Israel: Turn Right for the Abyss

Two partisan views that fail to address how Israel reached this point in its history where mass murder is its only policy, or how and why Palestinians who succeed at so many things fail at politics. Not quite a dialogue of the deaf, but with enough contentious nonsense to suggest a rational comprehension of what is happening now, and what might happen over the next year is buried under a ton of verbal rubble out of which not even a corpse of truth can be found that is worth resurrecting.

FH Hinsley, in Power and the Pursuit of Peace, asks you, re the origins of the First World War, to contrast an occasion with a cause- the assassination in Sarajevo was the occasion, but the cause lay deeper, in the ambitions of the European Empires: a framework that can help explain the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. An intelligent perspective you won’t find here, but here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beOiJcG0UMk

I am not surprised that Netanyahu has rejected any claim to a Palestinian State, he has opposed it his entire life.

The problems:

a) if Israel's Govt in its present form rejects any version of a Palestinian state, what does it want for the Palestinians? Set aside the blood-curdling elimination proposals of some of the Cabinet, and you have to ask: if Palestinians are to live, where are they to live?

b) if Palestinians and their supporters do want a Palestinian state, where will it be and who will live there? Will the eastern border be the River Jordan? Where will the Southern border be, in fact, where will any borders be, if, for example, Israel's security needs mean it will not stop policing the borders with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon?

In a Palestinian state will there be any Jewish Settlers, eg, those who have created the illegal settlements since 1967? If they were to go, where would they go?

c) are we looking at a proposal that means, in effect, two states which do or do not allow its citizens to travel freely one from the other, including Jerusalem of course, which offers job and education opportunities to all?

d) My proposal remains on the table: no two state or one state solution, but a Confederation of Israel and Palestine, modelled on Switzerland. Equality for all.

Right now it seems nobody wants to talk about it, and no doubt Hamas with its insane violence and hatred is shaping the debate as much as Netanyahu's Fascist fantasies. But without a sane alternative, there is no sanity, no peace, only war, and the misery of war.

No surprises that Netanyahu has declared 'the war goes on', even as he struggles to keep his wartime coalition government together. The problem is that Fascists don't know the meaning of compromise, and regard negotiations as appeasement, though Netanyahu is as usual, treating the US President with contempt on the basis he can rely on a lobbied Congress to meet his demands. For Netanyahu the White House is an irrelevance.

Given that Netanyahu attends the annual 'celebration' of the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 which killed 91 people including Arabs, the British who worked there (it was the HQ of the Mandate authority) -and Jews, 17 of them, does it mean Netanyahu sees the Hostages as a priority? No. Would it benefit him if they were murdered? For sure, it would justify even more punishment than the Palestinians have suffered so far.

All going to plan -trash Gaza, make life there impossible, paving the way for the expulsion of the population, for I don't see any other conclusion on his agenda.

Netanyahu rules out ceasefire deal that would mean Gaza withdrawal | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

I think it was a mistake for South Africa to launch a court action arguing that Israel was committing Genocide in Gaza, just as I do not agree with the argument that Israel is practising a form of Apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank.

In the latter case, Apartheid intended to re-locate Africans in the Cape and the Transvaal to their own 'Homelands' or Bantustans, in effect autonomous states, something that Israel has never contemplated in either Gaza or the West Bank.

What Israel has is a form of segregation that began with the first Aliyah in the 1880s when the first 'Colonist Farmers' arrived to discover that the land was not empty and undeveloped, but populated and farmed. The first Colonist Farmers avoided interacting with the Arabs as much as they could, and as the Jewish population grew over time, so they were able to create an economy separate from the Arab, and I daresay the Arabs were not that interested in interacting with the Jews, so that for the best part of a century the two communities have led parallel lives.

What has changed since 1967 in particular, is the extent to which successive Israeli governments have backed away from the logic of offering the Arabs equal citizenship and equal rights, just as the Palestinians have tended to reject anything that looks like they are willing to give up some cherished hope of independence from Israel. The Peace Treaty of 1993 might have worked if the Israeli Govt had been willing to trade land for peace in actuality, but Rabin was murdered soon after and with that the next generation of leaders rejected peace in favour of war.

Not a genocidal war, but a war of attrition which is intended to make life for the average Palestinian either difficult or impossible, through a raft of measures from cutting off the water supply on the West Bank for two weeks every summer, from the personal insults and threatening behaviour Greeks and Armenians in the Old City experience almost daily, mostly from the Settlers; to the demolition of homes, the imprisonment without trial of adults and children, the withholding of tax revenues impoverishing the Palestinian Authority, and at a more extreme level the attacks on Palestinian homes in the rural West Bank, often of Bedouin forced to abandon their way of life, only to be hounded or even murdered out of their homes by armed settlers, of the kind sanctioned by the US today (Feb 2nd).

Just as in Gaza Israel is demolishing apartment blocks, with the aim to prevent anyone returning to live there, the tactic today is the same as it has been for more than 50 years, while some in the Israeli Govt openly declare the Palestinians must be forced out of the country altogether.

This is not genocide, and it is a pity that critics of Israel do not base their judgments on the actual history of Israel and the Palestinians, just as the weakness of the PA has been a tragic let down for the Palestinians on the West Bank, giving the 'virile' Hamas the aura of strength, even as this extremist group attempts to change the agenda using the violence that has achieved nothing in over 100 years. Ignorance and emotion don't make a good case in Court. It is even worse on the streets.

Two articles which I think are worth reading.

The first is an intense look at the history and structure of Hamas, and goes some way to explaining how the decision to launch the attack on October 7th came out of the rift in the movement between its military wing in Gaza and the political leadership based in Qatar that developed after 2007. It goes some way to arguing that in 2006 and for a time after when Hamas won the elections in Gaza, it spoke with a more moderate tone, was prepared to negotiate with Israel, in effect behave as its 'parent' body the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had done over the years when it abandoned the 'armed struggle' to integrate itself into Parliamentary politics there.

That said, the kind of Govt Israel had in those years was never going to negotiate -not openly- with Hamas, and maybe they knew that. Either way, the military and militant Islamist faction began to dominate Hamas and use money from Iran and Qatar as part of a long term strategy to develop a significant military capability with greater facility than the more or less useless missiles lobbed into Israel over the years, but clearly it miscalculated the impact of its attack on October 7th, both in terms of Israel's response, and the lack of response from its supposed allied in Lebanon, though I don't know they counted an intervention in Red Sea shipping by the 'Houthi' movement in the Yemen which has complicated the conflict and given it a dimension Hamas may not have wanted.

Ultimately, Hamas is another version of the Revolutionary Islamism which has its roots in the failures of the liberal trend evident in the late 19thc through to the 1950s, that Albert Hourani examined in his classic book -a book few people read these days- but in this case has doomed its future in Gaza as a Governing authority, be it by the ballot box or the bomb. Satloff, writing in October 2023 is right to present the current war as the most serious since 1948, but evidently did not expect Israel to lay waste the most of the Gaza District, so far from thinking Hamas might be a spent force there and some other form of political authority run the District, it is now not clear if the District can sustain any significant population, the question 'Where are these people to live?' being as yet unanswered by Israel. Similarly I doubt even Satloff imagined that at this stage Israel would be losing friends rather than making them, while he might also not have considered the possibility that Israel may go bankrupt as the costs of the war escalate, with another unanswered question being that of compensation though there will be no re-building in Gaza if it remains a waste land.

