Israel still far from toppling Hamas in Gaza

While Israel’s political echelon wants to portray Hamas is on the brink of collapse, experts say complex urban warfare will lengthen the war and make victory much less clear.

The clock is ticking on Israel’s military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as it is unclear how much progress the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has made in eliminating the terrorist organization.

According to Israeli officials, approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attack and 251 people were abducted by Hamas on October 07. To date, 114 of the hostages, some of them foreign nationals, have been released. The rest remain in Gaza, and the Israeli government has promised to secure their release.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, more than 18,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israel’s retaliation on Gaza, with another 50,000 injured.

After over two months, there is increasing international pressure to end the war. Over the weekend, the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire. While the Biden Administration has maintained that Israel will be the one to determine the end of the war, there have also been American insinuations that Israel’s credit is limited.

“We have seen extensive damage,” said Dr. Michael Milstein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. “But Israel is still far from toppling Hamas. The majority of its fighters are still alive; it still possesses rockets.”

“Hamas doesn’t need this to keep up its fight,” he added. “For Hamas, resistance is much more important than governance. As long as it has weapons and fighters, it doesn’t care whether it can govern Gaza or hand out humanitarian aid.”

“There is a gap between what is being described by the political level as Hamas being on the verge of collapse, but the countdown to the end of Hamas is premature,” said Milstein.

UN agency for Palestine refugees on verge of financial collapse

The United Nations has appealed for sustainable funding for its agency that supports Palestine refugees, UNRWA, which is on the brink of financial collapse.

Chronic underfunding over the past decade, and resultant severe austerity measures, mean UNRWA is already operating with a US$75 million shortfall, putting its lifesaving programs across the Middle East at risk.

“As I address you today, I do not have the funds to keep our schools, health centers and other services running as of September,” Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told a pledging conference at UN Headquarters in New York.

UNRWA was established in 1949 as a temporary agency to provide aid to Palestinians following mass displacement from land that became Israel, making it one of the first UN humanitarian operations.

Today, nearly six million people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, depend on its services, which are almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Nearly a third of registered Palestine refugees live in camps.

UNRWA is seeking US$1.6 billion for its operations this year. Lazzararini said an additional US$75 million is urgently needed to provide food for over a million people in Gaza. Another US$30 million is required to maintain cash and food assistance to 600,000 people in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the international community to ensure the agency is fully funded.

Despite its essential role, “we allow UNRWA to remain trapped in financial limbo,” he said in remarks delivered by his Chef de Cabinet, Courtenay Rattray.

The UN chief was also deeply concerned that some of the largest and most reliable donors have indicated that they might be reducing their support.

“Let’s be clear: UNRWA is on the verge of financial collapse. The consequences of further budget cuts would be catastrophic,” he warned.

More than a half a million young Palestinians are enrolled in UNRWA schools, two of whom made impassioned pleas at the pledging conference.

Ahmad Abu Daqqa attends a boys’ school in the Gaza Strip, where a blockade has been in place for more than 15 years.

“We, the students of the Gaza Strip, seek hope amidst despair,” he said, conveying a message from his peers.

“We only find it in education and learning, despite the numerous difficulties and obstacles we face, like living in a conflict and war zone.”

UNRWA students are proud of their education, heritage and culture, added Leen Sharqawi, 15, who attends a girls’ school in Jordan. They also have big dreams.

“We are not just Palestine refugees,” she said. “We are children who dream of becoming global citizens and who want to help the world become a better place. Good education is what will allow us to do this.” 

Quds Day being observed under radically changed conditions

Today, Quds Day is being observed around the globe with mass anti-Israel protests. The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini, initiated the day of solidarity with Palestine on the last Friday of Ramadan. 

Israel is witnessing growing resistance against its colonialism, most significantly over the past year, from the occupied West Bank. 

Gone are the days when Israeli troops enjoyed the freedom to raid West Bank towns and villages to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians residing there. 

Today, newly formed armed resistance factions by the West Bank youth have changed the equation and are taking the battle to Israel's occupation troops.

They are conducting armed retaliatory operations against the regime's occupation including at its many military checkpoints scattered across the West Bank. Those retaliatory operations have struck the heart of the occupied territories, Tel Aviv.

