By Ahmed AL-SAMMAK

When Imad Alhour, 33, realized it was time to get admitted to the closest hospital treating COVID-19, he had to first figure out the safest route to avoid airstrikes. Next, he needed to hail a taxi.

Alhour lives in Gaza City and fell sick with coronavirus symptoms a few days before a violent escalation broke out between Israel and Gaza in May. His wife, Imran Namroti, 30, also had trouble breathing and a high fever. Neither had been tested, as Gaza’s scant laboratory supplies limits testing to only the sickest patients.

“We did not call any ambulances because they were just on duty to help people who were injured, and to find who was killed,” said Alhour.

The couple found a babysitter for their three children, their ages range between 3 and 8 years old. Once the kids were settled, they headed outside. After one hour of waiting, they flagged down a car.

“Finally,” Alhour said, “we managed to arrive at Al-Aqsa hospital,” one of the largest medical facilities in Gaza. “To avoid airstrikes,” they drove on “side streets, not through Salah al-Din Road, which is considered as the main highway in the Gaza Strip.”

The first doctor who treated the couple said they were not ill enough to get a COVID-19 test. “He refused to take any swabs from me and my wife and told us that they had only done this for extremely serious cases,” Alhour said. “I called my friend who works in the hospital and he helped us and took swabs.”

Their rapid test results “were supposed to take 30 minutes but it took 90 minutes because the hospital was full of people with injuries and the doctors were too busy,” he said.

Although the results were positive, after six hours the couple was released and sent home. The hospital was overwhelmed with injuries and critical COVID-19 patients and did not have the capacity to further treat them.

Over the next few days, their maladies worsened.

“We were suffering from COVID-19 symptoms and we could not reach the hospital again or to any doctor because of the heavy bombardments,” Alhour said. “You cannot imagine how difficult that was.” Ordinarily, he would comfort their children during deafening blasts. Gaza has experienced four major escalations with Israel since 2008, although this was the first that coincided with a pandemic.

“I did not know if my children had caught the virus or not since they had not had any symptoms,” he said.

“They used to scramble to me and my wife when hearing bombardments,” he said, adding the family initially tried to socially distance but in the end, made a decision to sleep in one room together during the more turbulent nights with overnight airstrikes. “I knew that being close to them was wrong but they were terrified of bombardments, so I had to be close to them and assure them that everything will be okay.”

“The coronavirus was not the priority for me, it was my children’s lives,” he said.

Overcrowded conditions

During the fighting that lasted from May 10 to May 21, Israeli forces killed 260 Palestinians, including 66 children, and damaged 50,000 houses, completely destroying 1,255 homes. At least 260 schools and 33 medical facilities also sustained damage. A joint assessment from the United Nations, European Union, and the World Bank found the total physical destruction cost $380 million, and Gaza incurred $190 million in economic losses. Recovery needs have been estimated at up to $485 million during the first 24 months.

At the height of hostilities, at least 120,000 Palestinians were displaced, one of them was Mohamoud Ghbayen, a 37-year-old father of five children. He sent his family to stay with relatives at the outset of violence. His home is in Beit Lehia in northern Gaza and a short way from the fence that separates the coastal enclave from Israel. Just beyond the fence, Israeli tanks fired artillery shells into the residential area.

The following day, “the Israeli army bombed my house with a warning missile,” Ghbayen said. “After 10 minutes, they decimated it with an F-16 warplane.”

With no place to live, Ghbayen went to a shelter in Shati beach refugee camp near the Mediterranean Sea. It was a repurposed school run by the United Nations. The rooms were cramped with two to three families in one of 40 classrooms. He, and eventually his kids who joined him there, where they slept on thin mattresses on the ground. “Until now I can only wonder why they destroyed my house since I am only a civilian with no military connection.”

Ghbayen noted that when he arrived at the school, there were around 300 people including women, children, and people with disabilities there, “with only six toilets to use.”

Mohamoud Ghbayen with his family at a shelter in a UNRWA school in Shati beach camp. (photo: Ahmed al-Sammak)

“If any of us were infected, all of us would have caught the virus. Our situation was really dreadful,” he said, later adding that “the coronavirus is not our [most pressing] issue now. All we want is to reconstruct our home.”

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, gave them “one meal per person, per day” and “face masks, sanitizers, water, and bread.” Although he stressed that no protective measures and social distancing were practiced.

“People here lost their homes and they are deeply depressed,” he described. “The coronavirus did not matter to them.”

“I did my best to not have close contact with others, but I had to,” he explained. “The school is like a prison. My wife, Manal Ghbayen who is 32 years old, my children and I, and everyone here has psychological pressure.”

“We are fed up with these circumstances,” Ghbayen insisted. “We cannot handle this anymore, may Allah help us.”

Weeks after a ceasefire was brokered by Egypt, there are still 320 Palestinians at two UNRWA schools, said Adnan Abu Hasna, UNRWA’s media advisor in Gaza.

“UNRWA has been giving out masks, sanitizers, psychological support, and food,” he said, adding, “the situation was very serious as some schools were too crowded.”

Post-war Covid-19 wave

“The war badly affected the situation of the pandemic in Gaza,” said Dr. Majdy Dahir, the director of the preventive medicine department at the ministry of health in Gaza. His agency’s headquarters were hit in an airstrike and the debris from the impact caused severe damage to the main COVID-19 laboratory in the next building over, shutting it down for nine days.

There are only two labs in Gaza that process PCR tests. Rapid tests are run out of four governmental satellite locations and 22 UNRWA health centers.

In early May, the coastal enclave was in recovery from a second wave. Now, Dahir estimated a third is on the rise, with more than 90% of all new COVID-19 cases in the occupied Palestinian territory coming from Gaza. Yet according to the World Health Organization, only 93,673 of Gaza’s population of just over 2 million are vaccinated.

According to data from the ministry of health, in the immediate aftermath of hostilities in May, Gaza’s positivity rate spiked to nearly 30%.

When asked if Gaza’s ministry of health can tackle the third wave, a spokesperson for the ministry, Ashraf Qedra explained: “We have 500 beds for COVID-19 patients which were not all occupied during the first and second wave.”

