If there are men who contain a soul without frontiers, a brow scattered with universal hair, covered with horizons, ships, and mountain chains, with sand and with snow, then you are one of those.
Fatherlands called to you with all their banners, so that your breath filled with beautiful movements. You wanted to quench the thirst of panthers and fluttered full against their abuses.
With a taste of all suns and seas, Spain beckons you because in her you realize your majesty like a tree that embraces a continent.
Around your bones, the olive groves will grow, unfolding their iron roots in the ground, embracing men universally, faithfully. – Note: This poem honours an international soldier who fought in the Spanish Civil War. It depicts him as a symbol of universal brotherhood and sacrifice, embodying the spirit of those who fight for justice and freedom. The poet emphasizes the soldier’s selflessness and the universal nature of his struggle, transcending national boundaries.
There is a complicated and long historical background to this resolution. It was passed after the headquarters of the British mandatory administration in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem were blown up by the Zionist terrorists in 1946. The British made a quick retreat from Palestine in 1948, leaving the Zionists as the new masters.
However, the formality of the Resolution 181 was to give the stamp of approval to the imperial patronage of the Zionist objectives that had started with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and resulted in the establishment of Israel in 1948, soon followed by the expulsion of the people of Palestine from their land by Israel. What Israel is doing in its war on Gaza is the continuation of its project that started in 1948 or even before.
The United States has, particularly since 1967, been the bulwark for Israelโs expansionist dreams. US-Israeli supremacist intentions, papered over and buried for decades, are now clear for all to see.
In these difficult times, the voice of the late Palestinian-American scholar, Edward Said is ever present, โWriting is the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.โ
For more than fourteen painful months Israel has passed off its inhuman actions against the people of Gaza as โdefensive.โ
We are to believe that the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and attacks on its Arab neighbors are somehow Israelโs โright.โ Championed by the Biden administration, Tel Aviv has grown ever more bolder and barbaric in its efforts to crush the resistance and expand its โundeclaredโ borders; simply, because it can.
Since it proclaimed itself a state on Palestinian land in 1948, Israel has been and continues to be engaged in the largest dispossession of an ethnic group in modern history. And following its victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel has emerged an expansionist, occupying and annexationist power, ruling over vast Arab lands and people.
The United States has, particularly since 1967, been the bulwark for Israelโs expansionist dreams. US-Israeli supremacist intentions, papered over and buried for decades, are now clear for all to see.
Out of the ashes of World War II, the newly created United Nations, with US pressure, helped legalize land theft. In 1948, the General Assembly (made up of 58 nations) said โyesโ to the creation of a Jewish state on 62 percent of historic Palestine. At the time of the unequal division, 68 percent of the population were Arab Palestinian Muslims and Christians, while only 30 percent were Jewish.
Zionist plans to seize all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, have never ceased, and are clearly stated in the Likud Party platform of 1977: โThe right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputableโฆ therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.โ
The inhumanity, injustices and militarism that we see today in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen have deep roots in the founding of the Jewish state and its ongoing desire to create a hegemonic Eretz Israel (Greater Israel) throughout the Middle East.
The expansionist policies of the current Israeli regime are not an aberration. They are rather a continuation and the inevitable outcome of the Zionist political ideology espoused by Israelโs founding fathers, advanced by the Labour and Likud parties, and currently being prosecuted by the fanatics in the far-right Religious Zionism party.
Like the early Zionists, every Israeli leader believed in the Jewish right to all of Palestine and the right to expel the indigenous population to achieve an exclusive Jewish state. Their plans, goals and strategies have been blatantly stated and well-documented over many years.
European founders, men like the father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904); Zeโev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of todayโs Likud Party); Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), the first president of Israel; and David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), Israelโs first prime minister, agreed that increased Jewish immigration and removal of Palestinians were required to secure control over Palestine and to create a Greater Israel.
Following are a handful of the many citations that should be weighed to understand European Zionism and its ethnic cleansing schemes for Palestine and its people:
โWhen we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own countryโฆ Both the process of expropriation and removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.โย (Herzl, 1895) (to Herzl, Palestinians were โitโ)
โThere is no choice: The Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabsโฆ We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the Eastโฆ The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz Israelโฆ (Muslims are) yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags.โ (Jabotinsky, 1939)
โBy a Jewish National Home I mean the creation of such conditions that as the country is developed we can pour in a considerable number of immigrants, and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English or America American.โ (Weizmann, 1919)
โWith compulsory transfer we (would) have a vast area (for settlement)โฆ I support compulsory transfer. I donโt see anything immoral in it.โ (Ben-Gurion, 1937) and โMy assumptionโฆis that a Jewish state on only a part (referring to partition plan) of the land is not the end but the beginningโฆ every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole.โ (Ben-Gurion, 1938)
From Israelโs founder, Herzl, to its first prime minister, Ben-Gurion, its goal has been โa land for Israelis, without Palestinians.โ
Furthermore, by looking back on Israelโs expansionist strategies, we can better comprehend what Tel Aviv and Washington are currently plotting for Palestine and the larger region. Their schemes for becoming the hegemons of the Levant are revealed in the: 1948 Plan Dalet (Plan D); Oded Yinon Plan, โA Strategy for Israel in the 1980s;โ and 1996 โA Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.โ
The Dalet PlanโBlueprint for the Ethnic Cleansing
Long before the British terminated their mandate and pulled their army out of Palestine, a cabal of Zionist political and military leaders, led by Ben-Gurion, had been preparing military plans for the dispossession of the Palestinians once the British left.
