The following was written by a
Gaza-based Palestinian journalist, known to +972 Magazine, who requested
anonymity for themselves and their interviewees out of concern for their
safety.
The war is still
being waged against us, the civilians of Gaza, after more than 100 days. We are
still suffering and aching from the bitter reality of our lives, which are not
lives at all. There is little talk of an end to the war, or even any rumors that
could comfort our exhausted hearts. A ceasefire seems like an impossible dream
that will never be achieved.
No one expected
the war to continue for so long. No one expected the extent of the destruction
and deaths that we have reached. We are all asking, praying, screaming: Will it
ever end?
Yesterday, I
called one of my friends to check in on him and his family. We laughed and
joked as we cursed the war that divided us, destroyed us, and obliterated our
dreams. When I asked him about his father, he went silent for a few seconds
before answering: “My father was martyred, along with my brother Malik.”
I wished then
that I had not asked him about his father, and that we could have just
continued cursing the war. I wished that the mobile connection had not patched
through on our ninth attempt. At the end of the call, he asked me: “Is it
possible that Hamas and Israel will agree to a ceasefire? Oh God, I hope the
war will end.”
We in Gaza are
literally dying every day, every minute, every second. Our lives have been
turned upside down since October 7, and now only revolve around our most basic
needs. Where can we find water? Is there any aid coming in? Where do we go to
collect it? Do we get flour today from Salah al-Din Street or Al-Rashid Street?
Have the tanks withdrawn from this area or are they still there? Can I go to my
house to inspect it? Is it safe to gather my children’s clothes from their
rooms?
The fear that
dominates me now is the fear of becoming normalized to this reality. That fear
extends to the continued and shameful silence of foreign governments to our
suffering. But it’s not only them: the absence of the Palestinian government —
or perhaps two different governments — and the Palestinian parties is
deafening.
I do not know
anymore, or perhaps I cannot know, who is to blame for our suffering.
Certainly, the main cause is the Israeli government. But we are beginning to
wonder: Has the world agreed with Israel to eliminate us? Is Hamas cooperating
with Israel? Where is the Palestinian Authority? Why have Israel and Hamas not
yet reached any kind of solution? Are American, Qatari, and Egyptian mediations
not enough?
Does the Hamas
government or the Palestinian Authority have answers to our daily questions? Do
they know how we can meet our basic needs? Our dignity and our lives are being
violated daily, and no one is providing us with help — do they know, but just
don’t care?
What Israel has
done to Gaza is a violent earthquake, an earthquake that is deliberately
destroying our homes and neighborhoods. But the citizens of Gaza are asking for
a government that at least remains in touch with its people, a government that
negotiates with Israel to protect us, not just themselves.
‘We want a
government that stops the bloodshed’
“Certainly,
Israel is a country that does not know anything about international agreements,
human rights, or anything humanitarian,” Muhammad Hani (pseudonym), a resident
of Gaza, tells me. “Or rather, Israel knows everything but ignores everything,
and refuses to respect or obey international conventions. The question is,
where is the government in Gaza? What is the role of our government in
defending the domestic front?
“We, the
civilians, are in a war against the Israeli army with all its strength,
equipment, and criminality,” Hani continues. “But where is Hamas when it comes
to protecting and preserving the interests of the people? At the very least, we
want a government that tells us where the Israeli army is stationed, instead of
us being dispersed and knowing nothing. We want a government that stops the
bloodshed in Gaza, that at least clarifies and shows us where we are heading,
and if there are negotiations or not.”
“I feel as if
the war is between [Hamas chief Yahya] Sinwar and [Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin] Netanyahu, and they both want to prove their strength at the expense
of civilians,” says Abu Issam (pseudonym), another Gaza resident. “Hamas does
not care about the victims among its people in Gaza, and Netanyahu does not
care about the hostages or the families of the hostages. We follow what is
happening inside Israel daily; perhaps the internal crisis in Israel will put
pressure on the government to stop the war.
“I wish we could
go out and march in Gaza in order to stop the war,” Abu Ismail goes on. “But as
for me, I’ve had enough. I’ve lost everything — my home and all my property. If
I live to see the end of the war, I will travel and leave the country to Hamas,
which loves what its people do not love.”