According to the ministry of health on Thursday, 115,483 Palestinians in Gaza have tested positive for COVID-19. There are currently 1,440 active cases and 1,078 have died from COVID-19 related causes.

mondoweiss.net

It is interesting to observe that the many atrocities carried out by Israel and its surrogates in Lebanon and Palestine through the years, which have killed thousands of civilians, have not aroused the ire that is being witnessed as a result of the recent attack on Gaza, which killed less than 300. That many of the dead were children and infrastructure in the already devastated Strip was deliberately targeted explains part of the anger, but there is something more fundamental brewing. People, even in the brainwashed United States and Britain, are tired of Israel’s brutality and have become immune to the excuses made for it by those in power. How many times can Nancy Pelosi repeat “Israel has a right to defend itself” when television viewers can themselves see the disparity of the punishment that is being meted out to Palestinians who have virtually no means of defending themselves? And how can Joe Biden and his cast of foreign policy imposters continue to assert that Israel was attacked when it is clear to many that the Jewish state deliberately provoked the fighting by its encouragement of armed mobs of settlers marching through Palestinian neighborhoods and calling for “death to Arabs,” not to mention the home demolitions and expulsions taking place to make room for Jews and the deliberate disruption of religious services at the al-Aqsa mosque on one of Islam’s holiest days?

In truth, Israel’s track record since it was created is not good. More than 800,000 Palestinians were expelled during the state’s founding, still more since the West Bank and Golan Heights were “acquired” in a war of aggression in 1967, and an estimated 100,000 Palestinians and Arabs have been killed by its army and police since 1948. The attack on Gaza last month featured the deliberate targeting of homes that wiped out entire families. Meanwhile, the much reviled “terrorist group” Hamas was established in 1988 with the support of Israeli intelligence to undercut the authority of the PLO, but now its alleged “extremism” serves the Israeli government as a useful tool to discredit the entire Palestinian freedom movement. Ironically, of course, Hamas has now morphed into the national liberation movement for the Palestinian people.

There have been large demonstrations in Western cities demanding Palestinian rights and an end to the oppression, though little of that has been reported in the U.S. media in particular for the usual reason, i.e. organized Israel Lobby pressure combined with Jewish ownership and management of many media outlets. The uncritical relations that most Western capitals have with Jerusalem, based largely on fear of being labeled anti-Semitic, are being scrutinized more than ever. In the U.S., Harvard Professor of International Relations Stephen Walt has called for an end to the “special relationship” with Washington because “The benefits of U.S. support no longer outweigh the costs.” Actually Walt is wrong as the so-called benefits received from completely uncritical support of Israel NEVER outweighed the costs to the United States.

And ordinary working people are also beginning to share the outrage. Last week the longshoremen’s union in Oakland refused to unload a ship belonging to the Israeli Zim line while other unions have passed motions condemning the Israeli apartheid state. There have been calls to extend the boycott of Israeli products to include the businesses owned by those Jewish billionaires who are known to be major supporters of Israel and its lobby. Black spokesmen have observed that their tactical “alliance” with Jewish groups that excuse the brutal Israeli behavior towards the Palestinians is not any longer acceptable.

Even the national media took a step back as they covered the recent slaughter of Gazans. The new New York Times correspondent in Israel Patrick Kingsley has to everyone’s surprised delivered some remarkably honest reporting. In short, overall, the tide may be turning.

Perhaps the clearest indication that the love affair with Israel might be ending comes from the U.S. Congress, where the mudslinging over a foreign policy issue has reached an intensity not seen in many years. Israel’s surrogates and most Jewish groups have joined in the fray, responding fiercely to criticism of Israel that actually appears to have gained some traction. The latest smearing of critics of Israel began in response to a comment by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who questioned Secretary of State Tony Blinken during a June 7^th House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, asking what the State Department response would be to the International Criminal Court’s investigation of alleged crimes by the Taliban and the U.S. in Afghanistan as well as Hamas and Israel in the Gaza conflict.

Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, followed up with a tweet asserting that “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.” She included the video of her questioning and stated that “I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.” It was a good question, forcing Blinken to lie about how they could obtain accountability by resorting to Israeli and American rule-of-law in the courts.

The friends of Israel quickly struck back. A joint statement signed on by twelve Democratic Party congressmen who self-identified as Jewish, accused her of “Equating the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban is as offensive as it is misguided. Ignoring the differences between democracies governed by the rule of law and contemptible organizations that engage in terrorism at best discredits one’s intended argument and at worst reflects deep-seated prejudice. The United States and Israel are imperfect and, like all democracies, at times deserving of critique, but false equivalencies give cover to terrorist groups. We urge Congresswoman Omar to clarify her words placing the U.S. and Israel in the same category as Hamas and the Taliban.”

Congressman Brad Sherman, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, signed the joint statement and also issued one of his own: “It’s not news that Ilhan Omar would make outrageous and clearly false statements about America and Israel. What’s newsworthy is that she admits Hamas is guilty of ‘unthinkable atrocities.’ It’s time for all of Israel’s detractors to condemn Hamas. And it’s time for all those of good will to reject any moral equivalency between the U.S. and Israel on one hand, and Hamas and the Taliban on the other.”

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also got into it, tweeting “Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitic & anti-American comments are abhorrent. Speaker Pelosi’s continued failure to address the issues in her caucus sends a message to the world that Democrats are tolerant of anti-Semitism and sympathizing with terrorists. It’s time for the Speaker to act.” The National Republican Congressional Committee also demanded that Omar be stripped of her House committee assignments due to her anti-Semitism and three GOP House members issued on Monday a press release condemning Omar and her associates for “trafficking in anti-Semitic rhetoric” and “inciting anti-Semitic attacks.” One of the three, Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, also dubbed the so-called Squad group consisting of Omar and her friends the “Hamas Caucus.”

Omar tweeted a response for her Democratic Party critics, writing that “It’s shameful for colleagues who call me when they need my support to now put out a statement asking for ‘clarification’ and not just call. The islamophobic tropes in this statement are offensive. The constant harassment & silencing from the signers of this letter is unbearable.” Omar was supported by Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American from Michigan, who tweeted “I am tired of colleagues (both D+R) demonizing @IlhanMN. Their obsession with policing her is sick. She has the courage to call out human rights abuses no matter who is responsible. That’s better than colleagues who look away if it serves their politics… Once again disappointed in my colleagues quicker to condemn @Ilhan than they are to condemn the human rights abuses of the apartheid state of Israel.”

Fellow progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added that making Omar a target for genuine threats was not a way to resolve the issue. She tweeted “Pretty sick & tired of the constant vilification, intentional mischaracterization, and public targeting of @IlhanMN coming from our caucus. They have no concept for the danger they put her in by skipping private conversations & leaping to fueling targeted news cycles around her.”