Plan Dalet (Plan D) was officially put into effect on March 10, 1948. Military orders were given to the new Israeli army and Haganah militia to systematically and forcibly remove Palestinians from vast areas of the country.
The operational orders specified which population centers should be targeted and laid out in detail how to drive out the inhabitants and destroy their communities, using methods including intimidation, setting fires to homes, properties and goods, demolishing homes and planting mines to prevent inhabitants from returning. On April 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, over 150 Palestinian men, women and children were massacred by Zionist terrorist militias (members of Irgun and Stern Gang).
After six months, when the Nakba (the catastrophe) ended, over 750,000 Palestinians had been uprooted, 531 villages destroyed and eleven urban neighborhoods had been depopulated, soon repopulated with Jewish Israelis.
The destruction of Palestinian communities began during and after the 1948 Arab- Israeli War marked the beginning of Israelโs apartheid system on 78 percent of historic Palestine.
The Yinon PlanโโA Strategy for Israel in the 1980sโ
In February 1982, an essay appeared in Kivinum (Directions), a journal of the World Zionist Organization. It was written by Oded Yinon, a journalist for the Jerusalem Post with close ties to Israelโs foreign ministry.
The Yinon Plan for the Middle East contained the key elements of the โGreater Israelโ scheme reflected in the expansionist policiesโunderwritten by the United Statesโthat Tel Aviv has implemented over more than eight decades.
Although the โde-Palestinization of Palestineโ has been a priority, every Arab state has been a target of Zionist expansionism. The Yinon Plan emphasizes two key elements: To survive, Israel must become an imperial regional power; and to achieve that hegemony, it must weaken and divide neighboring Arab states. Israelโs aim has been to create small, sectarian-based Arab states with little choice but to yield to Israeli domination.
The Yinon Plan has been taking shape since the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Israelโs interest in weak states in the Middle East
has been borne out in its air and cyber-wars and numerous assassinations of prominent opposition figures.
Since 1967, Israel has swallowed up more Arab land. It has illegally annexed Arab lands in Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights; with plans, as recently announced, to colonize the devastated Gaza Strip and to annex the West Bank.
โA New Strategy for Securing the Realmโ
A US-Israeli neoconservative research group at the Institute for Advanced Strategies and Palestine Studies in Washington, D.C. prepared a policy document in 1996 for newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The report titled, โA Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,โ laid out a plan of action on how Washington and Tel Aviv could integrate their policies to defeat Israelโs โfoesโ by reshaping the Middle East.
Notably, the authors of the manifesto worked in the George W. Bush White House, inside the Pentagon and Defense Department. Its lead author, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs (1981-87), Richard Perle, was one of the key figures in the formulation of the disastrous 2003 Iraq war strategy adopted by the Bush administration.
To win American support, Netanyahu was advised to package the proposed policies in a language familiar to Americans; hence, standard-issue canards such as โIsrael has the right to defend itselfโ and branding supporters of Palestinian rights as โterrorists.โ
The strategies described in the โYinonโ and โClean Breakโ plans were constructs for endless US-Israeli wars and chaos in the region. It should be noted, that the United States has engaged in or sponsored wars or conflictsโbeneficial to Israeli strategyโin Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (from 2011 to the present), in Lebanon, Yemen, occupied West Bank and Gaza; and with Iran if Israel continues to have its way.
To โsecure the realm,โ Israel was urged to pursue aggressive policies of preemption and regime change against governments in the region that resisted Israelโs expansionist aims. Netanyahu was advised to collaborate with Jordan and Tรผrkiye to destabilize Iraq and to contain Syria through proxy warfare.
Consistent with โclean break logic,โ the Bush administration, under the pretext that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction, invaded Iraq in 2003, toppled Saddam and dismantled the ruling Baโath Party.
Iraq has yet to recover from Americaโs eight-year-long occupation and war.
Despite the Iraqi governmentโs request that the US leave, Washington has refused to withdraw its remaining 2,500 troops.