They are also refusing to surrender to the regime's almost daily pre-dawn invasion of Palestinian towns and villages. Instead, these youths are confronting Special Forces in armed clashes, battles that usually last several hours. 

Their refusal to surrender explains the high Palestinian death toll. Israeli forces have murdered around 100 Palestinians so far this year.

It's no wonder Israel plans to set up a "National Guard" (described as a settler militia) to handle the West Bank resistance. 

That's how Israeli media described a photo published on April 9, 2023 of a meeting between the Secretary General of Lebanon's Hezbollah Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau. 

The two leaders met in Beirut to discuss the readiness of the axis of resistance and to further expand their cooperation in light of Israel's terrorism these days at al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem).

The meeting between Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Hamas movement in the besieged Gaza Strip to expand and improve cooperation will be seen as a major concern among the security apparatus of the Zionist entity.

The salvo of missiles fired from Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in response to Israel’s desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque (Islam’s third holiest site) indicated one key element.

The regime responded by striking farmland in Lebanon and airstrikes in the Gaza Strip for one night. In both attacks it was careful not to kill anybody as it cannot afford a wider conflict with the Palestinian resistance.

It also cannot embark on a war with Hezbollah as it knows very well the powerful resistance movement has weapons that can strike deep inside all occupied territories, including precision missiles that can hit very sensitive sites, including Israel’s Dimona nuclear weapons plant.

The same can be said about the Gaza Strip. Israel cannot afford a conflict with the Palestinian resistance in the blockaded coastal enclave as the resistance has missiles in its hands that can hit vital Israeli infrastructure and humiliate the regime.

With the power of the resistance in Lebanon and Gaza significantly growing, Israel can’t even wage a war to divert attention from the crisis the entity is witnessing from within.

There have been mass protests by Israelis against their new coalition’s plans to overhaul the regime’s so-called judicial system.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets and clashed with forces in protest against the proposed measures by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-orthodox and fascist cabinet.

Such is the extent of the fighting within Israel and warnings by the regime’s President and other officials of a civil war, Netanyahu’s cabinet was forced to postpone the plans for a month.

But as the English say, he is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If Netanyahu drops his overhaul plans, he could end up in prison for corruption charges as well as members of his fragile coalition withdrawing, which would mean an end to his majority in the Israeli Knesset.

That would result in fifth election in less than five years. There has never been so much internal division within Israel’s 75 years of occupation of Palestine. Nevertheless, Netanyahu needs to keep his cabinet at any cost. This explains the vicious storming into al-Aqsa Mosque and committing terror on innocent worshipers in a desperate bid to appease the settlers.

If there is anything that brings a smile on the settler’s faces, it is footage of the occupation troops mercilessly attacking women and men inside al-Aqsa Mosque. But again, this comes with its ramifications that Israel will face in the near future.

So much is the division over Netanyahu’s overhaul plans of the judiciary that even segments in nearly all of the regime’s military armed forces and units withdrew from crucial training, which Israeli military officials, in turn, said poses a direct threat to the existence of the occupation.

In another major setback for Israel, its staunchest supporter, the United States has lost its clout in West Asia as witnessed by the recent detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia as well as the steady restoration of ties between Syria and the Arab world. 

In a sign of how developments are quickly changing in West Asia, a Saudi delegation travelled to the Yemeni capital Sana’a for talks with the head of the popular Ansarullah revolution, not the other way round.

This was not the case two decades ago, when Washington had major influence on the region. That influence is now shifting to the countries in West Asia itself. 

Alongside that, such is the fascist language being publicly broadcast by the minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, that it has forced the US to end its decades long protocol of inviting a new Israel’s Prime Minister to the White House within two or three months.

Netanyahu, who assumed power again in January is still waiting for an invitation to hold talks with President Joe Biden. And he may have to wait longer.

On March 28, when Biden stressed he is not going to invite the Israeli prime minister to Washington “in the near term”, Netanyahu publicly hit back at the US President, underscoring the tense relationship between the current White House and the Israeli occupation.

However, it all goes back to the indigenous people of the land.

On Sunday Syrian President Bashar al-Assad pointed out that the Palestinian nation’s perseverance has pushed the occupying regime to the brink of collapse.

