The relatives of an Israeli family killed while in Hamas captivity in Gaza have demanded the government stop making statements attributing blame for the killings of their loved ones, threatening to “take all legal measures at their disposal” if the Netanyahu administration refuses to comply. The request came three days after a declaration by Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari that Palestinian “terrorists” had “deliberately” killed two young members of the Bibas family “with their bare hands.”
Lawyers representing surviving members of the Bibas family have accused government ministries of seeking to exploit their plight for propaganda purposes
Israel has deployed tanks to the occupied West Bank, further intensifying the assault that has forcibly displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians as Israeli officials are vowing a “prolonged” operation in the area. In raids on Sunday and Monday, Israel sent tanks into Jenin as part of its “Operation Iron Wall” campaign launched last month. This is the first time Israel has deployed tanks…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered yet another escalation of Israel’s military assault of the occupied West Bank after a series of bus explosions in Israel. It is currently unclear who was responsible for the explosions. Just hours after the explosions on Thursday, Netanyahu’s office wrote on social media that the prime minister has ordered an “intensive operation” to be…
Above photo: Reuters/Shir Torem. Hamas announced that the release of additional captives has been suspended. Due to continuous Israeli violations of the ceasefire terms. NOTE: The Cradle also reports: The leader of Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said in a speech on 11 February that the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) – with which […]
Israeli sources believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to sabotage the second phase of the prisoner release deal and derail the Gaza ceasefire, Haaretz reported on 9 February.
“It’s a show,” said one source. “Netanyahu is signaling quite clearly that he doesn’t want to move to the next phase. He’s sending a team without a mandate and without the ability to do anything,” the source added.
In a sign the Israeli Prime Minister is not serious about reaching the next phase of the deal, he sent a delegation to Qatar that is only allowed to discuss “technical details” rather than begin the second stage of the talks, a senior official said.
Many people who never liked Donald Trump are predictably outraged by many of his actual and potential foreign policy changes. These include new tariffs on goods from countries with which the US had, until the current administration, enjoyed free trade or Most Favored Nation status, including Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. In addition, he announced imposition or intended imposition of increased sanctions against Iran, Russia and potentially other nations. He also ordered the suspension of all foreign aid except to Israel and Egypt. (The order is currently blocked in federal court.) But his most outrageous proposals are undoubtedly to annex Canada and Greenland, “take back” the Panama Canal, and acquire and develop the Gaza Strip after removing its current Palestinian population.
All of this and more has understandably been used to justify the worst fears of those who predicted disaster. Panic and hysteria are not an uncommon response in some quarters of the press and social media. This is by no means entirely unjustified, but such reactions fail to appreciate what Trump himself perceives as the method behind his madness. He loves panic and hysteria, which he considers useful, if not essential, to his “art of the deal.”
Donald Trump is by nature a businessman, more specifically a salesperson. He makes deals by persuasion, coercion, temptation, reward, and the entire panoply of inducements to achieve an outcome that may or may not be what he or the other participants in the negotiation initially intended. If he makes an outrageous proposal, he expects a counterproposal, and if his outrageous proposal helps to shape the counterproposal, so much the better. If he issues a directive that results in disaster, he expects pushback and revision. That – for better or worse – is how he operates. He doesn’t feel that he needs a lot of analysis or expertise. He depends on others to push and pull the negotiation into the solution of the problem, which can be less or more, better or worse, than either of the negotiators initially intended. His role is to move things along and break the deadlocks. The result may not always be the perfect solution, but it’s often a solution of some kind.
One of the first successes of the Trump administration has been the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. One can only imagine the threats and promises that were made for Trump to achieve this just prior to his inauguration. Did he promise Bibi that he could resume full or even intensified genocide after a short pause, which would allow Itamar Ben Gvir to reverse his resignation from the governing coalition and permit Netanyahu’s to further his own ambitions)? Perhaps. But now Trump’s aim seems to be to prolong the ceasefire by assuring that the US will transfer the Palestinians to other countries (mainly Egypt and Jordan). Never mind that Egypt and Jordan have refused to accept the Palestinians, who have themselves refused to go, and that most or all US allies also oppose the plan. The objective is to promise whatever is necessary to prolong the ceasefire, and to keep coming up with ways to do that, no matter how unrealistic. In this case, the promise is to rid Israel of the Palestinians without even having to use the Israeli military or resources. What more could they want? This buys Israel’s cooperation, and the problems and contradictions get kicked down the road. Donald Trump wants to be seen as someone who can do the impossible, even if his methods are highly, highly unorthodox and coercive, such as a proposal to cut off foreign aid to Egypt and Jordan if they don’t accept.
Thus far, there is no doubt that the ceasefire is a success, if only a qualified one, with many violations (mostly by Israel, which is less than enthusiastic about it). However, the same cannot necessarily be said about Trump’s suspension of the operations and funding of the US Agency for International Development. The humanitarian aid and technological development provided by USAID is a real benefit to the societies that receive it, and it is plausible that people will die without it, especially the medical supplies, equipment and services that preserve life and health in underserved areas. On the other hand, that aid comes with strings attached. USAID, as well as many NGOs that are at least partly funded privately, are frequently a cover for CIA spying, black ops and regime change operations. The overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014 was largely funded and enabled by USAID funds directed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. The suspension of the USAID program is therefore not entirely unwelcome.
In any case, we can expect such strange and risky moves to be part of the next four years. In Trump’s last administration, he came in largely unprepared. This time, he appears, for better or worse, to be taking charge. It is likely to be a learning experience for all concerned, and the results are likely to be less predictable for us all, as well.