The US-Israel war on Syria, which led to the fall of President Assad in December 2024 began with the 1996 โClean Breakโ strategy for the region. It escalated in 2011 when President Barack Obama covertly instructed the CIA to overthrow President Assad in Operation Timber Sycamore. Thirteen years of deadly war, frequent Israeli air strikes, and crippling US-led economic sanctions, left Syria impoverished, fragmented and unable to resist foreign invasion.
Israel got what it wanted in Syria, a Balkanized and weakened country. The United States, Tรผrkiye and their forces dominate in the North, while Israel controls areas in the South. Tel Aviv now claims control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, and has declared its intent to expand its illegal colonies in the Golan Heights, declaring them part of the Israeli state โfor eternity.โ
Netanyahu has eagerly embraced โClean Breakโ proposals on ways to โsecure the realmโ in Palestine. He has perversely sabotaged the Oslo Accords (1993/1995), completely written-off the so-called two-state solution (land for peace) and sown division within the Palestinian national movement.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) tasked with limited government over parts of the occupied Palestinian territories by the now-extinct Oslo Accords, has been reduced to an enforcement arm of the Israeli security state.
The recent (December 21) large-scale armed crackdown against Palestinian resistance groups in the Jenin refugee camp carried out by PA Security Forces exemplifies the extent of the collaboration.
It should be noted, that the assault was coordinated with Washington and Tel Aviv, and put under the direction of US Army Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel, who has served as US Security Coordinator of the Israel-Palestinian Authority since November 2021.
Clean Break strategists callously advised Israel, โto pursue Palestinians into all areas.โ In its sinister belief that it can physically destroy the Palestinian national desire to return home to a free Palestine, Israel has ravaged and pulverized the defenseless Gaza Strip. And for more than 17 years, Netanyahu has made it his mission to kill as many Palestinians as the United States and its Western allies will tolerate.
Conclusion
From Herzlโs โspirit them outโ to Netanyahuโs campaign of genocide, the message and actions have been the sameโ-remove all traces of Palestinians. And from President Harry S. Truman to President Joe Biden, the message has been: the United States will prevent Israel from failing, whatever the political or economic cost.
When President Biden asserts that he is a โcommitted Zionist,โ he emphatically says to Israelis and Americans that the United States is in lockstep with Israelโs plans to erase Palestinians and their hopes for a sovereign Palestinian nation. Americans, too, many unwittingly, have become committed Zionists by financing Israeli supremacy and regional militarism.
In addition, by suppressing the truth about Israelโs expansionist plans, American politicians and the corporate media have fed the countryโs addiction to regional supremacy and its dreams of a Greater Israel, without Palestinians.
Ben-Gurionโs words in a letter to his son in 1937 were menacing and foreboding:
โThe Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.โ
Israelโs current Zionist extremists have seized upon the Palestinian act of resistance on October 7, 2023, to make Ben-Gurionโs hoped for โopportune momentโ a reality, believing that they, like their predecessors, can continue to disfigure history.
โ Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
On 19 December 2024, Human Rights Watch issued a 179-page report detailing Israelโs genocide in Gaza.
On 5 December 2024, Amnesty International issued a 296-page report detailing Israelโs genocide in Gaza.
On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Given the Westโs presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.
Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israelโs unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.
Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israelโs actions.
One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israelโs genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night.
The Israeli military has almost completely destroyed the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, once one of the most densely populated places on earth, turning it into a โghost town,โ Haaretz reported on Sunday.
First established in 1948 as a refuge for Palestinians driven from their homes by Zionist militias during the establishment of the modern state of Israel, the Jabalia refugee camp has been under a total siege since early October as part of a new ethnic cleansing campaign to move all Palestinians in northern Gaza to the south.
The IDF estimates that it has completely destroyed 70% of the buildings in the camp, and the ones that remain are damaged. โDuring a brief visit to the camp Friday afternoon, I could see that even the few buildings that are still standing were badly damaged,โ wrote Haaretz reporter Amos Harel.
According to IDF data, the Israeli military has forcibly driven 96,000 Palestinian civilians out of the Jabalia refugee camp. The IDF also says it killed 2,000 Palestinians during the operation, claiming most were armed, but there is a significant amount of evidence that the IDF kills unarmed civilians and counts them as โterrorists.โ The IDF says 35 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in the camp since early October.
The Haaretz report says only 100 โterroristsโ and a similar number of civilians remain in the camp. โJabalia has become a ghost town. Outside, you mainly see pack after pack of stray dogs roaming around and hunting for scraps of food,โ the report reads.
The ethnic cleansing campaign, which is based on an outline known as the โgeneralโs plan,โ has been focused on Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia. In each city, the IDF is demolishing every building in sight to ensure Palestinian civilians have nowhere to return, and the campaign will likely lead to the establishment of Jewish settlements and permanent Israeli occupation.
