Analysis: Why did Hamas attack now and what is next?

                Analysis: Why did Hamas attack now and what is next? 

  A number of factors led to Hamas’s operation in southern Israel. By Joe Macaron Published On 11 Oct 2023 On October 7, Hamas launched a massive military operation into Israeli territory. The shooting of thousands of rockets into Israel was followed by an attack by land, air and sea, with fighters penetrating deep into territory under Israeli control. They attacked military installations and temporarily took over various settlements. The death toll among Israelis has exceeded 1,200, including more than 120 soldiers; dozens of Israeli hostages were also taken into the Gaza Strip. The planning of the operation took somewhere between a few months and two years, per different accounts from Hamas leaders. The depth and magnitude of the attack were unprecedented and took Israel by surprise. It was a reaction to changing regional dynamics and growing Israeli aggression.

 While Hamas may appear to have fulfilled its declared short-term goals of deterring Israeli violations of Al-Aqsa Mosque and taking hostages to bargain for the release of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails, it does not appear to have a long-term end game. A heavy-handed response by Israel is ongoing – already claiming more than 950 Palestinian lives – but sooner or later it will have to end with mediation. 

                  Why did Hamas attack now?

 Hamas’s move was triggered by three factors. First, the policies of the far-right Israeli government enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem led to a sense of desperation among Palestinians and growing demands for a reaction. At the same time, the rising tensions in the West Bank caused by these policies necessitated the shift of Israeli forces away from the south and into the north to guard the settlements. This gave Hamas both a justification and an opportunity to attack. Second, the Hamas leadership felt compelled to act due to the acceleration of Arab-Israeli normalization.

 In recent years, this process further diminished the significance of the Palestinian issue for Arab leaders who became less keen on pressuring Israel on this matter. If a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal had been concluded, it would have been a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which may have eliminated the already weak chances of a two-state solution. This was also part of Hamas’s calculations. Third, Hamas was emboldened after it managed to repair its ties with Iran. In recent years, the movement had to reconsider the political position it assumed in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, in opposition to Iran and its ally, the Syrian regime. 

 Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has said that he was personally involved in improving the relations between Hamas and Damascus. A Hamas delegation visited Damascus in October 2022 and its political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh travelled to Beirut in April and Tehran in June. Just last month, Nasrallah hosted the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Ziad al-Nakhalah and the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau Saleh al-Arouri. Will there be a united front around Hamas? Iran has denied direct involvement in Hamas’s operation but it has expressed support for it. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general Yahya Rahim Safavi said “we support this operation, and we are sure that the resistance front also supports this issue”. However, Hamas’s realignment with the “resistance axis” does not necessarily mean there will be a united front on the ground confronting Israel. Hezbollah, for example, has not joined the fight. Currently, domestic politics in Lebanon are not conducive to a conflict with Israel, which is holding the Lebanese group back.

 What Hezbollah is trying to do is to deter the Israeli army from going too far in its revenge against Hamas in Gaza, hence it is increasing the pressure on the Lebanese border. Its shelling of Israeli positions is most probably meant to have a psychological effect than a military one. It has also chosen not to overreact in relation to the killing of three of its members by Israeli bombardment. However, both Israel and Hezbollah are on alert and tensions are high, which means miscalculations can happen. What is Hamas’s end game? Three days into Hamas’s surprising and overwhelming attack, it is not clear what its end game is and what it can do to reap long-term benefits. Its priority has seemed to be to take both military and civilian hostages to help deter aggressive Israeli retaliation and later exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

 However, Israel does not appear to be deterred. Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida has said that Israeli bombardment has killed four Israeli citizens held in Gaza. He has also warned that the movement will start killing hostages if Israel strikes civilian homes in Gaza without warning; this might backfire against Hamas if implemented. The Hamas leadership has said that the objectives of the attacks are ending “Israeli violations”, securing the release of Palestinian prisoners, and “returning to the project of establishing a state”. Hamas may be able to secure a prisoner swap deal with Israel, although, in the past, many of those released from Israeli prisons had been quickly rearrested. But the group does not have a clear roadmap for moving forward on “establishing a state” and it cannot have one separately from the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

The Entire Israeli-Palestine Conflict Explained | Secret Wars Uncovered ...

On International Women’s Day, Honor the Palestinian Women

 

The Israeli settlers and the military are doing to the Palestinians what the European settlers in America did to the Native People!  

Since the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967, more than 10,000 Palestinian women have been arrested and detained by the Israeli occupying authorities.               

International Women's Day is a global holiday celebrated annually on March 8 as a focal point in the women's rights movement, bringing attention to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.

International Women’s Day: Palestinian Women Continue to Challenge Israel’s Apartheid Regime.

It cannot be forgotten that International Women’s Day is International Working Women’s Day, a day rooted in working-class women’s struggles. Palestinian women are workers, farmers, and strugglers, working inside and outside the home to sustain and uplift Palestinian society in defiance of Zionism and imperialism. Today, we salute the Palestinian women workers, inside Palestine and everywhere in exile and diaspora, who confront super-exploitation, harassment, violence, police repression, and exploitation on a daily basis, including the Palestinian working women locked behind bars. It has always been the Palestinians of the popular classes, including Palestinian women, who form the basis of the resistance and the prisoners’ movement.        