During their joint press conference this week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that all Palestinians will be forcibly displaced from the Gaza Strip, the U.S. would take “ownership” of the Strip, and eventually rebuild it as the “Riviera of the Middle East” to be inhabited apparently by everyone from around the world (but clearly, they meant Israeli Jews), but not by the Palestinians who will be forcibly expelled from Gaza. For Trump, those Palestinians must be moved to Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere once and for all.
When Donald Trump campaigned for president in 2024, he told the Israeli-American Council that, during his first administration, “I was the best friend Israel ever had”.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees. In a press conference at the White House, Netanyahu told Trump, “You are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House”.
Since returning for his second term as US president, Trump has been as pro-Israel — and as anti-Palestinian — as he could possibly be.
Trump signed an executive order calling to deport international students who protest Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted President Donald Trump a golden pager mounted on a piece of wood in an homage to the horrific attack on Lebanon in which dozens of people were killed, including children, and thousands injured as a result of spontaneous explosions of pagers that had been rigged by Israeli authorities. Netanyahu’s office confirmed the gifting of the pager.
Washington, DC – On Tuesday night, February 4, hundreds of protesters gathered at Lafayette Square, near the White House, to raise their voices and stomp their feet in opposition of the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump.
Organized by Palestinian Youth Movement DMV, Md 2 Palestine, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Muslim American Society, the organizers united around the demands to arrest genocidal Zionist Netanyahu, the end of all U.S. aid to Israel, and no normalization of relations between occupied Palestine and Israel.
On Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first foreign leader to meet Donald Trump in The White House during his second term. The meeting took place amid ongoing ceasefire negotiations between the Israeli government and Hamas.
Speaking with reporters after the meeting, Trump made the stunning announcement that the United States would try to take over Gaza.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,” he said. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out.”
Human Rights Watch warned on Tuesday, ahead of a planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the U.S. “will be complicit” in Israeli war crimes as long as the Trump administration continues sending military assistance to Israel. In a statement, the human rights group said that the U.S.’s support of the Israeli military throughout its…
Both Egypt and Jordan have stated that this is a non-starter and will not happen.
Israeli extremists have welcomed Trump’s comments with the hope that the forced expulsion of Palestinians would pave the way for Jewish settlements in Gaza.
But the truth is that Israeli leaders likely feel deceived by Trump more than anything else. Benjamin Netanyahu and most of Israeli society were once clamouring for Donald Trump.
Since then, Israeli leaders and Israeli society, are seemingly taken aback by Trump’s more restrained approach toward the Middle East and desire for a ceasefire.
While the current ceasefire in place is a precarious endeavour at best, Israeli reactions to the cessation of hostilities highlight a profound point: not only did Netanyahu misread Trump’s intentions, but the entire Israeli political system itself seemingly only thrives during conflict in which the US provides it with unfettered military and diplomatic support.
Geostrategic calculus
Firstly, Israel believed that Trump’s second term would likely be a continuation of his first — where the US based its geostrategic calculus in the Middle East around Israel’s interests. This gave Israeli leaders the impression that Trump would give them the green light to attack Iran, resettle and starve Gaza, and formally annex the West Bank.
Trump blessing an Israel-Iran showdown seems to be off the table. Trump himself stated this and is backing up his words by appointing Washington-based analyst Mike DiMino as a top Department of Defence advisor.
The Trump effect As it pertains to his vision for the Middle East, Trump has been adamant about expanding the Abraham Accords, deepening US military ties with Saudi Arabia, and possibly pioneering Saudi-Israeli “normalisation”.
While there is an explicit pro-Israel angle to all these components, none of Trump’s objectives for the Middle East would be feasible if the genocide in Gaza continued or if the US allowed Israel to formally annex the occupied West Bank, something Trump stopped during his first term.
Witkoff’s willingness to meet with PA, along with the quiet yet growing relationship between Trump and Abbas, was likely something Netanyahu did not anticipate and may have also factored into Netanyahu’s acquiescence in Gaza.
Of equal importance, the Gaza ceasefire deal proves that Israeli politics can only survive if it’s engaged in perpetual war.
Brutal occupation
This is evidenced by its brutal occupation of the Palestinians, destroying Gaza, and attacking its neighbours in Syria and Lebanon. Now that Israel is forced to stop its genocide in Gaza, at least for the time being, fissures within the Israeli government are already growing.
Such dynamics within the Israeli government and its necessity for conflict are only possible because the US allows it to happen.
In providing Israel with unfettered military and diplomatic support, the US allows Israel to torment the Palestinian people. Now that Israel cannot punish Gaza, it has shifted their focus to the West Bank.
Since the ceasefire’s implementation, the Israeli army has engaged in deadly raids in the Jenin refugee camp which had displaced over 2000 Palestinians. The Israeli army has also imposed a complete siege on the West Bank, shutting down checkpoints to severely restrict the movement of Palestinians.
All of Israel’s genocidal practices are a direct result of the impunity granted to them by the Biden administration; who willingly refused to impose any consequences for Israel’s blatant violation of US law.
Joe Biden could have enforced either the Leahy Law or Section 620 I of the Foreign Assistance Act at any time, which would ban weapons from flowing to Israel due to their impediment of humanitarian aid into Gaza and use of US weapons to facilitate grave human rights abuses in Gaza.
Instead, he chose to undermine US laws to ensure that Israel had everything it facilitate their mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
The United States has always held all the cards when it comes to Israel’s hawkish political composition. Israel was simply the executioner of the US’s devastating policies towards Gaza and the broader Palestinian national movement.
Abdelhalim Abdelrahman is a freelance Palestinian journalist. His work has appeared in The New Arab, The Hill, MSN, and La Razon. Tis article was first published by The New Arab and is republished under Creative Commons.
