October 5, 2024
It is a terrible
thing to witness the obliteration of your homeland. When I think about what
we’ve lived through this past year, I feel like I’m going to lose my mind
completely. It is a shock that I’m still unable to absorb. I try not to think
at all, in the hope of maintaining my sanity until it ends.
The bodies of 88 unidentified Palestinians are buried in a mass grave in
Khan Younis, after Israeli forces returned them to Gaza severely
decomposed and without any identification, September 26, 2024. (Doaa
Albaz/Activestills)
Seconds go by
like hours. One night of this torment is difficult enough; our souls feel
suspended in time, until morning comes and we have to endure another day. We
search for one piece of news that might change our lives for the better. I long
for the day when we no longer hear the constant noise of bombs, warplanes, and
drones. The day the death stops.
At the
beginning, I was hopeful that the war would end within a week or two, like in
the past. It won’t last more than a month, I would assure people; if we can
just make it until then, we’ll be okay. I don’t know why I was so certain.
Perhaps I believed that the world would step in to stop this madness. Twelve
months later, we feel as though the world has simply accepted our suffering as
if it is the natural state of affairs.
In an instant,
my life was filled with terror. The school at which I used to teach has been
destroyed. Several of my students and colleagues have been killed, martyred
before I even had the chance to say goodbye. One colleague’s heart simply gave
out, unable to bear all of this. I lost contact with many of my friends.
No longer able
to do the job I love, I began channeling all of my remaining energy into
writing, trying to give voice to the experience of Gazans under Israel’s brutal
onslaught. But I am not an outsider: I face all of the same challenges that I
report on — from forced displacement to a lack of food, water, and electricity,
and the absence of healthcare.
For the first
eight months of the war, until we managed to buy a solar panel, my father would
walk from our home in the Al-Fukhari neighborhood, between Khan Younis and
Rafah, to the European Hospital in order to charge our phones, batteries, and
other devices. The lack of food and water has remained a difficult and
expensive problem: I never expected to have to pay $70 for a week’s supply of
water, or to carry heavy containers with my family just to fill our tanks.
For my mother,
who suffers from a bone and nerve disease, this year was spent in constant
pain. She cannot move without her medications, which we search for in every
hospital and pharmacy. When we do find them, we buy as much as we can. But
often we don’t, so she has reduced her intake to make the medication last
longer. We hear her groans, yet we’re helpless to alleviate her suffering.
Every time we
leave our house, we recognize the possibility that any one of us could return
in a shroud. We know that Israel’s incessant bombing means there is no safe
place in Gaza — even inside our home. But we thank God every moment that our
house is still standing and able to offer a partial sense of comfort.
My sister was
not so lucky. In December, her house in Khan Younis refugee camp was badly
damaged during Israel’s ground invasion, and she came to live with us. I tried
to console her but she was devastated by the loss of her home, robbed of the
future she was planning to build in it.
Clinging on to
home
I will never
forget the evening I narrowly escaped death. It was Aug. 16, and I was alone on
the second floor of my family’s house. My mother, father, and sister were
downstairs, and my brother was playing in the street with his friends.
I heard the
sound of the missile as it descended, and braced for the explosion so I would
know where to run. But I didn’t expect it to land so close — only a few meters
away from our house. Suddenly, dust, rocks, and shards of glass were flying
everywhere. I screamed for someone to save me. I still don’t know how I was
able to get down to the first floor; the thick smoke prevented me from seeing
anything around me. But when I made it outside, I grasped the extent of the
damage.
Our neighbors’
house had been completely destroyed. The surrounding houses were badly damaged
— including my uncle’s house, which was half destroyed. Our house was damaged
too: shrapnel sliced a large hole in our roof, all the windows were shattered,
and the water tank was in ruins. We were lucky to make it out alive, but I
still suffer from bruises on my back.
For me, home is
life. And all things considered, it is a miracle that we are still living in
ours. But we were twice forced to abandon it as Israel’s attacks closed in, and
each time we didn’t know if we would have a home to return to. It brought back
awful memories from the year 2000, when I was 8 years old, and the Israeli army
bulldozed our home to the ground; I was terrified that we would have to live
through this painful loss again.