Since 1948, there have been well over 18,000 Palestinian women imprisoned and detained by the Israeli occupation and Zionist colonialism. These include Palestinian women in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian women holding Israeli citizenship in occupied Palestine ’48. Outside Palestine, Palestinian women in exile and diaspora have been denied their right to return to Palestine for over 75 years yet continue to struggle, facing racism, political repression, criminalization, deportation, and imprisonment. 

Al-Haq Calls for International Accountability Measures as Alarming Settler Attacks on Palestinians Leave Huwwara Properties Razed in Blistering Inferno.

Al-Haq Welcomes Launch of World Health Organization Report on the Right to Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory     

Sunday, 26 February 2023, Israeli colonial settlers, illegally present in the occupied West Bank, conducted a series of arson attacks on Palestinian homes and private properties, including trees and cars, in an egregious systematic act of reprisal and collective punishment on Huwwara and other near-by Palestinian villages. 

      

         On International Women’s Day, Honor the Palestinian Women

By Benay Blend

On March 8, 2021, several days after being fined and imprisoned by Israel, Palestinian politician Khalida Jarrar sent a letter to Palestinian women commemorating International Women’s day. A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Jarrar served a two-year prison sentence.

In her message to “companions and sisters in Palestine, the Arab countries, and around the world,” Jarrar honored the voices of women resisting “injustice, persecution, and oppression.” International Women’s Day, she noted, stands as a symbol of “oppression, racism and colonialism,” against which she hoped that women might “remain at the forefront of this resistance, and March 8th as a symbol of liberation.”

Indeed, International Women’s Day enjoys a radical history. Writing for Red Flag, a publication of Socialist Alternative, one of Australia’s largest Marxist revolutionary groups, Janey Stone argues that historically it was a socialist event, originally organized by Clara Zetkin, a prominent member of the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the early 1900s.

Understanding that the working class needed women to win its battles, she organized a working women’s movement that grew quickly in Germany. In August of 1910, she organized an international working women’s day, inspired by US socialists who had held women’s demonstrations and meetings the year before.

On March 19, 1911, International Women’s Day took place for the first time in Europe. Several days later, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City burst into flames. That fire, which exposed horrible working conditions for mostly immigrant women, provided the impetus for International Women’s Day in the US.

In the 1970s, the federal government declared March to be National Women’s History Month, and with that move International Women’s Day became mainstream. The radical history of the women’s labor movement has been relegated to one day within one month, while much of the radicalism has been excised in the interest of the government.

In an engaging blog by Hood Communist, the writers talk about the ways that Black History Month has been taken over by the capitalist state. It cites the “liberalizing of ‘Black Lives Matter’” as an example of how “Black political agendas can be stolen and repurposed.” In just a few years, activists have “gone from fighting white folks about the meaning of the phrase to seeing it plastered across billboards and city streets.” The slogan once “fulfilled a specific purpose,” but now it “threatens almost to squander the radical potential that is fighting to outlive it.”

In some circles, International Women’s Day has also been consumed within a framework of capitalist consumption. Moreover, many Women’s Day commemorations are one-day affairs that do not call for continued struggle, plus there is seldom mention of global movements for liberation in which women play a role. Moreover, International Women’s Day around the world commemorates the past—the courage of women in the labor movement, the Triangle Fire, and so on. There is also attention paid to current issues, but still, the past remains the past. In Palestine, on the other hand, the past impacts the present, al-nakba al-mustamirra (the Nakba is ongoing).

If the organizers of such events stayed true to their roots, Palestinian women’s two-front struggle would be centered.  Palestinian women in the U.S., however, have been partly shut out of feminist spaces due to groups like Zioness, an organization of Zionist women that seeks to normalize Zionist “feminism” within mainstream feminist circles. As the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)  states: “there is no way for a ‘women’s movement’ to be feminist and liberatory if it protects and defends ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and the degradation of an entire people and land.”

Furthermore, for Palestinians in the U.S., any meaningful acknowledgment of Palestinian experiences – let alone Palestinian women – has been suppressed within US mainstream feminist spaces as a result of the too-long accepted ambivalence to Zionism as a structural form of gendered and sexual violence and oppression.

In addition, the western notion of “women’s rights” has been imposed on Palestinians by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as by liberal Zionist and Orientalist feminist discourses that “reproduce racist notions of Arabs and Muslims.” These notions promote the view that violence against Palestinian women is inherent in cultural and religious dogma.

In an interview with Collectif Palestine Vaincra, Zainab Younes, a member of the collective, discussed the challenges that women face as mainstays of the cause. She listed first the oppression that all Palestinians faced under occupation, then discussed barriers that women face due to marginalization in their own communities. She was careful to note, however, that intra-community issues are entwined with oppression that all Palestinians face, so it follows that there can be no national liberation without the kind of social liberation that honors women’s voices.

