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"The war has made it all worse, not better, the logical madness of HAMAS and Likud, locked in a deadly embrace."
There used to be a cartoon, with two dinosaurs fighting each other as they approach a mile-high cliff. They approach and then descend the mile-high drop, continuing to fight each other all the way down.
In 20 years, the whole middle east will be uninhabitable due to climate change.
For years now there have been reports of water shortages and claims the region is headed for 'water wars', though outside of Gaza and the West Bank it hasn't happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by Del06
Or maybe they will just live in the sky?
"“Neom Stadium will be the most unique stadium in the world,” Saudi’s committee wrote in an outline of its bid. “With a pitch situated more than 350 meters above ground, stunning vistas, and a roof created from the city itself, the stadium will be an experience like no other.”"
Saudi Arabia Unveils Bold World Cup Bid Despite No Competition (frontofficesports.com)
Israel has assassinated so many HAMAS officials over the years, has it made a difference? This article argues Netanyahu uses violence instead of diplomacy, and believes he has undermined President Biden, and made peace harder than ever, both in general Israeli-Palestinian relations, and with specific regard to Gaza. But also suggests Netanyahu does not want even a modest rapprochement between Iran and the 'West'. Well Netanyahu has been addicted to war most of his life, but the other question is, these days, are there any Israeli politicians who have a radically different view? Yitzhak Rabin was one such politician with a radical position, and he was murdered for it.
But a good read
Assassination again shows Netanyahu’s disregard for US-Israel relations (msn.com)
"We cling to this idea that the arc of history tends towards liberty and democracy. Have you been shaken out of that feeling?
I have been pessimistic about this place for a long time. If you look at the trajectory of what has happened here, it is a story of increasing Israeli expansion and Palestinian constriction into smaller spaces. If you just project forward, we are headed towards a fate like that of the Native Americans for the Palestinians."
Nathan Thrall: ‘The scale and brutality of the Israeli response in Gaza hasn’t surprised me, no’ | Books | The Guardian
The latest bombing of a school being used to house displaced Palestinians begs a number of questions.
1) Israel says it was a targeted attack and that "at least 20 fighters, including senior commanders, were among the dead". Every attack that results in the death and injury of men women and children is blamed on HAMAS using the facility targeted, while also claiming the elimination of however many HAMAS 'fighters' were there.
But never tells us their names, never proves that anyone from HAMAS was there. Indeed, this has been standard procedure for most of the 'forever war' with an organization Israel has supported since its foundation in the first Intifada in 1988.
2) After 10 months of the most savage and relentless bombing and military campaign in Gaza in its history, either HAMAS has an inexhaustible supply of 'fighters and commanders', or Israel is not doing a very good job of 'eliminating HAMAS' as Netanyahu says it is doing. This suggests that Israel can never eliminate HAMAS.
3) But this either means Israel accepting it cannot defeat HAMAS and therefore negotiate an end to this war, including the release of Hostages and a reconstruction programme, or just more of the same. More of the same is the preferred option of Smotrich and his extremist colleagues, because in reality the war in Gaza is merely an extreme version of what Israel has been doing since 1967 -making life for Palestinians so miserable and pointless that they pack up and leave. After all, if there was Genocide in Gaza, there would be little left by now of its 2 million inhabitants.
So expect more 'targeted attacks' (= targeting ordinary people, unless Israel really thinks every Palestinian in Gaza is HAMAS), more excuses from Israel, maybe more rockets from HAMAS into Israel (how after 10 months?), and of course, more scenes of carnage with most of the world indifferent to it all, and without doubt having no intention of taking any radical action to stop it, and move both parties into a different scenario in which something called Peace has a chance.
Israel strikes on Gaza school site kill at least 80, Palestinian officials say | Gaza | The Guardian
Although the press reports that Blinken thinks this might be the last chance to secure a deal, and some think it is close, the reality is that Israel and HAMAS both have enough objections to each other's proposals to reject them, though I ought not to be so cynical, even though Netanyahu and HAMAS have world records in cynicism and cruelty. Whatever.
The main obstacles are as Gershon Baskin notes in the article linked below-
-Israel wants to retain a presence in Gaza, to maintain and 'police' the southern border area with Israel along the Philadelphi Corridor or buffer zone with Egypt, HAMAS wants the IDF out of Gaza. I also believe Israel has or intends to create a buffer zone in the north similar to the one it is creating on the border with Lebanon.
(Displacement and Buffer Zones are becoming common, eg Turkey in Northern Syria and Northern Cyprus, Ukraine in Kursk, Russia in Eastern Ukraine)
-Israel wants to monitor internal movements in order to prevent HAMAS 'operatives' (soldiers?) from relocating, but it is not clear who the soldiers are or if Israel knows, other than what Arab informers tell them some of which might just be revenge for some other complaint, who knows? HAMAS, which has not been, and will not be militarily defeated objects to any attempt by Israel to control the territory, but this particular aspect could be dropped by Israel as long as the IDF remain in Gaza in some form.
