progressiveissuesblog

Provoking Civil War

2022-04-05 Israel is stoking a civil war against its Palestinian citizens   Three separate, deadly Palestinian attacks in Israeli cities in a week have elicited a predictable response. The Israeli army has drafted large numbers of extra soldiers into the West Bank and around Gaza, Palestinian territories already under decades of brutal military occupation.   But the fact that, unusually, two of the attacks were carried out by Israeli citizens – members of a large Palestinian minority whose rights are severely circumscribed and inferior to those of the Jewish majority – has raised the stakes considerably for the Israeli right.

A total of 11 Israelis died in the attacks a few days apart in the cities of Beersheba, Hadera and Bnei Brak, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Trigger-happy Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in separate incidents on Thursday, in the immediate wake of the attacks.   The lethal attacks were an opportunity for Naftali Bennett, the far-right leader who snatched the Israeli premiership from Benjamin Netanyahu last summer, to prove his credentials to his party’s main constituency: Jewish settlers determined to drive Palestinians off their lands and reclaim a supposed biblical birthright.  

In the occupied territories, armed settlers operate effectively as militias, terrorising nearby Palestinian communities, watched impassively, or sometimes assisted, by the Israeli army. They act as the long arm of the Israeli state – offering plausible deniability for Israeli officials as they exploit the settlers’ violence.    https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/israel-is-stoking-a-civil-war-against

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Peaceful Solutions (also see One State – Two State)

Updated 2024-08-28

The Real Fauda – Documentary   Can a TV drama bring life-long enemies together?   Set in the cloak-and-dagger world of the IDF’s undercover special forces – the Mista’arvim – Fauda is an Israeli-produced TV drama which has garnered praise for its realistic depiction of military tactics alongside its empathetic portrayal of Palestinians, militant or otherwise. BBC Arabic joins the production of the hotly anticipated second season, and tries to understand how it might one day pave the way for a dialogue between the two sides built on mutual understanding and compassion.     https://www.journeyman.tv/film/7282

“Peace Train” featuring Yusuf / Cat Stevens | Playing For Change | Song Around The World     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QpjR6-Uuks&t=47s

2024-08-21 Former Israeli and Palestinian Fighters Join With US GIs to Call for Peace in Gaza      A group of former fighters from Palestine and Israel plus active duty U.S. GIs announced last week why they decided to stop participating in war and urged U.S. military members to tell Congress to stop funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza via the ” Appeal for Redress v2.”

The online news conference was organized by Veterans For Peace and featured a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) special forces member, a young Israeli who just finished 85 days in jail for refusing to join the military, a former Hamas youth activist, and three active-duty U.S. military members who are awaiting discharge as conscientious objectors.   

 Elik Elhanan is a former special forces soldier in the IDF who, from 1995-98, served in south Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. In 1997, his 14-year old sister was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. He joined Courage to Refuse in 2002, co-founded the Israeli-Palestinian group Combatants for Peace in 2005, and now serves on the board of American Friends of Combatants for Peace. 

Sofia Orr, 19, spent 85 days in an Israeli military jail for refusing to join the Israeli Defense Force. Granted conscientious objector status and released in June, she wrote in her statement of refusal: “I refuse to enlist in order to show that change is needed and that change is possible, for the security and safety of all of us in Israel-Palestine, and in the name of empathy that is not restricted by national identity… I want to create a reality in which all children between the Jordan River and the [Mediterranean] Sea can dream without cages.”  

Ahmed Helou, now 52, lives in the West Bank and is a member of Combatants for Peace. He said: “I was born to a refugee family that was forced to flee from their home in 1948.  “At 15, I was invited to join a group called Hamas, to fight for the freedom of my people. It was 1987, the First Intifada. I threw rocks and made Palestinian flags. In 1992, I was sentenced to seven months in an Israeli military prison as a political detainee. When my parents visited, they told me about the Oslo process and I couldn’t stop thinking about how we could have another life.”

USAF Senior Airman Larry Hebert said: “As an active duty servicemember who joined believing our military was a force for good in the world, I’m horrified by the position of the United States government to fully support the genocide and occupation of civilians in Palestine.

USAF Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt said: “After 311 days, the death toll is appalling: nearly 41,000 innocent lives brutally taken, the majority women and children. Excruciating reports estimate a devastating total of 186,000 deaths, with almost 93,000 more suffering from severe injuries. Stories of widespread sexual violence, merciless executions, torture, and an endless list of war crimes flood the news, and yet our government remains apathetic to the suffering of Palestinians and the cries of millions calling for a lasting cease-fire and justice. As conscientious objectors, as advocates for peace and human rights, as service members with a shred of moral decency left in us, we adamantly refuse to be accomplices in this genocide.   

USAF Second Lt. Joy Metzler said: “As an active duty service member, I have been told repeatedly that military strength is the only way to counteract the threats we face in the world. But once again we see that violence, this time perpetrated by the Israeli government, only leads to death and destruction in an ever growing conflict.

Mike Ferner, special projects coordinator for Veterans For Peace, said: “It is highly significant that former fighters from Israel and Palestine have joined American GIs to say, ‘War is not the answer.’    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israeli-palestinian-fighters-peace

2024-06-24 An Age of Coexistence in Palestine  Guest: Ussama Makdisi is Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University of California Berkeley. He is the author of the Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World.  https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-25-2024/

2024-06-10’Glimmer of Hope’ as UN Security Council Approves Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution   In a move that boosts the three-phase plan announced by President Joe Biden late last month, the United Nations Security Council on Monday voted 14-0—with permanent member Russia abstaining—in favor of a U.S.-sponsored resolution for a cease-fire in Gaza.   Russia chose not to exercise its power to veto the resolution, which urges Israel and Hamas to “fully implement its terms without delay and without condition.”

Responding to the vote, Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement that “although the Biden administration should have allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a permanent cease-fire resolution many months and many slaughtered Palestinians ago, we welcome today’s development as a positive and long overdue step toward ending the genocide.”

“The Biden administration must now use American leverage to force [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to agree to a permanent cease-fire so that the massacres of Palestinian civilians can end, all hostages and political prisoners can safely go free, international tribunals can begin holding those responsible for war crimes accountable, and the world can finally begin pursuing a credible end to the illegal occupation of Palestine that has fomented decades of injustice and oppression.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/cease-fire-resolution-passes   

2024-05-12   19th Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony   The lives of everyone connected to Israel and Palestine will never be the same since October 7th 2023. With tens of thousands of lives cut short, families torn apart, children traumatized, now more than ever we need to continue to show up for one another to mourn and remember. And, as we do every year, call for an end to the violence and demand a political solution that brings freedom, justice and safety for all. With all eyes of the international community on Israel and Palestine, now more than ever, we need to unite around our sorrow and stay strong in building hope that another way is not only possible but imperative.

This year the 19th annual Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony was organized by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle-Families Forum. It is the only one of its kind and it is the largest Israeli-Palestinian jointly organized peace event. Last year over 15,000 people were in attendance physically and around 200,000 virtually from all around the world. The event is held every year on “Yom HaZikaron” (Israeli Memorial Day), a national day of mourning for Israelis.   https://cfpeace.org/israeli-palestinian-joint-memorial/

2024-04-13 The Oasis Plan: The LaRouche Solution for Peace Through Development      Today’s conflict in Gaza has come to the point that it stains the collective soul of humanity. Though it is born out of decades of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, and amidst a swamp of imperial ambitions, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on Jan. 26 delivered an undeniable verdict: Israel is on the verge of creating a genocide in Gaza. Either an end to this conflict is reached soon, or the words “Never Again,” which were so clearly stated at the end of the Nazi holocaust during the 1940’s, will forever ring hollow. https://laroucheorganization.com/larouche-plan-southwest-asia

2024-02-12 Which Side Are You On?   Israel wants all the territory devoid of Palestinians so they can claim it for their own, giving the U.S. commanders of capital an even more powerful base in the Middle East/Southwest Asia.

Under capitalism’s laws, owning the means of production gives the capitalist class the right to all of the surplus value we workers create—and there’s no limit to how much wealth any one capitalist can accumulate.  

There was a meme circulating on Facebook, “It’s 80,000 BC. You are immortal. The world is still frozen in an ice age. You decide to save $10,000 every day, never spending a cent. 82,021 years later, it’s 2021 ($300 billion). You still don’t have as much money as Elon Musk.” That’s an example of how much surplus value they are allowed to accumulate on an individual basis. 

But we have the ultimate power in our hands to stop them in their tracks by withholding our labor—rendering them helpless.   We must build and support our own workers’ party democratically controlled and run by the working class and dedicated to fighting for our interests—a party against war, environmental destruction, police repression, racism, and sexism. A party that stands for turning the ownership and control of the means of production and the surplus value our labor creates over to the world’s working class.

We have the means right now to build a Labor Party of our own that supports socialism and opposes all capitalist parties—a party that can win freedom, democracy, economic and social equality, and justice—a socialist world under the democratic control of the masses of working people.  https://www.socialistviewpoint.org/marapr_24/marapr_24_02.html

2024-02-05 As Israeli’s Mass Murder Continues, U.S. Makes it Worse    The world is riveted, as it should be, on Israel’s horrifying war on Gaza. The fact that Israel, critically supported by the most powerful imperialist state in the world, is committing the worst crime of genocide the world has seen since World War II, has sunk in, even in the U.S.  Most Americans, especially the young adults, are disgusted by what Israel is doing, and showing it, by conducting numerous demonstrations demanding “Cease Fire Now!,” and dropping President Biden’s approval rating into the toilet.  

Now comes the question of what is the plan for saving this persecuted and terrorized people? It’s certainly not killing off the Jews, which no one wants, but which some imperialist/terrorists assert is the case. And it is certainly not a “two state solution,” which is a ridiculous folly. Two people—one more powerful and murderous than the other—living side by side with the same paper border that they have now? Really?

First, we must note, that these two peoples lived side by side in peace in the same area for centuries before feudal-capitalist cultures screwed everything up.

Second, the boundaries and inequalities of nationalism and capitalism must be scrapped by scrapping nationalism and capitalism and replacing them with equality and socialism. This means that the state of Israel—along with any entity that equates a political entity with a religion—must be demolished. The Palestinians have never been a recognized state.

Last and most important, a secular, united, and socialist Palestine, uniting all ethnicities and based primarily on none, and linked in with a socialist federation of Mid-East socialist states, must be the goal. It will, of course, be necessary for nationalism and capitalism to be abolished first, in a revolution of the working-class masses.  https://socialistviewpoint.org/marapr_24/marapr_24_03.html

2023-12-26 Netanyahu Says Peace Depends on Hamas’ End, Demilitarized Gaza [MEK Note: Let’s look at Netanyahu’s prerequisites from a Palestinian viewpoint: End of oppression of Palestinians, demilitarize internal Israel forces and make Palestinians full and equal members of society with Jewish members] 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined three prerequisites to achieving peace in its war with Hamas: the destruction of the group, the demilitarization of Gaza and for Palestinian society to be “deradicalized.” 

The comments, made in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published Monday, come amid rising pressure on Israel to scale back the conflict in Gaza, which began following Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on southern Israeli communities that killed 1,200 people — with Hamas militants kidnapping scores of Israelis.   “In destroying Hamas, Israel will continue to act in full compliance with international law,” Netanyahu wrote, saying that eliminating Hamas “is the only proportional response to prevent the repeat of such horrific atrocities.”    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/netanyahu-says-peace-depends-on-hamas-end-demilitarized-gaza/ar-AA1m1P1G

2023-12-23 Man whose parents were killed on Oct. 7 calls for peace in Gaza    As the war between Israel and Hamas rages, the word “peace” may feel like an unreachable goal.  For Maoz Inon, it’s the only thing to hope for.   Inon’s mother and father were both murdered by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, along with hundreds of other Israelis. His mother, Bilha, was 76, and his father, Yacovi, was 78. Both were still “in the prime of their life,” Inon said, practicing Pilates and yoga and participating in their kibbutz.