I am still
confused about what to write and how to express my feelings and opinions. Do we
blame just Hamas or Israel, or are both the culprits? Hamas’ October 7 attack
does not justify in any way Israel’s actions in Gaza, but we are all dead in
Gaza now. We are all numbers that may eventually be counted in the death toll.
A few days ago,
the most influential Palestinian journalist in this war, 24-year-old Motaz
Azaizeh, decided that he had no choice but to leave Gaza. This is the most
natural decision for a person who witnessed death countless times from Israeli
bombing, who has been homeless and displaced for more than 100 days, and whose
voice was not heard by those in power despite screaming out to the world.
All this time,
we have been pleading for the war to end, but no one is listening to us. I have
written dozens of articles and given many interviews throughout this war, but I
feel that I, too, have reached the end.
Biden's
Choice: Gaza Cease-Fire or Devastating Regional War?
Nicolas
J.S. Davies
In
the topsy-turvy world of corporate media reporting on U.S. foreign policy, we
have been led to believe that U.S. air strikes on Yemen, Iraq, and Syria are
legitimate and responsible efforts to contain the expanding war over Israel’s
genocide in Gaza, while the actions of the Houthi government in Yemen,
Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria are all
dangerous escalations.
In
fact, it is U.S. and Israeli actions that are driving the expansion of the war,
while Iran and others are genuinely trying to find effective ways to counter
and end Israel’s genocide in Gaza while avoiding a full-scale regional war.
We
are encouraged by Egypt and Qatar’s efforts to mediate a cease-fire and the
release of hostages and prisoners-of-war by both sides. But it is important to
recognize who are the aggressors, who are the victims, and how regional actors
are taking incremental but increasingly forceful action to respond to genocide.
A
near-total Israeli communications blackout in Gaza has reduced the flow of
images of the ongoing massacre on our TVs and computer screens, but the
slaughter has not abated. Israel is bombing and attacking Khan Younis, the
largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, as ruthlessly as it did Gaza City in
the north. Israeli forces and U.S. weapons have killed an average of 240 Gazans
per day for more than three months, and 70% of the dead are still women and
children.
Israel
has repeatedly claimed it is taking new steps to protect civilians, but that is
only a public relations exercise. The Israeli government is still using
2,000-pound and even 5,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs to dehouse the people of
Gaza and herd them toward the Egyptian border, while it debates how to push the
survivors over the border into exile, which it euphemistically refers to as
“voluntary emigration.”
People
throughout the Middle East are horrified by Israel’s slaughter and plans for
the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but most of their governments will only condemn
Israel verbally. The Houthi government in Yemen is different. Unable to
directly send forces to fight for Gaza, they began enforcing a blockade of the
Red Sea against Israeli-owned ships and other ships carrying goods to or from
Israel. Since mid-November 2023, the Houthis have conducted about 30 attacks on
international vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden but none of the
attacks have caused casualties or sunk any ships.
In
response, the Biden administration, without Congressional approval, has
launched at least six rounds of bombing, including airstrikes on Sanaa, the
capital of Yemen. The United Kingdom has contributed a few warplanes, while
Australia, Canada, Holland, and Bahrain also act as cheerleaders to provide the
U.S. with the cover of leading an “international coalition.”
President
Biden has admitted that U.S. bombing will not force Yemen to lift its blockade,
but he insists that the U.S. will keep attacking it anyway. Saudi Arabia
dropped 70,000 mostly American (and some British) bombs on Yemen in a 7-year
war, but utterly failed to defeat the Houthi government and armed forces.
Yemenis
naturally identify with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, and a million
Yemenis took to the street to support their country’s position challenging
Israel and the United States. Yemen is no Iranian puppet, but as with Hamas,
Hezbollah, and Iran’s Iraqi and Syrian allies, Iran has trained the Yemenis to
build and deploy increasingly powerful anti-ship, cruise and ballistic
missiles.
The
Houthis have made it clear that they will stop the attacks once Israel stops
its slaughter in Gaza. It beggars belief that instead of pressing for a
ceasefire in Gaza, Biden and his clueless advisers are instead choosing to
deepen U.S. military involvement in a regional Middle East conflict.