Omar did in fact receive death threats. She described one of them in a tweet: “Every time I speak out on human rights I am inundated with death threats. Here is one we just got. ‘Muslims are terrorists. And she is a raghead n*****. And every anti-American communist piece of s*** that works for her, I hope you get what’s f***ing coming for you.’”

Nevertheless, something like an apology was forthcoming from the outnumbered Omar who surrendered to demands for clarification with an assertion that she was “not [making] a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel. I was in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems.” This led too something like forgiveness from the upper echelons of the Democratic Party, led by Pelosi, who responded “Legitimate criticism of the policies of both the United States and Israel is protected by the values of free speech and democratic debate. And indeed, such criticism is essential to the strength and health of our democracies. But drawing false equivalencies between democracies like the U.S. and Israel and groups that engage in terrorism like Hamas and the Taliban foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all.”

Omar has often been in trouble with powerful Jews in the Democratic Party as well as with her party’s senior management. The House even passed a resolution in 2019 that was aimed at her, condemning anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia after she described the Israel lobby as a “political influence in this country that says it is OK to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” She also was attacked for tweeting that American political support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” described as anti-Semitic because it implied that some Jewish oligarchs with names like Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson were using money to buy influence. Both of her comments were, of course, completely correct.

The back and forth over Gaza is revealing in that it shows how Israel’s real power operates in Congress, shamelessly with Jewish congressmen openly demonstrating their ultimate loyalty to Israel to include grossly misrepresenting the reality that exists currently in the Middle East. That reality is that Israel is essentially an invasive colonial power that has stolen identity and nationhood from the original inhabitants of the region, continues to regard them as chattels with no or limited rights, and uses its military might enhanced by the United States to mete out punishment directed against them as it sees fit. Israel is the only nation that commits war crimes on a regular basis as it frequently attacks its neighbors, most particularly Syria, without so much as a squeak coming from the United States.

When the occupied and abused Palestinians object and fight back to the best of their ability as they did from Gaza, which they are entitled to under international law, they are massacred and described conveniently as “terrorists.” No, Israel might be considered a form a democracy for Jews but the non-Jews ground down under its heel have a much different perception. Nor does its judiciary protect non-Jews as its rule of law is only designed to protect Jews. The United States is a similar faux democracy in that its politicians are so easily bought and manipulated, and it too had committed its share of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. So Ilhan Omar was right on all points, but still she had to surrender to the force majeure of Israel and its host of allies in the U.S. Congress.

In 2013, the UNDP warned of the increasing occurrence of dangerous heatwaves in Palestine over the coming years as a result of climate change. Indeed, at the end of August 2020, the Palestine Meteorological Office issued a warning about an impending heatwave, where the temperature ranged between 5-to-9 degrees above its yearly average.

As climate change continues to destroy the planet, Palestinians are struggling to manage its dramatic effects in great part due to the Israeli occupation. In August 2020, Israel blocked fuel entry to Gaza, which shut down its only power plant, and since then, the shortage has been ongoing.

Today, with roughly four hours of electricity per day in Gaza, and with the Israeli assault, sewage treatment plants are not functioning properly, which leads to dumping waste in the Mediterranean Sea. While blockades on essential resources are not new to Palestinians in Gaza, the ongoing fuel shortage will continue to impact hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and water distribution facilities.

The besieged enclave also must deal with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which has been spreading at an alarming rate, especially during the recent Israeli aggression which displaced tens of thousands of people to crowded spaces, including in relatives’ homes and in schools, thus increasing the risk of spreading and contracting the virus. With another hot summer marked by Covid-19 and the widespread destruction wrought by Israel’s recent assault fast approaching, Palestinians in Gaza are concerned for their safety.

Dangerous Summer Ahead

Palestinians in Gaza historically escaped heatwaves by going to the beach and other open spaces away from their cramped houses. This is no longer an option with the Covid-19 lockdowns, and with the latest Israeli assault, which has left countless buildings, homes, and neighborhoods in rubble.

Beach in Gaza City, July 2006. (Wikimedia Commons)

This summer, with limited electricity, Palestinians in Gaza whose homes survived Israel’s attacks will be unable to use mitigation measures such as fans, cold water and maintaining food in the fridge. The latter will leave families with higher food spoilage, necessitating that they buy food supplies in crowded markets on a daily basis, increasing both their risk of spreading and contracting the coronavirus, as well as their financial burden.

With nearly one-third of the population of Gaza facing deep poverty, a soaring unemployment rate, continuous salary cuts, and scarce access to safe water, Palestinians in Gaza are left with minimal resources to respond to the harsh realities of climate change.

Beyond financial hardships, Palestinians in Gaza face concerns over their health as temperatures rise. Among the most vulnerable are the elderly, who are highly susceptible to heat-related illnesses. In the months ahead, the elderly in Gaza will fight for survival from the dual threats of Covid-19 and the summer’s heat. Added to this is the increased fragility of the healthcare sector in Gaza which is already unable to withstand the rise in Covid-19 infection rates. Indeed, last month, Israel demolished Gaza’s only Covid-19 testing center.

August 2014: Palestinian residents walk beside a damaged UN school at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip after the area was hit by Israeli shelling. (UN Photo)

Women – and especially pregnant women – are also particularly vulnerable. As those who often shoulder unpaid care and domestic work, Palestinian women have reported an increase in these responsibilities since the start of the pandemic, which skyrocketed during the heatwave of August 2020.

As a result, and with limited water and electricity, women in Gaza reported an increase in household tensions and psychological stresses associated with caregiving and housework, including bathing and cleaning their children, trying to keep their children hydrated and caring for those with heat-related illnesses. Following the latest attacks on Gaza, it is certain that women will continue to bear the brunt of the psychological stresses of their households.

What Palestinians in Gaza Need

Lasting change necessitates an intersectional approach to support Palestinian families in withstanding climate change, including through connecting with other oppressed groups throughout the world to exchange tools and tactics for resistance and survival.

Climate change analysis must be mainstreamed at the government, non-governmental and donor levels. Access to climate-related information should be accompanied by guidelines on mitigating the effects of extreme weather conditions and it should be communicated to households.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health should issue guidelines to families on how to deal with heat-related illnesses within their homes. There must be proper documentation of heat-related illnesses by the Ministry of Health in order to clarify, with evidence and facts, the health consequences of climate change on Palestinians.