But on Oct. 7, their home was burned to ashes. Security officers said two bodies were found inside.   After receiving the news, Inon entered a seven-day period of mourning in the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva. After that, though, Inon says he “woke up.”   Since then, Inon has called for peace and an end to the war, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has claimed 20,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza.

“I strongly believe this land was promised to both Israelis and Palestinians,” Inon said. “A military invasion into Gaza will just makes things worse, will just keep this cycle of blood, the cycle of death, the cycle of violence that’s been going for a century. We must break this pattern of violence of answering, and terrorist attacks with more violence. We need to stop. And we need to act differently because we are acting the same for a century and receiving the same results.”

Inon has joined many of his countrymen in protesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Demonstrations against Netanyahu have occurred in the the country almost every night since Oct. 7, and his approval rating has plunged, with a new poll finding that less than a third of Israelis find him “suitable” for his position.   Many critics say that Netanyahu is using Israeli deaths to justify even more death in Gaza, a statement that Inon agrees with.    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/man-whose-parents-were-killed-on-oct-7-calls-for-peace-in-gaza/ar-AA1lWGzU

2023-12-12 WHAT IS THE PATH TO PEACE IN GAZA?     After Hamas’s depraved attack and the unfathomable destruction of Palestinian life, infrastructure and society in Gaza by the Israeli military offensive, any hope for the territory feels far away. But once the guns fall silent and Gazans are allowed to contemplate the reconstruction of their shattered home, the time will come when Israelis, Palestinians and the rest of the world must wrestle with the future of Gaza and its people.

Times Opinion reached out to thinkers, political leaders and experts for their vision of what might meet the moment. Because in the end, two neighboring groups of millions of people must find a way to live their lives. Here are 10 ideas for a path forward.   https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/12/opinion/gaza-israel-palestinians-plans.html

2023-11-27 “There Is an Alternative”: Meet the Israeli & Palestinian “Combatants for Peace” Urging Nonviolence   With Israel and Palestine experiencing the worst violence in decades, we speak with two co-founders of Combatants for Peace, a group composed of people from both sides of the conflict who have committed to nonviolence and peaceful coexistence. Avner Wishnitzer is a former member of Sayeret Matkal, one of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite commando units, and Sulaiman Khatib spent more than 10 years in prison after being arrested as a teenager for an attack on Israeli soldiers. The two recently co-authored a piece for The New York Review of Books on modeling a nonviolent path toward peace. “We are offering a different direction that’s based on partnership and common interest and common values,” says Khatib. Wishnitzer adds that only a political solution can bring lasting peace. “When people are fed with the idea that there is no choice but violence, they respond with violence to each other,” he says.    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27/combatants_for_peace_israel_palestine

2023-11-21 The Best Primer I’ve Heard on Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts    It is too early to talk about a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. With the trauma of Oct. 7 still fresh for the Israeli public and with the ongoing devastation in Gaza, any talk of conflict-ending solutions is cruel fantasy.   But it wasn’t always. Peace efforts in the Middle East have been tried over and over again. It is not a history without breakthroughs. There was a time when a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt would have been unthinkable. But that agreement lives alongside a long list of collapsed negotiations. Why?

I wanted to have someone on the show who could help me read this checkered history. Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo… Few people have been as intimately involved in the many Middle East peace processes as Miller. He’s a decades-long veteran of the State Department who has touched peace negotiations under the Reagan, the Clinton and both Bush administrations. His book is the best I’ve read on the peace processes and what went wrong.  In this conversation, we explore the frustrating, uneven history of Arab-Israeli peace efforts, Miller’s hard-won insights about the reality of peace negotiations and the idiosyncratic personalities who have most influenced the prospects for peace in the Middle East. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8eeZO_x6PI

2023-10-27 The Courage of Calling for Peace When the World Wants More Blood   War begets hatred. War begets fear. War begets insanity   History is taught from one war to the next. Winning, losing: This is so much easier to understand, to organize around, than, for instance, words such as these from the Dalai Lama:    “We can help ourselves only if we help the Other. It is the cultivation of love and compassion, our ability to enter into and to share another’s suffering, that are the preconditions for the continued survival of our species. . . . The feeling of community with all living creatures can be attained only if we recognize that we are all basically united and dependent on one another.”    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/calling-for-peace-amid-war 

2023-10-17 The Case for Hope in Israel and Gaza. Really       https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/10/17/the-case-for-hope-in-israel-and-gaza-really/

2023-10-15 Peace in Palestine: Solving the Solvable   An Improbable Yet Possible Solution to the Israel/Palestine Conflict – Let Peace and the Right of Return Rule!     Average Israelis and Palestinians must be brought to the peace table: Not “Israeli” governmental lunatics, or Palestinians who have sold their souls to the occupational forces (collaborators).

The idea of a two-state solution to the conflict has been around for decades, but it’s time to accept that it’s outdated. The idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip may have been feasible back in the 90s, but since then, “Israel” has expanded its settlements so much so that there is very little land left for Palestine. Also, many Palestinians want to return to their homes in what is now “Israel,” and accepting a two-state solution means having to give up that right.

The only way one can move forward is if “Israelis” start to acknowledge that the homes they have built in Palestine are not in line with international law. “Israelis” have to start taking responsibility for the illegal settlements they have built in Palestine and relinquish them.  Palestinians aren’t wrong when they say that they want their land back. However, is it unrealistic to think that Palestinians can peacefully have all their land back in what is now “Israel?”

An ideal solution would be to create a state for all, where Israelis and Palestinians live together in peace. This solution would require “Israelis” and Palestinians to put aside their differences regarding security fears, language, culture, and religion, and work towards creating an inclusive society that nurtures a culture of peace, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence.  

It’s time for “Israelis” and Palestinians to come together and acknowledge that for the greater good, a peaceful solution must be achieved. It’s time to move from toleration and coexistence to genuine understanding and compassion for the other’s historically based pain and fears. That kind of growth would require real courageous work on both sides. But imagine the positive impact it could have. It’s time to lead with love and end this conflict once and for all!  https://cindysheehan.substack.com/p/peace-in-palestine-solving-the-solvable

2010-12 23-Palestinian-Jewish Solidarity Statement   This statement is written and signed by Palestinians, Jews, and others who are committed to holding complex truths and striving to overcome polarization. We feel the pain of our people, identify with their pain, and need to work together to uplift our shared humanity.

The unfolding horror in Israel and Gaza is an escalation of decades of state-sanctioned violence by Israel against Palestinians. We condemn the horrific actions of Hamas against Israeli civilians. We likewise condemn Israel’s unbridled bombing and cutting off access to all basic needs, including food, water, electricity, and medical care. Attacks on Palestinian and Israeli civilians are repugnant.

Israeli violence against Palestinians has been intentionally hidden, slow, and steady. Contrary to what the media is reporting, this attack was not unprovoked. The Israeli and American governments have worked together to suppress and deny the inhumane acts against Palestinians that have led to this moment. There are Palestinians and Jews who have been raising red flags and warning about this inevitable outcome for decades, only to be dismissed and ignored.

The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing occupation, apartheid, and unbridled violence by settlers and soldiers in the West Bank provides the context for what is happening now. The recent Israeli government’s escalation of violence, encroachment of Al Aqsa Mosque, and its 16-year siege of Gaza has led to the current explosion…More  https://www.tikkun.org/statement-of-solidarity-with-israel-palestine/

2023-10-08 Fellowship of Reconciliation Condemns Palestine – Israel Conflict     In condemning Hamas’s attack launched on Shabbat and Simchat Torah, we are also led to condemn Israel for its decades of occupation, siege, and human rights violations and abuses that have led up to this moment.       FOR unequivocally condemns actions of violence that avoid the harder battles of justice. The killing and maiming of civilians, whether by Hamas rockets or Israeli airstrikes are unjustifiable, a war crime under international law. Also, unjustifiable are the actions of Israel that led to this current war: decades of military occupation with no end in sight, apartheid policies, recurrent massacres, and a siege so brutal that has turned Gaza into the largest open-air prison on earth. 

FOR recognizes and condemns the failure of the Biden administration to pursue a peaceful solution to this entrenched conflict while providing Israel with almost $3.8 billion annually in unconditional military aid. Even while pursuing normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries, the U.S. has not worked to bring an end to the occupation or demanded an improvement in the rights and status of Palestinians. To call Hamas’s actions “unprovoked,” as the White House initially did in a statement today, is to put one’s head in the sand.

Whether this current war results in another status quo in Gaza, as past wars have, or a reoccupation of Gaza by Israel, this violence will not aid the aims of safety, equality, freedom, and peace for all people between the river and the sea. In the words of renowned theologian, political analyst, and former FOR executive director, A.J. Muste, ‘There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”  https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/fellowship-of-reconciliation-condemns-palestine-israel-conflict/

2023-09-14 The Mothers’ Call, 2023    Women from the Israeli movement “Women Wage Peace” and the Palestinian movement “Women of the Sun” will hold a joint event on October 4th demanding to end the cycle of bloodshed and to promote “The Mothers’ Call” which was formulated by both movements and calls on peoples of both nations – Palestinian and Israeli, and peoples of the region to join our call and demonstrate their support for the resolution of the conflict.    https://www.womenwagepeace.org.il/en/the-mothers-call-2023/

2014-07-30 Rays of Hope in Gaza: 13 Israeli and Palestinian Groups Building Peace    Sami Al Jundi, a Palestinian former militant-turned-peacemaker whose story I chronicle in The Hour of Sunlight, once boiled down for me his vision of a peaceful future in the Middle East: Israeli children will only know safety and security when Palestinian children’s rights and needs are secured; and Palestinian children will only know safety and security when Israeli children’s rights and needs are secured.  Below are just a handful of the organizations and initiatives that are building toward true peace—a peace that comes with dignity, security, equality, and respect for human rights for all Palestinians and Israelis.    https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2014/07/30/13-peacebuilders-in-gaza

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Palestinians

Updated 2024-02-26

The Palestinian people (UN)      We monitor the impact of the Israeli occupation on socioeconomic conditions in the Palestinian Territory    https://unctad.org/topic/palestinian-people 

2024-02-15 Born in a Tent – The Moment Arkan Came into a Rafah Refugee Camp (PHOTOS & VIDEO)    Meet Arkan, his name means ‘pillars’, pillars of faith, pillars of hope, and the pillars of steadfastness. Arkan has just joined the struggle for freedom.  https://www.palestinechronicle.com/born-in-a-tent-the-moment-arkan-came-into-a-rafah-refugee-camp-photos-video/

2023-10-23 Palestine Letter: Israel is Imposing a Blackout on Gaza to Hide a Massacre     All around us, it looks like another Nakba. People are carrying bags on their backs, fastening furniture on top of cars, and fleeing on foot in every direction. They don’t know if they will even be able to return to find their homes intact. Neither do I. Before I left, I stood in the middle of my home and said goodbye to every corner and every stone.  https://www.wrmea.org/israel-palestine/palestine-letter-israel-is-imposing-a-blackout-on-gaza-to-hide-a-massacre.html

2023-11-17 “I want our house to have walls”   A Palestinian child and his family displaced in Khan Younis    “All I am asking for is for the war to stop and for us to return to our homes, if they are still standing.”  Mohammad Waleed Mohammad Obaid is 10 years old, and up until October 7, lived in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza city, with his mother and sisters: Leen, 13, and Reem, four. Mohammad’s father lives and works in the United Arab Emirates.

