Dozens remain
missing after a huge massacre committed by Israeli forces in central Gaza’s
Nuseirat refugee camp, which has consistently been a main target for bloody
attacks throughout Israel’s war against the strip.
At least 33 were
killed, with over 80 reported wounded or missing late on 12 December, according
to Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
“The Israeli
occupation committed three massacres against families in the Gaza Strip,
resulting in 40 martyrs and 98 injuries arriving at hospitals … There are still
a number of victims under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil
defense crews cannot reach them,” the Gaza Health Ministry said on 13 December
in an overall toll of the past 24 hours.
In total, over
100 were killed and injured in the Israeli attack on residential buildings
packed with civilians in the Nuseirat camp.
People were
still trying to clear the massive amount of rubble and search for more victims
on Friday.
Video footage
from right after the Israeli strikes on Nuseirat showed wounded children being
taken out of the wreckage of the targeted buildings.
The
Ramallah-based Foreign Ministry of the Palestinian Authority (PA) called the
Nuseirat massacre “a direct consequence of the international community's
failure to implement its resolutions and commitments, which in turn encourages
the occupation to escalate its crimes and continue its systematic destruction
of Gaza.”
Israeli
warplanes continued to launch violent raids across the Gaza Strip. “At least
three Palestinians were killed and several others injured in a series of
Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Friday morning,” WAFA news agency
reported.
The battered
Gaza Strip has been subject to a severe lack of humanitarian aid due to
Israel’s closure of all border crossings, as Tel Aviv has stepped up its
attacks and total siege – particularly in the north – where over 100,000 people
have been forcibly expelled and thousands killed alone.
The death toll
has surged to almost 45,000 Palestinians since the war began, with over 106,350
injuries.
Amnesty
International released a report on 5 December saying there is “sufficient”
evidence that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its war on
the Gaza Strip.
Tens of
thousands of Syrians from various minority groups have fled their villages and
made their way to the Lebanese border in fear of the extremist groups who just
took over Syria days ago after the lightning offensive that led to the fall of
president Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Around 90,000
Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon since the collapse of the Assad
government, according to a report released by Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar on
13 December – which cites security sources in Lebanon.
The official
number who entered Lebanon from Syria since Assad’s government fell on Sunday
does not exceed 7,000, excluding the
thousands of displaced people who entered via illegal crossings – bringing the
number closer to 90,000.
“The majority of
them are from minorities who were residing in areas controlled by the regime,
such as the vicinity of the Sayyida Zaynab shrine and the countryside of Homs
and Hama, all the way to the Lebanese border, and they decided to leave. Some
of them spoke of being subjected to threats, while others denied this, but they
have great concerns,” the security sources said.
A small number
of Syrians have resided in Beirut, while others have entered Lebanon’s eastern
Bekaa region. Many are also reported to still be stranded along the border.
The eastern
Lebanese city of Hermel has seen Syrians take refuge from the Qusayr, Matarba,
and Rablah areas in Syria, as well as Nubl and Zahraa – two Shia towns in the
Aleppo countryside that were besieged by Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, now known as
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the extremist forces which led the incursion on
Syria and entered Damascus on 8 December.
Some of the
displaced Syrians have reported being attacked or asked to leave by the
extremist militant groups.
Since the fall
of Damascus, HTS has publicly vowed that minority groups and all religious
sanctities would be protected by the new government appointed by the former
Al-Qaeda branch. While no mass slaughter of minorities has taken place, as seen
in previous years of the Syrian war, many are skeptical and fearful.
The Nusra Front
was responsible for many atrocities against Christians, Alawites, Shias, and
Druze – which included suicide bombings, executions, kidnappings,
indiscriminate shelling, and other war crimes.
The Turkish
proxy – the Syrian National Army (SNA) force – that also joined HTS in its
assault against Syria that began on 27 November has incorporated scores of ISIS
fighters and commanders into its ranks over the years.
Israeli tanks
penetrated deep into the Quneitra countryside overnight and entered the town of
Khan Arnabeh, one of the largest towns in the governorate, local sources
reported to Al Mayadeen on 13 December.