Lastly, both articles fail to locate the current conflict in the wide context that was provided by the end of Ottoman Rule in 1918 and the creation of Palestine by the British who at the time made it clear they did not believe the Arabs capable of ruling themselves 'under the strenuous conditions of the modern world' as the Mandate so famously and insultingly put it. The Statehood that was given to multiple successors to the Empires in Europe was never offered to the Arabs, and they have never forgotten it, while for some a Palestinian State is thus the logical correction of an historical wrong, though as yet nobody knows where this State will be, let alone how it intends to function.

For those reading this thread, I do hope you will take time to read these two articles.

The Road to October 7: Hamas’ Long Game, Clarified – Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Regime Change, Israeli-Style | The Washington Institute

The Basic Law that was passed by the Knesset in 2018 attempted to establish what the phrase a 'Jewish State' means in law and in the context of Jewish history, and was seen as an attempt to upgrade the Declaration of Independence of 1948, the basis on which Israel claims to be a democratic state that recognises the rights of all. The problems have been dealt with at length, not least because of a statement made in the Knesset after the original text of the law was amended-

"Upon presenting the reformed bill, Chairman Ohana stated: "This is the law of all laws. It is the most important law in the history of the State of Israel, which says that everyone has human rights, but national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people".
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People - Wikipedia

How one distinguishes between National Rights and Human Rights is rather obviously not clear, while this detailed examination suggests enough sophistry to satisfy all but those who see in the Basic Law a difference between meaning, in legal terms, and Intent in political terms.
Understanding Israel’s Nation State Law (jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

The point of interest for me today, is that for all of Likud's declarations, the 'Jewish State' can't actually function without non-Jews, yet it is also clear that the foreign workers on which Israel is now dependent -notably in domestic service/care homes (mostly Filipinos), Agriculture (South-East Asia, especially Thailand), and Construction (India, other Asian countries)- do not, indeed, cannot have equal rights with Israeli citizens.

Moreover, in the case of the workers from India, it may not surprise anyone that there are no Muslims working in construction, and that the better relations Israel and India have, may be due, in part, to the civil war against India's Muslims that has been waged for some years now by the BJP and Narendra Modi, one of the nastiest men in world politics. They see a common enemy with which to make a common cause, though in India's case it is also a huge population of unemployed youth.

That said, Israel is hardly alone in wanting its National cake to taste good for its National people, while offering yesterday's crumbs to the 'guests' working their asses off, even when relative to their home economy, they are actually doing well financially. But follow the money, and those precious National Rights and all that waffle disappear down a rabbit hole of political hypocrisy.

As for the Palestinians, was there ever a clearer view that Israel just wants the lot of them gone, using whatever means possible?

‘We do not have many options’: unease over Israel’s recruitment of Indian labourers (msn.com)

Chuck Schumer thinks Netanyahu has 'lost the plot' and no longer serves Israel's best interests...hmmm....when did Netanyahu ever do that? Schumer must surely know Netanyahu rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty -as did HAMAS- thereby signalling, along with Ariel Sharon at the time, that war was their preferred option -on the basis of course, they would always win.

But Schumer also advocates a 'two state solution' that has a 'de-militarised Palestinian State' --in other words, or maybe I got this wrong, Palestinians can have their own State but not their own army, so how do they defend themselves against anyone who attacks them? How can Israel be relied on to secure a Palestinian State? And where is this State going to be, who will demarcate its borders? Will there be free trade with Israel, free movement of people, free movement of capital and goods?

This is just lip service to a dead idea, from someone who should know better. I would write to him with my solutions, but I doubt he would read or respond to them. As for Netanyahu, I don't think he cares one way or the other what Schumer thinks.

The war goes on. The killing goes on. The roads destroyed; homes and schools (no child has gone to school since October last year) destroyed; shops and businesses destroyed; mosques churches cultural centres -destroyed. All according to plan.

Who has the courage to stand outside that wall that was build to create the Zoo called Gaza, and say 'Netanyahu, Tear Down this Wall, and Set the People Free!'--?

Not you, Chuck.

His comments are in this link

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer calls for new leadership and elections in Israel because Netanyahu is an 'obstacle to peace' (msn.com)

Well would you Adam and Eve it, here is Jared Kushner, the co-author of that business deal packaged as a new era in Middle East Peace (!) dubbed the 'Abraham Accords' -Jared, Dad and Brother all have financial interests to protect in Israel and the Illegally Occupied West Bank...

...offering an audience at Harvard his wisdom on Gaza- because Telegraph articles are normally locked behind a paywall, I have copied all of it here.

A few comments:

1) "If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war,” he added.“But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.” People have been living in Gaza for thousands of years, and in this 'construct' was St Porphyrius, one of the oldest Christian churches in the region -a church was built here in the 5th century, the latest in the 12th century - before Israel bombed it -
Church of Saint Porphyrius - Wikipedia
‘We were baptised here and we will die here’: Gaza’s oldest church bombed | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera

2) "“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” --Repeat: "a little bit unfortunate" -makes you wonder what a lot would be.

3) "He suggested that establishing a Palestinian state “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
A top priority for Israel, he said, should be moving civilians out of Rafah, and persuading Egypt to accept refugees “with diplomacy”.
In addition, he said the Jewish state should move displaced Gazans to the Negev desert in southern Israel."
--Does Kushner think Palestinians must accept being in a single state called Israel where they do not have equal rights, or any of the rights they would have in a State of their own?
--The Negev was populated by Bedouin Arabs, until Israel began forcing them to give up a way of life practised for thousands of years, so they could move in settlers -one wonders if Netanyahu thinks re-populating the Negev with the displaced from Gaza is a good idea, and needless to say, Kushner did not ask a single Palestinian living by the sea in Gaza if they would like to swap their Mediterranean home for a tent in the desert. And I doubt he asked a single Israeli who lives in the Negev if they will welcome two million new neighbours...

The man claimed he had read 20 books on the Middle East before his 'business deal' -some of us have read (and written some of the) more than 2,000 books, chapters in books, articles, and those atrocious pamphlets both sides used to and probably still do produce. What a disgrace to civilization.

You can judge, as here it is, without the photos or the graphics, or the reader's comments about which there should be the usual mental health warning as Telegraph comments are often shall we say 'out there' on the fringes of respectability.


Gaza’s waterfront property could be ‘very valuable’, says Donald Trump’s son-in-law

Jared Kushner advises Israel to move territory’s civilians out to the desert, ‘then clean it up’
Rozina Sabur, DEPUTY US EDITOR19 March 2024 • 9:02pm


Gaza’s waterfront properties could be “very valuable”, Donald Trump’s son-in-law has said, as he suggested Israel rehouse displaced civilians in the desert.
Jared Kushner, a former property dealer who served alongside his wife Ivanka Trump as senior White House advisers to her father, also told an audience at Harvard University that a Palestinian state would be “a super bad idea”.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Mr Kushner said in a discussion chaired by Prof Tarek Masoud, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair.
His comments emerged after an international early warning system set up by governments and NGOs determined that half the population of Gaza was on the brink of famine.

Israel’s planned ground offensive in the border city of Rafah could leave around 1.1 million people facing “catastrophic” hunger, the UN-backed food security assessment warned.

The West has struggled to respond to the looming humanitarian catastrophe, with US and European aid airdrop efforts criticised as inefficient by some international aid organisations.
Earlier this month, Joe Biden announced the US would deliver aid to Gaza from a floating pier, but that too is fraught with logistical and security challenges. A US military ship is en route carrying building equipment.