“I do not know if our home is still standing, because it is close to Al-Shifa Hospital,” Mohammad told DCIP. Israeli forces have besieged Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza city, surrounding the hospital compound and attacking patients with artillery shells and live ammunition. “I learned from the news that Israeli tanks have stormed the area, and we do not know the fate of our home.”   “I want our house to have walls. I do not really care if the doors and windows are gone. We will be able to live without them,” Mohammad said. “The important thing is that the house is still standing where it is.”   https://www.dci-palestine.org/i_want_our_house_to_have_walls_a_palestinian_child_and_his_family_displaced_in_khan_younis?utm_campaign=nov_17&utm_medium=email&utm_source=dcipalestine

2023-11-14 We Are Not Numbers: Palestinian Journalist Ahmed Alnaouq Mourns 21 Family Members Killed by Israel     One-and-a-half million residents of Gaza have been displaced by Israeli bombing and siege since October 7 in what many Palestinians are calling a second Nakba, or catastrophe, referencing the 1948 expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians to create the state of Israel. “It’s what has been going on for the past 75 years,” says Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, who describes how 21 members of his family were killed in Gaza, including his father and several siblings. Alnaouq had not been able to visit his family for four years prior to their deaths, due to restrictions upon entry into Gaza. He joins us from London, where historic protests calling for a ceasefire were deemed “hate marches” by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who was fired shortly thereafter. Alnaouq speaks about global support for Palestinians and responds to U.S. President Joe Biden’s latest comments on Israel’s targeting of hospitals in Gaza.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-1dmng0TCk

2023-11-13 ‘They call us terrorists’: Inside the Palestinian resistance forces of Jenin, West Bank       Israel continues to unleash hell upon the 22-by-5-mile concentrated area of Gaza, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with relentless airstrikes and indiscriminate bombings of hospitals, residential buildings, schools, and other civilian sites. As besieged Palestinians shelter and flee and die within the walls of their cage in Gaza, Resistance forces are mobilizing to rise up against an Occupation that has presided over lives for 75 years.

Where there is occupation, there is resistance, and numerous Palestinian resistance groups exist across the Occupied Territories. These groups consist of occupied subjects turned freedom fighters—those who have been directly targeted by Israel, who have witnessed their friends and families die at the hands of occupying forces, and who have been labeled “terrorists” for resisting their slow extermination. In Jenin, a 1km square ghetto-like refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, and the target of numerous Israeli incursions, there are many who have chosen the path of armed resistance, and many who felt they had no other choice.

For those who suffer under the direct oppression and daily practices of apartheid—including the suspension of human and civil rights, military-imposed blockades and checkpoints restricting people’s movements, the demolition of homes and killing of family members—there comes a breaking point. Generations of Palestinians, born into Occupation and violence, do not live a life of dignity. As they describe, under these conditions, they have nothing to live for and nothing to lose, and they have everything to fight for.

In July of this year, before the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks and Israel’s genocidal retaliatory offensive in Gaza, The Real News Network spoke to members of the community in Jenin refugee camp about their lives under Occupation, the role of the Resistance there, and the fight for freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WfLVa1u4pk

2023-11-13 “Beacon of Light”: Fellow Doctors Recall Dr. Hammam Alloh, Gaza Doctor Killed by Israeli Airstrike      We speak with two physicians who knew Dr. Hammam Alloh, a Palestinian nephrologist at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital who was killed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike. They recall him as a “committed physician, wonderful father” and “beacon of light.” He had refused to heed Israeli directives to evacuate in order to continue providing care to his patients. “He spent a decade learning how to serve his people,” says Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan with Doctors Without Borders. “He wanted his children to be able to see a day when they had a free, just, durable, free life in Palestine, without occupation,” says Dr. Ben Thomson, a fellow nephrologist who worked with Dr. Alloh.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hourhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvLS_zbVwGM  

2023-11-13 “We’re Being Exterminated”: Hear Dr. Hammam Alloh’s Interview from Gaza Before His Death   We feature one of the final interviews with Palestinian doctor Hammam Alloh, who died Saturday when an Israeli artillery shell struck his wife’s home, killing him, his father, brother-in-law and father-in-law. On October 31, Democracy Now! spoke to Dr. Alloh about conditions at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital, and his decision to continue working, as he called on people in the United States and the rest of the world to take action against Israel’s indiscriminate assault. When asked about why he refused to leave his patients, Dr. Alloh responded, “You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?”  Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfOyMz9pJjg

2023-11-04 The Only Way to End the Inhumanity Is to Humanize Palestinians     Where are the stories in mainstream media of Palestinian lives lost? Not just in the latest Israeli war on Gaza but in all the wars that preceded it?     We live in an era where, in theory, we have accepted that all human beings are deserving of equal treatment—that skin color, national origin, language, accent, clothing, and other markers of ethnicity are secondary to the fact that we all deserve dignity.  In theory.

In practice, the otherizing of human beings remains central to the grim calculus by which we justify violence against one another and even accept it as virtuous. This violence, inflicted by states or by vigilantes, is everywhere we look. In the United States, it’s in the way Black communities are over-policed, Indigenous communities are neglected, migrants are warehoused, and asylum seekers are kept out.   Internationally, it’s in the way our society dismisses the targets of Western wars and capitalism.   Most prominently today, it’s in the dehumanization of Palestinians during what, by many accounts, is an unfolding Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza.  

The only way to end the inhumanity is to humanize the victims of war in pursuit of justice.https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-dehumanizes-palestinians

2020-11-18 Palestinian women as a threat to Israel and feminist foreign policy as we go into the Trump administration    Join the antiwar group CODEPINK for our weekly radio show every Thursday! Each week features a different CODEPINK organizer hosting robust conversations with grassroots peacemakers all over the world from Korea to Yemen to Venezuela to Iran and beyond. Tune in to get weekly updates on the global antiwar movement and learn all about peacemakers in communities worldwide confronting war hawks wherever they may find them. https://codepink.substack.com/p/episode-65-palestinian-women-as-a-77e#details

2003-05-00 A Palestinian Labor Leader Speaks Out    In the three years since the current intifada, or uprising, began, the already-fragile Palestinian economy has nearly broken down. Under military and economic siege, entire economic sectors have collapsed. Unemployment runs well over 50%, with 411,000 people out of work. Almost half of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and food shortages have struck certain areas. The besieged and directionless Palestinian Authority (PA) appears unable to meet the staggering crisis.

In this context, the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) is focused on the literal survival of its members and their families. As one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in Palestine, the PGFTU is responding to the mass deprivation by stepping into a role previously fulfilled by the PA: providing an economic and social safety net for its members. The federation delivers unemployment and health insurance benefits to tens of thousands.   PGFTU also continues its long-term struggle to build a movement for workers’ rights in Palestine, and recently succeeded in pushing the PA to establish a set of working labor laws. With 500,000 public and private worker-members in the West Bank and Gaza strip, PGFTU represents 75% of the Palestinian workforce. That’s a unionization level most unions in the West would envy. But its members have faced conditions that no one would envy.  https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2003/0503aruri.html

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

One State – Two State

Updated 2024-04-03

What is the relationship between Israel and Palestine? – Britannica      “Palestine” was the name of the region along the eastern Mediterranean Sea that came under British administration after World War I. It came to denote the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, while the lands east of the Jordan River became known as Transjordan. “Israel” is the name of a state which was established in Palestine in 1948 for the Jewish people. Both names are ancient in origin. Another term, the “Palestinian territories,” refers to areas of Palestine known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were the areas of Palestine that remained under Arab control after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948–49. The territories were later captured by Israel in 1967 but were never brought under Israeli civil law. An agreement in 1993 between Israel and representatives of the Palestinian people sought to establish a Palestinian state in these territories, but that process has not been completed. Israel is an independent state governed by a form of parliamentary democracy. The Palestinian territories have some level of autonomy: the West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority, a self-governing body established after the 1993 agreement with Israel, and the Gaza Strip is governed by Hamas, a militant movement that until recently rejected the notion of a two-state solution. The conflict at its core is about the self-determination of two peoples living in the same place: Jews and Palestinians both want to control their own futures and both seek the ability to live in peace, freedom, and security.   But how to achieve that for two peoples on a tract of land slightly larger than Vermont has been very difficult to work out.     https://www.britannica.com/video/223179/Britannica-Insights-Israel-Palestine-conflict

2024-04-13 The Oasis Plan: The LaRouche Solution for Peace Through Development      Today’s conflict in Gaza has come to the point that it stains the collective soul of humanity. Though it is born out of decades of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, and amidst a swamp of imperial ambitions, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on Jan. 26 delivered an undeniable verdict: Israel is on the verge of creating a genocide in Gaza. Either an end to this conflict is reached soon, or the words “Never Again,” which were so clearly stated at the end of the Nazi holocaust during the 1940’s, will forever ring hollow.   

Therefore, an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza is urgently required. No good will come, either for Palestinians or for Israelis, from a continuation of this conflict. Additionally, steps must be taken toward the implementation of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. A solid basis for this already exists in United Nations Resolution 242, adopted November 22, 1967, which calls for the return to the pre-1967 borders. Without these basic steps, this war threatens to not only annihilate the people of Gaza, but to engulf the entire region in war—a situation which could rapidly become a nuclear World War III.  https://laroucheorganization.com/larouche-plan-southwest-asia

2024-03-22 How a One-State Solution for Israelis and Palestinians Could Heal the World     This is the language of peace. It swells the heart, it transcends the small-mindedness of global politics.  Probably fewer ideas are treated with more contempt in today’s world than . . . ahem: a one-state solution for Palestine and Israel, with, good God, every resident equally valued, equally free.

I acknowledge from the start: This is not a simple process, any more than America’s reluctant embrace of the civil rights movement was, or is, simple. But armed dehumanization — which is to say war, hatred, ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure, endless slaughter, the murder of children, genocide — is neither “simple” nor the least bit effective in creating a world that is safe for anyone. War and hatred perpetuate nothing but themselves. You know that, right?

 But what about a two-state solution? Neither side actually wants this and, with the West Bank overrun with Israeli settlers, it’s hardly possible anyway. The concept of a two-state solution, Samer Elchahabi writes at the Arab Center website. “has been used to delegitimize Palestinians’ aspirations for equality and freedom, has allowed for relentless settlement expansion on Palestinian land, and has offered a fig leaf for perpetuating occupation with Western support.” 

There are three basic ways of dealing with conflict: domination, compromise and what I would call transcendence.   Domination is simplistic. I win, you lose.   “Compromise does not create, it deals with what already exists.” And the conflict doesn’t really go away. It just takes a different form.

But the third option, which she referred to in her essay as “integration,” addresses the needs and wishes of all parties to the conflict and creates something — a solution — that hadn’t previously existed. In short, it creates a better world. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-palestine-one-state-solution

2024-03-05 Achieving the Two-State Solution in the Wake of Gaza War   The two-state solution is enshrined in international law and is the only viable path to a long-lasting peace. All other solutions—a continuation of Israel’s apartheid regime, one bi-national state, or one unitary state—would guarantee a continuation of war by one side or the other or both. Yet the two-state solution seems irretrievably blocked. It is not. Here is a pathway.

The Israeli government strongly opposes a two-state solution, as does a significant proportion of the Israeli population, some on religious grounds (“God gave us the land”) and some on security grounds (“We can never be safe with a State of Palestine”). A significant proportion of Palestinians regard Israel as an illegitimate settler-colonial entity, and in any event distrust any peace process. 

The usual recommendation is the following six-step sequence of events: (1) ceasefire; (2) release of hostages; (3) humanitarian assistance; (4) reconstruction; (5) peace conference for negotiations between Israel and Palestine; and finally (6) establishment of two states on agreed boundaries. This path is impossible. There is a perpetual deadlock on steps 5 and 6, and this sequence has failed for 57 years since the 1967 war.

Thus, the settlement should follow this order: (1) establishment of Palestine as 194th member state within two-state solution framework on June 4, 1967 borders; (2) immediate ceasefire; (3) release of hostages; (4) humanitarian assistance; (5) peacekeepers, disarmament and mutual security; and (6) negotiation on modalities (settlements, return of refugees, mutually agreed land-swaps, and others; but not boundaries).  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/two-state-solution-gaza-2667433791

2023-12-17 Netanyahu’s Bold Boast: ‘Proud’ to Thwart Palestinian State Creation       Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was “proud” of preventing the creation of a Palestinian state during a press conference in Tel Aviv Saturday night.   Speaking alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, Netanyahu claimed that he had halted the progression of the Oslo peace process, which began in 1993, calling the Oslo Accords “a fateful mistake” and said the results of the “little Palestinian state in Gaza” brought about by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 demonstrated the danger of allowing Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank.