The
United States and Israel have now conducted airstrikes on the capitals of four
neighboring countries: Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Iran also suspects U.S.
and Israeli spy agencies of a role in two bomb explosions in Kerman in Iran,
which killed about 90 people and wounded hundreds more at a commemoration of
the fourth anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem
Soleimani in January 2020.
On
January 20th, an Israeli bombing killed 10 people in Damascus, including 5
Iranian officials. After repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syria, Russia has now
deployed warplanes to patrol the border to deter Israeli attacks and has
reoccupied two previously vacated outposts built to monitor violations of the
demilitarized zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Iran
has responded to the terrorist bombings in Kerman and Israeli assassinations of
Iranian officials with missile strikes on targets in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan.
Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdohallian has strongly defended Iran’s claim
that the strikes on Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan targeted agents of Israel’s Mossad
spy agency.
Eleven
Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence facility and
the home of a senior intelligence officer, and also killed a wealthy real
estate developer and businessman, Peshraw Dizayee, who had been accused of
working for the Mossad, as well as of smuggling Iraqi oil from Kurdistan to
Israel via Turkey.
The
targets of Iran’s missile strikes in northwest Syria were the headquarters of
two separate ISIS-linked groups in Idlib province. The strikes precisely hit
both buildings and demolished them, at a range of 800 miles, using Iran’s
newest ballistic missiles called Kheybar Shakan or Castle Blasters, a name that
equates today’s U.S. bases in the Middle East with the 12th- and 13th-century
European crusader castles whose ruins still dot the landscape.
Iran
launched its missiles, not from north-west Iran, which would have been closer
to Idlib, but from Khuzestan province in south-west Iran, which is closer to
Tel Aviv than to Idlib. So these missile strikes were clearly intended as a
warning to Israel and the United States that Iran can conduct precise attacks
on Israel and U.S. “crusader castles” in the Middle East if they continue their
aggression against Palestine, Iran, and their allies.
At
the same time, the U.S. has escalated its tit-for-tat airstrikes against
Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. The Iraqi government has consistently protested
U.S. airstrikes against the militias as violations of Iraqi sovereignty. Prime
Minister Sudani’s military spokesman called the latest U.S. airstrikes “acts of
aggression,” and said: “This unacceptable act undermines years of
cooperation... at a time when the region is already grappling with the danger
of expanding conflict, the repercussions of the aggression on Gaza.”
After
its fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq killed thousands of U.S. troops, the United
States has avoided large numbers of U.S. military casualties for ten years. The
last time the U.S. lost more than a hundred troops killed in action in a year
was in 2013, when 128 Americans were killed in Afghanistan.
Since
then, the United States has relied on bombing and proxy forces to fight its
wars. The only lesson U.S. leaders seem to have learned from their lost wars is
to avoid putting U.S. “boots on the ground.” The U.S. dropped over 120,000
bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria in its war on ISIS, while Iraqis, Syrians,
and Kurds did all the hard fighting on the ground.
In
Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies found a willing proxy to fight Russia. But
after two years of war, Ukrainian casualties have become unsustainable and new
recruits are hard to find. The Ukrainian parliament has rejected a bill to
authorize forced conscription, and no amount of U.S. weapons can persuade more
Ukrainians to sacrifice their lives for a Ukrainian nationalism that treats
large numbers of them, especially Russian speakers, as second-class citizens.
Now,
in Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq, the United States has waded into what it hoped would
be another “U.S.-casualty-free” war. Instead, the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza
is unleashing a crisis that is spinning out of control across the region and
may soon directly involve U.S. troops in combat. This will shatter the illusion
of peace Americans have lived in for the last ten years of U.S. bombing and
proxy wars, and bring the reality of U.S. militarism and war-making home with a
vengeance.
Biden
can continue to give Israel carte-blanche to wipe out the people of Gaza, and
watch as the region becomes further engulfed in flames, or he can listen to his
own campaign staff, who warn that it’s a “moral and electoral imperative” to
insist on a cease-fire. The choice could not be more stark.
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