a bloody onslaught, on its northern border, Democrats in Congress gave their approval for the dispatch of $18 billion worth of military equipment to the Zionist regime. The package includes 50 F-15 fighter jets.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, explained his support for the agreement that he had previously held up by saying that he is “supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself against the real threats posed by Iran and Hezbollah.”
The looming danger of war spreading to Lebanon and across the Middle East underscores the urgency of the fight to unify the working class throughout the region, across all religious, ethnic, and national lines, with workers in the imperialist centres of North America and Europe to stop the warmongers. The barbarism displayed by Israel and its imperialist backers in Gaza and the reckless fuelling of war in Lebanon and against Iran are expressions of a crisis-ridden social order. World capitalism is driving the major powers to engage in a redivision of the world for control over key resources and geostrategic influence. A global anti-war movement led by the working class must be built to counterpose the programme of world socialist revolution to the capitalists’ resort to war and fascism.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/06/19/tsdc-j19.html
How Many More Massacres Must We Palestinians Endure Here in Gaza?
by Haya Ismail
Al Nuseirat refugee camp is in the middle of the Gaza Strip, where Mediterranean waves brush up against one of our urban centers of life. Even before the Israeli invasion forced many to shelter there, causing Al Nuseirat to expand to a breaking point, the camp was already crowded with people just trying to survive. It is a camp full of children, who wander the open-air markets in the morning looking for food and trying to create a semblance of joy through play against the backdrop of rubble.
But in the blink of an eye, Israel turned Al Nuseirat refugee camp into another living hell for its young civilian population. The dreadful roaring sounds of raining missiles and bullets reached far outside of the camp, signaling yet another air raid. This one, we would soon learn, was targeting the perimeter of Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al Balah. Could the hospital withstand another influx of injured people fighting for their lives? Would the ambulances even be able to reach them?
The doctors working at Shuhada al-Aqsa—intimately aware of the Al Shifa hospital massacre—were terrified that history could repeat itself in one of the last functioning medical centers in the Gaza Strip. Just like at Al Shifa, Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital had become a refuge for not only patients, but also for the many who had found shelter there, tents pitched in the hospital yard. The hospital grounds were crowded with people, including journalists—they emptied out in seconds just as Israel was about to bomb one of the tents. It was one of the last “safe” places in Gaza.
We Palestinians don’t stop asking ourselves where to go next, and we are running out of options.
Central Gaza has endured relentless airstrikes, ground bombardment, and naval assaults—countless civilians lost in the streets because they didn’t know where to go in the so-called “safe zone.” They had evacuated to camps like Al Nuseirat after Israel started targeting Rafah, the previous “safe zone.” However tired, sick, and angry we are, we still go from one “safe zone” to the next and back again—because we want to be safe and we want our families to be safe.
We want to live.
Some Israeli forces entered Al Nuseirat camp under the disguise of a U.S. aid truck, after the U.S. built a humanitarian pier to provide basic aid to Gaza. It is hard enough to know that the U.S. is supporting Israel’s military attacks against us by sending them funds and weapons. And it is harder still to see “humanitarian” infrastructure used to enact massacres in which the U.S. is complicit. In this way, even the international health sector is sustaining and profiting from the genocide in Gaza.
It adds insult to injury that influential governments are trying to frame this operation—this massacre against a refugee camp—as a “rescue mission.” Murdering more than 270 displaced and innocent people living in unthinkable conditions can never justify a rescue mission. Such could have been achieved instead by accepting ceasefire resolutions linked to reasonable demands.
We often wonder: how many more people will be murdered before Israel feels it has defeated us enough to feel victorious? The Israeli attack on Al Nuseirat happened in an instant, killing some 270 people and injuring at least 700 more in about an hour. The local market was instantly turned into a graveyard with bodies and body parts strewn across the pavement. They were murdered in cold blood.
Mohammed Jehad, a civil engineer working for UNRWA, was servicing the displacement shelters when the attack occurred. “It suddenly got dark under the sun of broad daylight,” he recalled. “I saw nothing but blood on the ground after tens of missiles were dropped over the space of a kilometer and buildings were smashed to the ground over the heads of the families living inside.”
When the tanks started approaching, the people of Al Nuseirat ran in opposite directions, staying low to the ground in an attempt to escape the Apache and quadcopters that hovered overhead. But they soon realized that they were encircled by Israeli forces. Mohammed was among those trapped in the area. “I was moving away from the tanks, but then two missiles dropped in the middle of the street,” he explained, adding, “people fell dead and injured all around me. It was the worst thing I have ever experienced and I still can’t believe I am alive.”
The forces finally retreated, leaving nothing but carnage in their wake. And the people of Al Nuseirat loaded their injured and dead loved ones onto donkey carts, bound for Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital. Here in Gaza, we are all broken and we are all martyrs to be. As we mourn the lives lost, we think about how much worse it has to get before the world finally says enough is enough. How many more people must die? How many more children have to lose their mothers, fathers, and body parts? How many more hospitals need to be turned into killing fields?
How many more massacres must we endure?
Haya Ismail is a young Palestinian writer and English literature student in Gaza. Throughout her lifetime she has been involved in many programs, clubs, courses, and initiatives. She is an Access program alumni who hopes to grow her writing skills into a career. Haya and her family have been displaced several times in Israel’s current round of attacks on the Gaza Strip, which have also destroyed her university. She is determined to continue writing to add to the voice of her beloved Palestine and its people.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gaza-massacre-al-nuseirat
Middle East Monitor – June 18, 2024
Biden Administration concerned Israel will drag US into War with Lebanon
The administration of United States’ president Joe Biden has grown increasingly concerned that Israel could drag the US into a war in Lebanon, as Tel Aviv continues to escalate tensions on its northern border and scale up attacks on Hezbollah.
According to CBS Newsﾠ, anonymous US officials informed it that the Biden administration views the increasing strikes by Israel’s military on southern Lebanon as the precursor of a full-scale invasion of the country and war with it. Such an event, the officials said, would require the US to intervene and directly support Israel in order to help it win the conflict.
Some of the officials also posed the possibility that the war would be an unintentional one, with Hezbollah potentially retaliating in such a decisive way to the increased Israeli strikes that it inevitably leads to a more direct conflict.
The growing concern amongst officials in the Biden administration comes after months of such fears that the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip could spill over into the wider region and develop into a regional war, particularly one in which external powers like the US would become more directly involved within a military capacity.
With Israel’s assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander this week – reportedly the most high-ranking to be killed since the start of recent hostilities – alongside the increased strikes on the border region, the US is apparently beginning to see those fears being realised. Washington is, therefore, reportedly placing its hopes in a ceasefire deal, which Israel has repeatedly been avoiding.
“The most important thing about the hostage release and ceasefire deal that’s on the table now is that if it’s achieved, it can have an impact in the north [of Israel], so that is an opportunity for us to be able to bring this conflict to a full close”, said one senior US official. “There has to be an agreement that allows Israelis to return to their homes in the North with security guarantees”.
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