The Oslo Accords were an agreement signed by Israel and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) that saw the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza as part of a process that was meant to lead to a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  

Netanyahu’s comments come after several Israeli officials said that there would be no two-state solution following the end of Israel’s indiscriminate war on Gaza, which has destroyed much of the occupied territory and killed at least 18,800 Palestinians, primarily women and children, in Israeli attacks since October 7, according to the territory’s health ministry.https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-s-bold-boast-proud-to-thwart-palestinian-state-creation

2023-11-28 Calls for a Two-State Solution Provide a Distraction—Not Hope     We are moving from a phase in which the mantra of the two-state solution has been used as cover for Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to one involving the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza, which has become the world’s biggest open-air concentration camp.  All of this is being justified by the need to remove the purported greatest obstacle to peace.

It is absurd to join together two such contradictory trajectories—one that talks of peace, and another that entails the ongoing process of exterminating a group of people who are supposed to benefit from the peace process.

But such a proposition is by no means unfamiliar within the context of US history, which began with the extermination of the indigenous population and extended to Iraq and Afghanistan by the 21st century. It is by design, based on the assumption that this is an opportune time to go ahead with a plan whose main goal is to guarantee the security of Israel and rebuild Washington’s regional alliances.  But what does invoking the two-state solution really mean after so many years of neglect, and the ensuing destruction and suffering inflicted on a colonized people? Will it translate into a real shift in U.S. policy?

And is the two-state solution still a serious or viable option, given the entrenched settler project in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the deepening fanaticism and trend towards fascism exacerbated by the current war? Is Washington’s version of the two-state solution the same one that the Palestinian leadership aspires to, and is the U.S. willing to put real pressure on Israel?   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/two-state-solution-gaza

2023-11-28 Netanyahu Says He Is ‘Only One Who Will Prevent a Palestinian State’     “Look Joe Biden: Netanyahu is spitting in your face,” said one critic. “Are you going to keep hugging him in public or are you going to finally end the blank check and hold him accountable for his words and actions?”  

With his approval ratings in the tank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been lobbying members of his Likud party in a bid to keep their support, claiming he is “the only one who will prevent a Palestinian state” in Gaza and the West Bank.  “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his colleagues in 2019. “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

 Analysts have long argued that one democratic state, not two states, is the only viable alternative to the apartheid status quo, given factors such as ever-expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Throughout his career, Netanyahu has vociferously opposed a peaceful resolution and worked to divide Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by propping up Hamas.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-palestinian-state

2023-11-18 What ‘From the River to the Sea’ Really   In 1969, the Palestinian National Council, the highest decision-making body of the Palestinians in exile, formally called for a “Palestinian democratic state” that would be “free of all forms of religious and social discrimination.”   A 1986 poll found that 78% of respondents “supported the establishment of a democratic-secular Palestinian state encompassing all of Palestine,” while only 17% supported two states.   This remained a popular vision among Palestinians, even as some of their leaders inched toward the idea of establishing a truncated Palestinian state alongside Israel in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.

Many Palestinians were skeptical of this two-state solution. For refugees exiled since 1948, a two-state solution would not allow them to return to their towns and villages in Israel. Some Palestinian citizens of Israel feared that a two-state solution would leave them even more isolated as an Arab minority in a Jewish state.   Even Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—those who stood the most to gain from a two-state solution—were lukewarm to the idea..

Two States or One?   The 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords led many to believe that a two-state solution was just around the corner.    But as hopes for a two-state solution dimmed, some Palestinians returned to the idea of a single, democratic state from the river to the sea.   Today, broad swaths of Palestinians still favor the idea of equality. A 2022 poll found strong support among Palestinians for the idea of a single state with equal rights for all.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/from-the-river-to-the-sea-meaning, https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-river-to-the-sea-a-palestinian-historian-explores-the-meaning-and-intent-of-a-scrutinized-slogan/

2023-11-10 “From the River to the Sea”: Omer Bartov on Contested Slogan & Why Two-State Solution Is Not Viable  Israeli American scholar Omer Bartov says the two-state solution is dead after decades of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, making the creation of an independent Palestinian state all but impossible. He says a one-state solution — a single democratic state for all Jewish Israelis and Palestinians — is also unlikely to work given the competing national visions of the two communities. “The only solution is a confederation,” says Bartov, describing a scenario in which two states would be closely intertwined and interdependent. He also discusses the phrase “from the river to the sea,” used by both Israelis and Palestinians to refer to the land.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBaf3LpNJeQ

2023-11-03 A One-State Solution Could Work in Israel    But the end of South African apartheid demonstrates it would take an Israeli commitment to peace that is nowhere in evidence.    The stated objective of the Israeli government is to defeat Hamas permanently. But what then? Israeli officials insist that they won’t govern the territory, but there is no one aside from Hamas in a position to run anything. Even if Gazans were to cobble together some group to run what remains of Gaza’s shattered civil administration, the boiling hatred and despair that fuel Hamas’s terrorism will remain—indeed, it likely will get much worse.   It has been obvious for decades that the only path forward is to end the occupation and grant some kind of government to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Whether this should be as two separate states or as a single one is the question.    The case against the two-state solution is mainly one of practicality.  

Apartheid was always going to leave deep scars. But the proximate problem with modern South Africa is that Mandela’s ANC, thanks, perhaps ironically, to the deep loyalty among the majority Black population created by the ending of apartheid, has faced no serious political competition in any election since 1994. As a result, it has degenerated into a deeply corrupt and incompetent organization. The major lesson here is that thirty years of one-party rule tends to lead to poor governance, not that the idea of a democratic South Africa was a bad one.

One could argue that the violence in Israel-Palestine is so much worse than what happened in South Africa that it is a difference in kind, not degree. But South Africans of all races would have had more than enough justification to cling to bitterness and resentment if they wished, and keep fighting until the country disintegrated. They simply chose not to do.  

The question for Jewish Israelis—who hold most of the power in this situation and therefore must take the lead on any lasting resolution—is whether they can muster this kind of sensible farsightedness. The biggest difference between the South Africa’s late apartheid regime and that of Israel is that there has not been any serious attempt to reach lasting peace from the latter party for decades now, since the pro-peace Israeli Prime Minister Yitzakh Rabin was assassinated by an ultra-Zionist terrorist.

 As Jerome Karabel writes here at the Prospect, there is a man currently in Israeli prison, Marwan Barghouti, who bears an eerie similarity to Mandela. Like Mandela, he once advocated violent resistance but turned against it in prison; like Mandela he is by far the most popular potential leader among Palestinians. If Israel wanted a credible negotiating partner, there he sits. But he remains locked up.  https://prospect.org/world/11-03-2023-gaza-israel-war-one-state-solution/

2023-10-20 China and Russia plan to work together for a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians    China and Russia share the same position on the Palestinian issue and plan to try to work together to cool the situation and help establish a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, a top Chinese envoy said Friday.

 “The fundamental reason for the current situation of the Palestine-Israel conflict is that the Palestinian people’s lawful national rights have not been guaranteed,” Zhai said, according to a statement released on Friday by the Chinese foreign ministry.    The two countries want to “play a positive role in resuming talks for peace between Palestine and Israel, truly implementing the two-state solution, and promoting a comprehensive, just and enduring solution to the Palestinian question at an early date,” Zhai said.   https://apnews.com/article/china-middle-east-envoy-israel-gaza-c08587a566ff38fec882118a0e117c3a

2021-05-00 Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State    Activist and scholar Jeff Halper believes we are living at an inflection point in the history of the Israel-Palestine “conflict.” There’s a caveat, though: In order for the impending waters of justice to rise, the Palestinian people must coalesce behind a clear and cohesive political plan, he argues.

Halper’s latest book, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine, makes the case for one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and argues that the global civil society and solidarity infrastructure is in place to make this outcome a reality. The book is a byproduct of the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), an upstart movement launched by Halper and others to provide a clear vision for one, democratic state.   https://www.wrmea.org/book-talks/decolonizing-israel-liberating-palestine-zionism-settler-colonialism-and-the-case-for-one-democratic-state.html

2021-04-03 Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State    Halper’s latest book, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine, makes the case for one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and argues that the global civil society and solidarity infrastructure is in place to make this outcome a reality. The book is a byproduct of the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), an upstart movement launched by Halper and others to provide a clear vision for one, democratic state. 

In order for this plan to work it needs buy-in from weary Palestinians, and Halper acknowledged this has yet to happen. If Palestinians were to take off and run with the one-state solution, Halper believes it would be a success.

Halper sees a plethora of groups and individuals advocating for Palestinians and engaging in movements such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but he fears this energy is not being effectively channeled. In his mind, it’s time to move from resistance and advocacy to action. Palestinians, he believes, can energize this global support in a historical way if they launch a clear political campaign.   It’s important to note that Halper’s book is not merely a plea to encourage a course change among Palestinians. Decolonizing Israel offers people of goodwill across the world an opportunity to rethink how this issue is discussed and what outcomes citizens and practitioners alike ought to be realistically promoting.  

While Palestinians are the primary victims of settler colonialism, Halper noted that this pernicious reality also leaves Israelis feeling unsettled. “One of the problems with settler colonialism is that you are constantly living in a state of insecurity because everything is built on injustice,” he said. “You can’t relax and say ‘I’m in my country, I’m at home, I’m at peace’…because you’re constantly aware that there is that underside of oppression and suffering that is ongoing that will never go away until decolonization takes place.” 

Halper also convincingly argues that there is much global energy and solidarity to be tapped into. Yet, one cannot but remain cynical that those in power—from Washington to Israel—are prepared to let the voices of Palestinians and their supporters be heard, regardless of how organized and numerous they are.    https://www.wrmea.org/book-talks/decolonizing-israel-liberating-palestine-zionism-settler-colonialism-and-the-case-for-one-democratic-state.html

2020-11-30 Green Party – One secular, democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis      https://progressiveissuesblog.com/2020/11/30/israel-palestine/

2020-05-10 The Political Program of the Campaign for One Democratic State in Historic Palestine    In recent years, the idea of a one democratic state in all of historic Palestine as the best solution to the conflict has re-emerged. It started gaining increased support in the public domain. It is not a new idea. The Palestinian liberation movement, before the catastrophe of 1948 (the Nakba) and after it, had adopted this vision, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The PLO abandoned this idea in the framework of the diplomatic negotiations at the late eighties that led to the Oslo agreement of 1993. The Palestinian leadership hoped that this agreement would enable the building of an independent Palestinian state on the territories that Israel occupied in 1967. But on the ground Israel has strengthened its colonial control, fragmenting the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza into isolated cantons, separated from one another by settlements, checkpoints, military bases and fences.

The two-state solution, which is basically an unfair solution, is clearly dead. Israel buried it deep under its colonial settlement policies in the territories that were supposed to become the independent Palestinian state. Israel has imposed a single repressive regime that extends over all the Palestinians who live in historic Palestine, including those with Israeli citizenship.    https://icahd.org/2020/05/10/the-political-program-of-the-campaign-for-one-democratic-state-in-historic-palestine/

2018-06-05 A just “one-state solution” is still possible in Israel/Palestine: But not if the media buries it     The one-state solution is the idea of bringing justice and peace to Palestine/Israel by having all inhabitants of historic Palestine — the land that includes Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza — living in one, binational country, where everyone has equal rights and political matters are settled on the basis of one person, one vote. This arrangement differs from the two-state solution, which would partition historic Palestine into two states divided along ethno-religious lines, and contrasts with present conditions, in which Palestinians live as second-class citizens inside Israel, and under Israeli occupation in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — the last of which is subject to a merciless siege.

The one-state option is gaining traction, but media coverage consistently suggests that the only possible scenarios for Palestine/Israel are either the two-state solution or the continued regime of Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid. https://www.salon.com/2018/06/05/a-just-one-state-solution-is-still-possible-in-israelpalestine-but-not-if-the-media-buries-it/

2017-01-07 Israel/Palestine: One State/Two State? Ralph Nader    Ralph talks to Israeli activist, Miko Peled, author of The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine about whether a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is even possible.   https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/israelpalestine-one-statetwo-state-137#details

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Occupation

Updated 2023-11-22

2023-11-10 “I Want American Workers to Be United to Make the Occupation Costly, to Make the Israeli Apartheid Costly.”  Every day, the Palestinian civilian death toll is rising dramatically as Israel continues its genocidal bombing and ground invasion of Gaza and settler and military violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank intensifies.