-Israel in the past has released Palestinian prisoners in exchange for hostage(s), but this time Israel is refusing to release named prisoners that HAMAS wants released. This could be the hardest element to crack for it could be that Netanyahu would agree to it but Smotrich and Ben-Gvir reject it, threatening to collapse the Coalition Govt which could fall anyway if the two lunatics think even Netanyahu has sold them out for the return of those hostages who are still alive. The jury is out on this one, for the cynical and cruel reasons noted previously.
As for Baskin's final comments, these reveal the fantasy land still under occupation-
This is what Baskin says-
"There must be a new path to a negotiated end of the larger conflict, but it begins by ending this war, Israel withdrawing from Gaza, Israeli hostages coming home and the establishment of a secure border between Gaza and Egypt. That would pave the way for the creation of a responsible and legitimate non-Hamas government in Gaza, an Arab-led international force in Gaza for a limited period of time, new elections in Palestine, new elections in Israel and then a regional peace process that will bring about the two-state solution, with an end to the Israeli occupation, a free democratic Palestine, and freedom, peace and security for all."
These ceasefire talks have been doomed to fail – Netanyahu and Hamas have tied negotiators’ hands | Gershon Baskin | The Guardian
As usual Palestinians have to accept someone else making their decisions, someone else telling them who can govern them (not HAMAS), some other military on their streets. Israel is never going to allow a separate Palestinian state to exist, so the mere idea of it is plain stupid, in addition to which no supporter of the idea ever tells us what the currency in this state will be, where its borders will be, what its trading relations will look like, though they do tell us who the govt will be, as if the same people were not aware that HAMAS has increased its presence in the West Bank and will grow stronger if Settler attacks on Palestinian villages carry on.
The irony is that if people accept there is a de facto single state, the so-called 'Democratic Israel' which in reality denied 4 million people living in the country basic or equal rights, the only solution is to re-structure this single state into a Confederation in order to force Israelis and Palestinians to do what they were doing before the Nationalists tried to change the place beginning in the 1880s. Zionism, or Jewish Nationalism as it is dressed up to be, has failed, much as all religious nationalism has failed, and will fail, because Nationalism is the cause of human division, human violence and human misery.
Two people, one land. Share it or fight for it? After 100 years of fighting the solution should be obvious. If only the US was not such a coward when it comes to dealing with Netanyahu, there might be one step forward. Though one has to believe there will then be two steps back. In my lifetimes? I doubt it.
If it is the case that the latest dead hostages were executed by HAMAS (their claim is they were killed by an IDF operation in the tunnel), it might be another example of 'I can be more cruel than you' in this wicked conflict, as in a previous 'deal' between the parties, two of the three now dead were on a list to be released. This fact has been an additional spur to the protests in Tel-Aviv by people who believe Netanyahu is deliberately delaying a deal, or adding clauses that he knows HAMAS will reject.
It has been pointed out, for example, that Netanyahu's insistence on the IDF remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor was not part of any previous deal with the obvious question, why not? Moreover, if Netanyahu describes the whole of the Gaza District as, in effect, a 'terrorist camp' that Iran will (or even does) use to attack Israel, it speaks of the long-established view that Gaza is a problem whose solution is the expulsion of most or all of its population, a 'policy' that has been in and out of the in and out tray of Israel politicians since the 1950s (see the Depopulation link below).
I guess if the US were to agree to take 4 million Palestinians that might solve the problem, but where to -Wyoming?
And if Gaza is an existential threat to Israel, so are Lebanon, and Jordan, bearing in mind in the latter case the Likud lays claim to 'historical' 'biblical' lands of Northern Jordan in ancient times known as Moab, Ammon and Edom. At which point on the map of the Middle East does Israel think it will have a 'secure border'?
Israeli Attempts to Depopulate Gaza, A Brief History (beehiiv.com)
'100-200,000, Not Two Million': Israel's Finance Minister Envisions Depopulated Gaza - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Israel’s ‘Plan B’ for the Gaza Strip | Opinions | Al Jazeera
Israel’s Plans for Gaza Are Moving Forward in Plain Sight - DAWN (dawnmena.org)
As if we did not know by now, Israel's world leadership in telecomms and its less popular adjuncts has been on display to lethal effect - exploding phones, spyware in the software you are probably using, if not to see this, to chat with your chums, and now exploding pagers.
The key point is not that Israel can do it, or that Israel and Hizbollah have been in an in and out dog fight -for so many years it would take me some time to construct a timetable- but that the attacks inside Lebanon have followed pleas from the US for Israel to do anything but escalate its tensions with Lebanon.
"A day before the coordinated sabotage, Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to Joe Biden, was in Israel urging Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials against an escalation in Lebanon."
Exploding pager attack in Lebanon is another blow for US peace hopes | US foreign policy | The Guardian
In other words, Netanyahu has told the US to go fuck itself, he will make the decisions, and all the US must do is to continue supplying the arms and the funding, until his old family friend, Trump, is back in the White House, which is what Netanyahu wants.
How will the US react? In a tame way, of course. And if there is an escalation, no doubt Israel will declare it has a right to defend itself, as if nobody else in the region also had that right, least of all the 8 year old girl who lost her life yesterday.
Netanyahu simply does not believe in peace or negotiations. On the basis Israel will win every war it gets involved in, war is his only item on the agenda, and everyone else must accept it. I think this is what is called the politics of despair.