Speaking at Harvard, Mr Kushner said: “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Asked about concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, would not allow Palestinians to return, Mr Kushner said: “Maybe.”
“I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war,” he added.
“But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
Mr Kushner also criticised “all the money” that had gone into the Hamas-run territory’s weapons stockpile and underground tunnel network instead of being used on education and innovation.
‘I would try to move people to the Negev’

He suggested that establishing a Palestinian state “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
A top priority for Israel, he said, should be moving civilians out of Rafah, and persuading Egypt to accept refugees “with diplomacy”.
In addition, he said the Jewish state should move displaced Gazans to the Negev desert in southern Israel.
“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
Prof Masoud asked if the proposal was something he would “try to work on”. Mr Kushner said: “I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now. And I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?”

The 43-year-old was an unpaid senior adviser in his father-in-law’s White House, and played a key role in brokering Mr Trump’s foreign policy approach in the Middle East.
While in the White House, he produced a 180-page Middle East peace plan that was three years in the making and included efforts to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It was endorsed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, but led the Palestinian Authority to cut ties with the US and Israel.
Mr Kushner’s remarks at Harvard on March 8 may give some indication of how Mr Trump will approach the Israel-Hamas war should he win back the White House.
Kushners will not serve again in White House

However, Mr Kushner and his wife have both kept a distance from Mr Trump’s 2024 campaign and have ruled out serving in a future Trump administration.
Israel has been waging its war in Gaza for more than five months following Hamas’s Oct 7 attack which killed about 1,160 Israelis, most of them civilians.
Around 130 hostages seized by the terror group are estimated to still be held in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
More than 31,800 Gazans, mostly women and children, have also been killed in the conflict according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Gaza's waterfront property could be 'very valuable', says Donald Trump's son-in-law (telegraph.co.uk)

Kushner has complained his comments have been taken out of context. He has posted a video of his talk on X, and it is here, though I always feel a but compromised when accessing Musk's platform for the kind of Neo-Nazis who would one assumes, want Kushner thrown out of the country. Maybe Kushner should have posted this on Father-in-Law's Pravda Sozial? Whatever.

Jared Kushner on X: "Two weeks ago, I had an engaging discussion with students and faculty at Harvard @Kennedy_School on the conflict in the Middle East, and the need for open intellectual discourse on American college campuses. https://t.co/QjRdZS7jyR https://t.co/iYIgeo0vrc" / X (twitter.com)

So many news items, so little advance.

-Biden complains to Israel, but the arms from the US keep going.
-Suella Braverman says there is no starvation in Gaza, Israel's bombing is precise and targeted. Doesn't explain why Israel has bombed schools, Christian churches, Mosques, cultural centres, and Roads, making the movement of people and goods more difficult than it was before.
-Allegations Israel uses an AI targeting system 'Lavender' -the one that killed the World Kitchen aid workers by mistake- are being denied, while others, of course, say it was indeed a targeted killing.
-600 legal experts have told the UK Govt supplying arms to Israel may be a violation of international law and should stop. The volume of arms is small, but it does include spare parts and other elements of the missile systems used by F-15 jets.
-One report claims Netanyahu wanted to instal a military govt in Gaza, but was overruled by the IDF.
-Another that the 'campaign against Rafah' hasn't happened and talk of it may just be threats.

What we don't know -where will the Palestinians of Gaza live? If they remain in Gaza, what form of policing will there be as law and order has been replaced by gang warfare in some if not all areas, HAMAS being now incapable of imposing order on the District.

Will Israel create a 'buffer zone' in the North to distance Palestinians from the Israeli border?

Given Gaza is in a state of collapse, what plans are there to revive it?

I take the view that from the start, the aim was to expel all Palestinians from the Gaza District, either to Egypt or to Jordan. The hard core Fascists in the Israeli Govt don't want anyone living in Gaza, or if they do, Settlers from other parts of Israel, with the long-cherished aim of the expulsion of non-Jews from the West Bank becoming less of a dream and more or a reality. Because Netanyahu has lost the plot. His containment strategy has failed, but with neither side interested or committed to meaningful negotiations, for the release of the Hostages, for an end to the war, for a post-war settlement, we are left with the bleak reality -

HAMAS and Likud rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty, opting for war. And that is what they have, even as we see them unable to use it to get what they want. And though Israel remains the stronger militarily, it is socially divided and facing, in the long term, the economic reality that it cannot finance this war indefinitely. As for the Palestinians, who knows what they want, when they remain ineffective, weak, lacking international friends and the resources to be anything other than second class citizens in the de facto One State (non-Solution that has existed since 1967.

The propaganda continues, the deaths roll on. And nobody is ashamed of what they are doing.

Israel bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Iran vows retaliation, some voices wonder with fear if the Middle East is about to be plunged into war.

The attack was possible because Syria has no control of the sky above its country, it is vulnerable to attack from external parties because the Asad regime is mostly at war with the citizens of that country.

But it was also possible because the IDF have repeatedly warned Netanyahu against a direct strike against Iran. One wonders if Netanyahu has in effect dared Iran to attack Israel, thereby bringing the US into a military alliance with a single or joint military attack on Iran or an Iranian target, precisely to force the USA into doing something it doesn't want to do. Netanyahu is that kind of 'strategist', a man who acts out of desperation to try to solve the problems he has caused.

For HAMAS, this, in theory would bring the other Middle Eastern states into the conflict, only I doubt it. Most of the Middle Eastern states loathe Iran, and do not see anything positive in its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Asad regime in Syria, the so-called 'Houthi' rebels in Yemen, or their support for HAMAS, which is merely tactical as the Shi'a Muslims of Iran and the Sunni fanatics of HAMAS are ideological enemies at the best of times.

If there is no regional expansion of the war between Israel and HAMAS, it will deal another blow to the long term aim of HAMAS to demolish the status quo in their favour, and with Iran being seen as close to Russia, it is unlikely to find any supporters in the Gulf or Saudi Arabia.

Thus in an election year, Netanyahu may be playing a deadly game with President Biden, to see if he takes the bait and lures the US into a tit-for-tat exchange with Iran, probably through proxy targets in Iraq as happened under Trump. The irony is that for all their vocal support for Israel, most of Trump's supporters want an 'America First' that declines to get involved in foreign wars.

Netanyahu has said this is a war for Civilization, that if Iran wins the region will turn back 'to the dark'. The man has been pumping these existential propositions for years now, and we see the result- chaos and mass murder in Gaza, revolting slaughter, sex crimes and the abduction of hostages in Israel -at what point has the world had enough of this addiction to war, and why should anyone come to the rescue of a reckless Fascist who doesn't care how many people die, and will, like Trump insist he is right from now to the end of his times?

A long read from Rashid Khalidi. Here are two extracts

"Hamas’s philosophy of armed resistance is unlikely to disappear as long as there is no prospect of an end to military occupation, colonisation and oppression of the Palestinian people, or of a political horizon promising true Palestinian self-determination and equality. Thus, an upheaval that might have been a catalyst of change may in fact produce continuity of colonisation and occupation, of the Israeli establishment’s exclusive reliance on force, and of armed Palestinian resistance."

"One constant in the 100 years of this war is that Palestinians have not been allowed to choose who represents them. As in the past, their preferences may be unacceptable to the powers that be, whether Israel, the western states or their Arab clients. These powers are once again likely to attempt to impose their choice of who represents the Palestinians and who is not allowed to do so, with the Palestinians themselves having no voice in this decision. In the absence of Palestinian agreement on a unified and credible political voice representing a national consensus, this would mean that crucial decisions about the future of their people will be made by outside powers, as has happened so many times in the past."
‘A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

I wonder if the Americans who are using the slogan 'Genocide Joe' have a clue who would be their alternative, given that the US is not about to abandon Israel? It is gesture politics and not much else.