Climate mitigation measures and efforts to redistribute care responsibilities from the individual to the state must be mainstreamed in the plans, strategies, and projects funded and implemented by donors and developmental agencies in Gaza. This consideration is crucial in marginalized areas where weak infrastructure exacerbates extreme weather impacts on people’s health, and places more caregiving responsibilities on women.

The international community must increase its pressure on Israel to end its assaults on Gaza, and to lift its siege so that life-saving equipment and assistance can enter Gaza.

Al-Shabaka via consortiumnews.com

Many Israeli commentators are bracketing Trump with Netanyahu. Veteran correspondent Ben Caspit, for instance, asks: Is Netanyahu “a Middle Eastern clone of Donald Trump?”. He continues: “The worst could still be ahead. Barring a last-minute change, the Knesset is scheduled to swear in the new government June 13 … Will Netanyahu in a last-ditch effort, engineer a Capitol-style invasion in Jerusalem? Will he call on his followers to march on the Knesset to prevent being unseated? … his Likud party has issued statements in English, informing the world that deposing Netanyahu means turning Israel into a dictatorship and comparing his designated successor Yamina leader Naftali Bennett to the leaders of North Korea”.

To be fair, Caspit answers his question with a ‘both yes and no’. But actually, the asking of this question is a pure ‘red herring’. Superficially, some parallels might have merit; but to frame the issue in this way is disingenuous, and misses the key point that Israel’s situation is far graver, than widely understood.

Israel has painted itself into a tight corner. Trump certainly helped Netanyahu with this, but the dynamic was as much a child of Clinton-Obama myopia, as that of Trump. Netanyahuism has been a phenomenon many years in the making; although undoubtedly was accelerated, and put on steroids, during the Trump era, when the power and platform of the U.S. government became the echo chamber of the Israeli Right.

So, what precisely, is the smoke-screen of ‘is Netanyahu channelling Trump’ obscuring? It obscures the reality that Israel has turned decisively Right – across the political spectrum. This may be described as Bibi’s personal ‘doing’, but it is no longer a matter of Netanyahu’s personal charisma. Israel has become structurally right-wing. It has become culturally right-wing, too. No longer the secular, ‘socialist’ Kibbutzim of yore (long since marginalised): Israel’s military and political leadership rather, is now predominantly Religious-Nationalist and Settler. This represents a ‘cultural revolution’ largely unnoticed in Europe.

Chen Artzi Sror, writing in Yedioth Ahoronot, observes that whilst formerly, the biggest fear gripping religious Zionists had been that of surrendering territory. The fallout from the 2005 evacuation of the Gaza settlements, pushed the settler community to expand inside Israel. Thus began the move of young religious Zionists to embed themselves into policy making, communication and government.

The early cultural components of hanging on to territory have however, undergone a revolutionary shift: Settling the land of Israel is no longer the main issue occupying religious Zionism. “Most of the Israeli public holds right-wing positions when it comes to issues of security and politics – and the West Bank is positively brimming with settlements that will most likely never be evacuated”, Sror writes. “These once solitary localities have become somewhat bourgeoise … Now, significantly, the ultra-Orthodox nationalists pursue something quite different – a worldview that strictly opposes what they call “post-modernism””.

Which is to say, “Anything that seeks to change the perception of family life and advance gender equality and equal treatment of non-Jews is perceived to be an existential threat to the very foundations on which the Jewish state was built” [emphasis added]. This dictates that the ‘People of Israel’ must be saved from foreign influence – and more particularly from Leftists: “Not those [Leftists] who want to evacuate settlements in order for a Palestinian state to arise, but those who march in the Gay Pride Parade and believe in equality for men and women. The vast majority of religious Zionists are more liberal than this, and as such send their children to pre-military yeshivas and youth movements. But it is in these very places – that such extremely conservative worldviews are often introduced”.

The tensions here, with a Leftist, Biden Admin embracing BLM and LBGTQ, hardly need emphasis.

The incitement amongst the Israeli Right has become very, very aggressive. Though Netanyahu loyalists are attacking Bennett and his Yamina party MPs, they largely believe in the same causes: settlement building, annexation of much of the West Bank, and Jewish supremacy over Palestinian citizens of Israel – “Yet they now feel galaxies apart”.

Netanyahu promotes a clear message that his new rivals are “traitors” who have betrayed the “people of Israel”. He has called Bennett a “habitual liar”; the March election he described as the “biggest election fraud in the history of the country”; and he lambasted the so-called “deep state” in Israel for pushing to form a “dangerous left-wing government” backed by “terror supporters”.

Israeli analyst, Meron Rapoport, notes that whilst Netanyahu built his political base on extreme polarisation, the discourse of hatred now is eating alive the Israeli Right. And, because Netanyahu believes his only way to maintain power is to call Bennett a traitor, as his supporters threaten to kill Knesset members, the atmospherics are being compared to the days prior to November 1995, when Israeli Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv. Paradoxically, since these leaders hail from the same right-wing camp and were close to each other, the anger and sense of betrayal are even stronger.

What is the point here? Even the long-serving U.S. ‘peace process’ negotiator, Dennis Ross, writes that at this point, “direct talks on the permanent status issues will go nowhere—the politics on each side, the real gaps on the substance, and the disbelief of their publics guarantee nothing would be achieved”. In other words, talks between Palestinians and Israel are pointless. The Israeli polity effectively is self-locked into entropy. There is no political way out from this very tight corner. Ross suggests that Biden should cynically ‘park’ the Palestinian issue, treating it as a PR exercise, without investing into it much political capital.

The strategic shift Rightwards in Israeli politics – which marks a tectonic change – is understood in Washington to have foreclosed on the two-state solution – and on the one-state solution, too, as a one-state solution is clearly incompatible with Religious Zionism’s ‘post-modern’ shift, and contradicts too, the very essence of Religious Zionism. And so we have Grid lock.

Ross’s comments reflect another entropy – that which is arising within the U.S. For while U.S. state apparatus is locked onto the old mantras of ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ and Hamas is the ‘threat’, and Congressional élites remain lock-solid, America is experiencing its own tectonic shift. Two surprising polls were released recently: Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP) commissioned the Barna Group to survey evangelical Christians about their views on Israel/Palestine.

The poll suggests support for Israel has dropped considerably: only 33.6% of young evangelicals (between the ages of 18 and 29) said they support Israel; 24.3% said they support Palestine; 42.2% said they support neither side in the conflict. Compare this survey to one carried out in 2018 – then a staggering 69% of young evangelicals said they supported Israel.