Israel has never been in a fragile state (pardon the pun) as it is now, facing so many crises from within and from the developments in the region as well as the international community as it continues to pursue its extremely racist agenda. 

 

Fatah-Hamas rift deepens

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s visit on Sunday to Ramallah termed a sign of improved relations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

However, this visit has dampened hope of resolving the dispute between the PA and its archrival, Hamas. In fact, the meeting between Gantz and PA President Mahmoud Abbas has exacerbated tensions between the two Palestinian factions.

Hamas was one of the first Palestinian groups to strongly condemn the visit by the “Zionist minister of war” to Ramallah. A number of Hamas officials accused Abbas of “stabbing the Palestinians in the back” and “betraying the blood of the Palestinian martyrs.”

A Palestinian official dismissed the charges as “idiotic” and accused Hamas of working to serve the agenda of “foreign powers” in the region, an apparent reference to Iran and Qatar. The serious accusations mean the split between the PA-ruled West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip is likely to continue, at least as long as Abbas is in power.

The rivalry between Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas reached its peak in 2007 when the Islamist movement violently seized control of the Gaza Strip after removing the PA from power.

Abbas has never forgiven Hamas for the humiliation. Worse, he is convinced that Hamas was behind a plot to assassinate him in the Gaza Strip.

Over the past 14 years, several attempts by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to achieve reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas have failed.

Last year, Fatah and Hamas seemed close to burying the hatchet when they announced they had reached an agreement, under the auspices of Egypt, to hold long-overdue elections for the PA presidency and parliament, as well as the PLO’s legislative body, the Palestinian National Council.

But Abbas’s decision in April to call off the elections again put Fatah and Hamas on a collision course. Since Abbas’s announcement, tensions between the two groups have been intensifying.

After the 11-day Israel-Hamas war in May, strains between the two sides further escalated, especially in light of the mass pro-Hamas demonstrations that swept many parts of the West Bank.

Several Palestinians who participated in the demonstrations were arrested or beaten by Palestinian security officers in the West Bank. Additionally, Fatah and Hamas have been unable to reach agreement on who would be responsible for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the war.

The honeymoon between Fatah and Hamas was credited to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US president Donald Trump. Last year, Fatah and Hamas even reached agreement to work together to topple Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, also known as the “Deal of the Century,” and Netanyahu’s “schemes” against the Palestinians.

Netanyahu and Trump managed, where some Arab leaders had failed, to unite the Palestinian rival parties.

Things have since changed, however, and neither Netanyahu nor Trump is in power. The absence of the two men from the political scene and the change of government in Jerusalem and Washington paved the way for the restoration of relations between the PA and Israel and the US.

Abbas has reached the conclusion that he has more to gain from dealing with the new governments in Israel and the US than from making peace with Hamas. The Biden administration has resumed financial aid to the Palestinians and is talking about the need to strengthen the PA, and this is precisely what Abbas wants to hear.

Similarly, the new Israeli government has already changed its attitude toward Abbas and the PA. At the behest of the Biden administration, the government has announced a series of gestures to strengthen the Palestinian economy and improve the living conditions of the Palestinians.

The Israeli measures could help Abbas and the PA leadership in the short term. But in the long term, the gestures are not going to change the hearts and minds of most Palestinians toward Israel. Nor will these gestures assist Abbas in regaining credibility among his own constituents.

Gantz traveled to Ramallah with one mission, to strengthen the PA and its leaders. The visit could also be seen as a bear hug for the 85-year-old Abbas. It is no wonder that the PA leadership refused to publish any photos of the meeting. Abbas is well aware that a photo op with the “Zionist minister of war” would cause great damage by making him appear as a “subcontractor” for the Israeli security establishment.

Abbas has long been facing sharp criticism because of his support for security coordination between the PA and Israeli security forces in the West Bank. About six years ago, Abbas drew strong condemnation from many Palestinians when he was quoted as telling a group of Israelis he considered security coordination to be “sacred.”

Abbas’s political enemies, including Hamas, are now exploiting the Gantz-Abbas meeting to incite against the PA leadership. Their main argument is that Abbas has chosen to align himself with the Israelis and Americans instead of working to reunite the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and end his conflict with Hamas.