I also no longer support the use of the word 'Zionism' which I have concluded after many decades, is fiction. Israel always was a Nationalist project, nothing more and nothing less, which is why the Jewish aspect is so confusing as the Project has appealed to Jews who are secular as well as religious.

As for Iran, which does not get a mention here, I think the war-talk may just be designed to scare people, as I see little for Iran to gain in attacking Israel -Iran is loathed by most Arab countries in the region, and if it were to step over the mark, it would be an opportunity to severely downgrade its military capacity, as well as inflicting more damage on its economy -though this would be cast as 'defence of Israel', it would be seen as a diminution of Iran's ability to support its proxies in the region, and also weaken the Russians if Iran cannot continue to supply weapons, though the political support can continue.

In line with Netanyahu's 'war everywhere and always', all we can expect is a proxy war, in either Iraq or Syria and the casualties might be higher, though after more than 20 years of war I don't suppose people care very much who lives and who dies in those countries.

If Israel's bombing of Iranian sovereign territory in Damascus was a Tit, Iran's attack on Israel might be seen as a Tat. Although this is the first time Iran has launched an attack from its territory on Israel, it is not the first time Israel has conducted operations on Iran, in Iran in the case of the various assassinations of nuclear scientists.

Will Israel now go for another Tit on Iran, or a Tat-Tit? Probably, but as the Iranian knew most of, maybe all of their drones and missiles would not get past the Iron Dome, maybe Israel will attack a 'soft' target, one that confirms the gesture it needs to make, destroying some weapons plant or something that does not cause many human casualties. Iran hasn't killed anyone in Israel, as far as I know, unlike the attack in Damascus which killed Zahedi, much loved in Iran.

One could believe Biden will say Enough Already! to Netanyahu, on the basis that both Israel and Iran have made their point, but Netanyahu is desperate. Israel has killed a lot of HAMAS fighters, but the movement is still intact, and incredibly given the gruesome atrocities of October 7th, Israel's retaliation in Gaza has lost it a great deal of the sympathy it has had, to the extent that it is more isolated than it has been since the woeful attack on Lebanon in 1982, designed to destroy the PLO, and another failure, or the Intifada of 1988.

The Arab states not only could not care what happens to Iran, at least three, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have been giving covert assistance to Israel, in the form of intelligence and aerial mapping, bases in Qatar and Jordan enabling the US Air Force to intercept the drones and missiles Israel hasn't reached, and so on.

Iran, on the other hand, has lived up to its promise to punish Israel for the Damascus attack, falling for Netanyahu's gambit. But if the Arabs are on Israel and the US's side, Iran can probably count on support from Russia and China, which is the real cause of anxiety should this current Tit for Tat madness get out of control.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi in Yemen may step up a gear, but after the incident in the Straits of Hormuz, return to the 'Tanker War' that lasted from 1984 to 1988, potentially bringing the US into direct confrontation with Iran, is also one of Netanyahu's intentions but something people will want to avoid, as it will not only involve military confrontation but also affect the price of oil.

The other aim is to weaken Biden, given that Netanyahu has had a relationship with the Trump family going back decades, and because Trump is literally plain stupid, and can be easily manipulated. Netanyahu needs him in the White House, as he is more pliable and reliable than Biden.

One would have hoped that history reveal the pattern of mistakes that undermine the Tit and the Tat going on now, but neither Netanyahu nor Iran care much about history, or human lives for that matter.

It will be a tense week, but can anyone calm the fears people have? Biden called Netanyahu - why didn't he call the Ayatollah Khamene'i, or some other dude in the Supreme Council? After all, it was Zhou Enlai who called Kissinger when there was a danger the Russian and China Battle of Zhenbou in 1969 would escalate, and it transformed China's relations with the US, but I doubt Iran is in the mood for a new agenda, but then neither is Netanyahu.

So many better uses for Tits, so many reasons to avoid Tats.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari-

"“I want you to show me another country facing over 110 ballistic missiles, and the drones,” he said. “I think Iran meant to get results and didn’t get results. The ballistic missiles are an escalatory factor. And when they used these numbers they wanted more significant results than what happened.”."
Israel ‘ready to do what is necessary’ after massive drone and missile strikes from Iran – Middle East crisis live (theguardian.com)

Ukraine? And in how many countries are men, women and children imprisoned without trial, or corralled into areas encased in walls and policed by the army? Or where there the segregation of a city is official, as in Hebron?
H1 and H2 Two Sides of the Same City: Hebron, Palestine (wesaidgotravel.com)

None of the hate and violence is unique, but not all conflicts soaked in hate and violence gone on without end -"enough of blood and tears"? Anyone remember that?

By Oslo they lay down and wept, peace hopes 20 years on unfulfilled (youtube.com)

*An Israeli has claimed that Israel did not strike an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus. Online sources say it was an annex of the Embassy, but I assume in the international law of diplomacy, this remains 'sovereign' Iranian territory.
Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus - Wikipedia

*For those interested on the 'backstory' to the Tits and the Tats-
The strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria could be the spark that ignites the Middle East | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank

*As for this guy, what is he talking about? Does he even know? (no comment needed on the headline related to a convicted fraud running for President)-

"Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — a staunch ally to Mr Trump — has also attempted to pin Iran’s attacks on Mr Biden.“The Biden Administration’s undermining of Israel and appeasement of Iran have contributed to these terrible developments,” Mr Johnson said in a statement on Saturday evening." (My emphasis in Bold).
Trump says Iran attack on Israel ‘would never have happened if I were president’ (yahoo.com)

The Idiot has spoken-

"Donald Trump responded to Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel by reposting a 2018 all-caps tweet in which he threatened the president of Iran and said the US would not stand for “DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH.”“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” read the 2018 tweet."
Trump reposts 2018 all-caps anti-Iran threat in response to Israel strike | Donald Trump | The Guardian

What did this Firebrand President do in the aftermath of the USA's assassination of Qasem Suleimani, and Iran's retaliation on a US base in Iraq? Launch an attack the like of which had never been seen before in history?...or...

"n his first public comments on the attack, at 8:45 pm EST on 7 January, President Donald Trump tweeted "All is well!", said that damage assessments were ongoing, and added that he would make a statement on the attack the following morning...In his televised White House statement on 8 January, while being flanked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump sought to reduce tensions by downplaying the impact of the missile attacks, observing that Iran appeared to be "standing down", and ruling out a direct military response. Furthermore, Trump said he was willing to "embrace peace" and urged greater international cooperation in the region,"
Operation Martyr Soleimani - Wikipedia

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stavros

The Idiot has spoken-

"Donald Trump responded to Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel by reposting a 2018 all-caps tweet in which he threatened the president of Iran and said the US would not stand for “DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH.”“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” read the 2018 tweet."
Trump reposts 2018 all-caps anti-Iran threat in response to Israel strike | Donald Trump | The Guardian

What did this Firebrand President do in the aftermath of the USA's assassination of Qasem Suleimani, and Iran's retaliation on a US base in Iraq? Launch an attack the like of which had never been seen before in history?...or...