Another day, another crime. It is beyond doubt that the exploding pagers and now the exploding walkie-talkies are a violation of international law, just on proportionate violence alone. That HAMAS doesn't care how many people die for its cause, so Israel views every Arab as an existential threat, or rather Netanyahu and his Likud and Coalition partners do, so who cares if the 'events' in Lebanon kill men, women and children regardless of any links to Hizbollah?
But this is really about the US. If the CIA did not know about this tactic, then it suggests that their intelligence gathering is not that good, and/or that Mossad and other intelligence agencies in Israel are not sharing information with the CIA, another failing.
If the CIA did know, my guess is that they strongly opposed using this kind of warfare, and this is where the action is: Netanyahu telling the Biden Administration to go fuck itself, Israel will act alone, but still expect the US to defend it, or maybe Netanyahu is trying to provoke Biden into a negative reaction so he can paint Harris as a danger to Israel, without openly advising the American people to vote for his guy, his old family friend Trump, though when it started it was actually Trump's daddy who made friends with a young Bibi when the latter was based in NYC.
Two selfish men addicted to their own survival, and if this means sacrificing the lives of innocent people, so be it.
All that time and money, all that intelligence and expertise, the manufacture of products, the infiltration of supply chains, to achieve what? Killing people, rather than saving them. Is this a tactical success that has exposed the weaknesses in Hizbollah, but a strategic mistake? Escalating the war with Lebanon is not a problem for Netanyahu because he believes Israel can and will win every war it takes part in, and is a reminder that in 1982 when his predecessor Begin launched the invasion of Lebanon, it was to destroy the PLO, a war that failed, that resulted in some of the most gruesome massacres even the Middle East has seen. That just over 10 years later the same PLO was signing a peace treaty with Israel is something that sticks in Netanyahu's throat and won't go away, he hates it.
He loves war, so does HAMAS. Can nobody intervene to stop these maniacs? You would think after 100 years the record shows it doesn't produce solutions.
An editorial in today's Observer concludes with this-
"Gaza is Biden’s biggest failure, bigger even than Ukraine. Yet, rather than urgently repair the damage, officials in Washington are suggesting that a ceasefire is unlikely before his successor takes office in January. So what is US policy now? In a word, containment. Unable to stop the war, the White House appears merely intent on preventing it spreading further before the November presidential election, for fear it could harm Kamala Harris’s and the Democrats’ chances. It’s not really a policy at all. It’s a cop-out, a green light for hardliners and extremists on all sides to do their reckless, abominable worst. Which is why, more so now than ever, the Middle East totters on the brink."
The Observer view on the Middle East crisis: Biden’s failure on Gaza is fuelling wider war | Observer editorial | The Guardian
I am not sure what Biden has done wrong in the sense that US policy toward Israel has not changed much since 1967 and I am sure if asked Biden officials would argue the commitment is to Israel, not Netanyahu. If the US were to say, reduce funding or weapons sales, would this pressure Netanyahu to change course and negotiate with HAMAS? I doubt it. He is a belligerent man and loves conflict, indeed, it is the only reason he is on politics, other than whatever personal gains he makes from the office.
Unless something is happening behind the scenes, neither HAMAS nor Netanyahu appear to be willing to conclude the latest phase of this conflict, indeed Netanyahu is banking on Trump becoming President and thus insults Biden at every opportunity. HAMAS is not going to agree to anything that does not preserve their organization, in Gaza and the West Bank (where it is more popular than ever), and will not agree to the IDF remaining in Gaza. If reports are true, that Netanyahu wants to transfer the Palestinians in the North of Gaza to the South, the prospects for a negotiated settlement are even more remote, the fate of the hostages from uncertain to very grim indeed.
Netanyahu sees Biden as a lame duck Democrat, he is holding on. Iran need only carry on doing what it has been doing even if there is discontent in Lebanon with it and Hizbollah, with no alternative in sight to re-structure Lebanese politics.
So it is not really Biden's fault, he is trying to bring two bullies to the negotiating table, and they are not willing yet to make a deal.
Another lose-lose situation in the Middle East.
An article in The Hill exposes the problem: the mistakes of history being repeated -again, and again.
"For all of its rhetoric about protecting Lebanon from Israeli aggression, Hezbollah’s actions in recent years have done more to destabilize the country than to safeguard it. And now, with Israel’s recent infiltration and systematic dismantling of Hezbollah’s military apparatus, the cracks in its image are more visible than ever."
The myth of Hezbollah has been shattered (thehill.com)
Here is another version
"In the mid-20th century, Lebanon was one of the wealthiest and most prosperous countries in the Middle East. Its capital, Beirut, was once known as the Paris of the Middle East. It was the only state in the Middle East where Christianity was dominant, at one point making up over 60% of the population.Decades later, “the country is in free fall,” according to one expert. A 15-year-long sectarian civil war, an influx of Palestinian and Syrian refugees, foreign interventions, large-scale emigration, and deep corruption turned Lebanon into one of the poorest and least stable countries in a poor and volatile region. The past four years have seen a series of crises that resulted in the collapse of the Lebanese economy and mismanagement contributing to the 2020 Beirut port blast that devastated the city. The once-thriving Christian community has plummeted to roughly one-third of the population."