Protesters with hands painted red to symbolize blood stand outside the Turkish Embassy in Croatia on Nov. 11, 2024, holding signs in English and Croatian that read, “Erdoฤan stop fueling genocide in Gaza.” The demonstration is part of a global campaign urging Turkey to cease its alleged role in oil shipments benefiting Israel.
A new report by the Stop Fueling Genocide campaign, supported by Progressive International, has revealed that 10 crude oil shipments were made from Turkey to Israel over the past year, eight of which violated Ankaraโs embargo announced in May, according to the Gazete Duvar news website.
The report is the second from the group, which uses satellite imagery and shipping data to track the movement of tankers from Turkeyโs Ceyhan port to Israel, providing evidence that Ankaraโs crude oil shipments to Israel continued despite the trade ban.
In the first report researchers confirmed that a tanker, the Seavigour, loaded Azeri crude oil in Ceyhan on October 28, turned off its tracking signal in the eastern Mediterranean on October 30 and reappeared near Sicily a week later, having reportedly offloaded its cargo. Satellite imagery later showed the Seavigour docking at the EAPC terminal near Ashkelon, Israel, on November 5.
Ceyhan serves as the endpoint of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which transports crude oil from Azerbaijan. This oil accounts for nearly 30 percent of Israelโs crude imports. Reports indicate that Azerbaijanโs oil exports to Israel have quadrupled this year, rising from 523,554 tons in January to 2,372,248 tons in September.
Researchers identified 10 journeys made since December 2023 by another crude oil tanker, the Kimolos, between Ceyhan and the EAPC Terminal in the second report, with eight occurring after Turkeyโs trade blockade on Israel was announced.
The report said the Kimolos, similar to other vessels trading with Israel, was turning off its tracking signal in the middle of the eastern Mediterranean for several days to mask the trade between Turkey and Israel.
The two ships identified in the reports are Suezmax-size vessels, which are chartered specifically for the transfer of high volumes of crude oil.
The report said researchers โhave reasonably concludedโ from this evidence that the Kimolos has routinely shipped Azeri crude oil from Turkey to Israel throughout the past year.
The findings contradict statements by Turkeyโs energy minister, who had denied any oil shipments to Israel since the embargo began.
The ongoing trade with Israel has drawn criticism from activists, who argue that crude oil from the BTC pipeline is refined and used to fuel Israeli military equipment. Advocacy groups have called on Turkey to enforce the embargo and align its policies with its stated support for Palestine.
Experts warn that if the International Court of Justice determines Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, those involved in supplying fuel could be found complicit in failing to prevent genocide.
Earlier this month nine activists, who had interrupted President Recep Tayyip Erdoฤanโs November 29 speech at the TRT World Forum in ฤฐstanbul, accusing the president of hypocrisy for allegedly facilitating crude oil shipments to Israel despite Turkeyโs public stance against Israeli military actions in Gaza, were detained and subsequently arrested by a court on December 2. They were released on December 6 after their lawyers filed an appeal contesting the arrests.
The arrests have sparked outrage among human rights groups and activists. Critics argue that Erdoฤanโs government is suppressing dissent while enabling trade that contradicts its pro-Palestinian rhetoric.
Aid group accuses Tel Aviv of deliberate ethnic cleansing in latest damning report
Israeli soldiers move on armored personnel carriers (APC) near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, December 18, 2024
THE medical aid group Doctors Without Borders accused Israel of โethnic cleansingโ in Gaza in a damning new report released on Thursday.
This comes as the Swedish government announced that it was ending its โcore supportโ for the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians (Unrwa).
MSF, the acronym from Doctors Without Bordersโ original French name, said Israel was systematically attacking Gazaโs healthcare system and restricting essential humanitarian assistance.
MSF say Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped and bombed. It also says MSF staff have witnessed a relentless campaign by the Israeli forces marked by massive destruction, devastation and dehumanisation.
The report accuses Israeli forces of having prevented essential items such as food, water, and medical supplies from entering the strip on numerous occasions, as well as blocking, denying, and delaying humanitarian assistance.
Fewer than half of Gazaโs 36 hospitals are even partially functional, and the healthcare system lies in ruins.
The report says that during the one-year period covered by the report โ from October 2023 to October 2024 โ MSF staff โhave endured 41 attacks and violent incidents, including air strikes, shelling, and violent incursions in health facilities; direct fire on our shelters and convoys; and arbitrary detention of colleagues by Israeli forces.โ
MSF medical personnel and patients have been forced to evacuate hospitals and health facilities on 17 separate occasions, often literally running for their lives.
The report says that even if the war ends today, the loss of families, repeated forced displacement and inhumane living conditions will scar the population for generations.
MSFโs secretary-general Christopher Lockyear said Israel was guilty of dismantling the infrastructure in Gaza that was essential for life and had strangled access to humanitarian aid in the besieged enclave.