“It’s a closure, it’s a curfew, in many places in the West Bank,” says Issa Amro. ​“It’s not normal life these days. Soldiers are everywhere, settlers are everywhere, people are afraid to leave their homes, they don’t go to work, they don’t go to school, they don’t go to universities.”

After losing touch with Issa during the day because he was escaping from settlers who were chasing him in Hebron, we managed to reconnect over the phone and record a nine minute conversation about the hell working people in Palestine are going through right now and what their fellow workers in the United States and Canada can do to stop the slaughter. Issa is a Palestinian human rights defender living in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Days prior to this recording, Issa was evicted from his home in Hebron and tortured by Israeli troops.   https://inthesetimes.com/article/issa-amro-palestinian-activist

2023-10-11 A Brutal Occupation Begets a Brutal War Between Israel and Hamas – Trita Parsi     Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, analyzes Iran’s role in supporting Hamas’ brutal coordinated attack on civilians in Israel. Parsi unpacks Palestinian grievances, as well as Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment and illegal blockade of Gaza. With host Talia Baroncelli.   https://theanalysis.news/a-brutal-occupation-begets-a-brutal-war-between-israel-and-hamas-trita-parsi/

2023-10-10 Mohammed El-Kurd: How Much Palestinian Blood Will It Take to End Israel’s Occupation & Apartheid?   Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd says Western reaction to Israel’s assault on Gaza has once again highlighted the double standard when it comes to how Israeli and Palestinian lives are valued. Israel is bombarding the densely populated coastal territory in retaliation for Saturday’s Hamas attack on southern Israel, as well as tightening the existing siege even further. Israeli officials have vowed to wipe out Hamas despite warnings of massive civilian casualties inside Gaza. “One wonders how much bloodshed, how much Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this violence to end.”  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10/mohammed_el_kurd_palestine_israel_gaza

2023-06-23 “The Palestine Laboratory”: Antony Loewenstein on How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation    We speak with journalist and author Antony Loewenstein about his new book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. Loewenstein explains that Israel’s military-industrial complex has used the Occupied Palestinian Territories for decades as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that it then exports around the world for profit. “You find in over 130 countries across the globe in the last decades, Israel has sold … a range of tools of occupation and repression that have initially been tested in Palestine on Palestinians,” Loewenstein says.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eYVjWwOVC4&t=22s

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Nuclear Arsenal

Updated 2024-07-26

Nuclear War Survival Skills https://ia802306.us.archive.org/19/items/NuclearWarSurvivalSkills_201405/nwss.pdf#page=170

2024-04-12 Russians sent warning that nuclear war is now ‘inevitable’ with ‘millions at risk’     Russians have been chillingly told that nuclear war is now unavoidable and millions are set to perish. Experts stated that nuclear conflict is certain – with Vladimir Putin poised to annihilate 250 million Europeans.

This horrifying assertion was made by a professor on the state-controlled Rossiya 1 TV channel, alarming Russian viewers. Dmitry Evstafiev, a Russian political analyst, declared on the broadcast that Putin’s deployment of nuclear arms against Europe is an inescapable reality.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russians-sent-warning-that-nuclear-war-is-now-inevitable-with-millions-at-risk/ar-BB1lw7dk?

2024-03-04 THE RISK OF NUCLEAR CONFLICT    Today’s generation of weapons — many of which are fractions of the size of the bombs America dropped in 1945 but magnitudes more deadly than conventional ones — poses an unpredictable threat.  It hangs over battlefields in Ukraine as well as places where the next war might occur: the Persian Gulf, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula.    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/04/opinion/nuclear-war-prevention.html?

2023-12-04 Nuclear Abolitionists Occupy New York       The risk of nuclear war by intent, miscalculation, or accident coupled with the growing concern over cyber-terrorism and AI is growing.    This past week New York City was invaded by nuclear abolitionists from around the world coming together as part of civil society, scientific, and affected communities, to support, strengthen, and move forward with the universalization of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons , TPNW, as the United Nations convened the Second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty . They gathered to celebrate what has been achieved and with hope and conviction for the complete elimination of these weapons to achieve a future free from the threat of their use.  The Treaty which entered into force January 22, 2021 calls for a verifiable, time bound, complete elimination of nuclear weapons. It establishes “a new global norm and taboo against the use, threatened use or possession of these weapons”.  

The world is closer to nuclear war than any time since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 78 years ago. This risk is heightened by the current war in Ukraine, where Russia has threatened the use of nuclear weapons, the ongoing nuclear weapons research by North Korea, the buildup of China’s arsenal and the current war and humanitarian crisis in Israel/Palestine, where there have been suggestions of using nuclear weapons against Palestinians. The risk of nuclear war by intent, miscalculation, or accident coupled with the growing concern over cyber-terrorism and AI is growing.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/nuclear-weapon-abolition

2023-11-20 A Nuclear Attack on Gaza: Israel Wouldn’t, Would They?     A cornered, nuclear-armed Benjamin Netanyahu would be the definition of a perilous situation in a war where nothing, not journalists, schools, or even hospitals, has proven off-limits. 

Israel’s robust military, the fourth-strongest in the world, is ravaging Gaza and, along with armed settlers, terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank following the brutal Hamas massacres of October 7th. Like so many other colonial projects, Israel was born of terror and has necessitated the use of violence to occupy Arab territory and segregate Palestinians ever since. The realization that its existence was dependent on a superior military in an unfriendly region also encouraged Israel to pursue a nuclear weapons program shortly after the state’s founding in 1948.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-nuclear-weapons-gaza

2023-11-19 The Dangers Only Multiply, A Growing Middle Eastern Nightmare    Yes, on a radio show, Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu insisted that there were “no non-combatants in Gaza” (assumedly including the thousands of young people slaughtered in recent weeks in that “children’s graveyard”). He then added that “one option” for Israel was to consider using a nuclear weapon and so wiping out more or less everyone left in that strip of land hardly bigger than two Washington, D.C.s. (Forget the radioactive fallout that would hit Israel as well.) And yes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly “suspended” him from regular cabinet meetings (even if that, as it turns out, wasn’t the most meaningful of actions).

It’s also true that Israel, one of the planet’s nine nuclear powers, has only — and given the nightmarish impact of such weaponry that has to be italicized — an estimated 90 such weapons, while the United States and Russia each have more than 5,000. Still, consider Eliyahu’s comment a rare admission by an Israeli official that his country is even nuclear armed. As Netanyahu himself typically said years ago, “We have a longstanding policy that we won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.”  

Israel’s robust military, the fourth-strongest in the world, is ravaging Gaza and, along with armed settlers, terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank following the brutal Hamas massacres of October 7th. Like so many other colonial projects, Israel was born of terror and has necessitated the use of violence to occupy Arab territory and segregate Palestinians ever since. The realization that its existence was dependent on a superior military in an unfriendly region also encouraged Israel to pursue a nuclear weapons program shortly after the state’s founding in 1948.   https://tomdispatch.com/the-dangers-only-multiply/

1991-10-27 The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy   Exposes one of the most well-protected political-military secrets of the Cold War  Ever since the early 1950s, Israel has had one military eye firmly fixed on atomic weapons as a means of salvation, using them primarily as a military threat for both offensive and defensive purposes. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, expounds on the steady but quiet growth of an Israeli nuclear industry that proved so successful that Israel was able to coerce several U.S. administrations into doing its bidding. He also explores in depth Israeli access to U.S. intelligence satellite technologies that resulted from inattention by Washington leaders as well as from the four years of insider spying by Jonathan Jay Pollard. He reveals that the Soviet Union has been targeted by Israeli nuclear warheads since the mid-1980s. Unlike several other recent expos es of Israeli intelligence apparatus (Ian Black and Benny Morris’s Israel’s Secret Wars , LJ 8/91, and Andrew and Leslie Cockburn’s Dangerous Liaison , LJ 6/15/91), Hersh follows the threads of a specific intelligence focus while highlighting U.S. policies that ultimately ignore the very real presence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. This incredibly well-written book should be in every collection.   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394570065/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

.

Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Non-Violent Protest – Israel \U.S. Response

2022-06-19 PEACE HEROES: The Martyrs of the Mavi Marmara   The activists who sailed on the Freedom Flotilla that was brutally attacked by the IDF (Israel Defense Force) that resulted in the murders of at least 10 people, were not terrorists or terrorist sympathizers—they are sympathetic with the plight of the people of Gaza and have been willing to face the wrath of a psychotically paranoid state to call attention to the blockade. 

What happened to the Martyrs of the Mavi Marmara is beyond tragic—it’s unthinkable and was a shocking act—even for the State of Israel, but it did happen. Nothing can change the fact that at least nine people are dead that should still be here with us today. What is, is. So what do we do about it now?

The autopsy report on the nine confirmed deaths show that 30 bullets were taken from the nine bodies. That’s not self-defense, that’s targeted assassination. From such a negative event, a great positive has occurred—Israel, by this monstrous act, has shone its own spotlight on at least two things: 1) there is no end to its paranoia and its inappropriate and disproportionate reactions, and 2) its barbaric siege on Gaza.

So many people have died in the struggle for peace and justice all over the world. One of the boats in the flotilla was named after courageous Rachel Corrie, a young American-Jewish peace activist who sacrificed her own life to prevent Palestinian homes from being destroyed by the State of Israel with US made bulldozers. Now, a ship is named after Rachel, and her legacy to free Palestinians from the wrath of an illegal and immoral occupation is still alive.   https://cindysheehan.substack.com/p/the-martyrs-of-the-mavi-marmara

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

.

Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Netanyahu

Updated 2024-08-28

2024-08-24 Netanyahu in dispute with Israeli negotiators over ceasefire conditions, source says    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has locked horns with Israeli ceasefire negotiators over his insistence that Israel will not pull out of the so-called Philadelphi Corridor in the south of the Gaza Strip, a person with knowledge of the talks said.

The Philadelphi Corridor, along the border with Egypt, and the Netzarim Corridor cutting across the middle of the Gaza Strip, have been two of the main sticking points in talks backed by Egypt, Qatar and the United States.https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/netanyahu-in-dispute-with-israeli-negotiators-over-ceasefire-conditions-source-says/ar-AA1pmmti?

2024-08-05 Bibi’s Mideast Solution: Unending War  The remote-control bomb that Israeli agents detonated in Tehran last week killed a lot more than Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. It also killed any prospect for a cease-fire in the Gaza war for the foreseeable future, absent the cessation of U.S.-provided offensive weapons. At the same time, it also made the prospects of a wider war, directly involving Iran and possibly even the United States, more likely.

With Israel’s war on Gaza now extending into its 11th month, this is not something for which the Israeli public is clamoring—least of all a rain of missiles from Iran. But by choosing to kill Haniyeh in the Iranian capital where he was a guest at the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Israel all but invited Iranian retaliation and short-circuited the ability of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, on his first day in office, to pursue his promised course of at least some reconciliation with Western governments. By assassinating Haniyeh, Israel was also eliminating Hamas’s chief negotiator of a Gaza war cease-fire and hostage release.   https://prospect.org/world/2024-08-05-netanyahu-regional-war-gaza-hezbollah/

2024-08-02 Bibi’s Death Wish   In one 24-hour period, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the killing of a top Hezbollah leader in an air strike on Beirut, and the assassination of the lead Hamas peace negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. That’s one sure way of destroying the peace talks.

Of all the Hamas leadership, Haniyeh was reportedly the most in favor of making a deal with Israel that traded a hostage release for a cease-fire and staged regional settlement. Now, talk of a hostage deal is off the table, much less the regional entente that the Biden Administration has been promoting—humiliating President Biden yet again.

Since the assassination of Haniyeh took place at an Iranian guesthouse, the world now waits to see what sort of retaliation ensues. Last April, the Iranians rained down some 300 missiles on Israel, taking care to limit casualties. That attack was in retaliation for Israel’s last assassination, one that also violated diplomatic immunity—the strike on Iran’s Damascus consulate on April 1 that killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, including two senior commanders.