Indeed, as Nada Elia makes clear when Arab American feminists are invited to speak at “progressive” events and conferences, they are expected to speak about “the oppression of Arab women by Islamic fundamentalism” (“The Burden of Representation: When Palestinians Speak Out,” in Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging, edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Asultany, and Nadine Naber, 2011, p. 141). Placing gendered violence within a larger context of settler colonialism and the criminal nature of Zionism is usually met with hostility and charges of anti-Semitism.

Similarly, in the early days of organizing the U.S. women’s movement split between working-class women who fought for better wages and working conditions and the mainstream who struggled for the vote. Excluded everywhere, women of color formed their own two-pronged organizations—against racism which men and women equally were affected, and, subsumed within that, women struggled against sexism in their own communities as well.

According to Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network, recognition of women’s participation in the struggle for national liberation does not just happen in one day. Women have always been part of the movement: “in the streets and fields of Palestine, in the home, the school, the university; in all forms of struggle, from the cultivation of Palestinian agriculture and the education of Palestinian children to engage in political leadership and all forms of struggle and resistance.”

At times, women’s engagement falls outside the bounds of mainstream feminism, which is why it is important to remember that there are many kinds of feminisms, including some that include women’s role as the keeper of the home. As Sarah Ihmoud declares, Israeli home demolitions also place women’s role as upholders of summoned (resilience) at the forefront of anti-colonial struggles (Nadera Shalboub-Kevorkian and Sarah Ihmoud, “Exiled at Home: Writing Return and the Palestinian Home, in Biography: An Interdisciplinary Study, Vol 37, No. 2, Spring 2014, p. 381). According to Ihmoud, women’s ability to create nurturing spaces within the home represents for Palestinians a radical act ensuring “re-rooting and daily survival.”

Within Ihmoud’s “Palestinian feminist analytic,” creating such safe places for their families constitutes the very essence of summoned; in doing so, these women are challenging the “monstrous manner” (p. 382) in which Palestinians are portrayed in mainstream media. Rather than a site of oppression, as viewed by some Western feminists, home for Ihmoud represents a space for preserving memories and tradition, thereby challenging the “rationality of Israeli and Western Eurocentric hegemony” (p.382).

Accordingly, women have endured political imprisonment, torture, and repression. On January 21, 2023, Middle East Eye staff reported that Israeli jail officials recently assaulted women prisoners as part of a move to enforce strict new measures against inmates introduced by Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said in a statement that Israeli forces beat women prisoners in Damon jail, fired tear gas at them, and used pepper spray. “The punitive actions taken in the Damon prison will have consequences in all prisons. The situation is getting worse because of the measures taken by the fascist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The Israeli government bears full responsibility for the situation and its consequences,” the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said.

As a consequence, the Higher National Emergency Committee of the Palestinian Prisoners Movement has called for a series of steps, beginning with disobedience and ending with an open hunger strike. Entitled “Freedom or Martyrdom,” the protest singles out an “attack on our dignity and the dignity of our women prisoners,” and freedom is the “sole demand.”

While it is true that Palestinian women face oppression on a daily basis, it is also true that Palestinians should not be reduced solely to the role of victim. As Ramzy Baroud declares, the Palestinians are “a nation of people with political agency who are capable of articulating, resisting, and  ultimately, winning their freedom as part of a much greater fight for justice and liberation throughout the world.” On International Women’s Day, it is important to remember that this nation includes women. 

https://samidoun.net/2023/03/international-womens-day-palestinian-women-prisoners-on-the-front-lines-of-the-liberation-struggle/

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/on-international-womens-day-honor-the-palestinian-women-photos/

What does Israel’s new government mean for Palestinians? | The Stream

 

    In November 2022, Israeli citizens voted in their fifth parliamentary election in less than four years and ushered in the country’s most far-right government ever elected. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is back in the role for a sixth term after securing an alliance between his Likud party and ultranationalist and ultraorthodox parties.

    While some view the election as a path to political stability following years of parliamentary turmoil, Palestinians and rights advocates are raising alarm over what this new government will mean for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, as well as for Palestinian citizens of Israel and those in the global diaspora. Palestinians and critics fear that this new government will not only open the floodgates to the further expansion of illegal settlements but will also embolden already increasing violence against Palestinians.

    So far, Netanyahu has noted settlement expansion as a top priority, pledged to annex the occupied West Bank, instructed police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces and sparked widespread protests in response to proposals that would overhaul the judicial system and supreme court. Top ministerial positions have already gone to those who have pledged to expand illegal settlement and stated open opposition to Palestinian statehood. 

 

Israeli forces beat mourners carrying Abu Akleh’s body

Israel Committing War Crimes In Gaza, { still }

Aljazeera

Israel committing war crimes in Gaza, Palestinian FM tells UN Palestinian foreign minister calls Israel ‘occupying colonial state’ as Israeli envoy slams violence by Hamas as ‘premeditated’ at a UNSC session.

 Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki on Sunday accused Israel of committing “war crimes” in its nearly weeklong offensive on Gaza as he urged international pressure at a United Nations Security Council session.     “Some may not want to use these words – war crimes and crimes against humanity – but they know they are true,” al-Maliki told the virtual session on the crisis on Sunday.

 He also renewed the charge – angrily denounced by Israel – that Tel Aviv is pursuing a policy of “apartheid” against the Palestinians. “Act now to end the aggression. Act now so freedom can prevail – not apartheid,” he told the Security Council. Since violence flared on Monday, at least 192 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, including 58 children. More than 1,200 others have been wounded. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed at least 13 Palestinians. Israel has reported 10 dead, including two children, from the thousands of missiles fired from Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, many of which were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system.

 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleaded for an immediate end to the violence and warned of an “uncontainable security and humanitarian crisis”. But the council meeting, already delayed by Israel’s ally the United States, resulted in little action. Al-Maliki – part of the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip and has been firing rockets into Israel – voiced regret over Israeli deaths but urged the Security Council to examine the power balance. Israel “is an occupying colonial power. Any assessment of the situation that fails to take into account this fundamental fact is biased”, al-Maliki said. 

 Hamas said its rocket fire into Israel was in response to Israeli forces’ repeated raising of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem earlier this month amid high tensions over moves to forcibly expel Palestinian families in the city to make way for Israeli settlers.

 

Independent, UK

U.N. Security Council diplomats and Muslim foreign ministers convened emergency weekend meetings to demand a stop to civilian bloodshed as Israeli warplanes carried out the deadliest single attacks in nearly a week of Hamas rocket barrages and Israeli airstrikes. President Joe Biden gave no signs of stepping up public pressure on Israel to agree to an immediate cease-fire despite calls from some Democrats for the Biden administration to get more involved.

 His ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told an emergency high-level meeting of the Security Council that the United States was “working tirelessly through diplomatic channels" to stop the fighting. But as battles between Israel and Gaza s militant Hamas rulers surged to their worst levels since 2014 and the international outcry grew, the Biden administration — determined to wrench U.S. foreign policy focus away from the Middle East and Afghanistan — has declined so far to criticize Israel's part in the fighting or send a top-level envoy to the region. 

Appeals by other countries showed no sign of progress. Thomas-Greenfield warned that the return to armed conflict would only put a negotiated two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict even further out of reach. However, the United States, Israel's closest ally, has so far blocked days of efforts by China, Norway and Tunisia to get the Security Council to issue a statement, including a call for the cessation of hostilities.  

  BBC News

Palestinian officials in Gaza say Sunday was the deadliest day since the current fighting with Israel began. Forty-two people were killed in Israeli air strikes on the territory on Sunday. Israel's army say Palestinian militants have fired more than 3,000 rockets at Israel over the past week. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that further fighting could plunge the region into an "uncontainable crisis". He pleaded for an immediate end to the "utterly appalling" violence. 

 Early on Monday, Israeli warplanes launched 80 air strikes on several areas of Gaza City, shortly after Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets at southern Israel. The Israel-Palestinian conflict explained Israel-Gaza: What the law says about the fighting The UN has also warned of fuel shortages in Gaza which could lead to hospitals and other facilities losing power. 

 Lynn Hastings, UN deputy special co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the BBC that she had appealed to Israeli authorities to allow the UN to bring in fuel and supplies but was told it was not safe. Gaza officials said 42 people, including 16 women and 10 children, died in Sunday's Israeli air strikes. Ten people, including two children, have been killed in rocket attacks on Israel since the fighting began last Monday, Israel said. The overall death toll in Gaza now stands at 197 people, including 58 children and 34 women, with 1,230 injured, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. 

Israel says dozens of militants are among the dead. Israeli air strikes hit a busy street in Gaza just after midnight on Sunday, causing at least three buildings to collapse and dozens of deaths. Hamas launched series of rockets towards southern Israel overnight and during the afternoon. Millions of Israelis scrambled to safe rooms or shelters as sirens went off. Palestinians also tried to take precautions, but in the densely packed and poorly resourced Gaza Strip, many had nowhere to go. Riyad Eshkuntana told Reuters news agency he put his daughters to sleep in a room of his house that he thought was the furthest from the explosions. Only one of his daughters, Suzy, six, survived the night. His wife and three other children died. "I ran to check upon the girls," said Mr Eshkuntana. "My wife jumped, she hugged the girls to take them out from the room, then a second airstrike hit the room... The ceilings were destroyed and I was under the rubble." 

 The New York Times 

 After Years of Quiet, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Exploded. Why Now? A little-noticed police action in Jerusalem last month was one of several incidents that led to the current crisis. Twenty-seven days before the first rocket was fired from Gaza this week, a squad of Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brushed the Palestinian attendants aside and strode across its vast limestone courtyard. Then they cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful from four medieval minarets.

 It was the night of April 13, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was also Memorial Day in Israel, which honors those who died fighting for the country. The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out. The incident was confirmed by six mosque officials, three of whom witnessed it; the Israeli police declined to comment.