He said: โWe are seeing forced displacements, ethnic cleansing in the north, the destruction of infrastructure, physical and mental injuries to the population in Gaza and all of this is undeniable.โ
The report said: โAttacks on civilians, the dismantling of the healthcare system, the deprivation of food, water and supplies are a form of collective punishment inflicted by the Israeli authorities on the people of Gaza.
โThis must stop now.โ
Israelโs Foreign Ministry hit back at the report, describing it as โentirely false and misleading.โ
In a statement the ministry said Israel does not target innocent health workers and tries to ensure delivery of aid, and charged the medical group with failing to acknowledge Hamasโs alleged use of hospitals as bases โfor terrorist activities and operations.โ
The MSF report reinforces similar allegations made on Thursday in a Human Rights Watch study.
HRW accused Israel of a campaign in Gaza that amounted to โacts of genocide,โ cutting off the flow of water and electricity, destroying infrastructure and preventing the distribution of critical supplies.
HRW executive director Tirana Hasan described the findings of the MSF report as being consistent with her own organisationโs report.
Amnesty International secretary-general Agnes Callamard said the research by MSF was โyet one more report detailing the carnage in Gaza.โ
But Vedant Patel, a spokesman for the US State Department, said it โdisagreed with the HRW report conclusions of genocide.โ
Of the MSF report Mr Patel said the health organisation itself acknowledged that the โintentionalityโ of any Israeli actions was beyond the scope of its assessment.
Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn warned the British government to learn lessons from the report.
He said: โThis devastating account of Palestinian suffering should be mandatory reading for government ministers. How much more evidence of genocide does the government need to end its complicity and suspend all arms sales to Israel?”
Director of the Tricontinental Centre for Social Research Vijay Prashad told the Morning Star: โPerhaps the most stunning part of the new MSF report is this simple fact: it could take up to 15 years to clear the rubble and 80 years to rebuild housing.
โThis itself shows that Israel has ethnically cleansed Gaza for at least several generations. No further proof is necessary.โ
Luciano Zaccara, an associate professor in Gulf politics at Qatar University, says Israelis are trying to push all the people in the north of Gaza out of the area, which has been under siege.
He told the Al Jazeera network that the Israeli operation and siege โhas been going on for more than two months without anybody being able to do anything.โ
Mr Zaccara said: โThere is no doubt about the kind of ethnic cleansing that they are carrying out in the north of Gaza,โ he stressed.
MSF said it continued to demand an immediate and sustained ceasefire and safe access to northern Gaza, to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and medical supplies to hospitals.
The aid organisation added that while it continues โto provide lifesaving care in central and southern Gaza, we call on Israel to end its siege on the territory and open vital land borders, including the Rafah crossing, to enable a massive scale-up of humanitarian and medical aid.โ
The Israeli onslaught against the Palestinians in Gaza continues.
On Thursday five children and 12 others were killed in an Israeli air strike on the Shaaban Rais School sheltering displaced people and earlier another five people were slaughtered in the Maghazi refugee camp in Deir al-Balah.
Officials said some people remained under rubble and on roads where ambulance and civil defence crews could not reach them.
The Gaza health ministry said the total number of deaths in Gaza is now at least 45,206 since October 7, when Hamas staged a cross-border raid that killed 1,139 Israelis.
Meanwhile the Swedish government confirmed it was ending its โcore supportโ for Unrwa.
In October, Israelโs parliament approved legislation banning Unrwa activities in the Palestinian territories, a measure that was to take effect in 90 days.
Stockholm said that 800 million kronor (around ยฃ58 million) being allocated for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the region next year will instead go through the channels of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency and the governmentโs support for other agencies such as the World Food Programme, the UN Childrenโs Fund, the UN Population Fund and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Swedenโs minister for international development co-operation and foreign trade, Benjamin Dousa, posted on X that the Israeli decision will make much of Unrwa work difficult or impossible.
But head of Unrwa Philippe Lazzarini said on X: โDefunding Unrwa now will undermine decades of Swedenโs investment in human development including by denying access to education for hundreds of thousands of girls and boys across the region.โ
He added the decision would โdoubleโ the suffering for the people of Gaza.
Desperate to stay relevant, the faithful US-Israeli ‘handpicked leader’ has intensified his crackdown on Palestinians in the West Bank and pledged to work with Trump
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York City on 26 September 2024 (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images/AFP)
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has been trying to stay relevant as events in Gaza, the West Bank and across the region have been moving at a much faster pace than the octogenarian politician is able to cope with.
This week, amid an Israeli genocide that has been unceasingly raging in Gaza for 14 months, Abbas’s security forces brazenly killed several prominent resistance fighters in Jenin in an attempt to appease the Israelis and their American benefactors.
When then-US President Donald Trump announced in January 2020 the so-called “deal of the century“, a proposal that was wholly aligned with Israel on all issues of contention, Abbas said: “I want to say to the duo – Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu – that Jerusalem is not for sale, and all of our rights are not for sale or bargaining. Your deal, the conspiracy, will not happen…we say a thousand times no, no, no to the deal of the century.”