Lebanon’s once-thriving Christian population dwindling as country approaches collapse - Washington Examiner
For reasons not explained, Janine di Giovanni, in her book The Vanishing: The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East (2021) does not dedicate a chapter to Lebanon, and only mentions it in passing, though when she points out the influx of -mostly Muslim- refugees from Syria into Lebanon owing to the Asad war + ISIS, she could have remarked on how this series of events that has been one factor in the destabilization of Lebanon was similar to the influx of Palestinians into Lebanon following the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and the Jordanian Government's expulsion of the PLO from that country between 1970-71.
In 1969 the Lebanese Govt reached an agreement with the PLO which effectively protected them, expanding the refugee camps that has existed since 1948, giving the PLO considerable authority over the southern areas where many refugees settled, but creating tensions with the largely Shi'a communities there -weak at the time, they created a political movement, Amal, to counter Palestinian influence, while more broadly resentment with the PLO fomented until breaking out into Civil War in 1974-75, a war that was sent spiralling into chaos when Israel invaded in 1982 in order to destroy the PLO owing to cross-border incidents with Menachem Begin saying 'enough is enough', or words to that effect, or if you like, the same words used by Netanyahu in the UN yesterday when justifying yet another round of bombing and destruction in Beirut. And what was the legacy of 1982? Hizbollah.
And just as Begin vowed to destroy the PLO, and didn't, so Netanyahu vows to destroy HAMAS and Hizbollah and will fail as surely as the sun rises in the morning.
Yes, Lebanon was once the largest Christian majority country in the region, because that is how the French created it. Just as Britain via the League of Nations created Palestine, TransJordan and Iraq in 1921, so France took over most of the Arab territory of the defeated Ottoman Empire (not all, the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was amended after the war to award the Mosul province of what was going to be in Syria to the British, thus becoming part of Iraq).
The French invented Lebanon as a Christian country, but it was never stable, as insurrections all over French territory made governance of a 'country' difficult, not least because the French rejected the wishes of the Arabs to rule themselves and imposed themselves through military force, much as the British were never welcome in Palestine. To the victor the spoils -as Churchill once protested when being told the Hashemite Sherif of Mecca was complaining about the British take over of Palestine 'he didn't win the war, we did!'.
So here we are again -an Israel that contains at least 4 million people who don't want it, were never asked if they wanted it, and have no rights inside it -this being Israeli 'democracy'. One social group not invading but seeking refuge in the country of another upsetting the balance of identities, creating tensions, corruption, and ultimately violence, while external actors pile in with their own agendas, fuelling low intensity warfare with dollars and bombs, and for what? Because people can't get along with each other.
Imagine if the British Govt in response to the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974, or the Brighton Hotel bombing in 1984 had led the RAF to bomb the Bogside into rubble, or laid waste to West Belfast, 90% of the 'Nationalist' or 'Catholic' population forced from their homes, flooding into the Republic, or living in tents on waste ground -it would have created a crisis in the UK and a whole heap of condemnation from around the world.
But at the time Thatcher said 'we don't deal with terrorists', until she did, and authorised secret talks with the IRA, talks that were continued under John Major, until Blair brought it all out into the open and a deal was struck that has transformed a province of chronic hate and violence into so tolerable a place they filmed much of Game of Thrones there. The Quarter-Master of the IRA, Martin McGuiness was as far as I know, never the target of assassination attempts by the SAS though he was an easy target throughout the Troubles, while Israel assassinated any number of leading PLO figures and could have murdered Arafat at any time, just as we believe they have or wish to assassinate Nasrallah today in Lebanon. When the late Queen visited Northern Ireland, she met McGuiness who by then was No 2 in the Power Sharing arrangement that ended the Troubles.
So there you have it: the forced movement of people from war in one country destabilizing another already weak state, leading to civil war and Israeli bombing -could be 1982, could be 2024. 'Terrorist' organizations that are going to be smashed, its leaders dead. Then come the negotiations, the peace treaties- as with Israel and the PLO in 1993- until someone else decides this ain't right, and they go back to what they did before, killing people.
So try this: Netanyahu, stop the bombing, and pick up the phone. You supported HAMAS from the day it was created in 1988 to the 7th of October 2023. Swallow your pride and admit everything you have done since the assassination of Rabin has been a failure. Try the one thing you have not done, peace instead of war.
But I guess it is not going to happen, HAMAS don't want it -not right now- and the Americans are not good for anything except dollars and bombs. Netanyahu spits in Biden's face every day, while the hand goes out- 'give us more'.
More of the same, as if the same old over the last 100 years had not proven the same old don't work.
SitRep Sept 2024: Situation Currently Hopeless.
"US President Joe Biden has described Hassan Nasrallah's killing as a "measure of justice for his many victims".He says these include "thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese civilians".".
Israel-Lebanon latest: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed in Beirut - BBC News
So why didn't the US kill him? They had the means, the motive and so many opportunities.
The world waits with mouths agape -are we about to see another turn of the spiral into forever war?
The new President of Iran is, relative to his predecessors, a reformist who wants to some degree better relations with the West, mostly for economic reasons, but with a revived nuclear deal on the table, or maybe the sidelines, judging by Patrick Wintour's article below.