The fragile, incomplete and long overdue Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement has brought huge relief to the millions of Palestinians who have been under daily threat of airstrikes, bombardment and forced starvation for over 15 months. The numerous scenes of Palestinians celebrating — a boy raising a Palestinian flag at the top of the rubble of his family’s destroyed home; an old man kneeling to…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to Elon Musk’s defense after the billionaire performed a salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration that is being widely celebrated by neo-Nazis as a Nazi salute. In a post on social media, Netanyahu said that Musk is being “falsely smeared” and suggested that Musk’s support of Israel is proof that he isn’t antisemitic — even as numerous Jewish…
The Israeli military is planning to continue occupying southern Lebanon past the deadline set forth in Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. Under the terms of the deal, agreed to in November, Israel and Hezbollah were supposed to withdraw from southern Lebanon by this Sunday, January 26. They were to be replaced by troops from the…
Scenes of fully armed Hamas fighters in their green headbands escorting the three Israeli women hostages to their handover on the first day of the ceasefire and patrolling the streets of Gaza are embarrasing for the Israeli government, says an academic.
Mohamad Elmasry, a media studies professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, says Israeli media are now focusing on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the 15-month war on Gaza which has killed almost 47,000 Palestinians,
“Back in April, Netanyahu said, ‘We are one step away from eliminating Hamas.’
“Then in June he doubled down on that and said, ‘We’re almost there. We almost eliminated Hamas.’
“And now he has to watch, on all the TV screens, Hamas fighters dressed in their fatigues escorting Israeli captives to their vehicles.
“He’s watching as Hamas will continue to govern Gaza and oversee the security situation, the humanitarian aid situation, and all elements of this ceasefire.
Hamas ‘has not been eliminated’
“Hamas has not been eliminated, and this is very embarrassing for Netanyahu.”
Three women hostages were exchanged for 90 Palestinian captives — mostly women and children, many of them detained by the Israeli military without charge — on the opening day of the ceasefire.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, said neither Hamas’s political nor military infrastructure had been entirely eradicated despite Netanyahu repeatedly citing it as the main goal of the war.
“Yes, Hamas was degraded, even decimated, militarily but they’re still standing up.
“So in that respect, short of occupying the entire Gaza Strip – which is something Israel never wanted to do – he did not attain that goal,” Pinkas told Al Jazeera.
“As for turning the Palestinians against Hamas, in order to do that he needs to offer them some sort of silver lining, some kind of alternative.
“Let’s not forget, it was Netanyahu’s deliberate, by-design policy to strengthen Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and say ‘what do you know, I’ve got no one to talk to about a peace process.’”
99 rescuers killed Meanwhile, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency has provided an update on the devastation in the besieged Strip, including the fact that Israeli attacks killed 99 and wounded 319 of its rescuers. Dozens suffered permanent injuries.
The Israeli military forces also detained 27 rescuers and their fate is unknown.
Civil defence crews recovered more than 97,000 injured Palestinians from bombed sites during the war.
About 2840 bodies were reported to have “evaporated without a trace” from Israeli weapons that unleashed temperatures between 7000-9000 degrees Celsius – “melting all at the centre of the explosion”.
Searching continues for an estimated more than 10,000 bodies buried under the rubble of bombed houses and buildings.
An Al-Jazeera Arabic special report translated by The Palestine Chronicle staff details how Israel’s military strategy in Gaza, aimed at dismantling Hamas and displacing Palestinian civilians, has failed after 470 days of conflict.
ANALYSIS: By Abdulwahab al-Mursi
On May 5, 2024, nearly seven months into Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the main goal of the war was to destroy Hamas and prevent it from controlling Gaza.
However, over 250 days since this statement, and 470 days into the Israeli aggression, it has become clear that Netanyahu’s promises have faded into illusions.
In the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire on Sunday, Israeli military radio reported that Hamas forces were reasserting their control over Gaza, stating that Hamas, which had never lost control of any part of the territory during the war, was using the ceasefire to strengthen its grip.
This development highlights the gap between Israel’s strategic objectives and the reality on the ground, as images from Gaza continue to reveal widespread devastation and loss of life, yet Hamas remains firmly in control.
Popular Support: The backbone of Hamas Military literature highlights the concept of “Center of Gravity” (COG) for military organisations, a concept that can vary depending on the organisation and context.
In the case of Hamas and Palestinian Resistance, the central element of their strength lies in the support of the local population.
This grassroots support provides Hamas with invaluable social depth, a continuous supply of human resources, and strong strategic backing.
The popular support and belief in the resistance’s strategic choices and leadership have allowed Hamas to maintain its popular mandate to achieve Palestinian national goals.
Recognising this, Israel has targeted Gaza’s civilian infrastructure both militarily and psychologically, aiming to raise the costs of supporting the resistance and weaken Hamas’s popular base.
Israel has treated Gaza’s entire civilian infrastructure as military targets, believing that expanding the death toll among civilians and inflicting maximum suffering would force the population to turn against Hamas.
Yet, despite these efforts, images of celebrations in Gaza, even in areas heavily targeted by Israel, underscore the exceptional nature of the Gaza situation, where resistance culture is deeply rooted and unyielding.
The strategic consciousness of Gaza’s people There appears to be a collective strategic awareness among Gaza’s people to maintain a victorious image at all costs, even in the midst of devastating humanitarian crises.
This desire to project an image of resistance and triumph, despite the overwhelming tragedy, has led to spontaneous public displays of support for Hamas and resistance forces, reinforcing their resolve against the Israeli onslaught.
Failure of forced displacement plans In the initial weeks of the war, Israel revealed its plan to forcibly relocate Gaza’s population.
Israeli media outlets reported in October 2023 that Netanyahu had proposed relocating Gaza’s residents to other countries.