And it is the same story amongst young Americans more generally: A recent Harvard-Harris poll of registered voters asked: “Who is more responsible for the violence in the Mideast – Israel or Hamas?”. It produced the following results: (18-34 year olds): Israel: 60%, Hamas: 40%; (35-49 year olds): Israel: 51% Hamas: 49%. (Note that the poll specified Hamas, rather than Palestinians – and Hamas is labelled terrorist in U.S. mainstream media, which makes the outcome even more significant)

The Democrats are already freezing solid, committed to old mantra – whilst young progressives, such as AOC, are snapping at Biden’s heels, asking about Palestinian rights. Western politicians can ‘talk the talk’ of two-states, but it is ‘empty talk’. They have no idea what to do next, and Israel’s success in weaponising ‘anti-Semitism’ (Corbyn being its prize scalp) effectively has Europe self-paralysed with fear for their careers.

What happened last month, in wake of Hamas’ defence of Jerusalem, has done two highly significant things:

It succeeded in mobilising the 1948 Palestinians (citizens of Israel) to resistance alongside their fellow Gazan and West Bank Palestinians. And it set the trap by which any provocation on the al-Aqsa compound, or any further Jerusalem ethnic clearances, could trigger a multi-front war. The Hizbullah leader, Seyed Nasrallah, spelled this out explicitly.

It is on this last point that there is denial all around. Israel’s ‘military edge’ has gone. It is the axis of Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, Iraq, Iran and AnsarAllah (the Houthis), rather, which now has the military – and political/strategic – edge. The strategic balance is inverted: Israel’s control of airspace is unrestricted – over Gaza only. Deeply buried and dispersed smart cruise missiles surround Israel, and radar blocking drone swarms, together with EWS, have altered the military calculus.

The reason the Israeli crisis is graver than many suppose is that no one wants to admit that Israel effectively has wasted its window to any political solution – chasing hegemony and its ‘victory narrative’. It has succumbed to Netanyahu’s narrative of ‘mission accomplished’ – the Palestinian issue supposedly made irrelevant – only to find the window of politics closed shut, at the same time that Israel’s military situation has reversed itself, decisively. The old certainty of Israeli military domination ultimately securing Palestinian acquiescence now looks decidedly frayed.

So fatigued and numbed by their own rhetoric have Israeli and western leaders become, that they will not think or say that Israel has run out of options. And so western policy continues on auto-pilot. Inevitably there will be further Right-wing provocations at al-Aqsa. The IDF will default to its policy of ‘mowing the Gaza lawn’ – only one or other of these times (maybe quite soon), Israel will find itself in a multi-front war.

Are they certain America will spend its blood to extract Israel from its self-made quagmire? Are they convinced Gulf States will be there too, shoulder-to-shoulder?

Israel is undergoing a change of management, with reliably hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being replaced by extreme nationalist Naftali Bennett. Bennett has at intervals favored the disenfranchisement of non-Jewish Israeli citizens and the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews from historic Palestine, killing them if necessary. He opposes the creation of any Palestinian state and routinely describes Palestinian protesters as terrorists while stating his belief that they should be shot on sight. He has also boasted of his shooting Palestinians during his military service, saying at one point “I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that.” He was heavily involved in “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in Lebanon in the 1980s, where his commando unit killed numerous civilians, and takes pleasure in recounting his participation in Israel’s war crimes.

All of which means that there will be no respite from the brutal Netanyahu reign of terror which has been prevailing on the West Bank, in Gaza and also in Jerusalem itself. If anything, the pressure on Arabs forcing them to leave will intensify. Evidence that the recently negotiated cease fire was little more than a pause in the plan to mitigate international pressure before continuing to make the former Palestine Palestinian free is already available. Israeli police and army units have been arresting hundreds of Arabs, many of whom are Israeli citizens, not because they have broken any of the “rules” imposed by the Netanyahu government, but as a preventive measure to have them identified, allowing them to be safely locked away when the next round of fighting begins. Eighteen hundred arrests have been reported since unrest began in April, but the figure is probably much higher than that. An estimated 25% of those who are detained are children and 85% of those children arrested report that they were physically abused.  Also, at least 26 Palestinians have been killed while resisting. It has been claimed that the police, embarrassed by being ridiculed by protesting Palestinians, are “settling scores” and “closing accounts,” frequently using savage beatings during arrests and as collective punishment to break the Arab resistance.

Israeli police have also been active at and around the al-Aqsa mosque, where they have been denying Muslims access to the holy site while promoting sightseeing visits by Israeli Jews. This is a clear violation of the rules established for access to the mosque and it sends a strong signal to Palestinians that there is more to come and the intention is clearly that they will eventually be removed by whatever means necessary from Greater Israel.

The Director for the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (ADALAH) Hassan Jabareen observed recently how the violence over the past month was deliberately provoked by Israel both to shore up Netanyahu’s electoral prospects while “the massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli police…is a militarized war against Palestinian citizens of Israel. This is a war against Palestinian demonstrators, political activists, and minors, employing massive Israeli police forces to raid the homes of Palestinian citizens.”

The Israelis, who clearly have a sense of humor, called the first phase of the mass arrests “Operation Law and Order.” The raids themselves have been carried out inside Israel itself and on the West Bank. Those Palestinians who are citizens of Israel have what has frequently been described as “second class rights” in the country’s judicial system. Although Israel claims its Arab citizens—roughly 20% of the nation’s population—have equality under the law, even the pro-Israel US State Department has repeatedly accused Israel of practicing “institutional and societal discrimination” toward its Arab citizens.

As a consequence, Palestinians who are arrested are indicted, charged and in some cases detained indefinitely under existing state of emergency and anti-terror legislation. A common charge is “incitement” which requires little or nothing in the way of evidence. Many of the arrested Palestinians have in fact been released after payment of exorbitant bails, averaging about $1,000. One Palestinian activist reportedly paying $7,400 to be set free.

It should be noted that the armed Jewish settlers who rioted in the lead up to last month’s fighting, destroying Palestinian homes and other property, have not been identified and detained by Israeli authorities. Activist Remi Kanazi notes how “Apartheid inside Israel is when Jewish Israeli mobs chant ‘Death to Arabs’ and brutalize Palestinians in their neighborhoods, while the cops do nothing, only for those same cops to conduct mass arrests of Palestinian citizens two weeks later.”