 In the outside world, it barely registered. But in hindsight, the police raid on the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, was one of several actions that led, less than a month later, to the sudden resumption of war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, and the outbreak of civil unrest between Arabs and Jews across Israel itself. “This was the turning point,” said Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

 “Their actions would cause the situation to deteriorate.” That deterioration has been far more devastating, far-reaching and fast-paced than anyone imagined. It has led to the worst violence between Israelis and Palestinians in years — not only in the conflict with Hamas, which has killed at least 145 people in Gaza and 12 in Israel, but in a wave of mob attacks in mixed Arab-Jewish cities in Israel. It has spawned unrest in cities across the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinians on Friday. And it has resulted in the firing of rockets toward Israel from a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, prompted Jordanians to march toward Israel in protest, and led Lebanese protesters to briefly cross their southern border with Israel. 

 The crisis came as the Israeli government was struggling for its survival; as Hamas — which Israel views as a terrorist group — was seeking to expand its role within the Palestinian movement; and as a new generation of Palestinians was asserting its own values and goals. And it was the outgrowth of years of blockades and restrictions in Gaza, decades of occupation in the West Bank, and decades more of discrimination against Arabs within the state of Israel, said Avraham Burg, a former speaker of the Israeli Parliament and former chairman of the World Zionist Organization. “All the enriched uranium was already in place,” he said. “But you needed a trigger. And the trigger was the Aqsa Mosque.”

 It had been seven years since the last significant conflict with Hamas, and 16 since the last major Palestinian uprising, or intifada. There was no major unrest in Jerusalem when President Donald J. Trump recognized the city as Israel’s capital and nominally moved the United States Embassy there. There were no mass protests after four Arab countries normalized relations with Israel, abandoning a long-held consensus that they would never do so until the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had been resolved. Two months ago, few in the Israeli military establishment were expecting anything like this. In private briefings, military officials said the biggest threat to Israel was 1,000 miles away in Iran, or across the northern border in Lebanon.

 When diplomats met in March with the two generals who oversee administrative aspects of Israeli military affairs in Gaza and the West Bank, they found the pair relaxed about the possibility of significant violence and celebrating an extended period of relative quiet, according to a senior foreign diplomat who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely. Gaza was struggling to overcome a wave of coronavirus infections. Most major Palestinian political factions, including Hamas, were looking toward Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for March, the first in 15 years. And in Gaza, where the Israeli blockade has contributed to an unemployment rate of about 50 percent, Hamas’s popularity was dwindling as Palestinians spoke increasingly of the need to prioritize the economy over war. The mood began to shift in April. The prayers at Aqsa for the first night of Ramadan on April 13 occurred as the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, was making his speech nearby. The mosque leadership, which is overseen by the Jordanian government, had rejected an Israeli request to avoid broadcasting prayers during the speech, viewing the request as disrespectful, a public affairs officer at the mosque said. So that night, the police raided the mosque and disconnected the speakers. “Without a doubt,” said Sheikh Sabri, “it was clear to us that the Israeli police wanted to desecrate the Aqsa Mosque and the holy month of Ramadan.” 

 A spokesman for the president denied that the speakers had been turned off, but later said they would double-check. In another year, the episode might have been quickly forgotten. But last month, several factors suddenly and unexpectedly aligned that allowed this slight to snowball into a major showdown. A resurgent sense of national identity among young Palestinians found expression not only in resistance to a series of raids on Al Aqsa, but also in protesting the plight of six Palestinian families facing expulsion from their homes. 

The perceived need to placate an increasingly assertive far right gave Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, little incentive to calm the waters. A sudden Palestinian political vacuum, and a grass-roots protest that it could adopt, gave Hamas an opportunity to flex its muscles. These shifts in the Palestinian dynamics caught Israel unawares. Israelis had been complacent, nurtured by more than a decade of far-right governments that treated Palestinian demands for equality and statehood as a problem to be contained, not resolved. “We have to wake up,” said Ami Ayalon, a former director of the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet. “We have to change the way we understand all this, starting with the concept that the status quo is stable.”

 The loudspeaker incident was followed almost immediately by a police decision to close off a popular plaza outside the Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem. Young Palestinians typically gather there at night during Ramadan. A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said the plaza was closed to prevent dangerously large crowds from forming there, and to head off the possibility of violence. To Palestinians, it was another insult. It led to protests, which led to nightly clashes between the police and young men trying to reclaim the space. To the police, the protests were disorder to be controlled. 

But to many Palestinians, being pushed out of the square was a slight, beneath which were much deeper grievances. Most Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed, are not Israeli citizens by choice, because many say applying for citizenship would confer legitimacy on an occupying power. So they cannot vote. Many feel they are gradually being pushed out of Jerusalem. Restrictions on building permits force them to either leave the city or build illegal housing, which is vulnerable to demolition orders. So the decision to block Palestinians from a treasured communal space compounded the sense of discrimination that many have felt all their lives. “It made it feel as though they were trying to eliminate our presence from the city,” said Majed al-Qeimari, a 27-year-old butcher from East Jerusalem. “We felt the need to stand up in their faces and make a point that we are here.”