The sources
added that the Israeli tanks entered an abandoned former military base in Khan
Arnabeh, before withdrawing again.
Israeli forces
also issued warnings to the residents of villages in the western countryside of
Daraa to stay in their homes, Al Mayadeen's correspondent Reda al-Basha stated.
Israel has been
occupying additional land in southern Syria and the Golan Heights since Assad
was deposed on Sunday by extremist militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The group, led
by former Islamic State (ISI) commander Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who has
recently started going by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, received strong
foreign backing from the US, Turkiye, and Israel in its lighting campaign to
capture Syria's major cities, including Damascus.
Last night's
incursion came as Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to
“prepare to remain” throughout the winter in the UN-patrolled buffer zone in
the Golan Heights.
“Due to the
situation in Syria, it is of critical security importance to maintain our
presence at the summit of Mount Hermon, and everything must be done to ensure
the (army's) readiness on-site to enable the fighters to stay there despite the
challenging weather conditions,” Katz's spokesman said in a statement Friday.
Katz called the
return of the peaks of Mount Hermon in Syria to Israeli control “a moving
historical moment.”
“Netanyahu and I
visited the Golan Heights and saw the peaks of Mount Hermon in Syria, which
returned to our control after 51 years,” he added.
Katz made his
comments as footage emerged of Israeli Jewish settlers performing Talmudic
rituals in areas under Israeli army control inside Syria. The Israeli settler
movement is asking that the army “conquer and destroy” as much territory in
Syria and Lebanon as possible to pave the way for Jewish settlement.
A Dutch court
has rejected a request made by 10 pro-Palestinian organizations to halt the
Netherlands’ weapons exports to Israel and stop trade with illegal Israeli
settlements.
“The interim
relief court finds that there is no reason to impose a total ban on the export
of military and dual-use goods on the state,” the Hague district court said in
a statement on 13 December.
Those who filed
the case cited the staggering number of civilian casualties in Israel’s war on
the Gaza Strip and argued that the Dutch government – which is a signatory to
the 1948 Genocide Convention – has a
duty to take all measures possible to prevent genocidal Israeli actions.
They also cited
the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling in January this year, which
called to prevent genocidal acts.
The decision
comes nearly a month after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest
warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense
minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza.
Dutch Foreign
Minister Caspar Veldkamp told his parliament recently that Netanyahu would be
arrested if he entered the Netherlands. However, the country’s Prime Minister
Dick Schoof has said Netanyahu could still avoid arrest in the Netherlands.
“We have
obligations that come from the treaty on which the ICC is based, and we comply
with them. In light of that, we would have to see how we act when the Prime
Minister of Israel were to come to the Netherlands. There are possible
scenarios, also within international law, in which he would be able to come to
the Netherlands without being arrested," Schoof said in late November.
Several European
countries, such as Belgium, Italy, and Spain, along with Canada, have suspended
or imposed restrictions on arms sales and weapons deals with Israeli defense
firms.
Earlier this
year, an analysis written for the New Arab by Jonathan Fenton-Harvey said the
ICJ ruling in January “established a precedent in domestic courts among
Israel’s western allies,” which has prompted many to restrict or ban arms sales
that could be used in the violation of international law.
The battered
Gaza Strip has been subject to a severe lack of humanitarian aid due to
Israel’s closure of all border crossings. This comes as Tel Aviv intensifies
its attacks and enforces a total siege – particularly in the north – where over
100,000 people have been forcibly expelled and thousands killed.
The death toll
has surged to almost 45,000 Palestinians since the war began, with over 106,350
injuries.
At least 33
Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded in an Israeli attack on
residential buildings in central Gaza late on Thursday.
Amnesty
International released a report on 5 December saying there is “sufficient”
evidence that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its war on
the Gaza Strip.
Just in time for
the Al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) lightning conquest of Syria,
a western PR campaign was launched to rebrand the terror group’s leader, Abu
Mohammad al-Julani.
The BBC assured
their readers that Julani, now commonly referred to as Ahmed al-Sharaa – which
is his real name – had “reinvented himself,” while the Telegraph insisted that
the former deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is now “diversity
friendly.”