Outside of Israel proper, other Palestinians, who are citizens of the Palestinian Authority or who have United Nations documentation, have no rights at all under Israeli law and are being detained at will and, in many cases, indefinitely, without any access to legal counsel or to family members. Most of them were not doing anything illegal, even by Israeli standards, when they were arrested. They were guilty of being Palestinian.

In one example of how the process works, well-known Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat, who had previously been arrested at age 17 and imprisoned for two years for having thrown stones at Israeli soldiers has been targeted. He lives in Bil’in on the West Bank and has had his two sons abducted from their home in recent night invasions by Israeli security forces. Abdul Khaliq, 21 years old, was taken away on May 17^th and Mohammed, 19 years old, was abducted on May 24^th. They are being held in the Almasqubia detention center in Jerusalem and have been denied any contact either with their parents or legal counsel. The Israeli authorities have provided no explanation of why they were arrested in the first place.

In another recent example of the brutality of the Israeli police, al-Jazeera reports in detail how thirteen-year-old Mohammed Saadi was kidnapped, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with a gun to his head by five policemen working undercover in his hometown of Umm al-Fahem. Saadi was among thousands who gathered for a funeral procession held for Mohammed Kiwan, a 17-year-old boy who had been shot and killed by Israeli police a week earlier.

Activists among the Palestinians observe that the Israeli repression has proven counter-productive. Most Palestinians now understand that the Israelis intend to exterminate them. One observer notes that “The fear barrier has been broken. Israeli forces are up against a people who no longer have anything to lose. The young men in Jerusalem don’t see they have a future to look forward to, due to socioeconomic factors that is either the result of or exacerbated by the occupation policies towards them. These people are defending their right to exist, their homes and their homeland, and had it not been for their resistance, Jewish settlers would have taken control of many places in Jerusalem.”

Clearly, the Joe Biden administration will do nothing even if the Israeli government were to arrest and torture 100,000 Arabs, but there is growing sentiment even in Congress and the Zionist controlled media that “what is wrong is wrong.” Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s has twice introduced a bill, which is languishing in congressional committee, that calls on the United States to block aid to Israel that can be perceived as being used to arrest, beat and imprison children. Her legislation the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act​ H.R. 2407 amends a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act known as the “Leahy Law” to prohibit funding for the military detention of children in any country, including Israel.

McCollum argues that an estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli security forces and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system since 2000. These children between the ages of 11 and 15 have sometimes been tortured using chokeholds, beatings, and coercive interrogation. As of September 2020 there were an estimated 157 children still detained in Israeli prisons, a number that has certainly gone up dramatically given the current crackdown by the police and army. Even though Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will surely block any attempt to let the McCollum bill see light of day one can at least honor the Congresswoman for what she is attempting to do and hope that some day the United States government will finally act honorably and help deliver liberty and justice for the long suffering Palestinians.

The National Director Emeritus for the Anti-Defamation League has announced on Twitter that he is cancelling his subscription to The New York Times, claiming that a front-page story featuring the photos of children killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza this month constitutes “blood libel” against Jews.

“I am cancelling my subscription to NYTimes,” tweeted Abraham Foxman. “I grew up in America on the NYT- I delivered the NYT to my classmates- I learned civics- democracy and all the news ‘fit to print’ for 65 years but no more. Today’s blood libel of Israel and the Jewish people on the front page is enough.”

Foxman’s statement drew criticism from all corners, including from loyal establishment pundits like Jonathan Chait, for his ridiculous assertion that merely humanizing Palestinian children killed by Israel is the same as promoting the ancient antisemitic canard known as blood libel.

To be clear, what has incensed the former leader of the @ADL is that the @nytimes, after decades of trivializing Palestinian death, has humanized our children by showing their faces & printing their names. #Gaza https://t.co/TCNAj8GY1J pic.twitter.com/Vehj9wTjZL

— Huwaida Arraf (@huwaidaarraf) May 28, 2021

Supporters of Israeli apartheid and mass murder are losing control of the narrative, which has led to redoubled perception management efforts ranging from the cringey to the iron-fisted. In the former category we’re seeing them pen entire articles attacking Seth Rogen for tweeting a fart emoji at virulent Israel apologist Eve Barlow and claiming that putting “fart” in Barlow’s name is the same as a literal pogrom. In the latter category they’re blowing up entire press offices and arresting Palestinian journalists. This is narrative management at its least subtle.

From a new statement titled “Israel now holding 13 Palestinian journalists” by Reporters Without Borders:

“Two Palestinian journalists were arrested by Israeli security forces in Jerusalem yesterday and were placed in administrative detention today, bringing the total now held administratively by the Israelis to 13. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns Israel’s misuse of administrative detention to hound Palestinian reporters.”

“Administrative detention” is one of the many apartheid abuses which Israel has come under criticism for employing, as Israel-based +972 Magazine explained last year:

According to human rights group B’Tselem, as of September 2020, Israel is holding 376 Palestinians, including two minors, in administrative detention. Israel uses administrative detention to indefinitely detain Palestinians (and on extremely rare occasions Jewish extremists) without charge or trial. Administrative detention orders, handed down by the IDF commander in charge of the occupied West Bank, are reviewed every six months, but the detainees are not told what crimes they are being accused of, nor shown the evidence against them.

According to lawyers who defend Palestinian detainees, administrative detentions are almost always based on “confidential material” handed over ex parte to the courts by the Shin Bet, to which the detainees themselves and their lawyers have no access. As a result, it is virtually impossible to defend oneself against an administrative detention order.

Israeli forces just arrested two Palestinian journalists from Sheikh Jarrah:

Wahbi Makiya and Zeina Al-Halawanipic.twitter.com/j0Tkgptcaa

— لينة (@LinahAlsaafin) May 27, 2021

Before the Gaza ceasefire last week Israel managed to deliberately blow up over 20 offices for Palestinian media outlets, as well as the tower hosting the international outlets AP and Al Jazeera.

“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” AP president and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement after the building was destroyed.

Which, of course, is the whole idea: for the world to know less about what happens in Gaza. The Israeli government has a decades-long history of threatening and targeting journalists in order to exert control over the public narrative about what happens under its rule, and as that narrative slips from its grip we are seeing this pattern ramp up with greater and greater aggression.

“Rather than reduce the cruelty, the Israeli government keeps trying to reduce accurate news coverage,” author and activist Norman Solomon writes. “The approach is a mix of deception and brutality. Blow up the cameras so the world won’t see as many pictures of the atrocities.”