However, after months of war, Gaza’s residents have shown an unshakable determination to remain, with displaced individuals in refugee camps celebrating their return to their homes, despite the widespread destruction they have suffered.
In northern Gaza, particularly in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabaliya, and Shuja’iyya, Israel’s attempts to prevent the return of displaced residents became a significant obstacle to a ceasefire agreement, delaying it for months.
Israel’s plan, known as the “Generals’ Plan” by former Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland, aimed to create a buffer zone in northern Gaza by applying immense military and living pressures on the population.
However, as evident from the ongoing images from the region, the displaced population continues to resist and return, undermining Israel’s relocation goals.
Hamas’s military structure endures One of Netanyahu’s primary goals was to dismantle Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
However, in the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire, images showed Hamas fighters organising military parades in southern Gaza, signalling the resilience of Hamas’s military structure even before the ceasefire officially began.
Despite Israeli claims of killing thousands of Hamas fighters and destroying significant portions of Gaza’s tunnel network, the rapid and organized emergence of Al-Qassam forces on the ground suggests that these Israeli claims may have been aimed more at reassuring the Israeli public about the progress of the war, rather than reflecting the true situation on the ground.
Failure of post-war plans In December 2023, Netanyahu rejected Palestinian proposals that Hamas be included in Gaza’s post-war governance, insisting, “There will be no Hamas in the post-war period; we will eliminate them.”
Throughout the war, Israel attempted various unilateral methods to manage Gaza, including direct military administration and creating a new technocratic authority with local leaders, but all efforts failed.
Israeli military attempts to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza also proved ineffective, as the army struggled to manage these operations.
As the conflict nears what is supposed to be its final phase, the governance structure in Gaza has not changed.
Hamas’s leadership, especially the Al-Qassam Brigades, continues to operate effectively, and the ceasefire agreement has allowed for the resumption of local security forces.
Even after Israel’s targeted assassinations of 723 members of Gaza’s police and security apparatus, the resilience of Gaza’s security forces has remained evident.
This failure of Israel’s post-war vision was highlighted by a comment from a political analyst on Israeli i24 News, who questioned the results of the prolonged military operation: “What have we achieved in a year and five months?
“We destroyed many homes, lost many of our best soldiers, and in the end, the result is the same: Hamas rules, aid enters, and the Qassam Brigades return.”
Republished from The Palestinian Chronicle with permission.
Over the past three years, a collective of volunteer researchers, lawyers, and commentators created The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, dedicated to holding accountable four weapon manufacturing corporations based in the U.S. Their tribunal amassed copious evidence to prove that Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon) and General Atomics (a company which manufactures weaponized…
As Israel’s military continued its 15-month assault that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and decimated the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed that early Saturday the full Cabinet approved a recently announced cease-fire and hostage-release deal that is set to take effect at 8:30 am local time Sunday. The 24-8 vote on the three-phase deal…
Israel plays a cynical game. It makes phased agreements with the Palestinians that ensure it immediately gets what it wants. It then violates every subsequent phase and reignites its military assault.
ANALYSIS:By Chris Hedges
Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game.
It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace.
It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.
If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause. Israel has no intention of halting its merry-go-round of death.
The Israeli Cabinet delayed a vote on the ceasefire proposal while it continues to pound Gaza — but finally agreed to the deal. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in the first 24 hours after the ceasefire was declared.
The morning after a ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on part of the deal “in an effort to extort last minute concessions.”
He warned that his cabinet would not meet “until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”
Hamas dismissed Netanyahu’s claims and repeated their commitment to the ceasefire as agreed with the mediators.
The deal includes three phases.
The first phase, lasting 42 days, will see a cessation of hostilities. Hamas will release some Israeli hostages — 33 Israelis who were captured on October 7, 2023, including all of the remaining five women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for up to 1000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The Israeli army will pull back from the populated areas of the Gaza Strip on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians will be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel will allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.
The second phase, which begins on the 16th day of the ceasefire, will see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel will complete its withdrawal from Gaza during the second phase, maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt.
It will surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The third phase will see negotiations for a permanent end of the war.
But it is Netanyahu’s office that appeared to have already reneged on the agreement. It released a statement rejecting Israeli troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor during the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire.
“In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice,” while claiming the Palestinians are attempting to violate the agreement. Palestinians throughout the numerous ceasefire negotiations have demanded Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza.
Egypt has condemned the seizure of its border crossings by Israel.
Israeli military ground operations in the Gaza Strip in November 2023. Image: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
The deep fissures between Israel and Hamas, even with the Israelis finally accepting the agreement, threaten to implode it.
Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire. But Israeli policy is unequivocal about its “right” to re-engage militarily.
There is no consensus about who will govern Gaza. Israel has made it clear the continuance of Hamas in power is unacceptable.
There is no mention of the status of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN agency that Israel has outlawed and that provides the bulk of the humanitarian aid given to the Palestinians, 95 percent of whom have been displaced.
There is no agreement on the reconstruction of Gaza, which lies in rubble. And, of course, there is no route in the agreement to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.
Israeli mendacity and manipulation is pitifully predictable.
Camp David
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (left), the late US President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin after the Camp David Peace Accords signing ceremony at the White House on September 17, 1978. Image: US National Archives and Records Administration, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.
But the subsequent phases, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never honored.
Oslo Or take the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement, signed in 1993, which saw the PLO recognise Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people; and Oslo II, signed in 1995, which detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state, was stillborn.
It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” was to be delayed until “final’ status talks, by which time Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were to have been completed.
Governing authority was to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. The West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C.
The Palestinian Authority has limited authority in Areas A and B. Israel controls all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, US President Bill Clinton and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony, September 13, 1993. Image: Vince Musi, White House, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law– was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, instantly alienating many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees.
Edward Said called the Oslo agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians”.