Yet, when Trump was re-elected on 5 November, Abbas called to congratulate him and vowed to work with him on a political settlement that he himself rejected out of hand five years earlier.
This was followed by a deal the Egyptians struck two weeks ago between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian faction headed by Abbas. The agreement was to appoint an independent committee of prominent and professional Palestinians in Gaza to run its affairs and reconstruction after the war.
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It was a demand by the Zionist regime and the Biden administration in order to dislodge Hamas from any future role in ruling Gaza.
However, Abbas’s Fatah quickly retracted its approval as the Israelis rejected any role for or input from Hamas in the future of Gaza. It seems that such a deal would not play well in Netanyahu’s vow for a “total victory” over Hamas and the resistance.
So what’s Abbas’s end game, and where is he headed in his twilight years?
Hand-picked ‘leader’
In his 20th year of a four-year term, Abbas announced in late November, a few days after he turned 89, his succession plan.
He issued a decree that called for the appointment of the unambitious, uncharismatic and feeble Fatah leader, Rawhi Fattouh, as an interim president after Abbas.
Condoleezza Rice recounted how a handful of people in 2003 hand-picked Abbas to become the leader of the Palestinian people
The 75-year-old Fattouh is currently serving as the chairman of the Palestine National Council, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) parliament in exile.
In 28 years, the PNC met only once in 2018.
Interestingly enough, Fattouh is also the same person who served as an interim president after the death of former PA President Yasser Arafat in November 2004 until Abbas was elected to replace him in January 2005.
For over a year, Abbas has been under American pressure to appoint a successor who will be as compliant and amenable to Israel and the US as he has been during his long tenure.
As recalled in her 2011 memoir, No Higher Honor, Condoleezza Rice, who served as US President George W Bush’s national security advisor, recounted how a handful of people in 2003, including her, Bush, CIA Director George Tenet, and Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, hand-picked Abbas to become the leader of the Palestinian people.
For much of 2002, Sharon refused to deal with Arafat but was eventually able to convince Bush to sideline the PLO leader in favour of Abbas as the more submissive and yielding Fatah leader.
Before he was appointed as a prime minister in 2003 as a result of American and European pressures, Abbas was publicly ridiculed by Arafat, who called him the “Karzai of Palestine”, a reference to Hamid Karzai, the former Afghan president, who was widely considered in the Arab world as a US puppet.
Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, had risen to the leadership of Fatah and the PLO almost by default.
Even though he was considered among the first generation of Fatah founders as he joined the movement in the early 1960s, he was not distinguished or appointed to senior positions until decades later.
‘Strategic asset’
It was not until most of the early founders and senior leaders of Fatah and the PLO, such as Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), Sa’ad Sayel, Abu Yusuf al-Najjar, and many others, had been assassinated by Israel between the 1970s and early 1990s that Abu Mazen started to hold more significant positions within Fatah and the PLO.
When the PLO adopted its 10-point plan in 1974, paving the way towards a political settlement based on recognising Israel in exchange for a truncated Palestinian state, Abbas was known to favour abandoning any form of armed resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Why the Palestinian Authority’s biggest claim is a lie
Regarding this political ideology, Abu Iyad, who was considered to be next in line in the Palestinian movement after Arafat before his assassination in 1991 by the Zionist regime, quipped: “The thing that I fear the most is that treason would one day just become (normalised as) an opinion.”
When Israel failed to crush the First Intifada (1987-1991), it adopted a political track that would preserve its expansionist and settlement policies. This path culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Abbas was not only one of the few Palestinian interlocutors in this process but also the person who actually signed the accords on the White House lawn on behalf of the Palestinians.
Needless to say, the Oslo process was nothing short of a disaster that was doomed to fail from the start.
The Palestinian negotiators led by Arafat and Abbas surrendered their main card and strongest leverage at the outset, which was the recognition of the Zionist regime on 78 percent of the historical land of Palestine.
In exchange, Israel only pledged to engage in a vain political process that should have ended with an independent Palestinian state by 1999, or so thought the PLO leaders.
Yet, more than three decades after Oslo, the Zionist regime has not only killed the so-called two-state solution but consolidated its plans for a “Greater Israel”, including a more than six-fold increase of illegal settlers in the West Bank from about 115,000 in 1993 to over 750,000 today.
According to a 2015 International Crisis Group report, most Israeli officials consider Abbas their most important “strategic asset”.
The reason is quite clear.
It has been mainly through a political philosophy championed by Abbas that rejected decades of Palestinian resistance, prompting one expert to remark: “Abbas not once in his life did he adopt armed resistance, nor did he support it.”
He often mocked any notion of armed resistance by any group, including his own, even when Israel had killed scores of Palestinians unprovoked.