The Israeli authorities will keep the journalists arrested in Sheikh Jarrah last night in jail for 5 more days before trial.

This is a clear message: attempt to document & expose Israel’s colonial violence, you will be punished with incarceration & silencing. #SaveSheikhJarrah

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) May 28, 2021

As Alan MacLeod wrote in Mintpress News, the Overton window has shifted on Palestine. During 2014’s far more deadly Israeli attack on Gaza we saw a low-level local Democratic official sparking outrage and scandal by merely posting “Palestine ” on Facebook, now you have words like “apartheid” being routinely used by mainstream media outlets and national US political figures to describe Israeli abuses of the Palestinian people.

People are just becoming too conscious of the Palestine issue to tolerate its existence as a taboo subject anymore, even in the most mainstream circles of discussion. The old tactics of silencing and marginalizing Palestinian rights advocates simply do not work anymore, and politicians and pundits can no longer get away with painting themselves as progressive-minded humanists without acknowledging the brutal and unjust nature of Israeli occupation.

Palestine is simply not a third rail anymore, and it’s been this way for a while now. By the time I started doing commentary in late 2016 people were still saying you’ll be smeared as an antisemite and dragged through the mud if you criticize Israel, but my experience this entire time has been that I get a lot more vitriol and attacks coming my way by criticizing US imperialist agendas toward nations like Russia, China, Syria and Venezuela than by criticizing the Israeli government. There’s pushback to be sure, but it’s not nearly as vituperative as what I’m used to.

The Israel Narrative Is Crumbling Because Of Phone Cameras And The Internet

There are only so many viral videos of unconscionable acts that can be dismissed with “Actually this is way more complicated than it looks.”https://t.co/RYWZVyMdpW

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 11, 2021

This last attack on Gaza was just the ignition of a powder keg in shifting public sentiment that had been building for several years, and it hasn’t been due to any top-down effort at perception steering by the establishment narrative managers, but by ordinary people sharing ideas and information and moving the Overton window of acceptable debate through sheer force of will.

The fact that this can be done makes one wonder in what other ways we can collectively move the narrative in a way that benefits ordinary people instead of the oligarchic empire of the US and its allies. This is an exciting time to be alive.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

By Jake JOHNSON

Israel’s deadly 11-day assault on the Gaza Strip left an estimated 400,000 of the occupied territory’s roughly two million people without access to a regular supply of clean water, a humanitarian nightmare that is driving calls for immediate international aid and an end to the 14-year Israeli blockade.

In addition to killing more than 240 Palestinians—including dozens of children—and displacing tens of thousands, Israel’s aerial and artillery bombardment further devastated Gaza’s infrastructure, from sewage systems to electricity lines that power the coastal enclave’s water desalination plants.

“Attacks on water and sanitation infrastructure are attacks on children.”
—Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF

The result, as Oxfam International’s Shane Stevenson put it Tuesday, is that “hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza will soon have no access to basic hygiene.” According to Oxfam, nearly a fifth of Gaza’s population lacks access to safe water.

“Electricity cuts and the destruction of office buildings have forced many small businesses to come to a halt,” Stevenson said. “Israel’s authorities have stopped the bombing but are now restricting fuel deliveries [upon which Gaza is dependent for its electricity]. They have also closed most of the Gaza fishing zone, meaning nearly 3,600 fishermen have now lost their daily income and food.”

To both rebuild in the wake of Israel’s latest onslaught and confront “the root causes of the conflict,” Stevenson argued that the international community “must ensure concrete political action to bring an end to the occupation and the ongoing blockade,” which has severely limited Gaza’s ability to obtain the materials necessary to develop robust clean water infrastructure.

A temporary cease-fire paused Israel’s bombing campaign last week, but not before the attacks did severe damage to Gaza’s core civilian services. While lack of access to clean water has long been a crisis in the besieged territory, Israel’s fresh wave of airstrikes worsened the emergency by damaging critical pipes and sending untreated sewage water into densely populated areas, heightening contamination risks.

“Even before the recent hostilities,” Oxfam pointed out, “the average daily consumption of water was just 88?liters per capita—far below the global optimal requirement of 100?liters.”

Amal, a mother in northern Gaza, told Oxfam that running water “might be available for one hour, but we won’t have electricity to pump the water to the roof tank.”

“We stay up all night looking for water to fill plastic buckets,” said Amal.

400K people in #Gaza do not have access to regular water supply after 11 days of bombardment devastated electricity and water services and severely impacted the three main desalination plants in Gaza city https://t.co/B8F95pVhOZ pic.twitter.com/RXD27XSQHR

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) May 25, 2021

According to a UNICEF report released Tuesday, nearly 48 million people across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe are in need of clean water and sanitation services, including 1.6 million in the occupied Palestinian territories. The child-focused aid agency stressed that people in those regions are frequent victims of deliberate, war-related attacks on water infrastructure.

“Water resources and the systems required to deliver drinking water have been attacked for centuries,” the new report notes. “All too often, the human dependence on water has been exploited during conflict. Nearly all of the conflict-related emergencies where UNICEF has responded in recent years have involved some form of attack hindering access to water, whether directed against water infrastructure or through incidental harm or tactic used by a party to the conflict.”

Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s director of emergency programs, said in a statement that access to clean water “is a means of survival that must never be used as a tactic of war.”

“Attacks on water and sanitation infrastructure are attacks on children,” Fontaine added. “When the flow of water stops, diseases like cholera and diarrhea can spread like wildfire, often with fatal consequences. Hospitals cannot function, and rates of malnutrition and wasting increase. Children and families are often forced out in search of water, exposing them, particularly girls, to an increased risk of harm and violence.”

Common Dreams via consortiumnews.com

If ever American foreign policy looked like a tacky brochure from a dodgy car dealer, then U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered on the image with his trip to the Middle East this week.

Washington’s top diplomat flew to the region to flog the “two-state solution” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, asserting that it was the only way to find peace. This was after nearly two weeks of an Israeli blitzkrieg on the Gaza Strip, the coastal enclave where two million Palestinians subsist in chronic poverty. Blinken said the purpose of his trip was to shore up a ceasefire and to jump-start a long-defunct peace process predicated on a two-state solution.

The fact is that the American model of peace is long dead. For more than three decades since Washington brokered the Oslo Accord the endless talk about two states coexisting has been a chimera and a fallacy. The Israelis never believed in such a settlement, despite occasional cynical lip service. And the Americans never seriously held the Israelis to their supposed commitments. Occupation and annexation of the Palestinian homeland have been allowed to continue unabated with Washington’s acquiescence.