Hezbollah was not involved in that carefully limited Iranian retaliation. But this time, Israel is on the verge of a war with Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time. Netanyahu has managed to bring together sworn enemies of each other, Sunni Hamas and Shia Hezbollah. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah is armed by Iran and capable of inflicting massive damage on Israel in a regional war.    https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-08-02-netanyahu-israel-war-hezbollah-iran/

2024-07-20 Rights Group Urges DOJ to Investigate Netanyahu for Genocide  As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit Washington, D.C. next week, an American legal group on Friday pressured the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into him and other officials for committing or authorizing genocide, war crimes, and torture targeting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel launched its retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces partly armed by the U.S. government have killed at least 38,848 people and wounded another 89,459 — according to Gaza officials — while destroying civilian infrastructure and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.

“We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza,” says the Center for Constitutional Rights’ (CCR) 23-page letter to Hope Olds, who leads the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.   https://truthout.org/articles/rights-group-urges-doj-to-investigate-netanyahu-for-genocide/  

2024-07-11 Netanyahu “Trying to Do Everything to Prevent a Deal,” Says Ex-Israeli Peace Negotiator Daniel Levy    Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy discusses ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued hostility to compromise and the Biden administration’s ineffectual mediation. Contrary to its claims of brokering peace, the U.S. “will continue to send the weapons” Israel uses to devastate Gaza, unremittingly fueling an increasingly unpopular war, says Levy, who is now president of the U.S./Middle East Project.   Democracy Now! is an independent global newshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pfJzZ2xAkU

2024-06-12 They’re Arresting the Wrong People Inside of Congress    While they are arresting peace activists for exercising First Amendment rights, they are making plans to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant request.

I was arrested again inside of Congress for speaking out against U.S.-backed genocide. Myself and others were brutally tackled and carried out of the room by Capitol Police. I was charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” for speaking out and holding a sign as the secretary of state and the secretary of defense testified in Congress for more money for the endless U.S. war machine. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/congress-arresting-wrong-people

2024-03-23 Netanyahu ‘has got to go as soon as possible’: Ehud Olmert Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joins ‘Cavuto Live’ to weigh in on a potential Rafah offensive, the calls for a new election, and reacts to remarks from Sen. Chuck Schumer  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/netanyahu-has-got-to-go-as-soon-as-possible-ehud-olmert/vi-BB1kpDc4?

2024-03-05 UNRWA Chief Accuses Netanyahu of ‘Concerted Campaign’ to Destroy Aid Agency     The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees told the U.N. General Assembly on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies are intentionally trying to decimate the critical aid body as mass starvation looms in the Gaza Strip.

“UNRWA is facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner-general. “Part of this campaign involves inundating donors with misinformation designed to foster distrust and tarnish the reputation of the agency. More blatant, is the Israeli prime minister openly stating that UNRWA will not be part of post-war Gaza.”

“The implementation of this plan is already underway with the destruction of our infrastructure across the Gaza Strip,” he continued. “Attempts to evict UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem, and from a nearby vocational training center for Palestine refugee youth, are underway. Draft legislation in the Israeli Knesset seeks to prohibit outright any activity by UNRWA on Israeli territory.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/unrwa-chief-netanyahu

2024-02-07 NETANYAHU’S WAR ON TRUTH   Two weeks before  Hamas commandos led a series of raids into Israel on October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu stood before an empty chamber at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. The Israeli prime minister brandished a map of what he promised could be the “New Middle East.” It depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. On this map, Gaza and the West Bank were erased. Palestinians did not exist. 

He was speaking on the grand stage of the U.N. General Assembly, but no world leaders bothered to attend. Outside, some 2,000 people, a mixture of American Jews and Israeli citizens, protested his attacks on the independence of the Israeli judiciary system. The scene served as a reminder of how deeply unpopular his far-right governing coalition, not to mention Netanyahu himself, had become in Israel. At that moment, it seemed that Netanyahu was pushed against the ropes, in a losing battle to continue his political reign.

Just days later, as Hamas commandos penetrated the barriers encircling Gaza and embarked on their deadly raids targeting several military installations as well as kibbutzim, everything changed in an instant.    Just as the Bush administration exploited the 9/11 attacks to justify a sweeping war in which it declared the world a battlefield, Netanyahu is using the horrors of October 7 to wage the crusade he’s been preparing for his entire political career. With his grip on power fading last fall, the October 7 attacks provided him with just the opportunity he needed, and he hitched his political survival to the war on Gaza and what could be his last chance to eliminate Israel’s Palestinian problem once and for all.   https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/

2024-01-04 Netanyahu Wants To Arrange ‘Resettlement’ Of Gaza’s Population        Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is arranging a “voluntary” resettlement for Gazans displaced by the IDF bombardment in what many are calling blatant “ethnic cleansing.” Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks.   “The “voluntary” resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, with a senior official saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption.    Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, has learned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is conducting secret contacts for accepting thousands of immigrants from Gaza with Congo, in addition to other nations.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjFdHJ7xni0

2024-01-02 Netanyahu: ISRAEL Must Control Egypt’s Border With Gaza      Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is adamant that the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip should be under his control. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZFqhU5mhwA  

2023-12-26 Palestinians Say Netanyahu ‘Confessions’ Reveal Truth of ‘Genocidal War’ in Gaza [MEK Note: Hitler spent years forcing Jewish people to leave Germany before the Holocaust years.  No country would take them in mass.  Zionists worked with Nazi to get out some to Palestine.  This also seems to be Netanyahu and Israel’s long-time plan that has failed after 75 years!  So now it is genocide if necessary] 

The Foreign Ministry said that the Israeli prime minister’s push for what he terms “voluntary migration” shows that ethnic cleansing of the besieged enclave is the real goal of the ongoing bombing and ground invasion.      Amid a ramping up of bombardments and military ground operations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he was working toward what he referred to as a “voluntary migration” of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli newspaper Hayom Daily reported.   “Our problem is the countries that are willing to absorb (them), and we are working on it,” he said, according to a translation from the Anadolu Agency.     https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-voluntary-migration-gaza

2023-12-26 Netanyahu Says Peace Depends on Hamas’ End, Demilitarized Gaza [MEK Note: Let’s look at Netanyahu’s prerequisites from a Palestinian viewpoint: End of oppression of Palestinians, demilitarize internal Israel forces and make Palestinians full and equal members of society with Jewish members] 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined three prerequisites to achieving peace in its war with Hamas: the destruction of the group, the demilitarization of Gaza and for Palestinian society to be “deradicalized.” 

The comments, made in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published Monday, come amid rising pressure on Israel to scale back the conflict in Gaza, which began following Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on southern Israeli communities that killed 1,200 people — with Hamas militants kidnapping scores of Israelis.   “In destroying Hamas, Israel will continue to act in full compliance with international law,” Netanyahu wrote, saying that eliminating Hamas “is the only proportional response to prevent the repeat of such horrific atrocities.”    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/netanyahu-says-peace-depends-on-hamas-end-demilitarized-gaza/ar-AA1m1P1G

2023-12-24 Israelis to have insurmountable debt, Netanyahu must quit now – MK     I srael is facing an impending economic catastrophe that could burden the state with insurmountable debt for generations to come, Knesset State Control Committee chairman MK Mickey Levy (Yesh Atid) said, calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately resign from power with or without elections.    

Levy criticized the prime minister for prioritizing personal survival over the welfare of Israel, stating, “He only thinks of himself. All of his moves are designed to preserve his own survival, and these far outweigh the decisions he’s made for the benefit of the state.” He further claims that even within the Likud Party, there is widespread dissatisfaction with Netanyahu’s conduct, asserting that he has caused heavy damage to the party.

Expressing concern over the state budget, Levy accused it of “looting” funds for unnecessary purposes, and that this was not exclusive to all the money earmarked for Israel’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sector. He stressed the importance of equal opportunities in education and criticized the inclusion of unnecessary expenditures, such as allocating over NIS 600 million for promoting Jewish identity.  

Levy predicted that the 2024 budget will worsen Israel’s economic situation, burdening future generations with insurmountable debts. He warned that Israel’s GDP will decrease, the deficit will soar, and external debt will continue to rise.   The lawmaker suggested closing at least 10 ministries that he deemed to be redundant, especially during times of war when every shekel should be directed towards the war with Hamas.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israelis-to-have-insurmountable-debt-netanyahu-must-quit-now-mk/ar-AA1lYaLr

2023-12-20 Netanyahu rules out cease-fire as Hamas leader visits Egypt | DW News     The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has been in Egypt for talks on halting the fighting with Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again ruled out a cease-fire until Hamas is eliminated and the remaining hostages are freed. Several countries including Germany classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. Meanwhile there’s been no let up in attacks on the Palestinian territory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e8fkwng56M

2023-12-17 Netanyahu’s Bold Boast: ‘Proud’ to Thwart Palestinian State Creation       Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was “proud” of preventing the creation of a Palestinian state during a press conference in Tel Aviv Saturday night.   Speaking alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, Netanyahu claimed that he had halted the progression of the Oslo peace process, which began in 1993, calling the Oslo Accords “a fateful mistake” and said the results of the “little Palestinian state in Gaza” brought about by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 demonstrated the danger of allowing Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank.

The Oslo Accords were an agreement signed by Israel and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) that saw the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza as part of a process that was meant to lead to a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  

Netanyahu’s comments come after several Israeli officials said that there would be no two-state solution following the end of Israel’s indiscriminate war on Gaza, which has destroyed much of the occupied territory and killed at least 18,800 Palestinians, primarily women and children, in Israeli attacks since October 7, according to the territory’s health ministry.https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-s-bold-boast-proud-to-thwart-palestinian-state-creation

2023-12-12 In Dueling Remarks, Biden and Netanyahu Spar Over Gaza’s Future    President Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed Tuesday over who should govern Gaza after the war, in a remarkable public display of differences emerging between the two leaders over the conflict. 

Biden made his toughest remarks since the war began about Netanyahu’s government. He suggested that its hard-line stance has prevented Netanyahu from accepting the Biden administration’s postwar plan to have the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza, and that it would also obstruct progress toward political, economic and security arrangements that could spawn a separate Palestinian state—an outcome the U.S. president sees as a long-term solution to the conflict.

President Biden’s comments came as Netanyahu said in Israel he would block the Biden administration’s postwar plan to have the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza, the sharpest sign of Israeli pushback against the U.S. blueprint for administering the enclave after Israel’s invasion ends.

“After the great sacrifice of our civilians and our soldiers, I will not allow the entry into Gaza of those who educate for terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Palestinian Authority, which currently oversees parts of the West Bank, in a statement Tuesday.

Israel’s position on who will replace Hamas in postwar Gaza may not become fully clear until elections that are expected to be held next year, when it will be decided whether Netanyahu survives as prime minister.

His rejection Tuesday of a Palestinian Authority role in Gaza was intended to help shore up his flagging domestic support, amid calls for his resignation for failing to prevent Hamas’s attack and the government’s early fumbles in handling the crisis, Israeli analysts said.

It is a message designed to resonate with Netanyahu’s right-wing and centrist voters, said Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s U.S. ambassador under Netanyahu from 2009 to 2013. The prime minister is “saying Oslo was a worse catastrophe for Israel than Oct. 7 and I am the best guarantor you have that [such an agreement] won’t happen again.”

He “is playing politics with our national security,” Oren added, noting a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire last weekwas blocked because of “an American veto.”  Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Netanyahu’s opposition to Palestinian Authority rule in Gaza is related to his own domestic political survival, but it isn’t a position necessarily shared by his entire cabinet, which sees little to be gained from defying the White House.  “At the moment, Bibi is just playing to the gallery, and the gallery is his political base,” said Yaari, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “I don’t think we’re at a point where Bibi feels he is obliged to make a decision.”  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/in-dueling-remarks-biden-and-netanyahu-spar-over-gaza-s-future/ar-AA1lou8j

2023-12-05 Netanyahu’s game of Russian roulette     With diminishing strategic gains from Israel’s Gaza war and internal and external threats to his prime ministership, an embattled Netanyahu may choose war with Lebanon to prolong his political survival.  Forced into a Gaza truce by an angry public demanding prisoner exchanges, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now faces his toughest challenge since launching air and land assaults on the Gaza Strip in October.    The frequency of his threats to both Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Israel’s northern front has spiked since Netanyahu’s reluctant acceptance of the Qatar-brokered truce. 