 The clashes at the Damascus Gate had repercussions. Later that week, Palestinian youths began attacking Jews. Some posted videos on TikTok, a social media site, garnering public attention. And that soon led to organized Jewish reprisals. On April 21, just a week after the police raid, a few hundred members of an extreme-right Jewish group, Lehava, marched through central Jerusalem, chanting “Death to Arabs” and attacking Palestinian passers-by. A group of Jews was filmed attacking a Palestinian home, and others assaulted drivers who were perceived to be Palestinian. Foreign diplomats and community leaders tried to persuade the Israeli government to lower the temperature in Jerusalem, at least by reopening the square outside Damascus Gate. But they found the government distracted and uninterested, said a person involved in the discussions, who was not authorized to speak publicly. 

 Mr. Netanyahu was in the middle of coalition negotiations after an election in March — the fourth in two years — that ended without a clear winner. To form a coalition, he needed to persuade several extreme-right lawmakers to join him. One was Itamar Ben Gvir, a former lawyer for Lehava who advocates expelling Arab citizens whom he considers disloyal to Israel, and who until recently hung a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish extremist who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, in his living room. Mr. Netanyahu was accused of pandering to the likes of Mr. Ben Gvir, and fomenting a crisis to rally Israelis around his leadership, by letting tensions rise in Jerusalem. “Netanyahu didn’t invent the tensions between Jews and Arabs,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a political commentator and biographer of the prime minister. “They’ve been here since before Israel was founded. 

But over his long years in power, he’s stoked and exploited these tensions for political gain time and again and has now miserably failed as a leader to put out the fires when it boiled over.” Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, rejected that analysis. “Exactly the opposite is true,” Mr. Regev said. “He has done everything he can to try to make calm prevail.” On April 25, the government relented on allowing Palestinians to gather outside the Damascus Gate. But then came a brace of developments that significantly widened the gyre. First was the looming eviction of the six families from Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. With a final court decision on their case due in the first half of May, regular protests were held throughout April — demonstrations that accelerated after Palestinians drew a connection between the events at Damascus Gate and the plight of the residents. 

 “What you see now at Sheikh Jarrah or at Al Aqsa or at Damascus Gate is about pushing us out of Jerusalem,” said Salah Diab, a community leader in Sheikh Jarrah, whose leg was broken during a recent police raid on his house. “My neighborhood is just the beginning.” The police said they were responding to violence by demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah, but video and images showed they engaged in violence themselves. As the images began to circulate online, the neighborhood turned into a rallying point for Palestinians not just across the occupied territories and Israel, but among the diaspora. 

 The experience of the families, who had already been displaced from what became Israel in 1948, was something “every single Palestinian in the diaspora can relate to,” said Jehan Bseiso, a Palestinian poet living in Lebanon. And it highlighted a piece of legal discrimination: Israeli law allows Jews to reclaim land in East Jerusalem that was owned by Jews before 1948. But the descendants of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled their homes that year have no legal means to reclaim their families’ land. “There’s something really triggering and cyclical about seeing people being removed from their homes all over again,” Ms. Bseiso said.

“It’s very triggering and very, very relatable, even if you’re a million miles away.” On April 29, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority canceled the Palestinian elections, fearing a humiliating result. The decision made Mr. Abbas look weak. Hamas saw an opportunity, and began to reposition itself as a militant defender of Jerusalem. “Hamas thought that by doing so, they were showing that they were a more capable leadership for the Palestinians,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political expert at Al Azhar University in Gaza City. 

 On May 4, six days before the war began, the head of the Hamas military, Muhammed Deif, issued a rare public statement. “This is our final warning,” Mr. Deif said. “If the aggression against our people in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood does not stop immediately, we will not stand idly by.” War nevertheless seemed unlikely. But then came the most dramatic escalation of all: a police raid on the Aqsa Mosque on Friday, May 7. Police officers armed with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-tipped bullets burst into the mosque compound shortly after 8 p.m., setting off hours of clashes with stone-throwing protesters in which hundreds were injured, medics said. The police said the stone throwers started it; several worshipers said the opposite.

Whoever struck first, the sight of stun grenades and bullets inside the prayer hall of one of the holiest sites in Islam — on the last Friday of Ramadan, one of its holiest nights — was seen as a grievous insult to all Muslims. “This is about the Judaization of the city of Jerusalem,” Sheikh Omar al-Kisswani, another leader at the mosque, said in an interview hours after the raid. “It’s about deterring people from going to Al Aqsa.” That set the stage for a dramatic showdown on Monday, May 10. A final court hearing on Sheikh Jarrah was set to coincide with Jerusalem Day, when Jews celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem, by dint of the capture of East Jerusalem, in 1967. 

 Jewish nationalists typically mark the day by marching through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and trying to visit Temple Mount, the site on which the Aqsa Mosque is built. The looming combination of that march, tensions over Al Aqsa and the possibility of an eviction order in Sheikh Jarrah seemed to be building toward something dangerous. The Israeli government scrambled to tamp down tensions. The Supreme Court hearing in the eviction case was postponed. An order barred Jews from entering the mosque compound.