Our first
displacement was during the early weeks of the war, when our area came under
heavy shelling. We spent a cold night in the parking lot of the European
Hospital; the corridors inside were already too crowded to accommodate us. I
didn’t sleep a single moment. I felt as though there was a huge rock on my
chest, weighing me down.
Then, on the
morning of July 2, we fled again after the Israeli army issued evacuation
orders for our neighborhood. We gathered our belongings into a truck and headed
to my sister’s damaged house, which we tried to fix up as best we could. But I
couldn’t bear the agony of being displaced from my own home, and so, despite
the danger, I returned after 10 days with my father and brother, and my mother
joined us soon after.
When we arrived
back home, our neighborhood was nearly empty. Many of our neighbors had fled to
Al-Mawasi, the so-called “humanitarian zone,” and wouldn’t return until around
two months later. On several occasions, with the incursion of Israeli forces into
the city, we were besieged in our immediate surroundings for a week or more,
unable to move freely without risking being shot.
Back in the
spring, my mother and I made the decision to leave Gaza. At first, she was
reluctant to travel, worried about leaving behind my sister and her two
children. But with the lack of treatment for her condition, she agreed that it
would be for the best.
Our escape plan
was in motion. We managed to register with a travel agency to leave through the
Rafah Crossing, our bags were packed, and we were merely waiting for our names
to appear on the exit list. On the night of May 6, our time finally arrived. Then
the unimaginable happened: the following morning, as we awaited confirmation
that we could leave the next day, the Israeli army invaded Rafah. The first
thing it did was occupy the Rafah Crossing, cutting off our last passageway to
the outside world.
Every day, we
wait for the crossing to reopen so that we will be allowed to leave. We dream
of that moment. But each day that I remain stuck here, I lose a little more
hope for the future of Gaza.
Joe Gill
By rights, this should be a moment
of sweet joy for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The work of 40
years is finally coming to fruition: the goal of “destroying” all the Middle
East “terror states” is close at hand.
Netanyahu has followed a single
strategy for around 40 years, outlined in a book he wrote in 1986 called
Terrorism: How the West Can Win (currently £143 or $187 on Amazon UK).
In it, Netanyahu defined terrorism
as the "deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the
innocent to inspire fear for political ends” - a pretty accurate description of
what Israel has done in Gaza for the last year and is now doing to Lebanon.
Netanyahu’s theory of “fighting
terror” relies, first and foremost, on the use of force. As he explained in a
Congressional hearing in 2002 in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq: “If you
take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you it will have enormous
positive reverberations on the region.”
Less than entirely convinced of
Netanyahu’s faith that regime change would bring a flowering of peace and
stability across the region, Representative John Tierney, a more critical voice
than you are likely to hear in the sycophantic Congress of today, responded:
“Is that speculation on your part or do you have some evidence?”
Netanyahu was unfazed: “I was asked
the same question in 1986. I had written a book in which I said the way to deal
with terrorist regimes, with terror, was to apply military force against them.”
“The way we did in Afghanistan?”
responded Tierney.
“What we saw was something else,”
the then-Israeli foreign minister replied. “First of all, we saw everybody
streaming out of Afghanistan; the second thing we saw was many Arab countries,
Muslim countries trying to side with America, trying to be OK with America.”
Afghanistan became a 20-year war
that ended in failure. However, Netanyahu’s comments about the Arab states were
not entirely without merit. The more the Israelis and the Americans tore
through the Middle East, from Iraq to Lebanon, Libya and Syria, the more the
remaining pro-western Arab states drew closer to the US and Israel.
Invasions and implosions
It is worth repeating what Netanyahu
said before the bloodshed and misery of the Iraq invasion unfolded to
appreciate the way his mind works: as a glorified real estate speculator who
wants to acquire as much land as possible by any means possible.
“The application of power is the
most important thing in winning the war on terrorism [for 'terrorism', read
resistance to Israeli annexation and US imperialism]. It’s like what are the
three principles of real estate, the three Ls: location, location, location.
The three principles of winning the war on terror are the three Ws: winning,
winning and winning. The more victories you amass, the easier the next victory
becomes.
"The first victory in
Afghanistan makes the next victory in Iraq that much easier. The second victory
in Iraq will make the third victory that much easier, but it may change the
nature of winning that victory. It may be possible to have implosions taking
place. I don’t guarantee it, Mr Tierney, but I think it makes it more likely.”