Biden administration “does not support southern operations unless or until the Israelis can show that they have accounted for all the internally displaced people of Gaza.”    Netanyahu, however, harbors a different agenda, seeking to prolong the conflict for personal gains rather than political success. The continuation of the war means he will stay in office longer, and have the time to strike internal and external deals that ensure his post-conflict survival.

For now, “King Bibi” faces mounting pressure from both allies and adversaries. International calls for tangible outcomes from the conflict are intensifying, with the mainstream media increasingly compelled – by social media – to highlight Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Domestically, Netanyahu is grappling with almost daily demands for his resignation or for the removal of extremist cabinet ministers from the Otzma Yehudit and religious Zionist parties.     https://new.thecradle.co/articles/netanyahus-game-of-russian-roulette

2023-11-28 Netanyahu Says He Is ‘Only One Who Will Prevent a Palestinian State’     “Look Joe Biden: Netanyahu is spitting in your face,” said one critic. “Are you going to keep hugging him in public or are you going to finally end the blank check and hold him accountable for his words and actions?”  

With his approval ratings in the tank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been lobbying members of his Likud party in a bid to keep their support, claiming he is “the only one who will prevent a Palestinian state” in Gaza and the West Bank.  “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his colleagues in 2019. “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

 Analysts have long argued that one democratic state, not two states, is the only viable alternative to the apartheid status quo, given factors such as ever-expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Throughout his career, Netanyahu has vociferously opposed a peaceful resolution and worked to divide Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by propping up Hamas.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-palestinian-state

2023-11-12 Netanyahu Blames Arabs – Not Hitler – For The Holocaust!        An old video of Benjamin Netanyahu has surfaced in which the Israeli Prime Minister alleges that Adolf Hitler had not planned the Nazi’s “Final Solution” to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population until he was given the suggestion by a Palestinian Mufti. He was rightfully raked over the coals for this Nazi whitewashing and attempt to place blame for the Holocaust on Arabs.     Jimmy and his guests Russell Dobular and Keaton Weiss from Due Dissidence discuss the political angle of Netanyahu’s comments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnvsGSJu3wc

2023-11-10 Palestinian Groups Ask ICC to Arrest Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for War Crimes & Genocide in Gaza    We speak with Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat about a new effort to hold Israel accountable at the International Criminal Court over the war in Gaza, where Israel’s monthlong air and ground assault has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians. On Wednesday, three Palestinian rights groups filed a lawsuit with the international body, urging it to investigate Israel for the crimes of genocide and apartheid. The petition also calls for arrest warrants to be issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. International inaction against Israeli aggression is part of “a systematic failure to hold Israel to account for decades,” as well as the “absolute double standard” applied to war crimes committed against people of the Global South, says Erakat, who was part of a team of academics and activists who came together to support the ICC lawsuit. “This is not just a crisis of international legal institutions, but also a crisis of democratic — or so-called democratic — institutions in the countries in which we live.” Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtBN7mVO1T8

2023-11-08 NETANYAHU’S SAVAGE GAME: MASS KILLING PALESTINIANS, EXPLOITING ISRAELI GRIEF     PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU continues to reject international calls for a ceasefire and says Israel will oversee security in Gaza indefinitely. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss Israel’s monthlong scorched-earth campaign in Gaza and the U.S. government’s complicity.

You and I both have reported on Israel’s sieges of Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine over the years, and so, on one level, what we’re seeing, we’ve seen play out — I mean, you could make an argument that it’s played out for 75 years — but just, even in the past several Israeli campaigns, we’ve witnessed this killing of civilians. But the scale, the industrial scale on which children are being killed right now is shocking to the soul.

 You mentioned this contract that people felt that they had with the government and with the military. And, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu, a lot of his appeal to people was that he’s a very, very security-focused prime minister.

Even before October 7th — obviously, as you mentioned — there was a judicial overhaul plan. There were protests, mass protests, a lot of the security establishment, the former security establishment, the people in the army were openly protesting against Netanyahu and his government. And there were already a lot of people going on record saying they don’t trust him with Israel’s security. And there were warnings from within the General Security Service here that the government’s policies and plans have undermined the national unity and resilience, and are making us look weak in the eyes of our enemies. This was the kind of statements that were being put out by top security officials in Israel. So, that was. already happening before October 7th.

Since October 7th, it’s just across the board that, literally, I would say, nobody in this country wants Netanyahu in his chair, and yet he’s still there. And it’s hard to really overstate how much the failure is on him. Like, people really hold him responsible. And it’s not just that day, but also years and years of … He’s basically been the longest serving prime minister. Something like 15 years now, he’s been in power, and so, he’s shaped Israel’s entire approach to the Palestinian issue in general, and to Hamas specifically.

There’s been tons of criticism about the fact that he’s basically propped up Hamas, and left Hamas to kind of be in power and be funded by Qatar while undermining the P.A. in order to basically avoid any kind of dialogue, any kind of political framework or negotiation towards a solution. 

So, Israelis definitely understand that, and they definitely are extremely angry with him, and they believe that he will have to move from his chair. Some believe it’ll happen during the war, some think it’ll happen after the war. It’s kind of amazing that he’s still there because, really, nobody trusts him. And you can also see in the way that he’s been handling this war, in his public statements, and just his general approach, is [that] he lacks any empathy for the families of the kidnapped. There’s clear disarray in his cabinet, and he clearly is interested in himself and his legacy, and also in trying to save whatever is left of his political career. https://theintercept.com/2023/11/08/intercepted-israel-netanyahu-gaza/

2023-11-03 Video: Netanyahu Admits To Plan To Wipe Out Gaza!     Recently surfaced decades-old footage of Benjamin Netanyahu goes a long way to explaining the Israeli Prime Minister’s thinking when it comes to Palestine, the United States and the rest of the international community. Israel needs to devastate Gaza, he says, and, when asked, adds that the United States is easily manipulated and that he doesn’t care what the international community thinks.    Jimmy, along with The Convo Couch host Craig Jardula and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger, discusses the comments that should give Netanyahu heartburn if the media would ever ask him about them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdq1zhLANT0&t=18s

2023-11-01 Netanyahu’s ‘PSYCHOTIC’ Tweet Deleted As GROWING COALITION of Israelis Push To DUMP PM: Analysis   Senior correspondent at Vox Zack Beauchamp weighs in on Israel’s view of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu amid the war with Hamas. #Palestine #Gaza    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUb8xm1mwus

2023-10-30 Netanyahu Accused of ‘Genocidal Intentions’ in Gaza After ‘Holy Mission’ Speech      “The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal,” noted one theologian after the prime minister invoked an ancient enemy. “The Bible commands to wipe out Amalek, including women, babies, children, and animals.”   Human rights defenders on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an “explicit call to genocide” after he delivered a televised address calling Israel’s imminent invasion of Gaza a “holy mission” and invoked an ancient mythical foe whom the God of the Hebrew Bible commanded the Israelites to exterminate.   Declaring the start of a “second stage” of Israel’s war on Gaza—which he described as a “holy mission”—Netanyahu said that “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.”   According to the Hebrew Bible, the nation of Amalek was an ancient archenemy of the Israelites whose extermination was commanded by God to Saul via the prophet Samuel. https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-genocide

2023-10-17 The Israeli War on the Palestinian People    Will Netanyahu Survive?  On the domestic front, Netanyahu’s problems are not minor. Under his administration, Israel has just suffered an unprecedented attack on its own territory. Not coincidentally, this has been compared with the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Israel was surprised by the combined action of Egypt and Syria. Its impregnable security was breached by the action of Hamas, a militia with completely asymmetrical firepower, the attack perpetrated with a combination of artisanal methods, such as gliders and backhoes. The operation included not only military targets but also attacks on hundreds of young people who were at a rave, families living in kibbutzim and other nonmilitary targets. The attack on military posts and civilians alike was easily instrumentalized by Netanyahu and the imperialist states in an attempt to legitimize their declaration of war. In turn, this demonstrates that Hamas lacks any strategy to succeed in the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people.

In the immediate term, Netanyahu succeeded in welding a reactionary national unity. The establishment of a new unity government, however, does not mean that the Israeli state has overcome the deep social, political, and state fractures that led to the massive mobilizations against Netanyahu’s judicial reform (an “unrepublican” reform that took away powers from the judiciary to reconcentrate them in the executive branch). So far this year, every Saturday, tens of thousands of Israelis — mainly from the secular middle classes, the technology sector, reservists, and even pilots of the armed forces — have been rallying in major cities against Netanyahu’s coalition government and the settler and extreme religious right-wing parties, which among other privileges do not perform military service and receive millions in subsidies from the state. These same sectors, together with relatives of the hostages, began to take to the streets and hold Netanyahu responsible for the disaster in the south of the country, arguing that the army was concentrating on protecting settlers in the West Bank.

Their political differences, however, do not result from how Israel treats Palestinians. As the Israeli-born historian Ilan Pappé correctly explains, the opposition to the judicial reform is not, as the Western press claims, a movement in “defense of democracy,” for the simple reason that it does not question the oppression of the Palestinians. In Israel, there is a basic consensus on the Zionist state’s colonial policy, even if some people reject extreme solutions, such as the expulsion of Palestinians and the outright annexation of the West Bank, as openly proposed by Netanyahu’s ministers.

The configuration of Israeli power after the Hamas attack expresses both the moment of unity achieved by Netanyahu and its strategic weaknesses. With the approval of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), the prime minister formed a “war cabinet” and an “emergency unity government,” which was joined by Benny Gantz of the opposition center-right National Unity Party, and possible replacement candidate whom Joe Biden is trying to court. So far, Yair Lapid of the main opposition party (Yesh Atid) has rejected the invitation, perhaps saving himself for a major crisis. In exchange for this “national salvation,” Netanyahu accepted the condition of excluding his right-wing ministers from the decision-making table. Strategically, perhaps this attack will mean the end of his political career, as happened with Golda Meir, who resigned two years after the Yom Kippur War.     https://www.leftvoice.org/the-israeli-war-on-the-palestinian-people/

2023-10-16 Israel Is Making a Terrible Mistake   One notable difference with 9/11, which led to a skyrocketing approval rating for Bush, is that Israeli Jews overwhelmingly hold Netanyahu and his government responsible for the attack. This is true on several levels. First and most obviously, Netanyahu’s core political promise (in part as cover for his egregious corruption) is that only he can protect Israeli civilians through an “iron wall” apartheid policy. Not only did he fail, it seems that the government ignored warnings from Egypt that some kind of attack was in the works.

Second, partly thanks to Netanyahu’s dependence on two tiny extremist settler parties for a majority in the Israeli parliament, during the attack many Israeli military units were out protecting feral settlers in the West Bank (who have provoked many bloody clashes with Palestinians over the last year) instead of being stationed at the border with Gaza. Third, failing to secure some kind of lasting settlement with the Palestinians has obviously stoked anti-Israel rage and hence support for Hamas.

Fourth and most importantly, Netanyahu has literally lent substantial material support to Hamas in the form of money and diplomatic legitimacy—not because he likes them, but as a counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, to divide the Palestinian people and obstruct the movement for a Palestinian state. Indeed, Israel has pursued similar policies for decades, which were directly implicated in the original formation of Hamas in the 1980s.