On 6 December,
just days before entering the capital Damascus, Julani sat down with CNN
journalist Jomana Karadsheh for an exclusive interview to explain his past.
“Julani says he
has gone through episodes of transformation through the years,” CNN wrote,
after he assured Karadsheh “no one has the right to eliminate” Syria’s
Alawites, Christians, and Druze.
But why was
Julani so eager to convince the American public that he had no plans to
exterminate Syria’s religious minorities? This question looms larger when
recalling the massacre of 190 Alawites in Latakia on 4 August 2013, and the
taking of hundreds more as captives.
Back then,
militants from HTS (then the Nusra Front), ISIS, and the Free Syrian Army (FSA)
attacked 10 villages, slaughtering civilians in ways documented by Human Rights
Watch: gunshot wounds, stabbings, decapitations, and charred remains. “Some
corpses were found in a state of complete charring, and others had their feet
tied,” the report stated.
Another useful
US asset
Fast forward to
recent years, and Julani’s “transformation” seems less about repentance and
more about utility. Despite HTS remaining on the US terror list – and an
American bounty of $10 million reserved for Julani himself – former US special
envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey, described the group as a strategic “asset” for
US operations in Syria.
Under the guise
of countering extremism, Washington pursued a dual strategy: enforcing crushing
economic sanctions on Syria – of the sort that killed 500,000 Iraqi children in
the 1990s – while ensuring its wheat-abundant
and oil-rich regions remain under US control.
Ambassador
Jeffrey admitted to PBS in March 2021 that Julani’s HTS was the “least bad
option of the various options on Idlib, and Idlib is one of the most important
places in Syria, which is one of the most important places right now in the
Middle East.”
But how did
Julani ascend to power in Idlib, which US official Brett McGurk described as
“the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11,” while failing to mention the
critical US role in bringing it about? His Nusra Front spearheaded the 2015
conquest under the banner of Jaish al-Fatah (the Army of Conquest), a coalition
that combined Nusra suicide bombers with Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters
equipped with CIA-supplied TOW missiles. Foreign Policy hailed the campaign’s
swift progress, crediting this synergy of jihadists and western arms.
Years later, US
official Brett McGurk would label Idlib “the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since
9/11.” Yet, the crucial role of US weapons and strategic aid in this outcome
went unmentioned.
Assistance from
Tel Aviv and Brussels too
This assistance
extended beyond arms: the Financial Times (FT) reported that in response, EU
foreign ministers “lifted an oil embargo against Syria to allow rebels to sell
crude to fund their operation.”
While the FSA
claimed control of the oil fields, activists openly acknowledged that the Nusra
Front was the true beneficiary, trucking barrels to Turkiye for refining or
export to Europe. The arrangement netted Nusra millions before ISIS seized the
fields a year later.
Academic and
Syria expert Joshua Landis noted the importance of controlling the oil fields,
explaining that “Whoever gets their hands on the oil, water, and agriculture
holds Sunni Syria by the throat” and that “the logical conclusion from this
craziness is that Europe will be funding Al-Qaeda.”
Behind the
scenes, western and regional powers facilitated Julani’s ascent. Israeli
airstrikes supported Nusra during clashes with Syrian forces, while outgoing
Israeli Army Chief Gadi Eisenkot admitted to supplying “light weapons” to rebel
groups – essentially acknowledging what the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) had been
reporting for years to “discredit the rebels as stooges of the Zionists.”
Previous reports
in the Wall Street Journal showed that Israel had for years provided
humanitarian and medical aid to “rebels” in southern Syria, including by
bringing Nusra fighters across the border into Israel for treatment.
In an interview
with The American Conservative in border village Beit Jinn, militants revealed
that Israel had been paying salaries – to the tune of $200,000 per month – for
the entire year before HTS troops were expelled from the area by the SAA and
fled to Idlib.
Meanwhile, the
US oversaw a “cataract of weaponry” to Syria’s opposition, as described by the
New York Times. Though publicly earmarked for the FSA, these arms frequently
ended up in Nusra’s hands.
Julani’s
meteoric rise began years earlier, seeded by his ties to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and
its Jordanian leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The latter, whose activities
conveniently justified the US invasion of Iraq, operated with tacit US
acknowledgment.