The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There was no provision in the interim agreement to end Jewish colonization, only a prohibition of “unilateral steps”.
There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank at the time of the Oslo agreement. They have increased to at least 700,000. No final treaty was ever concluded.
The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo …
“a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo agreement, was assassinated on November 4, 1995, following a rally in support of the agreement, by Yigal Amir, a far-right Jewish law student.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s national security minister, was one of many rightwing politicians who issued threats against Rabin. Rabin’s widow, Leah, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters — who distributed leaflets at political rallies depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform — for her husband’s murder.
Then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, on the day he was assassinated, giving a speech in favour of the Oslo Peace agreement in Tel Aviv. Image: Israel Press and Photo Agency, Dan Hadani collection, National Library of Israel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Israel has carried out a series of murderous assaults on Gaza ever since, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn”.
These attacks, which leave scores of dead and wounded and further degrade Gaza’s fragile infrastructure, have names such as Operation Rainbow (2004), Operation Days of Penitence (2004), Operation Summer Rains (2006), Operation Autumn Clouds (2006) and Operation Hot Winter (2008).
Israel violated the June 2008 ceasefire agreement with Hamas, brokered by Egypt, by launching a border raid that killed six Hamas members. The raid provoked, as Israel intended, a retaliatory strike by Hamas, which fired crude rockets and mortar shells into Israel.
The Hamas barrage provided the pretext for a massive Israeli attack. Israel, as it always does, justified its military strike on the “right to defend itself”.
Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which saw Israel carry out a ground and aerial assault over 22 days, with the Israeli air force dropping over 1000 tons of explosives on Gaza, killed 1,385 — according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — of whom at least 762 were civilians, including 300 children.
Four Israelis were killed over the same period by Hamas rockets and nine Israeli soldiers died in Gaza, four of whom were victims of “friendly fire.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz would later report that “Operation Cast Lead” had been prepared over the previous six months.
Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, wrote that:
“the brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesman…their propaganda is a pack of lies…It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men.
“Israel’s objective is not just the defense of its population, but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers.”
A child in Gaza City during the ceasefire after the 2008–2009 conflict. Image: andlun1, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
These series of attacks on Gaza were followed by Israeli assaults in November 2012, known as Operation Pillar of Defence and in July and August 2014 in Operation Protective Edge, a seven week campaign that left 2251 Palestinians dead, along with 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers.
These assaults by the Israeli military were followed in 2018 by largely peaceful protests by Palestinians, known as The Great March of Return, along Gaza’s fenced-in barrier. Over 266 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli soldiers and 30,000 more were wounded.
In May 2021, Israel killed more than 256 Palestinians in Gaza following attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Further attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque took place in April 2023.
And then the breaching of the security barriers on October 7, 2023 that enclose Gaza, where Palestinians had languished under a blockade for over 16 years in an open air prison.
The attacks by Palestinian gunmen [Al-Aqsa Deluge] left some 1200 Israeli dead — including hundreds killed by Israel itself — and gave Israel the excuse it had long sought to lay waste to Gaza, in its Swords of Iron War.
This horrific saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged — the erasure of Palestinians from their land. This ceasefire is one more cynical chapter. There are many ways it can and, I suspect, will fall apart.
But let us pray, at least for the moment, that the mass slaughter will stop.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.
Israel plays a cynical game. It makes phased agreements with the Palestinians that ensure it immediately gets what it wants. It then violates every subsequent phase and reignites its military assault.
ANALYSIS:By Chris Hedges
Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game.
It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace.
It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.
If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause. Israel has no intention of halting its merry-go-round of death.
The Israeli Cabinet delayed a vote on the ceasefire proposal while it continues to pound Gaza — but finally agreed to the deal. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in the first 24 hours after the ceasefire was declared.
The morning after a ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on part of the deal “in an effort to extort last minute concessions.”
He warned that his cabinet would not meet “until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”
Hamas dismissed Netanyahu’s claims and repeated their commitment to the ceasefire as agreed with the mediators.
The deal includes three phases.
The first phase, lasting 42 days, will see a cessation of hostilities. Hamas will release some Israeli hostages — 33 Israelis who were captured on October 7, 2023, including all of the remaining five women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for up to 1000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The Israeli army will pull back from the populated areas of the Gaza Strip on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians will be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel will allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.
The second phase, which begins on the 16th day of the ceasefire, will see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel will complete its withdrawal from Gaza during the second phase, maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt.
It will surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The third phase will see negotiations for a permanent end of the war.
But it is Netanyahu’s office that appeared to have already reneged on the agreement. It released a statement rejecting Israeli troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor during the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire.
“In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice,” while claiming the Palestinians are attempting to violate the agreement. Palestinians throughout the numerous ceasefire negotiations have demanded Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza.
Egypt has condemned the seizure of its border crossings by Israel.
Israeli military ground operations in the Gaza Strip in November 2023. Image: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
The deep fissures between Israel and Hamas, even with the Israelis finally accepting the agreement, threaten to implode it.
Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire. But Israeli policy is unequivocal about its “right” to re-engage militarily.
There is no consensus about who will govern Gaza. Israel has made it clear the continuance of Hamas in power is unacceptable.
There is no mention of the status of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN agency that Israel has outlawed and that provides the bulk of the humanitarian aid given to the Palestinians, 95 percent of whom have been displaced.
There is no agreement on the reconstruction of Gaza, which lies in rubble. And, of course, there is no route in the agreement to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.
Israeli mendacity and manipulation is pitifully predictable.
Camp David
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (left), the late US President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin after the Camp David Peace Accords signing ceremony at the White House on September 17, 1978. Image: US National Archives and Records Administration, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.
But the subsequent phases, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never honored.