"n his first public comments on the attack, at 8:45 pm EST on 7 January, President Donald Trump tweeted "All is well!", said that damage assessments were ongoing, and added that he would make a statement on the attack the following morning...In his televised White House statement on 8 January, while being flanked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump sought to reduce tensions by downplaying the impact of the missile attacks, observing that Iran appeared to be "standing down", and ruling out a direct military response. Furthermore, Trump said he was willing to "embrace peace" and urged greater international cooperation in the region,"
Operation Martyr Soleimani - Wikipedia

---

Completely agree 1000% the Idiotic Fraudulent Assclown Donald Trump has spoken,with another one of his incoherent tweets on his failed social media platform. The more he talks the more unhinged he sounds.

Foreign Policy presents the 3 strategic options Israel may consider when 'retaliating' against Iran's attack on Israel, as if that event was not retaliation for Israel's attack on Iran's Consular building in Damascus. I don't believe any of this is called the 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee Syndrome', but it could be.

Regimes such as the one in Iran, or the current one in Israel seem to need a drama every six months or a year, perhaps to remind everyone that they are in the midst of an existential crisis, and if they don't act, they will lose everything.

'You got the win, take the win', was Biden's humble response. But Netanyahu doesn't do humble, neither does Tehran, or HAMAS.

After 100 years, no advance. And not much hope.

Iran Attack: 3 Ways Israel Could Respond (foreignpolicy.com)

I thought y'all would be interested in this one:

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/why-i...not-a-failure/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Del06

I thought y'all would be interested in this one:

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/why-i...not-a-failure/

---

Problem is that Iran did not need to use the attack to force Israel to reveal where its defences are -they attacked the Nevatim (not Netivim as stated in the article) base in Southern Israel because it was used to launch the attack on Damascus, ie they already knew about it. Both Israel and Iran have spies in each other's countries to give them the info they need -how else has Israel been able to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists inside Iran? You think nobody in Israel pockets some money in exchange for information of vale to Iran, or that Palestinians in Gaza are not feeding intelligence to Israel?

Eg

"According to Iranian Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, the primary targets of the strikes were the Nevatim Airbase, from which Israel launched the Damascus attack, and the intelligence center in Mount Hermon, which had allegedly provided the intelligence for the consulate attack. Tehran emphasized that it had no intention of further escalating the conflict, with Bagheri declaring, “Our operations are over.”". [Only it's not over until it's over].
Iran and Israel’s Dangerous Gambit - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Russian air force regularly flies to the edge of UK air space to trigger a response and monitor it -this has been standard practice in the military since the Cold War.

The core issue in the latest exchange is not the Iranian response to the Damascus attack, but that Israel violated international law by targeting a building with diplomatic protection, being:

" "a significant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which ensures the inviolability of diplomatic agents and premises" ".
Israel strike on Iranian Embassy: A grave threat to global diplomatic laws – Middle East Monitor

-Israeli officials claim the building did not have Diplomatic status,- whatever. Iran and Israel have been at war with each other for years, the only question now is how far are both sides willing to go to get what they want?

Anthony Blinken is trying to put a positive spin on his current visit to the Middle East, but it is gloom and doom in Gaza. For

""Hamas wants clear terms for the unconditional return of displaced people to the north of Gaza and to ensure that the second stage of the deal will include discussing the gradual and complete withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the entire Gaza Strip.""
Middle East crisis live: Hamas ‘seeking more clarity on terms of ceasefire deal’ (theguardian.com)

What does this mean? Where will people live if they move from the South -where Israel is about to launch a massive attack on Rafah (so we are led to believe)- to a northern area much of which has been laid waste from the bombing; and is there not a plan to create a buffer zone inside the northern limits of Gaza policed by the IDF? How will HAMAS respond to that?

Clearly they don't think the IDF can defeat them completely on the battlefield, and want to regain as much territory to control as they can. But even if Netanyahu decides he has a military victory -disabling the ability of HAMAS to fire rockets into Israel and make incursions into the land; and concedes he cannot destroy HAMAS as a social movement, I don't see him creating a space in Gaza where HAMAS can re-group without a deal similar to the Good Friday Agreement when the Provisional IRA agreed to de-commission their arsenal of weapons. Netanyahu is not Blair, he is not the kind of man to compromise. And if he won't, why should HAMAS?

Below is a link to a speech Melanie Phillips gave to the National Conservative Conference in Brussels last month.

I remember when MP was a feminist and vaguely on the left of British politics, and have followed her journey to this 'National Conservative' concept/movement that allows her to give vent to all the things she believes has gone wrong with 'Western Civilization' which is of course mostly the fault of 'the left' but aided for the past 13 years by the Conservative Party. As she points out, she lives in Jerusalem, and presents an array of claims some of which are false-far from seeking to protect civilian life in Gaza, Israel turned off the water and the power, bombed those plants it had no control of, has bombed mosques, Christian churches, cultural centres, in fact just about anything you can think of, because military might is an essential ingredient of success, she says, and Israel is not just fighting for its own survival, but for the survival of Western Civilisation, something the Russians also believe they are doing in Ukraine.

Notice the way she condemns the UN and International Humanitarian Law, as if it was an anti-Israel conspiracy from the start, or if not has -probably since 1967- been used to condemn Israel in a way she thinks is not done to lunatic Muslims, Iran, HAMAS, etc, as if she was unaware of the catastrophic damage done to the Palestinian cause after 1967 with the sequence of hi-jackings and assassinations that took place across Europe and the Middle East.

But she also seems reluctant to note that the evolution of international law through the Charter of the UN and Human Rights law, not only originated in the US and the UK, but most of the people responsible were both Conservative and Jewish, such as Hersch Lauterpacht, and that much of the origin of this law was derived from a determination that post-Nazi, post-Holocaust slogan 'Never Again' be made real, and in law, not just attitudes.

As for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, what rights to they have in her 'Nation State' if they are not Jewish? She does not say. That she has nothing to say about 4 million people thus repeats the historic refusal of those Jews who see Israel as an exclusive homeland, to tell those who we must assume do not belong there, what to do, where to live -Palestinians become a black hole in that 'Particular' Nation State, or like HAMAS they are an existential threat that must be destroyed. As for all the other stuff, it is a repetition of the rage heard elsewhere, but I offer her speech so that those who do read these posts but may not be aware of it, have an insight into what the more extreme supporters of Israel believe.

Hersch Lauterpacht
Hersch Lauterpacht - Wikipedia

Melanie Phillips | How Conservatism’s Chickens Came Home to Roost in Gaza | NatCon Brussels 2 (youtube.com)

In to the Abyss steps Nigel Biggar, writing in the Telegraph. An Oxford Professor who has written a controversial book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2024) which I have not read, Biggar titles his article Oxford Protestors Can't Hide Their Ignorance, and proceeds wit an article that is itself ignorant of facts and context, though big on interpretation -his own. He also accuses the Oxford Professors who signed a letter supporting student occupiers of ignorance, as if it was an important letter, which it is not.

Biggar's selective approach to the history enables him to argue that the Jewish settlers who arrived in Ottoman 'Palestine' (in reality, the Vilayet of Jerusalem) in the late 19th century were not Colonialists who stole the land, because they purchased it from its Arab landlords, the latter being true. Whether or not the first Aliyah of 1880 was fleeing a progrom in what is now Ukraine (they came from Kremenchug) is debatable. That so-called Zionism has always been a Nationalist project is not in doubt, but Biggar doesn't want to either acknowledge this, or consider the implications of a Jewish State in a land occupied for the most part by non-Jews, the dilemma that has never been resolved, though for some in Netanyahu's governing coalition, the expulsion of all non-Jews from, dare I day it, 'the river to the sea', is exactly what they want, though it presumably will not include the Filipinos who wipe the arses of elderly Israelis in care homes, the construction workers from India, or the agricultural labourers from South-East Asia, mostly Thailand (some of whom were and may still be hostages taken by HAMAS on the 7th of October 2023).