As it turned out, following the
disastrous invasion of Iraq and later Lebanon, there were “implosions” across
the whole region in 2011. These were not without risks for Israel, but the
counter-revolutions that ended the uprisings ensured that no destabilising
force would threaten Netanyahu’s vision of a reconfigured Middle East.
In fact, the post-2011 order was
more pro-Israel than the one that preceded it. This strategy culminated in the
2020 normalisation accords with four Arab states, implemented without any
concessions on Palestinian demands for self-determination.
Then, things fell apart.
Gates of hell
Netanyahu’s strategy of containing
the Palestinian issue by besieging Gaza and co-opting the Palestinian Authority
into a gradual colonisation of the West Bank, while seeking normalisation deals
with Arab states, ended on 7 October. Since 8 October, following the Hamas-led
attacks, Netanyahu and his allies have adopted a policy of all-out war against
the Palestinians and accelerated colonisation in the occupied territories.
With the recent assassination of
Hassan Nasrallah, Netanyahu has opened the gates of hell. Having killed the
Hezbollah leader in such a brazen, reckless manner, using dozens of 1-tonne US
bombs to destroy a whole block, and also killing a senior Iranian leader in the
same strike, an Iranian response was only a matter of time.
According to Lebanese Foreign
Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire just before
his assassination, with the Lebanese government informing the US and France,
who, in turn, said that Netanyahu had agreed to the plan.
This was a lie. The Iranian supreme
leader had warned Nasrallah days before his death that the Israelis were
planning to kill him and urged him to flee to Iran.
Speaking before the UN last week, on
the day he gave the go-ahead for the strike on Nasrallah, Netanyahu told the
gathered UN members that the global body was “a swamp of antisemitic bile”, “a
house of darkness” and home turf for the Palestinians.
“We are winning,” he bombastically
declared as delegates filed out in disgust, leaving a largely empty hall. The
strategy of “win, win, win” was looking less effective than he had claimed 22
years earlier. This was perhaps because after a year of total devastation and
tens of thousands killed, Israel was not even decisively victorious in Gaza.
This was the same venue where he had
sat as ambassador 40 years earlier, when Palestine had no seat. But since June
2024, it has been a full member of the UN, recognised as a sovereign state by
146 of the 193 member states. The General Assembly passed a resolution last
month demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine within the next 12
months by an overwhelming margin. The International Court of Justice (ICJ)
ruled the same in July. Israel has run out of time.
Netanyahu still has his one trump
card: the United States and its limitless supply of weapons and diplomatic
cover. As Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg puts it, for Israel, the rest of the
world does not exist, only Israel does. It is one, plus the US and a handful of
allies, versus the whole world.
"There is no place that the
long arm of Israel cannot reach," Netanyahu said after comparing Israel’s
seven-front war to the conquest Moses instructed his people to wage as they
entered Canaan from the plains of Moab. The seven fronts he identified with his
cartoon maps were Gaza, Judea and Samaria (occupied West Bank), Lebanon, Yemen,
Iraq, Syria and Iran. Israel is at war with half of the Middle East.
Crossing the Rubicon
Where are all the Muslim and Arab
countries that Netanyahu promised 22 years ago would be eager to side with
America and Israel as they wage war against all these enemies? Even favourites
such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have been decidedly wary of being
seen as too close to Israel as it destroys Gaza and rampages into Lebanon.
Perhaps this is just a blip, and
once Netanyahu chalks up another “victory”, they will file back into line. But
that victory is not assured. The early days of the Lebanon war suggest that the
decapitation strategy has not degraded Hezbollah's capacity to inflict lethal
damage and retreat on Israeli forces. The quagmire of Lebanon could yet swallow
up Netanyahu’s dreams.
And then there is Iran. Netanyahu is
closer than ever to his long-cherished dream of a regional war between Iran and
the US. This should be his moment of triumph. With its display of brute power
in Gaza, Lebanon and Tehran (with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in July)
having shocked and awed the region and world, surely now is the time of
victory?
Iran, with its 180 missiles raining
down on Tel Aviv and striking military bases in a targeted assault, has shown
that it can strike back. The absence of civilian casualties is seen through the
lens of Israel’s genocidal war strategy as a failure, but it was surely
intentional.