Last week, a document leaked to Palestinian media revealed that Abbas had made it clear he will not allow Hamas to join any Palestinian unity government unless the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip accepts all international resolutions pertaining to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

This means Hamas must recognize Israel’s right to exist and accept the two-state solution as a precondition for joining any Palestinian government – a demand that has been vehemently and repeatedly rejected by Hamas officials. The leaked document set off a war of words between Fatah and Hamas, with each accusing the other of foiling efforts to achieve national unity.

For now, Abbas and the PA leadership appear satisfied with the policies and measures of the Biden administration and the Israeli government. A senior PA official on Tuesday praised the recent agreements with Israel, especially family reunifications and financial matters, as a significant achievement.

Earlier, Palestinian officials said they were satisfied with the new approach of the Biden administration, namely to strengthen the PA.

The three men running the PA – Abbas, Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh and General Intelligence chief Majed Faraj – are all known for their hostility toward Hamas. They have decided the Palestinians are better off dealing with the Biden administration and the government of Naftali Bennett than joining forces with Hamas.

Commemorating Nakba Day

Every year on May 15, millions of Palestinians around the world commemorate Nakba Day, or the catastrophe that befell them in 1948. This catastrophe resulted in the dispossession of an estimated 750,000 refugees from historic Palestine, and the uprooting of two-thirds of the Palestinian Arab population and their society in the process of the creation of the State of Israel. 

73 years later, the Nakba remains central to Palestinian national identity and political aspirations, as evidenced by the 2018-19 Gaza March of Return and even the recent protests in Jerusalem. However, despite being a core Palestinian grievance, the Nakba continues to be whitewashed or denied outright by pundits, lobbyists, and even policymakers. 

Commemoration of the day has been taught by Arab citizens of Israel who were internally displaced as a result of the 1948 war has been practiced for decades, but until the early 1990s was relatively weak. Initially, the memory of the catastrophe of 1948 was personal and communal in character and families or members of a given village would use the day to gather at the site of their former villages. Small scale commemorations of the tenth anniversary in the form of silent vigils were held by Arab students at a few schools in Israel in 1958, despite attempts by the Israeli authorities to thwart them. Visits to the sites of former villages became increasingly visible after the events of Land Day in 1976.

As early as 1949, one year after the establishment of the State of Israel, 15 May was marked in several West Bank cities (under Jordanian rule) by demonstrations, strikes, the raising of black flags, and visits to the graves of people killed during the 1948 war. These events were organized by worker and student associations, cultural and sports clubs, scouts clubs, committees of refugees, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The speakers in these gatherings blamed the Arab governments and the Arab League for failing to "save Palestine". By the late 1950s, 15 May would be known in the Arab world as Palestine Day, mentioned by the media in Arab and Muslim countries as a day of international solidarity with Palestine.

In the wake up of the failure of the 1991 Madrid Conference to broach the subject of refugees, the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced in Israel was founded to organize a March of Return to the site of a different village every year on 15 May so as to place the issue on the Israeli public agenda.

By the early 1990s, annual commemorations of the day by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel held a prominent place in the community's public discourse.

It is believed that Israeli Arabs taught the residents of the territories to commemorate Nakba Day. Palestinians in the occupied territories were called upon to commemorate 15 May as a day of national mourning by the Palestine Liberation Organization's United National Command of the Uprising during the First Intifada in 1988. The day was inaugurated by Yasser Arafat in 1998.

The event is often marked by speeches and rallies by Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, in Palestinian refugee camps in Arab states, and in other places around the world. Protests at times develop into clashes between Palestinians and the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 2003 and 2004, there were demonstrations in London and New York City. In 2002, Zochrot was established to organize events raising the awareness of the Nakba in Hebrew so as to bring Palestinians and Israelis closer to a true reconciliation. The name is the Hebrew feminine plural form of "remember".

On Nakba Day 2011, Palestinians and other Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria marched towards their respective borders, or ceasefire lines and checkpoints in Israeli-occupied territories, to mark the event. At least twelve Palestinians and supporters were killed and hundreds wounded as a result of shootings by the Israeli Army. The Israeli army opened fire after thousands of Syrian protesters tried to forcibly enter the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights resulting in what AFP described as one of the worst incidents of violence there since the 1974 truce accord.

The IDF said troops "fired selectively" towards "hundreds of Syrian rioters" injuring an unspecified number in response to them crossing onto the Israeli side.