What would happen if, instead of fire and brimstone, Iran offered a new deal that sought peace rather than war? It might be hard to predict, given Iran's close relations with Russia at the moment, but if the weakening -for the time being- of Hizbollah were to offer a 'reset' of the kind that, following Saddam's catastrophic invasion of Kuwait led to the Oslo Accords, it would wrong-foot Netanyahu, as the agenda would include a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of the hostages, a diplomatic recognition of Israel by Iran, and, wait for it, 'sovereignty' or even a state for the Palestinians.
Problem is Netanyahu doesn't like packages, and always preferred bi-lateral rather than multi-lateral deals, so however tempting it would be to have an Israel-Iran relationship, with the added promise of Saudi Arabia (who would not want to be left out of the advance), Netanyahu would have to weight the benefits with the dissent of the crazies in his Cabinet who, assuming they rejected it, would end Netanyahu's career, and Middle East peace with it, though in all cases, Palestinian rights would be the last item on the agenda.
Iran's President Khatami offered a new relationship with the US after 9/11. They had Bin Laden's family under house arrest in Tehran, they hated al-Qaeda, but Bush rejected the offer, not even Obama could move beyond the nuclear deal to end the US-Iran hostility.
So it all looks bleak, because Netanyahu is not Rabin. But what has been achieved? Israel assassinated al-Musawi when he was leader of Hizbollah, now it has assassinated Nasrallah. This time next year if not next month, Hizbollah will have a new leader. Whether the organization remains powerful in Lebanon is not so sure, it has its constituencies in the South and the Bekaa Valley, but many Lebanese are fed up with them, but populate a weak, fragmented State, which now has to contend with Israel's destruction, and yet another crisis of human displacement -where are these people made homeless going to live? Who is going to pay for the reconstruction in Beirut and Gaza and the other zones of obliteration? Those suckers called Americans?
The killing of Hassan Nasrallah leaves Iran with a fateful choice and the US humiliated | Hezbollah | The Guardian
Netanyahu must be having a military grade orgasm. He has what he has always wanted in his existential obsession: to prove that Israel is the dominant military power in the Middle East, and cannot be beaten. And I don't think he is wrong to think that, as the US armaments Israel has are superior to what Iran has, and there is the longer term view that Netanyahu has stated that is the same phrase Tony Blair used with regard to regime change in Iraq: 'We need to remake the Middle East'. The violence that is being used to achieve an aim that has no clear objective other than the end of the Islamic Republic in Iran and the elimination of HAMAS and Hizbollah, may in the short term deliver severe blows, and there is a slight possibility of change in Iran, though one underestimates the internal conflict between those who desire reform (and the new Iranian PM is at least in principle a reformer), and the diehard supporters of the Ayatollahs -Israel, in seeking to change Iran, may only de-stabilize it much as Bush and Blair trashed Iraq, with all the gruesome results that followed there.
But if this cripples Iran and leaves its civilians in a dire mess, that too is for Netanyahu an achievement, because what Netanyahu has committed himself to is the opposite of diplomacy, of the kind that led to Israel signing a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979 -with no cross border attacks since then- and Jordan in 1993 (ditto), and the PLO also in 1993, a treaty Sharon and Netanyahu (and HAMAS) trashed so they could go back to the 100 years war that has so far not produced a solution to the simple fact that Arabs and Jews live in the same space, and should learn how to share it.
So here we go again, war, war, and yet more war. As if there was no alternative. As for the price of oil per barrel, and the laws of war, well I guess they are all up in the air, and soaring....
"Israel will attack Iran within days and could strike oil facilities or even nuclear sites, according to reports. The Israeli response could include targeted assassinations as well as air strikes, Israeli officials told Axios news website.
...Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, has urged Israel to “destroy [Iran’s] nuclear project, destroy their major energy facilities and critically hit this terrorist regime.”".
Israel-Hezbollah war latest: Israel ‘will launch retaliation on Iran’s oil production within days’ (telegraph.co.uk)
One year on, and there is no end of bloodshed, and no end of Bullshit, most of it from the Americans, though I do believe there are educated Americans who do not share the outrageous bias of their media, though it seems when Gallant described the Palestinians as 'animals' he was probably just echoing what others think.
The mainstream media has failed us after 7 October | Peter Beinart | The Guardian
As someone with family ties to the region, who has been there, lived, written about it, and lamented too many times the myopic violence and hate, today is not as special as it is for those who mark October 7th with grief, because we have been here before. The wonder is that after 100 years it still goes on.
Over the weekend, when I was in Stockholm, surely one of the least interesting of Europe's capitals, I read two thought-provoking interesting articles.
Raja Shehadeh, whose writing about Palestinians life has always been eloquent and deeply human, writes about the widening gulf between Arab and Jew, and, as it gets wider, so too do the prospects of any kind of dialogue, let alone reconciliation. It is one of his most depressing pieces of journalism, but nevertheless important.