He says that the League of Nations awarded the Mandate "in order to build a new independent Arab state and a Jewish homeland out of the ruins of the irredeemable Ottoman Empire. In 1930, faced with violent Arab unrest, the British considered restricting Jewish immigration but decided against it out of sympathy for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.".
This is nonsense. The British along with other European states, made secret agreements long before the end of the First World War which, presuming an allied victory, then divvied up the Ottoman Empire's lands amongst themselves, with absolutely no regard for the Arabs or anyone else living in the region. One of the lesser known of the secret agreements is the 1915 Treaty of London that was on victory, to give Britain, France, Russia and Italy a share of the spoils, though the Treaty and its aftermath had obvious complications, not least the Bolshevik Revolution and the emergence of Fascism in Italy. The link below looks in some detail at it for those interested.

As for the latter part of the quote, Nazi Germany had no role to play in the end of the Passfield White Paper's proposals to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Proposal failed because the British had to juggle the interests of the Jewish community in Palestine and their supporters in London, and the Arabs, and as happened throughout the Mandate, the British screwed both sides -and themselves. In other words, the British were incapable of governing in the interests of the population of Palestine, and thus undermined their own authority, which is why some historians have argued that in all of British Imperial History, Palestine remains the most consistent failure from start to finish.

When there is so much verifiable history re-interpreted to suit today's latest prejudice, one wonders why people like Biggar even bother to draw a fig leaf on their preference.

Biggar's article can be read here-
Oxbridge protestors can’t hide their ignorance (yahoo.com)

The Treaty of London can be read about here-
London, Treaty of (1915) | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1) (1914-1918-online.net)

Hillary Clinton has said the campus protestors she has spoken to are clearly ignorant of the history of the Middle East about which they are protesting, citing this example-

"She went on to claim that her husband, former President Bill Clinton made an offer to the former leader of the Palestinian Authority Yassir Arafat, which would have given Palestinians their own state."If Arafat had accepted [this offer] there would have been a Palestinian state now for about 24 years. It’s one of the great tragedies of history that he was unable to say yes," she added."
Clinton: Gaza student protestors are 'ignorant of history' (newarab.com)

Try this, from (notorious?) Norman Finkelstein:
Israel, not Arafat, scuppered Clinton-led peace deal – Middle East Monitor

Or this
30 years after Arafat-Rabin handshake, clear flaws in Oslo Accords doomed peace talks to failure (theconversation.com)

Peace is the hardest thing to achieve, war the easiest. But then Jesus wanted us all to love each other, yet love on that scale seems to be impossible.

I don't know what to make of Senator Lindsey Graham, as I only encounter him in news bites saying one thing on a Monday and the opposite on Friday. His latest nonsensical argument is-

"GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Sunday urged the US to keep supplying munitions to Israel, comparing the war in Gaza with World War II and saying dropping atomic bombs on Japan was the "right decision" to ending the conflict."
Lindsey Graham wants more bombs for Israel, saying the US was right to nuke Nagasaki and Hiroshima (yahoo.com)

Perhaps this is the moment to ask why the British Govt did not use the tactics in Northern Ireland that Israel uses in Gaza -the RAF did not bomb either West Belfast or the Bogside, turning both into mountains of uninhabitable rubble. The Catholic population was not forced out of their homes, to live in tents in the local park, or walk with their remaining belongings south into the Republic of Ireland. Protetstants in 'Ulster' may claim that a United Ireland is an 'existential' threat to their way of life, ignoring the fact that many Protestants not only lived in the Republic but helped build it, indeed the first President of Ireland was a Protestant.

The IRA attempted to murder Margaret Thatcher, and in one audacious act lobbed a missile onto 10 Downing St when Prime Minister John Major was holding a Cabinet meeting, yet neither the military leadership or the IRA or the political wing, Sinn Fein were assassinated in the way Israel has travelled across the world to murder what it calls 'Terrorists' -in fact Martin McGuinness, the Quartermaster of the Provos ended up in the Power Sharing Govt of Northern Ireland, and welcomed Her late Majesty the Queen to the Province.

Netanyahu says the remaining battalions of HAMAS in Rafah must be wiped out, while behind him, as it were, in Northern Gaza, HAMAS has re-grouped, showing that the military action against it is like stepping onto mercury -one blob gets taken out here, only for another to emerge there. With both HAMAS and Israel committed to violence with no regard for the welfare of the citizens of Gaza, any hopes of an end to this are slim. And yet, just as Margaret Thatcher initiated the secret talks with the IRA that were continued by John Major, and just as secret talks between Palestinians and Israelis in Oslo looked for a paradigm shift to end the conflict between them, both Israel and the Palestinians have been dragged back to the bad old days when if you wanted the land, you fought for it, winner takes all.

With so many losers over the last 100 years, you might wonder why they do it. In the end, Mo Mowlam on behalf of the Labour Govt brought the warring factions to the negotiating table, and after much heartache and threats, a peace deal was made that transformed Northern Ireland.

Once upon a time, some people said of Northern Ireland as Graham has said: just drop a nuke on the place and end it. What happened there can happen in Israel and Gaza, just as once it did, albeit in flawed fashion, with Rabin and Arafat. Can someone in Israel take up the challenge, can HAMAS find the means to back down?

Nobody will be asking Senator Graham to use his political skills to help.

So, Netanyahu has condemned the UN recognition of a Palestinian state -no surprise there; and the Arab states have said they support the creation of one through a 'two state solution' -no surprise there either. Because they have no imagination, and crucially, no coherent plan that will end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, just more of the same ideas that don't work and never have -or to put it politely, via Einstein, they are mad.

I am not opposed to Palestinian statehood, but what is this state they keep going on about? Look at the political geography: where will the borders of a Palestinian state be? Will Palestine have an army, a police force, its own currency, its own judicial, education and health systems? Will it indeed be an Independent state capable of defending itself, attracting foreign investment and diplomacy, and all the other things one associates with an Independent State?

I just don't see Israel agreeing to remove its armed forces from the borders with Syria and Jordan. I don't think Israel will tolerate a Palestinian Army, let alone a Palestinian Air Force and Navy literally minutes away in some cases.

And, just as there has never been a just answer to the question: what rights to non-Jews have in a Jewish State? So the questions of Palestine are: what status will settlements and settlers on the 'West Bank' have, given that this must be the core of the Palestinian state- can they stay, must they go? And what if they decide to take up arms against Palestine, much as they are doing right now anyway?

Likud's dream of 'Erez Israel suggests that the current geography -from the River to the Sea, is not enough. The Biblical provinces of Gilead, Moab and Ammon on the Eastern side of the River Jordan are surely in their sights at some point in the future. So why would Israel agree to something called a Palestinian state? And without an agreement between the two, it can never happen.

Change the Paradigm: imagine a Confederation of Palestine and Israel, like Switzerland. And why not? No need to change the geography re borders. Security co-operation rather than conflict. Currency union, equal rights for all. Sounds good to me.

As Brecht once put it: so viele Berichte, so viele Fragen.

Palestinian statehood key to Arab plans for post-war Gaza (yahoo.com)

This is a deeply depressing, at times disgusting, but vital report on sexual violence in Gaza, in Israel and the West Bank -it attempts to unravel fact from fantasy -not so much of the former, too much of the latter- and spares no-one when it comes to the bleak reality facing women, be they Arab or Jewish. That people can take sides in this debate (step forward Hillary Clinton) only deepens the disbelief at the partisan approach to what, in reality, is a global problem.