Brutal security force
His leadership style turned a relatively vibrant Palestinian national movement into a subsidiary of the Israeli occupation, often referred to as a “five-star occupation” since it had relieved the Zionist regime from appearing as the occupying power, while carrying out aggressive and domineering settler-colonial policies worse than South Africa’s apartheid regime.
During his tenure, he embraced the American dictate to change the security doctrine of the Palestinian security forces from policing and protecting Palestinian population centres into a brutal security force acting as the first line of defence of Israeli settlements and the occupation army against any form of resistance, including passive popular forms.
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Since his rise to lead the Palestinian Authority in 2005, he adopted the American plan under Lieutenant General Keith Dayton to train PA security forces, which engaged in suppression and silencing of dissent, as well as illegal arrests and torture, many times leading to death as in the case of Nizar Banat in 2021.
In coordination with the US and the Zionist regime, Abbas created a bloated security force whose primary mission was security coordination with the Israeli army to thwart any resistance or operations against the occupation.
He called this mission sacred and for decades refused to stop it even though Palestinian public opinion overwhelmingly condemns it.
Scores of Palestinian political bodies and factions have called on him to halt such disgraceful practices.
A detailed 2017 report found that the Palestinian security sector employed around half of all civil servants, accounting for nearly $1bn of the PA budget, and receives around 30 percent of total international aid given to the Palestinians, including most of the funds coming from the US.
The study further found that the Palestinian security sector spent more of the PA’s budget than the education, health, and agriculture sectors combined. It included more than 80,000 individuals, where the ratio of security personnel to the population is as high as 1 to 48 – one of the highest in the world.
In Abbas’s first encounter with Donald Trump in 2017, the US president bragged about the PA’s continued security coordination with Israel, as he praised its effectiveness in protecting the Israeli occupation, in which he said: “They get along unbelievably well. I was actually very impressed and somewhat surprised at how well they got along. They work together beautifully.”
‘Small-time dictator’
When Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, Abbas coordinated with the Americans and Israelis, as laid out in detail in Rice’s account in her book, to obstruct the Hamas-led government from being able to serve as the democratically elected party.
In fact, it was Abbas’s security forces, again in coordination with the Americans, that tried in 2007 to topple Hamas’s government in Gaza, only to be outmanoeuvred by Hamas, which took over Gaza, effectively resulting in two separate Palestinian governments.
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David Wurmser, a Bush administration official at the time, commented in a Vanity Fair article in 2008 that the Bush administration was engaged “in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory”.
He added that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand.
Wurmser further observed: “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.”
Ever since this internal strife, Gaza has been living under a crippling Israeli siege with little interference from Abbas.
With the support of the Americans, Israelis and regional actors, Abbas took total control of the Palestinian political life. He started to unilaterally issue decrees like any small-time dictator of a banana republic.
His unconstitutional and unlawful decrees would dismiss governments, install prime ministers, cancel elections, spend billions, cover corruption by his cronies, family members and sons, and appoint a constitutional court in order to dismiss the Hamas-led legislative council.
But perhaps the behaviour that shocked most Palestinians was Abbas’s deafening silence during the early days of Israel’s genocidal war.
As the Israeli war of extermination and ethnic cleansing campaign intensified, Abbas would voice his strong but empty opposition to the Israeli brutality on the one hand, while continuing to have security coordination with the same vigour as if no genocide in Gaza, daily settler attacks across the West Bank, or routine Al-Aqsa compound incursions had been taking place for over a year.
With the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza entering its 15th month with no end in sight, and while Israel prepares its long-term occupation of Gaza, as well as aggressively pushing its policy of effective annexation of Area C in the West Bank, it appears that the current fascist Israeli government is on the verge of dumping Abbas in favour of a new security arrangement that would favour local Palestinian collaborators to govern the Palestinian populations.
A 2017 study found that the Palestinian security sector employed around half of all civil servants, accounting for nearly $1bn of the PA budget
It’s clear that the current Zionist regime, with its grand design to impose the Greater Israel project, wants to resolve its demographic Palestinian problem and decisively end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its favour once and for all.
Hence, part of Israel’s grand strategy to realise this objective is not merely to be content with banning Unrwa, killing the two-state solution, or establishing Israeli hegemony in the region.
But in essence, it’s moving aggressively to redesign all the Palestinian institutions and sources of power that have defined the Palestinian struggle over decades.
Regardless of Abbas’s decree or what happens to him in the near term as he enters the twilight of his life, Israel will make sure that he is the last Palestinian leader who combines all the titles that define the Palestinian institutions – the PA president, the PLO chairman, the Fatah leader, and the president of the “State of Palestine”.