When will this horror end? When Israel realises that the cost of destroying us is too high | Raja Shehadeh | The Guardian
Particularly when read with this other article, which goes some way to exposing how divisions in Israel among its Jews now make it impossible for some to live there, and not just anyone, but the kind of secular intellectual and entrepreneurial elite who have been central to Israel's economic success over the last 40 years -only they can't cope with the Fascism of Netayahu, Smotrich, Gen-Gvir and even worse, the people on the ground who support them.
A year of war accelerates ‘silent departure’ of Israel’s elite | Israel | The Guardian
The dream of Jabotinsky and Stern, of Begin and Sharon is being realized in Netanyahu, but crucially, among a wider spectrum of the Israeli public who in 1993 might have thought of Rabin -yes let's Give Peace a Chance.
Margaret Thatcher once denied the Provisional IRA the 'oxygen of publicity' -and not long after enabled back channel talks with the very same people we were not allowed to hear talk on TV. John Major maintained those talks and sought a different kind of relationship with the Republic of Ireland, so Blair, with the redoubtable Mo Mowlam at the helm, could build on existing forms of dialogue to end a war characterised by the same kind of ignorance and hate we see in the Middle East: It can Be Done.
But note, the UK never bombed Belfast or 'Derry' to nothing, the Catholics were not slaughtered on mass or driven south to 'their' Republic. And yet, had Netanyahu on the evening of October 7th called Sinwar and said :THIS ENDS HERE, who knows?
I lament the lack of decency and courage, as if such simple virtues have no place in this world.
Ни славом униат ни платком вытереть
The latest Diktat from the Master of all he Sees
"Israel's prime minister has urged the Lebanese people to throw out Hezbollah and avoid "destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza".
During a video address directed at the people of Lebanon, Netanyahu said: "You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.
"I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end."".
Netanyahu warns Lebanon of 'destruction like Gaza' - BBC News
One possible alternative
"I say to you, the people of Israel, free your country from the Likud and its allies, so that this war can end".
Likud in the Knesset: 32 seats
Hizbollah in the Lebanese Parliament: 13 (*part of a 61 seat Coalition in the Parliament)
Hezbollah and its allies lose majority in Lebanon's parliament : NPR
Israel: parliament election results by party 2022 | Statista
More drivel from the swivel eyed loon
a) has never been to Gaza
b) Gaza better than Monaco...makes you wonder if he has ever been there. Is there a more exquisite harbour than Monte Carlo, and is it not one of the reasons people go there to live?
Douglas Murray, a pioneer of preposterous potty politics, once argued that Gaza could have become Singapore on the Med, were it not for crazy HAMAS death-is-better-than-life types. As if Israel would tolerate an economic success story on its southern Border that could or would undermine its own economic strength (as was, given that Bibi's War is costing them -and the US taxpayer- the Earth).
Give it some thought: which is the most likely location for 'Singapore on the Med'? Gaza? No. Cyprus? No. Crete? No. Rhodes? No. Sicily? No. Gibraltar? Definitely No.
Malta. And it hasn't happened. End of story.
Trump appears to falsely claim he’s been to Gaza – and says it could be ‘better than Monaco’ | The Independent
I don't know if Yahya Sinwar has been assassinated by Israel, it is really not that important. It may be a military victory for Israel, and it is undeniable that they have some stunning intelligence networks, not just in Israel but across the world, even if, when they fail they do so in spectacular fashion, eg 1973, and October 7 2024.
Israel spent years tracking down most of the men they held responsible for the Munich Olympic massacres, most of them from Black September. Though an offshoot of Fateh, their elimination did not affect Fateh that much -Black September was wound up in 1974, and just under 20 years later Arafat was shaking hands with Yitzhak Rabin and singing a peace treaty. Killing the leaders of HAMAS, or Hizbollah or any or all senior figures in the 'Palestinian movement' does nothing, absolutely nothing to deal with the one reality that Netanyahu cannot or will not try to resolve: the 4 million Palestinian men, women and children who live in Israel without any of the rights that Israeli citizens have.
The extremists -even more extreme than Netanyahu- might want to expel every Palestinian from the Gaza District, even the West Bank, but nobody knows how, or where 4 million are supposed to live, while further north, Lebanese refugees moving into Syria are in dire situations, perhaps another 1, 2 or 20 million will be made homeless by Israel, and who is going to stop them?
And to think all it needed, on October 7th was a phone call from Netanyahu to the leader of HAMAS that Israel and Netanyahu supported and nurtured from the day it was created, saying 'This Stops Here'.
One wonders if that nauseating coward in Israel will soon be joined by that spineless, ignorant coward Trump in their campaign of death, misery and homelessness. Dare we hope for better days ahead?
Middle East crisis live: Israeli army says it is ‘checking possibility’ it killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar (theguardian.com)
I will take whatever you are smoking ��Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
The same baccy Sadat was smoking when he went to Israel in November 1977.Quote:
Originally Posted by sidney111
The same baccy Margaret Thatcher was smoking when her Govt opened a back channel with the Provisional IRA during the Hunger Strikes of 1981.
The same baccy the Palestinians and the Israelis were smoking when they started their secret talks in Oslo in 1993.
The same baccy Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat were smoking on the White House lawn in 1993 'Enough bloodshed and tears' -remember that?