Just a day after Iran’s missile
attack, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, met with
Iran’s president in Doha and said: “We intend to close the book on
disagreements with Iran forever.” This is not the “new Middle East” that Netanyahu
has worked so long for. This is Israel’s nightmare. The emptiness of Israel’s
military power (no matter how many people it kills), and the full reality of
its isolation are now clear for all to see.
For Netanyahu, the gambler, a
full-scale Middle East war is the last roll of the dice. A Rubicon has been
crossed since Nasrallah's killing. But Netanyahu is no Julius Caesar and the
Litani River may still be Israel’s undoing.
Edward
Carver
October
4, 2024
About
1.2 million people have been displaced as Israeli forces have surged into
southern Lebanon and undertaken a bombing campaign in multiple parts of the
country, including in and around Beirut, leaving many people out in the street,
with shelters mostly full as of Friday.
Nasser
Yassen, Lebanon's environment minister, announced the displacement figure
Wednesday, saying that about 160,000 had landed in shelters. Roughly half the
displacements occurred over just a few days earlier in the week—both before and
after Israel ordered people in dozens of villages in southern Lebanon to
evacuate—according to Save the Children.
Most
of the country's 900 shelters are full, Rula Amin of the United Nations Office
of the High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday at a press conference in
Geneva, adding that some hotels and nightclubs were acting as makeshift
shelters.
Mathieu
Luciano of the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration said the
situation was dire.
"Roads
are jammed with traffic, people are sleeping in public parks, on the street,
the beach," he said, according to Reuters.
Bachir
Ayoub, Oxfam's Lebanon country director, said that the shelter system in
Lebanon, whose entire population is roughly 5.5 million, couldn't handle the
high numbers of refugees.
"The
shelter system is set to collapse if there is no peace on the horizon,"
Ayoub said in a statement.
"There
must be an end to this violence," he added. "All parties must stop
fighting. We need safe space to get people the aid they need."
Israel
and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia and political party, have traded airstrikes
and rocket fire for the last year, and the conflict has seen a major escalation
in the last two weeks. Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
last week, reportedly using 2,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs
manufactured in the U.S.; the attack flattened residential buildings and killed
at least six others, in addition to Nasrallah.
This
was one of series of airstrikes Israel has made on Beirut and its southern
outskirts—a campaign that continued Friday, with the possible use of more
"bunker buster" bombs.
The
death toll over the last two weeks in Lebanon is over 2,000, according to the
Lebanese health ministry.
Israel
launched a ground incursion in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, leading to close
range fighting with Hezbollah and mass displacement of the residents there.
"People
are coming to us traumatized," said Gheith Bittar, executive director of
SHiFT Social Innovation Hub, a Beirut-based group that partners with Oxfam.
"Most of them have lost their houses and relatives. Some of them were
scared because of the scale of bombardment as they were fleeing, and many
others because of their fear of the unknown coming to a new city."
The
most vulnerable members of Lebanese society are at the most risk, experts say.
For example, many women from low-income countries are domestic workers in
Lebanon and have been abandoned by their employers; some don't seek shelter or
aid for fear of being deported.
"They
don't have papers... and as a result, they are reluctant to seek humanitarian
assistance because they fear that they may be arrested and they may be
deported," Luciano said.
The
conflict has also led to the mass displacement of children, as Common
Dreamsreported last week.
More
than 300,000 people in Lebanon have fled to Syria in the last 10 days,
according toAl Jazeera. The group likely includes Syrians who had previously
fled war in their home country.
However,
the main route to Syria became far more difficult to take on Friday: Israel
bombed it, leaving a huge crater.
Lebanon's
hospitals have been overwhelmed and at least 28 on-duty Lebanese medics were
killed in just a 24-hour period this week, according to World Health
Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Qassam Muaddi
Israel killed 20
Palestinians in an airstrike on Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern West Bank
late on Thursday, October 3, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported. Several
children and an entire family were among the dead, as the strike targeted a three-floor
residential building in the center of the camp.
The strike,
conducted with an Israeli fighter jet using a heavy missile, was the first
strike of its kind in over 20 years. The Israeli army and intelligence said in
a joint statement that the strike targeted Zahi Oufi, described as a local
“Hamas commander” who was killed in the strike. Residents in Tulkarem told
Mondoweiss that the targeted location was a local cafe full of civilians, where
Oufi was at the time. The cafe was on the ground floor of a residential
building that housed several civilian apartments in the overcrowded refugee
camp.