 At the last minute, the government rerouted the Jerusalem Day march away from the Muslim Quarter, after receiving an intelligence briefing about the risk of escalation if it went ahead. But that was too little, and far too late. By then, the Israeli Army had already begun to order civilians away from the Gaza perimeter. Shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday, the rocket fire from Gaza began.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/world/middleeast/israel-palestinian-gaza-war.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57138996

https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/gaza 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/16/israel-committing-war-crimes-in-gaza-palestinian-fm-tells-un

Israeli-Palestinian conflict focuses on condemned Bedouin village

New phase of Israel-Gaza conflict

Israel and Gaza: Inside the conflict

Airstrikes and rockets kill Palestinians and Israelis as violence increa...

Ninth family member dies after Israeli strike: ministry

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - A Palestinian wounded in an Israeli strike that killed eight members of his family has died, the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip said on Friday.
Mohammed Abu Malhous al-Sawarka, 40, succumbed after being wounded in "the massacre in which eight members of a family died when they were targeted in their homes," ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement.
It said he was the brother of Rasmi Abu Malhous who was killed when his home was hit by an air strike on November 14.

Five children and Rasmi's two wives were also killed.
Israel has pledged to investigate the incident, saying that their intelligence reports had indicated "no civilians were expected to be harmed".
Israel described Rasmi as an Islamic Jihad commander, but Gaza residents have suggested it may have been a case of mistaken identity.
The three-day flareup began when Israel killed a senior Islamic Jihad official in Gaza on November 12.
The Islamist group, which is closely allied with Gaza's rulers Hamas, subsequently fired more than 450 rockets at Israel.
During the confrontation Israeli forces attacked dozens of targets in the enclave.

Palestinian officials said 35 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded. There were no Israeli fatalities.

786 (Seven 8 Six) - Palestine Live

The battle for Al-Aqsa Compound

          The battle for Al-Aqsa Compound
Israeli soldiers storm Al-Aqsa compound,Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemns "attack" on Al-Aqsa following clashes at one of Islam's holiest sites.
Clashes have erupted after a number of Israeli soldiers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, police and witnesses said.
The Israeli security personnel used tear gas and stun grenades, as they entered the compound to arrest what they called Palestinian "stone throwers".

          Stun grenades & tear gas: Israeli forces storm Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem


Omar Kiswani, the manager of Al-Aqsa Mosque, told Al Jazeera that 80 "Jewish settlers" protected by the Israeli police, attacked the mosque when confronted by Palestinian volunteer guards.
A statement issued by the Israeli police said that "masked protesters who were inside the mosque threw stones and fireworks at police".

A Muslim witness accused police of entering the mosque and causing damage, saying prayer mats were partially burned.
Clashes later continued outside the mosque complex, with police firing tear gas and stun grenades.
Israeli security forces closed the mosque's compound to worshippers following the clashes that come just hours before the start of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.

"The presidency strongly condemns the attack by the occupier's military and police against the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the aggression against the faithful who were there," a statement from his office said.
Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said that the Israeli police were being dishonest.

"The Israeli police are lying, they have lied before and they are lying again," he said."I think what happened today is an act of aggression on the part of the Israeli army," he said, adding that right-wing Jewish settlers provoked Palestinians when they entered the mosque.

Al Jazeera's Scott Heidler, reporting from Jerusalem, said there are some reports that Jewish groups and Jewish activists who are not supposed to pray in the Al-Aqsa compound got in there, and this is what could have triggered the clashes.

"We are hearing that the minister of agriculture, a member of a right-wing political party here in Israel, was waiting to get into the compound this morning. If that directly sparked what we saw, it is difficult to say," Heidler said.

The disturbances came with tensions running high after Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon last week banned two Muslim groups from entering the mosque compound - Islam's third holiest site.

Israel seized East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, in the Six Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.
On Monday, chunks of rock still peppered the entrance to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site. Volunteers worked to remove shards of glass and metal, but parts of the crimson and gold carpet were charred by stun grenades hurled into the holy site by Israeli forces, who also fired rubber-coated metal bullets at Muslim worshippers.

This has become a reoccurring scene, with ominous implications, which has ignited Palestinian fears of an Israeli takeover of the holy esplanade. Jews call the esplanade the Temple Mount and consider it their holiest site, and Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary or al-Haram al-Sharif.

 Over time, the discussion over entry to the compound has shifted to one focusing on freedom of worship - with Israeli groups arguing that Jews, like Muslims, should be allowed to pray there.

"This is not about prayer,” she argued. "We are worried by the entry of extremists who want to demolish our mosque and build their temple. There's been an increase in the number of attempts to do so in recent years."

In 1990, Israeli border police killed 22 Palestinians during a demonstration triggered by an attempt by Jewish extremists to lay the cornerstone for a new temple in the compound.

Several years earlier, two members of an organisation called the Jewish Underground (who were founding figures in the pro-settlement Gush Emunim movement), were caught trying to bomb the two sites with the hope that the Third Temple would be built on their ruins.