The same baccy Tony Blair's Govt was smoking when, the day after the election victory in 1997. Mo Mowlam went to Northern Ireland to begin the end game of the Troubles that produced the Good Friday Agreement of 10 April 1998.
It has been done, it can be done. All it needs is courage.
Don't need a smoke. Need a drink. A stiff one. Preferably single malt, many times.
"Despite widespread international opposition, lawmakers voted overwhelming on Monday evening to approve two bills essentially barring the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants from operating in Israel, and severely curtailing its activities in Gaza and the West Bank."
Knesset approves laws barring UNRWA from Israel, limiting it in Gaza and West Bank | The Times of Israel
While the Knesset decision has been widely condemned, it should come as no surprise. When I was doing research in the Middle East in the 1990s I was in a library and found a small pamphlet published in Israel -it was published in the 1960s- that condemned UNRWA, the point being that Israel has been opposed to this UN Agency since the day it was created.
The argument from those Israelis who supported this measure, was that UNRWA could not serve Palestinian refugees because they do not exist. It is an extension of Golda Meir's claim that Palestinians don't exist, and is part of the broader argument about Palestinian identity not having any 'national' significance before 1967. Just as Palestinians 'left' their territory in 1948, so they were not refugees but migrants, though few people, states or institutions accepted this view. It also enabled pro-Israeli writers to claim that 'Jordan is Palestine' and thus encourage Palestinians on the West Bank to cross the river, a sentiment that is probably even stronger now than it was after the 1967 war.
There is an obvious problem with the simple fact that Arab and Jew have lived in this land for millennia, though right now the opportunity for two sides to share what they have does not look realistic, as the militants on both sides have done all they can to create bitterness, hatred and violence. One wonders who the Falustin of the Bible were, just as the 'Jordan is Palestine' argument becomes a sham when the Likud Party's definition of 'Erez Israel -the creation of which is its mission- includes the Biblical lands of Moab, Gilead, Ammon and Edom which are on the East Bank of the River Jordan.
Perhaps when Netanyahu declares he is creating a 'new Middle East' he means a Greater Israel which has two buffer zones -the Philadelphi Corridor on the Egyptian border, the Buffer zone in what is currently Southern Lebanon (emptied of over a million people to serve Israel's strategic but ultimately also its social and economic interests), while Israel will expand East of the River Jordan. However fanciful this sounds, bear in mind that for decades nobody thought Israel would actually ban UNWRA, that it would build walls to shut out people it doesn't like when everyone else was tearing them down, and repeat in the Gaza District what Israel did in the Palestine Mandate in the 1940s.
Gaza is now uninhabitable, which is what Netanyahu and the Crazies have wanted for a long long time. Where will the people go? They don't care, as long as it is not in Israel. In the end, it is the US which will have to pick up the tab for this expensive folly, though I doubt either Harris or Trump will agree to take in 4 million Palestinian refugees.
It's as if nobody really cares enough to do anything to help them, stateless, without rights, without homes, without hope.
"More than 1,000 figures from the literary and entertainment industry – including several Nobel laureates, Pulitzer prize, and Booker prize winners – have signed an open letter against “illiberal and dangerous” cultural boycotts.The letter was released by the nonprofit body Creative Community For Peace [CCFP], which campaigns against cultural boycotts of Israel, after more than 1,000 book industry figures pledged to boycott Israeli cultural institutions that “are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians”."
Nobel and Pulitzer winners denounce ‘dangerous’ Israel cultural boycott | Israel | The Guardian
First off, I don't support these kinds of boycott, because they are offensive, and because they don't work. Netanyahu could not care a damn about culture, or rather, his only culture is violence, so a boycott is pointless with so vulgar a man.
Second, have we not reached a point where the 'right of self-defence' that Israel claims must be set against the international law of armed conflict as well as humanitarian law to ask what Israel's proportionate response should have been? The collective punishment that has effectively destroyed the Gaza District is illegal, but raises the question was Israel merely waiting for the moment to impose its 'end game' on Gaza -that is, to find a way to get the people out, something Netanyahu's more extreme partners in Govt have declared is their aim?
Third, horrific as Oct 7th was, three times as many Palestinians were slaughtered in the refugee camps in Beirut in 1982 by Christians while the IDF formed a cordon around the camps to maximize the casualties -or are we to say some lives are worth more than others?
Lastly, these writers of books, makers of theatres might be asked this: after HAMAS, which hated cinema, who destroyed Gaza's cinemas, its theatres, its Libraries (making it impossible for anyone to borrow a book by David Grosssman) and cultural treasures in the form of historic mosques and churches? Israel did.
Have any of the 1000 condemned this cultural annihilation?
Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024 – Librarians and Archivists with Palestine
Gaza’s Cinemas & Theatres — afikra | عفكرة
Two Palestinian Artists Condemn Israel’s Destruction of Gaza's Iconic Theater - Palestine Chronicle
100 days of war in Gaza: More than 23,000 dead and a society in ruins | Middle East Eye
Channel 3 News reported on this last week, and when the channel's Irish reporter asked one of the zealots what should happen to the Palestinians in Gaza, he said 'Maybe Ireland and the UK can taken them'.
How about Michigan?