Julani followed
a similar trajectory, emerging as a key player in the Nusra Front, which
conducted bombings in Damascus and other cities in 2011 and 2012, with attacks
initially misattributed to the Syrian government.
A salafist
principality
Why did the EU
choose to “fund Al-Qaeda” by dropping oil sanctions? Why did the US provide a
“cataract of weaponry” to Nusra?
An August 2012
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report revealed that the US and its regional
allies supported the establishment of a “Salafist principality” in eastern
Syria and western Iraq as part of the effort to depose president Bashar
al-Assad and divide the country.
The DIA report
said a radical religious mini-state exactly of the sort later established by
ISIS as its “caliphate” was the US goal, even while admitting that the
so-called Syrian revolution seeking to topple Assad’s government was being
driven by “Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaeda.”
The seeds of the
Salafist principality were planted when late ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi
dispatched Julani to Syria in August 2011 – at that time, Baghdadi’s group was
known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).
Prominent
Lebanese journalist Radwan Mortada, who was embedded with Al-Qaeda fighters
from Lebanon in Syria, met Julani in the central Syrian city of Homs at this
time. Mortada informs The Cradle that Julani was being hosted by the Farouq
Brigades, an FSA faction based in the city.
Contrary to
media reports, Farouq commanders insisted the group was not comprised of
defectors from the Syrian army. Instead, they said Farouq was a sectarian
Salafist group that included fighters who had fought for Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda in
Iraq (AQI) after the 2003 US invasion.
A few months
later, Julani and his fighters secretly entered the war against the Syrian
government by carrying out multiple terror attacks. In Damascus on 23 December
2011, Julani sent suicide bombers to target the General Security Directorate in
Damascus, killing 44, including civilians and security personnel.
Two weeks later,
on 6 January 2012, Julani sent another suicide bomber to detonate explosives
near a bus in the Midan district of Damascus, killing some 26 people.
The
establishment of the “Support Front for the People of the Levant,” or the Nusra
Front, was revealed after a videotape was provided to journalist Mortada
showing Julani and other masked men announcing the group’s existence and
claiming responsibility for the attacks, which opposition activists had blamed
on the Syrian government itself.
The great prison
release
Julani’s rise,
however, was facilitated years earlier. In what has been dubbed the “Great
Prison Release of 2009,” the US military freed 5,700 high-security detainees
from Bucca Prison in Iraq. Among these was Julani, alongside future ISIS
leaders like Baghdadi. Craig Whiteside of the US Naval War College described
Camp Bucca as “America’s Jihadi University,” emphasizing the role of these
releases in revitalizing the Islamic State of Iraq – which had been nearly
defeated by Sunni tribal uprisings.
“The United
States is often unjustly blamed for many things that are wrong in this world,
but the revitalization of ISIL [ISIS] and its incubation in our own Camp Bucca
is something that Americans truly own,” Whiteside wrote.
“The Iraqi
government has many enemies, and the United States helped put many of them out
on the street in 2009. Why?” Whiteside wondered, not realizing they would be
sent to Syria as part of the US’s covert war to topple Bashar al-Assad.
More alarming
today is the prospect of HTS releasing thousands of ISIS fighters from
US–Kurdish prisons in Syria's north to expand their ranks. It wouldn't be the
first time. This past July, American-backed Kurds released around 1,500 ISIS
prisoners from detention camps, which the US military describes as an ISIS
“army in waiting.”
The question of
who Abu Mohammad al-Julani is – his motivations, ideologies, and
transformations – is ultimately less important than what he represents. Over
the past two decades, one fact remains consistent: Julani is a tool of US and
Israeli strategy.
From his early
days in Iraq to his rise as the leader of the Nusra Front and later HTS, Julani
has played a pivotal role in advancing the geopolitical interests of his
benefactors. Whether branded a terrorist or a “blazer-wearing” moderate, his
actions have consistently served as a means to destabilize Syria and the wider
West Asian region.
Julani’s
“reinvention” is no more than a veneer designed to mask the enduring reality of
his role: a strategic asset in a game where ideology is secondary to power.
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