Oslo Or take the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement, signed in 1993, which saw the PLO recognise Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people; and Oslo II, signed in 1995, which detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state, was stillborn.
It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” was to be delayed until “final’ status talks, by which time Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were to have been completed.
Governing authority was to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. The West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C.
The Palestinian Authority has limited authority in Areas A and B. Israel controls all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, US President Bill Clinton and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony, September 13, 1993. Image: Vince Musi, White House, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law– was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, instantly alienating many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees.
Edward Said called the Oslo agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians”.
The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There was no provision in the interim agreement to end Jewish colonization, only a prohibition of “unilateral steps”.
There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank at the time of the Oslo agreement. They have increased to at least 700,000. No final treaty was ever concluded.
The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo …
“a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo agreement, was assassinated on November 4, 1995, following a rally in support of the agreement, by Yigal Amir, a far-right Jewish law student.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s national security minister, was one of many rightwing politicians who issued threats against Rabin. Rabin’s widow, Leah, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters — who distributed leaflets at political rallies depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform — for her husband’s murder.
Then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, on the day he was assassinated, giving a speech in favour of the Oslo Peace agreement in Tel Aviv. Image: Israel Press and Photo Agency, Dan Hadani collection, National Library of Israel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Israel has carried out a series of murderous assaults on Gaza ever since, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn”.
These attacks, which leave scores of dead and wounded and further degrade Gaza’s fragile infrastructure, have names such as Operation Rainbow (2004), Operation Days of Penitence (2004), Operation Summer Rains (2006), Operation Autumn Clouds (2006) and Operation Hot Winter (2008).
Israel violated the June 2008 ceasefire agreement with Hamas, brokered by Egypt, by launching a border raid that killed six Hamas members. The raid provoked, as Israel intended, a retaliatory strike by Hamas, which fired crude rockets and mortar shells into Israel.
The Hamas barrage provided the pretext for a massive Israeli attack. Israel, as it always does, justified its military strike on the “right to defend itself”.
Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which saw Israel carry out a ground and aerial assault over 22 days, with the Israeli air force dropping over 1000 tons of explosives on Gaza, killed 1,385 — according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — of whom at least 762 were civilians, including 300 children.
Four Israelis were killed over the same period by Hamas rockets and nine Israeli soldiers died in Gaza, four of whom were victims of “friendly fire.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz would later report that “Operation Cast Lead” had been prepared over the previous six months.
Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, wrote that:
“the brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesman…their propaganda is a pack of lies…It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men.
“Israel’s objective is not just the defense of its population, but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers.”
A child in Gaza City during the ceasefire after the 2008–2009 conflict. Image: andlun1, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
These series of attacks on Gaza were followed by Israeli assaults in November 2012, known as Operation Pillar of Defence and in July and August 2014 in Operation Protective Edge, a seven week campaign that left 2251 Palestinians dead, along with 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers.
These assaults by the Israeli military were followed in 2018 by largely peaceful protests by Palestinians, known as The Great March of Return, along Gaza’s fenced-in barrier. Over 266 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli soldiers and 30,000 more were wounded.
In May 2021, Israel killed more than 256 Palestinians in Gaza following attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Further attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque took place in April 2023.
And then the breaching of the security barriers on October 7, 2023 that enclose Gaza, where Palestinians had languished under a blockade for over 16 years in an open air prison.
The attacks by Palestinian gunmen [Al-Aqsa Deluge] left some 1200 Israeli dead — including hundreds killed by Israel itself — and gave Israel the excuse it had long sought to lay waste to Gaza, in its Swords of Iron War.
This horrific saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged — the erasure of Palestinians from their land. This ceasefire is one more cynical chapter. There are many ways it can and, I suspect, will fall apart.
But let us pray, at least for the moment, that the mass slaughter will stop.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.
Israel’s security cabinet has approved a long-awaited ceasefire deal with Hamas. If finalized, the ceasefire is expected to go into effect on Sunday. “The main challenge will be the second phase, and here there are many, many problems on the horizon,” says Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who stresses the importance of also freeing the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel. “Again and again…
Israeli forces killed at least 87 Palestinians, including numerous children, in the hours after officials announced that Israel and Hamas have reached a long-awaited ceasefire deal on Wednesday, according to Gaza authorities. At least 23 of those killed are children, Gaza’s officials said on Thursday. Fifty people had been killed since dawn on Thursday, per Palestinian newswire Wafa.
We host a roundtable on the planned Gaza ceasefire with former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy of the U.S./Middle East Project, Gazan analyst Muhammad Shehada of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and journalist Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News. We discuss how incoming President Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff pressured Israel to accept the deal and what it reveals about the…
A ceasefire in Gaza is not the end of Palestine’s nightmare, but the start of Israel’s. Legal moves will only gather momentum as the truth of what happened in Gaza is uncovered and documented after the war has ended.
ANALYSIS:By David Hearst
When push came to shove, it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who blinked first.
For months, Netanyahu had become the main obstacle to a Gaza ceasefire, to the considerable frustration of his own negotiators.
That much was made explicit more than two months ago by the departure of his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant. The chief architect of the 15-month war, Gallant said plainly that there was nothing left for the army to do in Gaza.
Still Netanyahu persisted. Last May, he rejected a deal signed by Hamas in the presence of CIA director William Burns, in favour of an offensive on Rafah.
In October, Netanyahu turned for salvation to the Generals’ Plan, aiming to empty northern Gaza in preparation for resettlement by Israelis. The plan was to starve and bomb the population out of northern Gaza by declaring that anyone who did not leave voluntarily would be treated as a “terrorist”.
It was so extreme, and so contrary to the international rules of war, that it was condemned by former Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon as a war crime and ethnic cleansing.