"Since the war in Gaza began, there has been renewed international focus on Israeli settlements and settler violence in the West Bank. Unprecedented pushback has come in the form of US, British, and EU sanctions.Weiss, under sanctions from Canada herself, says she is undeterred by criticism from abroad, pointing to what she claims is her personal success of establishing 300 settlements in the West Bank, where 500,000 Israeli settlers now live.
“I took all my experience from 50 years of dealing with settling the mountains, and I’m mobilising it to create a new reality in Gaza,” she said. “You think what I am saying is imaginary, some kind of fantasy. It is not.”".
‘The Arabs will disappear’: buoyant Israeli settlers eye return to Gaza | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian
Nominating Mike Huckabee to be the US's ambassador to Israel is purely transactional -the 'Evangelicals' gave him their vote, he gives them Huckabee. But Huckabee himself has had to admit he doesn't make policy, and it is clear that as far as that goes, Huckabee's appointment contradicts Trump's desire to be the 'peacemaker' in the Middle East, and of course get a Nobel Prize for doing so.
The problem is that when the UAE signed up to the 'Abraham Accords' it was explicit that this did not endorse the annexation by Israel of the West Bank, which is the opposite position of Mike Huckabee, and it is unlikely that Trump, seeing as he does the amount of money Kushner has got from the Saudis is going to put a principle before profit, so in this sense, Huckabee's appointment is a cosmetic blush, and not much more, though in terms of tone, it does send a bleak message to the Palestinians wherever they live: You are Nothing, Nobody Cares About You, You Have no Future.
Some links, and note that there are just as many critical remarks from Jewish outlets as others-
The Real Reason Trump Picked Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel - The Atlantic
What Trump Israel Ambassador Mike Huckabee Has Said About the Middle East | TIME
How Mike Huckabee could derail Trump's promised Israel policy – The Forward
Trump ambassador pick Huckabee says administration could back West Bank annexation | The Times of Israel
A predictable burst of outrage has followed the ICC warrant for the arrests of Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Mohamed Deif. That said, while Netanyahu has condemned it, and while his supporters in the UK, Hungary and the US have also done so, I am not sure they have condemned the warrant for Deif, maybe they don't mention him because it would raise the question: why him and not them?
The core of the legal argument is that Israel has deliberately deprived the population of Gaza of the basic needs of life, an argument that is proven every day on the footage we are allowed to see, given that Israel restricts reporting from the Gaza district. Depriving people of their homes, as is also the case in southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut, is also a crime.
It is clear that in the past, Israel supported the creation of HAMAS as a means of undermining the PLO/Fateh in the West Bank. It is clear that for all the tit for tat rockets and border clashes, first Sharon and then Netanyahu believed their strategy of containment was working, just as Netanyahu turned the screws on settlements on the West Bank until HAMAS believed it could not longer just lob rockets into Israel with minimum damage.
It is also the case that the Kushner Accords with the Gulf and other Arab states was seen by HAMAS a blow, but just as they thought the average Arab in the street opposed them (and most did), HAMAS underestimated the reaction of the Gulf states in particular if, as happened on October 7th 2023 HAMAS decided to change the status quo and push for a radical break with the preceding 25 years of misery. Detached from the political bureau in Qatar, much as the PLO leadership was isolated in Tunis between 1982 and the 1990s, Sinwar and Deif in my opinion miscalculated the Arab reaction -there was no repeat of the reaction to the October War of 1973, it left HAMAS on its own, its closest supporters in despair at the actions it took on October 7th.
One key point is the vexed problem of self-defence and a proportionate response to an attack. We have seen over the years that Israel's retaliation for an HAMAS attack was always disproportionate, thus since 2023 Israel's response has not just been disproportionate, is suggests that Netanyahu and his Cabinet of Lunatics, October 7 2023 not only changed the parameters of the 100 year old conflict, it has presented Israel with an opportunity to repeat 1948 and expel the Arabs from the Gaza District, first by making it uninhabitable, and soon I fear, the mass 'transfer' of Arabs out, where to I don't know.
If this is worthy of a court case, some may argue why Israel and not others, though others have been indicted and in the case of the former Yugoslavia tried and imprisoned.
Throughout the war of liberation in Algeria, the French military did respond to various bombings and killings with a 'ratonnade', rounding up Arabs, treating them badly in prison, and so on. But as with the British following the pub bombings in Birmingham in 1974, and the bombing of the hotel in Brighton Margaret Thatcher was staying in for the party conference in 1984, neither party responded by carpet bombing cities, be it Algiers or Oran, Belfast or (London)Derry. We never saw the Bogside or West Belfast churned into rubble, the Catholic population in whom the IRA and INLA were embedded (perhaps with more local support than HAMAS had in Gaza), bereft of their homes, squatting in fields or parks, or marched south into the Republic of Ireland.
Israel's response is thus not just a violation of International Law as is also the case with HAMAS, but suggests more than self-defence is at work here. It is an agenda which the new US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee may support, though it remains to be seen if the old family friend of Netanyahu, Trump, gives Israel the freedom to do whatever it wants.
One thing is sure -there will not be any reduction in the violence soon, the tragedy rolls on, the world seemingly powerless to stop it.
(1) UK would comply with Netanyahu arrest warrant, says No 10 – UK politics live