It is from the latest edition of The London Review of Books, and can be read here-

Azadeh Moaveni · What They Did to Our Women: Women in Wartime (lrb.co.uk)

What if? HAMAS, weakened to the point of, but not exactly killed off in Gaza, finds a new home on the West Bank, where Palestinians who are not protected against settler violence turn to the group that has no boundaries when it comes to killing (and that includes other Palestinians). And what if this plays into the hands of people like Netanyahu, so that they can shift their campaign from Gaza to the West Bank. After all, is it not the case that, it is not Genocide that is taking place -this should be obvious- but the longest campaign that has been going on for 100 years: to make life so difficult or impossible for the Arabs, that they leave and go and live somewhere else? And if you count the millions forced out of their homelands in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine -what's another 4 million?

But what if they refuse to go? So here we are again: same old same old, no new ideas, no advance.

‘Only Hamas can defend us’: Israeli raids and Fatah failures boost support in West Bank | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

We do not yet know if the recommendation of the International Criminal Court will lead to warrants for the arrest of the people named so far, the irony is that as the US and other major states are not signatories to it, they can only exert external power, or threats in the case of the US, in an attempt to protect its ally Israel, even though some in the Biden Administration know that Netanyahu is without doubt a cause of the war, and an obstacle to its end. Thus

"US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he will work with lawmakers on potential sanctions against the International Criminal Court as its prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials."
US hints at support for sanctions over ICC warrants on Israel - BBC News

For a more biased view, the Telegraph states a common view

"makes a mockery of both the institution and the laws it claims to uphold.By applying for the arrest of the Israeli leadership alongside that of Hamas, the court has bolstered a supposed moral equivalence where none exists."
The ICC has disgraced itself (yahoo.com)

Did the ICC make a mistake in prosecuting Slobodan Milošević? Was it wrong to seek the arrest of Vladimir Putin? As so often in international law, it appears to be useful for some and not for others, as if the application of the law was a matter of pick and choose rather than to look in an objective manner at what is actually happening on the ground in an attempt to make people legally accountable. For some, it is war, and bad things happen in war -as Trump might say 'get over it'.

If there is no moral equivalence between Israel and HAMAS, it is because morals have been abandoned by both sides; the article from the London Review of Books I linked in an earlier post demolishes any insult to facts that claim the IDF is moral and minimises casualties. As we have seen over 100 years, so clearly one wonders why people like Anthony Blinken make such pathetic excuses, the game is simple: 'if you want this land, fight me for it'.

None of this brings the war to an end. None of it tells anyone where the people of Gaza are going to live, or how, or if their children are ever going to go to school again, if ever. Crucially, for Israel, it fails to establish that the security of its people is a fact, it aggravates an age old problem of inter-communal trust, made even worse if HAMAS does indeed establish a network on the West Bank to rival the Palestinian Authority, the ultimate irony for an Israel that supported and encouraged HAMAS from the start in 1987 precisely to weaken the PLO as it then was which has since morphed, or declined into the PA.

Name of the game: not swings and roundabouts, more Snakes and Ladders.

This is a useful background to the ICC
The International Criminal Court: History and Role (parl.ca)

Israel's Foreign Minister, Israel Katz:

"I have instructed the immediate recall of Israel’s ambassadors to Ireland and Norway for consultations in light of these countries’ decisions to recognise a Palestinian state.I’m sending a clear and unequivocal message to Ireland and Norway: Israel will not remain silent in the face of those undermining its sovereignty and endangering its security.
Today’s decision sends a message to the Palestinians and the world: Terrorism pays. "
Israel-Gaza war live: Israel recalls ambassadors as Norway, Ireland and Spain say they will recognise Palestinian state (theguardian.com)

How does he think the State of Israel was created: Terrorism, or was it National Liberation?

"British soldiers were frequently targets for attack and kidnap, often in retaliation for death sentences passed on members of Irgun and LHI. A typical insurgent operation was the bombing of the British Officers Club in Haifa, in which 30 people were killed and injured.
On 22 July 1946, Irgun fighters also blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing over 90 people, including many civilians. This attack broke the fragile Haganah-Irgun partnership."

"The main terrorist groups were Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organisation) - ultimately led by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin - and an even more militant organisation, Lohamey Heruth Israel (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) or LHI.
The British called LHI the Stern Gang after its leader, Abraham Stern, who was killed in a clash with the Palestine Police in 1942. In November 1944, LHI assassinated the British Minister for the Middle East, Lord Moyne." (Link below to quote on the Haifa attack).

On Stern:
"The main argument of this monograph is that Stern's ideology, and the small yet devoted group which gathered around it, were the ultimate and most profound expression of a genuine fascist movement which had gradually evolved during the 1920's and 1930's in Hebrew society in Palestine in general, and within the Revisionist movement in particular."
20131746.pdf (uzh.ch)

"On 31 March 1947, Irgun set light to the oil refinery at Haifa, starting a fire which blazed for three weeks. In May, it attacked the prison at Acre, freeing a large number of inmates.
On 29 July, in retaliation for the execution of three of their members, LHI kidnapped and hanged two British Army sergeants. They then booby-trapped the bodies so that the officer who cut them down was badly injured."
The British Army in Palestine | National Army Museum (nam.ac.uk)

"The British Mandate for Palestine was an instrument of government instituted by the League of Nations for the administration of territories formerly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. British rule lasted from 1917-1948.The British Mandatory authorities during their rule executed hundreds of residents of Palestine, the overwhelming majority being Palestinian Arabs."
Olei Hagardom - Wikipedia

A new book from Raja Shehadeh. The fear, as ever, is the fear of freedom. If freedom has any meaning, everyone must have it.

What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh review – making sense of senseless violence | Politics books | The Guardian

Roland Oliphant of The Telegraph offers an interesting range of opinions on the ICC, specifically with regard to the Palestinian and Israelis named in the Court's docket, and more generally on international humanitarian law, and the problems of prosecuting people accused of crimes in war.

The argument with regard to starvation and accountability is a problem for Yoav Gallant, because

"Following the devastating attacks by Hamas against Israel on 7 October, Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, announced a complete siege of the Gaza Strip: “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything will be closed.” "
There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything will be closed” | The unlawful siege and starvation of civilians in Gaza | Global Rights Compliance

"Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, as Israel fights the Hamas terror group.“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds".
Defense minister announces 'complete siege' of Gaza: No power, food or fuel | The Times of Israel

Gallant is thus the most vulnerable of the Israeli officials the Court wishes to prosecute.

Oliphant's video talk is here-
How the ICC bared its teeth - and caught the West off guard | Defence in Depth (msn.com)

What can be more stupid than to tell a state at war- 'don't cross this red line' -when they go ahead and do it -and there is no response to match the threat? And what happens when you declare a group to be 'terrorists' and therefore determine they must be destroyed, only to find, years and a zillion deaths later, that they still exist, that 'we' are negotiating with them, and they ultimately have their slice of the cake? It might have worked in Northern Ireland, it hasn't worked in Afghanistan, and I doubt a Palestinian state run by HAMAS would be a nice place to live.

But red lines? Nonsense, and dare one use the word, a hostage to fortune, like troubling deaf heaven with bootless cries.