According to the BBC, the 2011 Nakba Day demonstrations were given impetus by the Arab Spring. During the 2012 commemoration, thousands of Palestinian demonstrators protested in cities and towns across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Protesters threw stones at Israeli soldiers guarding checkpoints in East Jerusalem who then fired rubber bullets and tear gas in response.

ICC prosecutor announces formal investigation into Israeli war crimes

International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda announced on Wednesday that she is opening a full war crimes probe against Israel and the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip. "The decision to open an investigation followed a painstaking preliminary examination undertaken by my office that lasted close to five years," Prosecutor Bensouda said in a statement.

"In the end, our central concern must be for the victims of crimes, both Palestinian and Israeli, arising from the long cycle of violence and insecurity that has caused deep suffering and despair on all sides," she added. "My office will take the same principled, non-partisan, approach that it has adopted in all situations over which its jurisdiction is seized."

"This is a long-awaited step that serves Palestine’s tireless pursuit of justice and accountability, which are indispensable pillars of the peace the Palestinian people seek and deserve," the PA foreign ministry said in a statement. 

Israeli Foreign Minister says ICC war crimes probe in Palestinian territories is 'an act of moral and legal bankruptcy.'

Bensouda's announcement comes less than a month after a February decision by the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber recognizing a State of Palestine and authorizing her to move forward.

The probe is expected to cover the 2014 Gaza War, the 2018 Gaza border crisis and the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank as well as Hamas' rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

War crimes suits could be leveled at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defense ministers and any other high-level officials involved in such activity since 13th June 2014. Soldiers and commanders could also be targeted.

"The investigation will cover crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed in the Situation since 13 June 2014, the date to which reference is made in the Referral of the Situation to my Office," chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement released on Wednesday.

Bensouda said that the investigation "will be conducted independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favour." She said that the decision to open an investigation followed a painstaking preliminary examination undertaken by her office that lasted close to five years.

"Having assessed submissions from states, international organizations and other stakeholders, the Chamber was otherwise unanimous in its view that Palestine is a State Party to the Rome Statute. The majority also ruled that Palestine's referral of the Situation obliged the Office to open an investigation, the Office having determined that there existed a reasonable basis to do so in accordance with the Rome Statute criteria," she wrote in a statement.

Bensouda called on Palestinian and Israeli victims and affected communities to be patient.

"The ICC is not a panacea, but only seeks to discharge the responsibility that the international community has entrusted to it, which is to promote accountability for Rome Statute crimes, regardless of the perpetrator, in an effort to deter such crimes," she wrote. "In meeting this responsibility, the Office focuses its attention on the most notorious alleged offenders or those alleged to be the most responsible for the commission of the crimes."

Her primary concern, she wrote, "must be for the victims of crimes, both Palestinian and Israeli, arising from the long cycle of violence and insecurity that has caused deep suffering and despair on all sides."

Bensouda's decision comes only a few weeks after her successor, Karim Khan, was announced to take her place starting in June.

The news will be another blow to Israel, where officials had hoped Bensouda would leave the decision of how to proceed to her successor and that he might be more sympathetic to Israel's many claims against the ICC's jurisdiction.

On Tuesday, Defense Minister and Acting Justice Minister Benny Gantz alarmed government officials when he warned that hundreds of Israelis could be subject – in the near future – to war crimes probes by the International Criminal Court.

Gantz called that “an estimate,” declining to say that Israel had drawn up a list of officials likely to be investigated. Israel will provide legal assistance to any targeted Israelis and will give them advice regarding travel abroad if necessary, Gantz said.

Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director for the left-wing NGO Human Rights Watch, stated: "The ICC prosecutor’s decision to open a Palestine investigation moves Israeli and Palestinian victims of serious crimes one step closer to obtaining a measure of justice that has for too long eluded them. 

"The court’s crowded docket shouldn’t deter the prosecutor’s office from doggedly pursuing cases against anyone credibly implicated in such crimes. 

"All eyes will also be on the next prosecutor Karim Khan to pick up the baton and expeditiously move forward while demonstrating firm independence in seeking to hold even the most powerful to account. ICC member countries should stand ready to fiercely protect the court’s work from any political pressure," he added.