Again and again, Netanyahu and the Israeli nationalist right have prioritized the occupation and their own power over the safety and security of Israeli Jews (not to mention the human rights and lives of Palestinians). And this new war on Gaza might be the final culmination of this policy.   https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-16-israel-biden-administration-terrible-mistake/

2023-10-12 ‘NETANYAHU IS FINISHED’   The Bibi doctrine—his belief that he could control Hamas—compromised Israeli security and has now begat a bloody war  https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/netanyahu-is-finished

2023-10-11 While Israeli Media Examine Government Failure, US Papers Push ‘National Unity’   How could Israel—so famous for its military might and advanced intelligence capabilities—have missed the warnings of such an attack? The coordinated nature of the rocket attacks and assaults on nearby towns make clear that this was a huge operation that took time and planning; paragliding attacks require practice runs that are not easy to hide (L’Orient Today, 10/9/23), for instance. Already, Israeli media have begun looking closely at the Israeli government’s actions to understand how and why this happened—in sharp contrast to US broadsheet opinion, which has largely rallied unquestioningly behind Israeli “national unity.” 

 An Israeli military veteran in the New York Post (10/9/23), hardly considered a pro-Palestine publication, blamed Israel for ignoring warnings from Egyptian intelligence about “something big.”

An editorial at Ha’aretz (10/8/23) put the blame squarely on Netanyahu, saying “he is the ultimate arbiter of Israeli foreign and security affairs.” It also pointed the finger at his right-wing policies on settlement expansion and allies with far-right extremist parties. “As expected, signs of an outbreak of hostilities began in the West Bank, where Palestinians started feeling the heavier hand of the Israeli occupier,” the editorial said, noting that “Hamas exploited the opportunity in order to launch its surprise attack.”

At the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (10/7/23), David Halperin, chief executive officer of the Israel Policy Forum, wrote that for the last year, “my colleagues and I…have joined with others in expressing concern about the nature of Israel’s far-right government.” The article—which questioned why Netanyahu’s government, famously hard-nosed on security, failed to protect the people—was reprinted in the Jerusalem Post (10/7/23).

Alon Pinkas (Ha’aretz, 10/9/23) wrote more directly: “Netanyahu should be removed as prime minister immediately—not ‘after the war,’ not after a plea bargain in his corruption trial, not after an election. Now.”   https://fair.org/home/while-israeli-media-examine-government-failure-us-papers-push-national-unity/

2023-10-08 For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces       The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from.    https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

National Right to Exist

2023-06-09 Does any Nation Have the “Right” to Exist?   So, to answer the question – does any nation have the legal right to exist? The answer is yes and no. Yes, every nation has the right to existence as long as they don’t interfere with the existence of other nations legally. This fact seems to call into question the legitimate right to existence of two brutal states: the U.S. and Israel. But the legality of this isn’t explicitly agreed upon for two primary reasons. One, there is no specific and definitive international law that guarantees the right of nations to exist. Two, the existing international law on the subject, and the interpretation of these laws can vary. Some states (US/Israel) may use their bigger military power to intimidate smaller states, violating the principle of the right of nations to exist.

When it comes to the idea of self-determination, which is often thrown around in discussions related to the right of nations to exist, there are cases where groups within a country can exercise their right to self-determination but not necessarily declare independence (like the Donbass and Crimea regions in Ukraine). Self-determination is a collective right to decide political status and create a government, which means that every individual is entitled to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Thus, even under international law, there is no guarantee that self-determination will lead to independence.   https://cindysheehan.substack.com/p/does-any-nation-have-the-right-to  

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Nakba II

Updated 2024-02-26

2023-12-05 Jordan’s King Abdullah says world should condemn any attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians     Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Tuesday the world should condemn any attempt by Israel to create conditions that would forcibly displace Palestinians within the war-devastated Gaza Strip or outside its borders.

In remarks carried by state media after a meeting with the Cypriot president in Amman, the monarch again called for an immediate ceasefire and warned that Israel’s relentless bombing campaign was leading to a “dangerous deterioration” in the situation.  Abdullah has lobbied Western leaders to pile pressure on Israel to allow an uninterrupted flow of aid and open crossings it controls to bring in sufficient level of aid needed.

Israel now controls the volume and nature of aid entering to over 2.3 million inhabitants under siege, according to U.N. officials and humanitarian workers.    UNRWA officials say only a trickle of the aid the enclave needs is getting through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt which NGOs and officials say can only handle a fraction of the needs.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/jordan-s-king-abdullah-says-world-should-condemn-any-attempt-to-forcibly-expel-palestinians/ar-AA1l2KQP

2023-11-25 Why does the world think that ᑭᗩᒪᗴSTIᑎᗴ is different ⁉️   https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161059104061100&set=a.10151463016161100

2023-11-23 The Old and New Nakba: Forced Expulsion of Palestinians Must Be Rejected      It is simply inaccurate to claim that the ongoing Israeli attempt to displace all, or many Palestinian refugees from Gaza to Sinai is a new idea, compelled by recent circumstances.    Displacing Palestinians, or as it is known in Israeli political lexicon, the ‘transfer’, is an old idea – as old as Israel itself.

In fact, historically, population ‘transfer’ has been more than an idea, but an actual government policy, with clear mechanisms. Yosef Weitz, director of the Land and Afforestation Department, was entrusted with setting up the Transfer Committee in May 1948 to oversee the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from their towns and villages.

 In other words, while Israel was concluding the initial phase of ethnic cleansing, it initiated another phase, that of ‘transfer’, the results of which are well-known. https://freepress.org/article/old-and-new-nakba-forced-expulsion-palestinians-must-be-rejected

2023-11-11 A New Nakba against the Palestinian People    The Israeli regime is carrying out a new Nakba against the Palestinian people with the backing of its imperialist allies.     On October 28, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the start of the “second phase” of the war in the Gaza Strip. His announcement invoked the biblical command to exterminate the Amalekites, an enemy people of the ancient Israelites whom the vengeful god of the Old Testament literally calls to annihilate so that nothing is left: men, women, children, cows, sheep, houses, and more.

From a military point of view, in this new phase of the war, the Israeli army has made a ground invasion, dividing the Gaza Strip in two and maintaining a double tactic of siege and fire against the Palestinian people, in addition to the ongoing aerial bombardments. Bombs, missiles and white phosphorus abound, while there is no food, water, energy, fuel, or medical supplies, nor safe shelter in hospitals or schools. The entire civilian infrastructure is a “legitimate” target in the Israeli crusade to “eradicate Hamas.”

In the first four weeks of Israel’s military attacks, the Zionist state has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including about 4,800 children, in addition to 100 aid workers. These numbers, which increase daily, give an idea of the magnitude of Israel’s many war crimes. The ones of greatest impact are the deliberate attack on the Jabalia refugee camp on October 31 — the most densely populated and poorest in Gaza — and the bombing of an ambulance convoy in front of Al Shifa hospital on November 3. According to a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, between October 7 and 31 Israel dropped 25,000 tons of explosives — the equivalent of two nuclear bombs — on the Gaza Strip.    https://www.leftvoice.org/a-new-nakba-against-the-palestinian-people/

2023-11-05 Diplomats Tell New York Times Israel Privately Pushed to Expel Gazans to Egypt     Israel has quietly tried to build international support in recent weeks for the transfer of several hundred thousand civilians from Gaza to Egypt for the duration of its war in the territory, according to six senior foreign diplomats.   Israeli leaders and diplomats have privately proposed the idea to several foreign governments, framing it as a humanitarian initiative that would allow civilians to temporarily escape the perils of Gaza for refugee camps in the Sinai Desert, just across the border in neighboring Egypt.

The proposal has been rejected by not only Palestinians but also “most of Israel’s interlocutors—who include the United States and Britain—because of the risk that such a mass displacement could become permanent,” the newspaper noted.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-expel-gazans-to-egypt

2023-11-03 Day 27 roundup of Israel’s attacks on Gaza   Nora Barrows-Friedman The Electronic Intifada Podcast “We’re living the Nakba times again, seeing the tents come up in Khan Younis. It’s surreal. It’s surreal,” said Ghaida Hamdan, who is grieving 36 members of her family. They were killed in Israeli bombings last week.   Ghaida and her mother, Ghada Ageel, joined us on Thursday’s livestream.   Ghada is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and wrote about Israel’s murder of her family in The Guardian.

“[Israel] now discovered after 16 years of an inhuman blockade, they cannot put an end to this willingness for freedom, for dignity,” Ghada said.  “So now the plan of annihilation, of genocide, of expulsion, of continuing the unfinished the project of Nakba, this is what we see. My grandmother has been always telling me [that] whenever we have a generation, they come and kill it.”   https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/watch-day-27-roundup-israels-attacks-gaza

2023-11-03 Another Nakba? Israeli Intel Ministry Proposes Expelling Every Palestinian in Gaza to Egypt     A leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry dated less than one week after the October 7 Hamas attack proposes the permanent transfer of Gaza’s residents to Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the document’s authenticity but dismissed it as a mere “concept paper,” while Egypt and much of the Arab world has publicly opposed the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians. But the exposed plans have confirmed many Palestinians’ fears that Israel’s ultimate goal during its current offensive is their ethnic cleansing from Gaza, a reenactment of the 1948 Nakba that saw about 700,000 Palestinians pushed out of their homes and turned into refugees during the creation of Israel. For more, we hear from Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, a writer for +972 Magazine and Local Call, who says that while the Intelligence Ministry is not particularly powerful, “this is an official state document essentially recommending the government to carry out an ethnic cleansing of Gaza.” Meanwhile, radical settlers in the West Bank are increasingly using the war on Gaza as cover to push Palestinians out of their homes and villages, often under threat of lethal violence. “Death is now everywhere, and things are deteriorating really, really quickly,” says Abraham.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8YSVICeRqI

2023-10-31 Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé on Gaza War, Hostages & the Context Behind Current Violence      We speak with Israeli historian Ilan Pappé about Israel’s escalating war on Gaza, as well as a leaked document from the country’s Ministry of Intelligence that suggests permanently expelling Gaza’s entire population to the Sinai Desert in Egypt. “This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation,” says Pappé. He also says the only way to secure the release of the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas is to agree to an all-for-all swap for the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel, including many women, children and elderly people. “This is the only way to release the people who were taken.” Pappé is a leading critic of the Israeli occupation, a professor of history and the director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. His books include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples and The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK7jckzam5c

2023-10-25 Craig Murray: The Chances of a Regional War  Gaza has no defence from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease killing even more people per day than bombardment.  The population of Gaza is simply defenceless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.

The question is, what is Israel’s aim? Do they intend to reduce the Gaza Strip still further, annexing half or more of it? Will starvation and horror enable the international community to force Egypt to accept the expulsion of the population of Gaza into the Sinai Desert as a “humanitarian” move?   That appears to be the end game: expulsion of population and territorial expansion into Gaza.    That would require a ground invasion, but probably not until after even more intense aerial bombardment to eliminate all resistance.   This territorial ambition of course accords with the violent expansion of illegal settlement in the West Bank which is currently under way, with the world paying almost no attention.  It is very hard indeed to comprehend the passivity of Fatah and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, at the moment.    https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/25/craig-murray-the-chances-of-a-regional-war/

2023-10-13  A Second Nakba? Israel Orders 1.1 Million Palestinians to Evacuate Northern Gaza Amid Bombing & Siege   Israel’s military on Friday ordered 1.1 million civilians in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate “southwards” in just 24 hours, a demand that aid groups say will cause untold human suffering.   Meanwhile, Israel continues to maintain a total blockade of the territory, blocking food, water, fuel and medicine from reaching those trapped inside. For more on the crisis and mounting human toll, we speak with Gaza writer Muhammad Shehada, who condemns the international community and mainstream media for its complicity in Israel’s destruction of Gaza. “These things are unimaginable horrors that are inflicted on Gaza right now with no one intervening to stop it,” he says. “This is pure madness.”https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/israel_orders_gaza_evacuation

2023-10-13 Former EU Envoy: Israel’s Forced Transfer of Palestinians in Gaza Would Be a War Crime     Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, recently retired European Union ambassador to Palestine, says Israeli pain and anger cannot justify war crimes in Gaza, where Israeli bombardment has already killed over 1,500 people. Now with Israel demanding the relocation of 1.1 million people ahead of an expected ground invasion, von Burgsdorff says Israel must adhere to international law and protect civilians. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/eu_envoy_to_palestine_gaza_israel

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World