“I was in the
camp just half an hour before the strike, playing billiards with some young men
from the camp,” a resident of the camp who preferred to remain unnamed told
Mondoweiss. “It was about 100 meters away from the place that was struck.”
The camp
resident detailed the events leading up to the strike and how it subsequently
unfolded. “One of the guys who was playing with me was a teenager named Arkan
Bilal. He left to buy something and never came back,” he explained. “I left to
go visit my wife’s family in the city [of Tulkarem], and on my way, I walked by
the [targeted] cafe and saw several men, including elderly men sitting inside
as usual, with children playing in the street just in front of it. Then I saw
Anwar Nuseimi, who lives in Jericho and was visiting his parents in Tulkarem
for a few days, and he waved hello to me.”
“As I left the
camp, I saw a fighter jet flying very high over the city,” he continued. “About
ten minutes after leaving the camp, a very loud explosion could be heard all
over the city. A friend told me that there was a strike in the camp.”
“I went back to
the camp, and the cafe had been completely destroyed, but the building was
still standing, although partially destroyed — the bomb had pierced two floors
before exploding in the cafe,” he continued to explain. “There were hundreds of
people trying to pull bodies and survivors from the rubble and looking for
their loved ones.”
Emptying the
camps
The eyewitness
continued to describe the aftermath, seeing a body hanging from electricity
cables and human bodies disfigured and “shredded into pieces.”
“They were
completely unrecognizable,” he detailed. “Then the names of the victims began
to be identified; one of them was Arkan, the boy I was playing billiards with
less than an hour ago. Another was Anwar, who was on his way to buy cigarettes
from the store right in front of the cafe when I saw him. Another was Majdi
Salem, a child who was playing in front of the cafe, and six were members of
the Abu Zahra family — a father, mother, two children ages 5 and 7, and both
grandparents, all of them killed in their house on the second floor.”
“We’ve been
living through the occupation’s raids for more than a year now, but this was
different,” he clarified. “We have become used to bulldozers breaking into the
camp and destroying streets and buildings. We’ve even grown used to the sound
of drones. But we haven’t seen a bombing from a fighter jet since the Second
Intifada.”
“People in
Tulkarem are still in shock,” he remarked.
Tulkarem has
been a main target of Israeli forces’ raids since October 7. The city, its
surrounding villages, and its two adjacent camps have lost 114 people to
Israeli fire since January in Israel’s attempt to stifle the spread of armed
resistance in the northern West Bank. Both Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps
have been the central target of Israeli military violence, leading to the
displacement of several families from their homes.
In August, the
Israeli army launched “Operation Summer Camps,” a widescale military campaign
against the armed resistance in the northern West Bank concentrated in the
cities of Tulkarem, Tubas, and Jenin.
“Since August,
Israeli forces have arrested hundreds of people and conducted field
interrogations with them,” Mohammad Abu Eid, a resident of Tulkarem city, told
Mondoweiss. “Those who were released were told to leave the camp until the end
of the raid.”
“Upon returning
to the camps, many of these people discovered that their homes were damaged,”
he said. “And they had to rent apartments in the city with the help of UNRWA,
the Palestinian Authority, and other NGOs.”
Abu Eid is a
member of the Jadayel Association, a local organization that distributes
humanitarian aid to the camp’s residents. “It seems that the occupation is
trying to empty the camps, but most people chose to stay and repair their
homes,” he explained. “We and other associations try to help them with food
packages and blankets, but it’s not enough. We need more help.”
Following the
massacre in Tulkarem refugee camp, the Palestinian Authority called upon the
international community and humanitarian organizations to “urgently intervene”
to prevent the crimes of the occupation. The UN Human Rights Office also
condemned the massacre, calling it a clear example of Israel’s “systematic
resort to lethal force in the West Bank that is frequently unnecessary,
disproportionate, and therefore unlawful.”
Thursday’s
massacre raises the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank by Israeli
forces or settlers since October 7 to 742. These include 163 children, 14
women, and 11 elderly. At least 5,750 have been wounded, with over 10,000
arrested. Israel has also destroyed 1,363 Palestinian properties in the West
Bank during the same period, leaving 4,571 Palestinians homeless.
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