Key to this plan was a corridor forged by a military road and a string of outposts cutting through the centre of the Gaza Strip, from the Israeli border to the sea.
The Netzarim Corridor would have effectively reduced the territory’s land mass by almost one third and become its new northern border. No Palestinian pushed out of northern Gaza would have been allowed to return.
Red lines erased No-one from the Biden administration forced Netanyahu to rethink this plan. Not US President Joe Biden himself, an instinctive Zionist who, for all his speeches, kept on supplying Israel with the means to commit genocide in Gaza; nor Antony Blinken, his Secretary of State, who earned the dubious distinction of being the least-trusted diplomat in the region.
Even as the final touches were being put on the ceasefire agreement, Blinken gave a departing news conference in which he blamed Hamas for rejecting previous offers. As is par for the course, the opposite is the truth.
Every Israeli journalist who covered the negotiations has reported that Netanyahu rejected all previous deals and was responsible for the delay in coming to this one.
It fell to one short meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to call time on Netanyahu’s 15-month war.
In a war of liberation, the weak and vastly outgunned can succeed against overwhelming military odds. These wars are battles of will
After one meeting, the red lines that Netanyahu had so vigorously painted and repainted in the course of 15 months were erased.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in military gear – now a wanted man by the ICC . . . “After one meeting, the red lines that he had so vigorously painted and repainted in the course of 15 months were erased.” Image: AJ screenshot APR
As Israeli pundit Erel Segal said: “We’re the first to pay a price for Trump’s election. [The deal] is being forced upon us . . . We thought we’d take control of northern Gaza, that they’d let us impede humanitarian aid.”
This is emerging as a consensus. The mood in Israel is sceptical of claims of victory.
“There’s no need to sugarcoat the reality: the emerging ceasefire and hostage release deal is bad for Israel, but it has no choice but to accept it,” columnist Yossi Yehoshua wrote in Ynet.
The circulating draft of the ceasefire agreement is clear in stating that Israel will pull back from both the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor by the end of the process, stipulations Netanyahu had previously rejected.
Even without this, the draft agreement clearly notes that Palestinians can return to their homes, including in northern Gaza. The attempt to clear it of its inhabitants has failed.
This is the biggest single failure of Israel’s ground invasion.
Fighting back There is a long list of others. But before we list them, the Witkoff debacle underscores how dependent Israel has been on Washington for every day of the horrendous slaughter in Gaza.
A senior Israeli Air Force official has admitted that planes would have run out of bombs within a few months had they not been resupplied by the US.
It is sinking into Israeli public opinion that the war is ending without any of Israel’s major aims being achieved.
Netanyahu and the Israeli army set out to “collapse” Hamas after the humiliation and shock of its surprise attack on southern Israel in October 2023. They demonstrably haven’t achieved this goal.
“But after wave upon wave of military operations, each of which was supposed to have ‘cleansed’ the city of Hamas fighters, Beit Hanoun turned out to have inflicted one of the heaviest concentrations of Israeli military casualties.” Image: AJ screenshot APR
Take Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza as a microcosm of the battle Hamas waged against invading forces. Fifteen months ago, it was the first city in Gaza to be occupied by Israeli forces, who judged it to have the weakest Hamas battalion.
But after wave upon wave of military operations, each of which was supposed to have “cleansed” the city of Hamas fighters, Beit Hanoun turned out to have inflicted one of the heaviest concentrations of Israeli military casualties.
Hamas kept on emerging from the rubble to fight back, turning Beit Hanoun into a minefield for Israeli soldiers. Since the launch of the most recent military operation in northern Gaza, 55 Israeli officers and soldiers have perished in this sector, 15 of them in Beit Hanoun in the past week alone.
If any army is bleeding and exhausted today, it is Israel’s. The plain military fact of life in Gaza is that, 15 months on, Hamas can recruit and regenerate faster than Israel can kill its leaders or its fighters.
“We are in a situation where the pace at which Hamas is rebuilding itself is higher than the pace that the [Israeli army] is eradicating them,” Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, told the Wall Street Journal. He added that Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, “is managing everything”.
If anything demonstrates the futility of measuring military success solely by the number of leaders killed, or missiles destroyed, it is this.
Against the odds In a war of liberation, the weak and vastly outgunned can succeed against overwhelming military odds. These wars are battles of will. It is not the battle that matters, but the ability to keep on fighting.
In Algeria and Vietnam, the French and US armies had overwhelming military advantage.
Both forces withdrew in ignominy and failure many years later. In Vietnam, it was more than six years after the Tet Offensive, which like the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 was perceived at the time to be a military failure. But the symbol of a fightback after so many years of siege proved decisive in the war.
In France, the scars of Algeria last to this day. In each war of liberation, the determination of the weak to resist has proved more decisive than the firepower of the strong.
In Gaza, it was the determination of the Palestinian people to stay on their land — even as it was being reduced to rubble — that proved to be the decisive factor in this war. And this is an astonishing feat, considering that the 360 sq km territory was entirely cut off from the world, with no allies to break the siege and no natural terrain for cover.
Hezbollah fought in the north, but little of this was any succour to Palestinians in Gaza on the ground, subjected to nightly bombing raids and drone attacks shredding their tents.
Neither enforced starvation, nor hypothermia, nor disease, nor brutalisation and mass rape at the hands of their invaders, could break their will to stay on their land.
Never before have Palestinian fighters and civilians shown this level of resistance in the history of the conflict — and it could prove to be transformative.
Because what Israel has lost in its campaign to crush Gaza is incalculable. It has squandered decades of sustained economic, military and diplomatic efforts to establish the country as a liberal democratic Western nation in the eyes of global opinion.