The issue of the compound was recently addressed by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, which suggested that Jews wishing to visit should be permitted to do so without being allowed to pray. "Access for all communities is the best way to ensure access for each," the report states.

The group reported discussions between Israel and Jordan, which has custodial rights at the compound, over the possibility of allowing non-Muslim visitors. There's been no confirmation on the Jordanian side to this report, and an Israeli official in the Israeli prime minister's office has denied it, according to Israeli daily Haaretz. "There are no negotiations and no change in the status quo at the Temple Mount," the official said.

 Jerusalem's Old City, founded around 4,000 BC, is an area of great significance to people from the three monotheistic religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. It is divided into four quarters (Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian) and is surrounded by walls. Eleven gates lead into the Old City, and seven of these are open today.
Inside the Old City, a World Heritage site, lies al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, a 35-acre compound that comprises Islam's third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, al-Aqsa mosque. The compound is also home to the Dome of the Rock, a revered site believed to be where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Since Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in June 1967, the affairs of the Noble Sanctuary have been run by an Islamic trusteeship, supported by the Jordanian government, known as the Waqf. Israel still maintains what it believes to be its right to sovereignty over the area after it annexed the eastern part of the city.

In addition to running schools and charities in Jerusalem, the Waqf maintains guards at the entrances to the compound, with the exception of the Mughrabi Gate. This gate (also known as Bab al-Magharbeh or Dung Gate) is connected by a bridge to an open-air plaza that was created when Israel demolished the Mughrabi (Moroccan) Quarter in 1967.

This plaza lies in front of the Western (Wailing) Wall, which Jews believe is the last remnant of the Second Temple, a place of Jewish worship that was destroyed by the Roman rulers of Jerusalem centuries ago. Jewish tradition maintains that a Third Temple will be rebuilt on the Noble Sanctuary, referred to in Judaism as the Temple Mount.

The Noble Sanctuary compound is currently allowed for Muslim prayer alone, but Israeli soldiers regularly escort Jewish Israeli visitors to the site. These incursions are often performed under armed guard, and provoke violent clashes between the Israeli security forces and Palestinians. The Israeli authorities also regularly impose strict rules on Palestinian access to the Noble Sanctuary, frequently forbidding all men under 40 (at times under 50) years of age from entering.

Jerusalem: Hitting Home

The city of Jerusalem lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and property, housing and Israeli settlements are burning issues. The Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem has forced thousands of Palestinians from their homes and created 
a serious housing shortage. 

Since 1967, the Palestinian population has quadrupled, climbing to over 300,000 - nearly 40 percent of the population. Yet the Israeli municipal authorities in East Jerusalem deem that Palestinians can build property on only nine percent of the land.

          Al Jazeera World - Jerusalem Hitting Home



For Palestinians, construction permits are prohibitively expensive and bureaucratic processes make them difficult to obtain. Many Palestinians have had no choice but to build their own homes without permits, even with the threat of demolition hanging over their heads.

Israel has now declared around 20,000 of these buildings to be illegal and has ordered their demolition.
Rather than paying the high costs of fighting demolition orders in court, or paying the fines for getting Israeli crews to pull down their homes, Palestinian families are making the difficult choice to bring them down themselves. Forced to demolish their own homes, many have been made homeless, or pushed away from the city centre. Others have chosen to remain in the ruins of the properties they themselves have pulled down.
Jerusalem: Hitting Home examines how these demolitions are not just changing the face of the city but also the lives of the people who live there.

The film follows three families who have been forced to take hammers to their own homes. It traces the events that led to the demolitions, where the families have gone afterwards, and the emotional and economic impact it has had on them. The filmmaker also charts how city planning and municipal policies have led to a set of building rules that many argue are pushing Palestinians towards the outskirts of the city, disrupting their lives and shifting the city's demographics in favour of the Israeli majority.

The architecture of violence

   

                 The Architecture Of Violence

Eyal Weizman explains architecture's key role in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the evolution of urban warfare.

          Rebel Architecture - The architecture of violence


On a journey across the settlements and roads of the West Bank and along the Separation Wall, Israeli architect Eyal Weizman demonstrates how architecture is central to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
"Architecture and the built environment is a kind of a slow violence. The occupation is an environment that was conceived to strangulate Palestinian communities, villages and towns, to create an environment that would be unliveable for the people there," says Weizman.

Local Israelis and Palestinians explain how it feels to live in a landscape where everything, from walls and roads, terraces and sewage, to settlements and surveillance are designed to ensure the separation of the two peoples, while simultaneously maintaining control.

Eyal's work on the architecture of occupation has led him to understand the discipline's role in modern urban warfare. Visiting Nablus and Jenin, he explains how the Israeli army pioneered a new kind of modern urban warfare through its deep understanding of architecture.

But Weizman has found a way for architecture to resist. His latest project, Forensic Architecture, is way of turning a building's military wounds into evidence to be used against the state for the investigation of war crimes, with the aid of innovative architectural and visual technologies.