From an Israeli perspective, he has served his purpose, and it is now time for the final solution.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Sami Al-Arian is the Director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Zaim University. Originally from Palestine, he lived in the US for four decades (1975-2015) where he was a tenured academic, prominent speaker and human rights activist before relocating to Turkey. He is the author of several studies and books. He can be contacted at: nolandsman1948@gmail.com.
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On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he spoke with President-elect Donald Trump about Israelโs need to achieve โvictoryโ against Iran and its allies in the region.
โI unequivocally declare to Hezbollah and to Iran: In order to prevent you from attacking us, we will continue to take action against you as necessary, in every arena and at all times,โ Netanyahu said.
โI discussed all of this last night with my friend, US President-elect Donald Trump. We had a very friendly, warm and important discussion. We discussed the need to complete Israelโs victory and we spoke at length about the efforts we are making to free our hostages,โ the prime minister added.
The conversation between Netanyahu and Trump came after reports said Israel sees an opportunity to bomb Iran following the regime change in Syria that ousted former President Bashar al-Assad. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the Trump transition team is discussing the idea of strikes on Iranโs nuclear facilities.
The pretext for any Israeli or US action against Iranian nuclear facilities would be to stop Iran from building a bomb, but thereโs no evidence that Tehran has decided to pursue nuclear weapons, something recently acknowledged by the CIA.
In his remarks on Sunday, Netanyahu also said Israel was changing the โfaceโ of the Middle East. โSyria is not the same Syria. Lebanon is not the same Lebanon. Gaza is not the same Gaza. And the head of the axis, Iran, is not the same Iran; it has also felt the might of our arm.
The Israeli leader claimed Israel has โno interest in a conflict with Syria,โ but Israel has unleashed a heavy air campaign against the country since the downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launching over 800 strikes.
The recent fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus marked a turning point in Syriaโs ongoing conflict, with new reports revealing a covert Ukrainian role in aiding Syrian rebels.
Ukrainian intelligence provided strategic support, including drone technology and experienced operators, to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant rebel faction in Idlib, Caliber.Az reports via The Washington Post.
This effort underscores Ukraineโs broader strategy to undermine Russian influence on multiple fronts amid its ongoing war with Moscow.
Approximately four to five weeks prior to the HTS-led offensive, Ukrainian operatives delivered 150 first-person-view drones and deployed 20 experienced operators to assist the rebels. Although Western intelligence sources suggest this aid played a modest role in the regimeโs downfall, it was a significant demonstration of Kyivโs intent to counter Russia in unconventional theatres such as the Middle East, Africa, and even within Russia itself.
Ukraineโs intelligence agency, the GUR, has reportedly collaborated with opposition groups in Syria under a special unit known as โKhimik,โ bolstering rebel capabilities against Russian-backed Syrian forces.
Ukraineโs motivations for such actions are clear. With its homeland under siege, Kyiv is actively opening secondary fronts to stretch Russian resources and influence. A June report in the Kyiv Post detailed strikes by Ukrainian-backed Syrian rebels on Russian military installations, accompanied by video evidence of these operations.
Russian officials have expressed growing concern, with statements from representatives such as Alexander Lavrentyev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accusing Ukrainian intelligence of conducting “dirty operations” in Idlib. Despite these claims, independent verification remains scarce.
While Russia has downplayed Ukraineโs involvement, pointing to HTSโs independent drone program and prior expertise, the rapid collapse of Assadโs regime caught Moscow off guard. Russian Telegram channels have sought to minimize Kyivโs role, suggesting Ukrainian personnel were in Syria for too short a time to significantly influence operations. However, this narrative contrasts with Ukraineโs broader pattern of covert actions against Russian forces worldwide.
Beyond Syria, Ukraine has demonstrated its capability for overseas operations in other regions. In July 2023, Ukrainian intelligence reportedly supported Malian rebels in an ambush against Wagner Group mercenaries, resulting in significant losses for the Russian paramilitary group.
Such actions highlight the GURโs aggressive strategy, with its head, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, affirming Ukraineโs commitment to targeting Russian military assets globally. This approach has drawn concerns from Western allies, including the Biden administration, over potential escalations.
Ukraineโs actions in Syria align with its broader strategy to disrupt Russia’s influence and partnerships. By aiding HTS, Kyiv weakened a critical Russian ally in the Middle East, further isolating Moscow. Although the Ukrainian assistance may not have been decisive, it contributed to an environment where the Assad regimeโs fall became inevitable.
The parallels to other intelligence failures, such as Russiaโs inability to anticipate HTSโs offensive or Israelโs surprise during Hamasโs October 2023 attack, are striking. Both underscore the challenges nations face in responding to unconventional threats.
For Ukraine, these operations serve as a testament to its resilience and resourcefulness in a protracted struggle against a powerful adversary. While not the decisive factor in Damascus, Ukraineโs covert actions signal its intent to shape the global battlefield to its advantage.
By 
Peace and Justice Post 
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