Generational memory Israel has not only lost the Global South, in which it invested such efforts in Africa and South America. It has also lost the support of a generation in the West, whose memories do not go back as far as Biden’s.
The point is not mine. It is well made by Jack Lew, the man Biden nominated as his ambassador to Israel a month before the Hamas attack.
In his departing interview, Lew, an Orthodox Jew, told the Times of Israel that public opinion in the US was still largely pro-Israel, but that was changing.
With the enormous cost in lives, every family has been touched by loss. But what Gaza has achieved in the last 15 months could well transform the conflict
“What I’ve told people here that they have to worry about when this war is over is that the generational memory doesn’t go back to the founding of the state, or the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, or to the intifada even.
“It starts with this war, and you can’t ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers — not the people making the decisions today, but the people who are 25, 35, 45 today and who will be the leaders for the next 30 years, 40 years.”
Biden, Lew said, was the last president of his generation whose memories and knowledge go back to Israel’s “founding story”.
Lew’s parting shot at Netanyahu is amply documented in recent polls. More than one-third of American Jewish teenagers sympathise with Hamas, 42 percent believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and 66 percent sympathise with the Palestinian people as a whole.
This is not a new phenomenon. Polling two years before the war showed that a quarter of American Jews agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state”, and a plurality of respondents did not find that statement to be antisemitic.
“The antiwar protests, condemned by Western governments first as antisemitism and then legislated against as terrorism, have created a global front for the liberation of Palestine. The movement to boycott Israel is stronger than ever before.” Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Deep damage The war in Gaza has become the prism through which a new generation of future world leaders sees the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is a major strategic loss for a country that on 6 October 2023 thought that it had closed down the issue of Palestine, and that world opinion was in its pocket.
But the damage goes further and deeper than this.
The antiwar protests, condemned by Western governments first as antisemitism and then legislated against as terrorism, have created a global front for the liberation of Palestine. The movement to boycott Israel is stronger than ever before.
Israel is in the dock of international justice as never before. Not only are there arrest warrants out for Netanyahu and Gallant on war crimes, and a continuing genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but a myriad of other cases are about to flood the courts in every major western democracy.
A court action has been launched in the UK against BP for supplying crude oil to Israel, which is then allegedly used by the Israeli army, from its pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkiye.
In addition, the Israeli army recently decided to conceal the identities of all troops who have participated in the campaign in Gaza, for fear that they could be pursued when travelling abroad.
This major move was sparked by a tiny activist group named after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old killed by Israeli troops in Gaza in January 2024. The Belgium-based group has filed evidence of war crimes with the UCJ against 1000 Israelis, including video, audio, forensic reports and other documents.
A ceasefire in Gaza is thus not the end of Palestine’s nightmare, but the start of Israel’s. These legal moves will only gather momentum as the truth of what happened in Gaza is uncovered and documented after the war has ended.
Internal divisions At home, Netanyahu will return from war to a country more divided internally than ever before. There is a battle between the army and the Haredim who refuse to serve.
There is a battle between secular and national religious Zionists. With Netanyahu’s retreat on Gaza, the settler far right are sensing that the opportunity to establish Greater Israel has been snatched from the jaws of military victory.
All the while, there has been an unprecedented exodus of Jews from Israel.
Regionally, Israel is left with troops still in Lebanon and Syria. It would be foolish to think of these ongoing operations as restoring the deterrence Israel lost when Hamas struck on 7 October 2023.
Iran’s axis of resistance might have received some sustained blows after the leadership of Hezbollah was wiped out, and after finding itself vastly overextended in Syria. But like Hamas, Hezbollah has not been knocked out as a fighting force.
And the Sunni Arab world has been riled by the Gaza genoicide and the ongoing crackdown in the occupied West Bank as rarely before.
Israel’s undisguised bid to divide Syria into cantons is as provocative to Syrians of all denominations and ethnicities, as its plans to annex Areas B and C of the West Bank are an existential threat to Jordan.
Annexation would be treated in Amman as an act of war.
Deconfliction will be the patient work of decades of reconstruction, and Trump is not a patient man.
Hamas and Gaza will now take a backseat. With the enormous cost in lives, every family has been touched by loss. But what Gaza has achieved in the last 15 months could well transform the conflict.
Gaza has shown all Palestinians — and the world — that it can withstand total war, and not budge from the ground upon which it stands. It tells the world, with justifiable pride, that the occupiers threw everything they had at it, and there was not another Nakba.
Gaza tells Israel that Palestinians exist, and that they will not be pacified until and unless Israelis talk to them on equal terms about equal rights.
It may take many more years for that realisation to sink in, but for some it already has: “Even if we conquer the entire Middle East, and even if everyone surrenders to us, we won’t win this war,” columnist Yair Assulin wrote in Haaretz.
But what everyone in Gaza who stayed put has achieved is of historic significance.
David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. This article has been republished from the Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.
Ever since Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, I felt as if time had stopped. Every day was the same, stripped of meaning or hope. My family and I witnessed atrocities beyond description. From the siege of tanks surrounding us to the terrifying evacuations under constant bombardment, every moment was a struggle for survival. I will never forget the sight of my mother bleeding before…
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir boasted on Tuesday about Israel blocking a Gaza ceasefire deal “time after time” for months now, even as Western media and U.S. officials have pinned blame for the lack of a deal on Hamas. In a post on social media, Ben-Gvir said: “In the last year, using our political power, we managed to prevent this deal from going ahead, time after time.”…
Israel and Hamas are nearing a deal for a hostage swap and temporary pause in fighting, various sources say — but Israeli leaders are reportedly insisting that any deal allow the military to continue their assault and occupation in Gaza. Sources from both sides as well as U.S. officials said on Monday that negotiations have reached a breakthrough point and a deal may be reached within the…