"Benjamin Netanyahu has responded cooly to Joe Biden’s proposal for peace between Israel and Hamas, insisting the Israeli army will continue fighting until it has “eliminated” the Palestinian militant group’s capacity to rule Gaza and pose a military threat.The Israeli prime minister’s comments came after Hamas said it had a positive view of the three-phase ceasefire proposal announced by the US president for a permanent truce in Gaza."
Israel-Gaza war live: Hamas views ceasefire plan ‘positively’ but Netanyahu vows to continue war (theguardian.com)

Reasons to be cheerful -a plan. Reasons not to be cheerful: Netanyahu - he won't agree to anything that leaves HAMAS intact, he being detached from reality -the Blair Govt succeeded in getting the IRA to 'decommission' its weapons (or so we were told), but the political wing, Sinn Fein, became a partner in the Govt of Northern Ireland thereafter. And HAMAS is not going to agree to anything similar to what the IRA agreed to. It is not about to disappear, though I guess it could disband, and re-group under another name.

Note the point Netanyahu made about eliminating HAMAS's "capacity to rule Gaza". In other words, there will not be an election in Gaza, just in case the people decide to vote for HAMAS, or its equivalent, or indeed, any party or person who wants independence or worse, the same rights in Gaza that the citizens of Israel have.

Because ever since Lord Balfour declared the British Govt had no intention of consulting the Palestinians about the Governance of Palestine, the Palestinians have never been asked what they want, let alone given it. When the British left in 1947, the UN made the decisions, not the Palestinians, and since then decisions have been made through war, other than the 1993 Peace Treaty that was rejected by, yes you guessed it, Netanyahu and HAMAS. Even now, Biden and others outside Israel want other Arabs to 'get involved' in the Governance and re-construction of Gaza, in effect to take over and deny Palestinians that once-hallowed phrase made famous by Woodrow Wilson -'National Self Determination'.

But at least Palestinians will be able to go back to their homes, if this is what you call home-

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/80843...0&dpr=1&s=none

"Labour leader Keir Starmer said last month that he wanted to recognise a Palestinian state if he won power, but that such a move would need to come at the right time in a peace process.Foreign Secretary David Cameron, a Conservative, said in January that Britain could formally recognise a Palestinian state if Palestinians had shown "irreversible progress" towards a two state solution, according to reports at the time."
UK's Labour to include pledge on recognizing Palestinian state in election manifesto- Guardian | Reuters

Two statements, both of which are shaped by the British telling the Palestinians what the terms and conditions might be -just as in the period between 1916 and 1921, the British made it clear that the Palestinians were incapable of governing themselves, which is why the British would be doing it, so Lord Cameron imposes his set of rules on them today. As for Sir Keir Starmer, he also imposes Labour Party conditions on the Palestinians, because they can't come up with any of their own? And where is this Palestinian state? Where are its boundaries, and who polices them now, and in the future? What currency will a Palestinian state use? And so on.

Lip service for the general public, I assume, but no less pathetic for all that. As for Netanyahu being invited to speak to Congress toward the end of July -is it the case that he is more popular in the US Congress than he is at home? And why will those Senators and Representatives who disagree with him just not attend, rather than heckle this madman to his face?

Why are Democrats blindly embracing Netanyahu? | Jo-Ann Mort | The Guardian

Two stand out moments: the military raids that rescued four hostages, with stunning collateral damage; and Benny Gantz leaving the Coalition. The former would not have been possible without Palestinian informers who have been paid by Israel for years. The Telegraph behind a paywall has an article saying British intelligence helped out with electronic surveillance, as if Israel needed that, being pioneers in the technology, while Israel says it had undercover guys in Gaza pretending to be Arabs and that is plausible. HAMAS regularly -or used to- execute informers, but it is not a subject much talked about. The British had an informer inside the high command of the IRA, but we only knew that after the Troubles ended.

As for Gantz, his departure has consolidated the hard liners around tough guy Netanyahu -not good for Gaza or the remaining hostages. So the UN Security Council can pass as many resolutions as it likes, the war goes on.
Prospect of Israeli hostage deal recedes as far-right minister signals opposition | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

Another day, another step towards a reality that has existed since 1967. Belazel Smotrich, the kind of politician who would not normally make it to Government in a decent, open democracy, is pleased to find that changes in Israeli law give the 'Settler movement' on the West Bank of the River Jordan the powers to, in effect, annexe the territory-

"As the Guardian revealed last week, the Israeli military recently quietly handed over significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for Smotrich.
An order posted by the Israel Defense Forces on its website on 29 May transferred responsibility for dozens of bylaws at the Civil Administration from the military to officials led by Smotrich at the defence ministry."
Israeli far-right minister speaks of effort to annex West Bank | Israel | The Guardian

Smotrich sees this is being both the means whereby Israel can annexe the West Bank and prevent the creation of a Palestinian State.

But whatever the de jure situation, in international law, the de facto situation is that the West Bank, and Gaza have been part of Israel since 1967, not least because Israel has never accepted UN decisions as binding, though one simply gasps at this comment in the article linked above when referring to Smotrich's proposal -

"Annexation and the acquisition of territory by military conquest is forbidden as one of the founding principles of international law including the UN charter."

Because it means the creation of Israel in 1948 was a violation of International Law, simply because though the Jewish Agency accepted the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, it then ignored it to acquire through military force considerably more territory than was in the Plan, this being one of the roots of Israel's hostility to the UN, along with the formation of UNRWA because Israel denied there were Palestinians to begin with and thus no Palestinian refugees. The rest, as they say, is history.

The core problem is this, as it has been forever: if Palestinians are to live in Israel, are they to be equal, to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen of Israel? One can imagine what Smotrich would say if asked the question, but that does not mean it is not the most reasonable to ask. But until people accept that there is one single state between the River and the Sea, most of the discourse will be distorted, passionate, soaked in loathing, and of no practical use to anyone who lives in this part of our world.

An interesting interview with the former head of Shin Bet that exposes the divisions within Israel, but while he acknowledges the 'endless war' Netanyahu is committed to, on the one hand, and Palestinian aspirations on the other, he does not really address the 'day after' scenarios in either Gaza or the West Bank going beyond some concept of a 'two state solution' so that he himself for all his bitter condemnation of Netanyahu has no long term plan that is practicable. Also, given that Iran has few friends in the Region and thinks it is in their interests to disrupt the MSB agenda of 'normalization' with Israel, this aspect also suggests that unless and until Iran ceases to have the traction it has, then it remains a potent force -though this also begs the questions about the internal politics of change in Iran. Lastly, Lebanon is in deep crisis, the south is likely to become part of a 'buffer zone' strategy that Netanyahu and the IDF think will improve Israel's security -another buffer zone will be created in northern Gaza, but we always come back to the hard question -what happens to the Palestinians? Where will they live, how will they live?

The war has made it all worse, not better, the logical madness of HAMAS and Likud, locked in a deadly embrace.

Netanyahu’s ‘toxic leadership’ will lead to end of Zionism, says former Shin Bet chief (yahoo.com)

A fairly long read, but one that looks favourably on the idea of a single state, or the Confederation argument that I have proposed as well as Dahlia Scheindlin -because until the paradigm changes and politicians inside and outside Israel stop whirling around the 'two state solution' and telling Palestinians who is to represent them, this misery will continue.

The Palestine-Israel nightmare won’t end until we accept these basic truths (yahoo.com)

Protestors who, according to him “stand with HAMAS” should be ashamed of themselves can answer to nobody but themselves. But as for you, Mr Netanyahu, when are you going to make yourself accountable for supporting HAMAS since it started? Have you no shame?

The US Congress should be ashamed to give a platform to such a squalid mass murderer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ku1g1CwrCU