Blinken’s itinerary speaks of the systematic and flawed bias. He first arrived in Israel this week where his priority was to hold a high-profile meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Blinken reiterated “America’s ironclad commitment to Israeli security”, while Netanyahu thanked the United States for “firmly supporting Israel’s right to self-defense”. The nauseating spectacle of fawning followed an onslaught of Israeli bloodletting against a civilian population whose right to self-defense is never mentioned by Washington nor its controlled corporate media.

Almost like an after-thought, the American diplomat then visited Ramallah in the West Bank where he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a low-key setting in stark contrast to the glad-handing offered to the Israelis.

“I am here to underscore the commitment of the U.S. to rebuilding a relationship to the Palestinian Authority and with the Palestinian people,” Blinken said with a straight face.

This is part-and-parcel of the obsolete American policy to build up the PA and Abbas as the Washington-designated representatives of the Palestinians which is essential to the continuance of the U.S. two-state solution charade.

Blinken did not visit Gaza, the coastal ring-fenced ghetto where the Israelis razed over 1,000 homes and businesses in their latest onslaught with U.S.-supplied warplanes and bombs. The PA in Ramallah and Abbas are redundant like so much of the model of U.S. policy.

The Hamas Palestinian faction which is dominant in Gaza is viewed by most Palestinians, including those living in former PA strongholds of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as the legitimate leadership. That view has been reinforced after the two-week conflict during which Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israeli areas – albeit most of them intercepted by air defenses. Hamas’ hostilities came after weeks of provocative repression by the Israeli security forces at the Palestinian places of worship in East Jerusalem, as well as moves to evict Palestinian residents from areas near the Old City.

Hamas is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union, partly because it refuses to recognize the Israeli state as a legitimate entity. Hamas by definition does not subscribe to the two-state solution. It views Palestine as the whole area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea – the historic homeland of all Semitic people, including Jews and Arabs.

Blinken offered to rebuild Gaza with a paltry donation of $5.5 million. He talked about more money coming in the future from Congress, but with no guarantees. That is an insult upon massive injury. The American-fueled Israeli blitz killed over 240 Palestinians, including 66 children. According to the United Nations, over 400 buildings were destroyed, as well as six hospitals and dozens of health centers and schools razed.

Blinken did not explain how the United States would repair such appalling damage in an area that was already a humanitarian crisis before the latest blitz. But he did say adamantly that Washington would not be working with Hamas.

America’s two-state solution model is a clapped-out vehicle that was never really intended to arrive at delivering viable Palestinian statehood. It has been a cynical cover for the Israeli occupation machine to continue grinding down Palestinian territory and spitting out broken homes and lives through sporadic bouts of violent ethnic cleansing. Each time the violence erupts – 2021, 2014, 2009, and so on – the Palestinians end up losing ever more of their historic rights.

The time has come to recognize that the two-state solution is a dead-end for Palestinians. The Americans and their Israeli surrogates should not be allowed to impose their cynical deception any longer.

The Zionist project which the British empire launched with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 on Palestine has created a destructive and unsustainable colonial occupation known as Israel. The only viable and just solution is for all people to live in one land from the river to sea provided that their rights are equally respected, whether Muslim, Christian, Jew, or no religion. Israel is an apartheid state predicated on repression, discrimination and Zionist illegal occupation.

Since the Second World War and the inception of the Israeli state in 1948, the Americans have succeeded the British as the guarantors of this illegal colonial project under the guise of politically correct platitudes about “dignity for all”. In the real world, however, the established American foreign policy is part of the problem, not the solution.

Blinken’s used-car-sales trip to the Middle East is proof that the American model is on the scrap heap of history.

The phrase “rules-based international order” is being used a lot by Washington’s representatives who wish to make clear, as indicated by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that they consider the alternative “is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.”

No doubt his statement attracted adverse reaction among those in the many countries that have suffered from the crushing effects of U.S. military might, and where violence and instability are now prevalent (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya), but there is no possibility that President Biden will cease his push for the exercise of “global power”, which he has declared to be the “grounding wire of our global policy.”

Mr Biden continued that “we must start with diplomacy rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values : defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity,” but demonstrated reluctance to uphold universal rights by refusing to endorse a UN Security Council Resolution that called for observation of his “most cherished democratic values.” On May 17, as reported by the Times of Israel, fourteen of the Council’s fifteen members expressed “grave concern regarding the crisis related to Gaza and the loss of civilian lives and casualties, and called for de-escalation of the situation, cessation of violence and respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians, especially children.”

Rejection of a resolution calling for “respect for international humanitarian law” is not consistent with Washington’s intention to abide by the “rules-based international order” which is apparently the solution to all the world’s problems — providing the rules are not applied to Israel.

According to the United Nations, in half-a-century the United States has vetoed over fifty draft Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, thus ensuring that there is a far more violent and unstable Middle East than there otherwise would have been. Yet on May 7 Secretary Blinken gave a speech at the Security Council in which he said that “human rights and dignity must stay at the core of the international order.” He emphasised that “there are certain rights to which every person, everywhere, is entitled” and that “domestic jurisdiction doesn’t give any state a blank check to enslave, torture, disappear, ethnically cleanse their people, or violate their human rights in any other way.” All of these sentiments are laudable, but the U.S. government is selective in endorsing and applying international law, and Mr Blinken actually admitted that “some of our actions in recent years have undermined the rules-based order and led others to question whether we are still committed to it. Rather than take our word for it, we ask the world to judge our commitment by our actions.”

The Palestinians are indeed questioning Washington’s commitment to the rules-based order, and they and much of the rest of the world (including all fifteen other members of the Security Council) are judging the Biden Administration accordingly.

It is regrettably apparent that President Biden and his appointees and associates are unrelentingly opposed to criticism of Israel for its violations of human rights and dignity. There is no possibility that Mr Biden will take firm action to prevent Israel from taking whatever action it wishes in order to subjugate the Palestinians. To be sure, the random rocketing of southern Israel by the Hamas organisation is reprehensible in the extreme, and even though it has done little damage and caused a tiny number of fatalities (12, compared with 248 Palestinian deaths), it can in no way be recognised as legal.

The Palestinians of Gaza and in all the Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands are subjected to repression and their overall treatment is entirely inconsistent with Mr Biden’s no doubt sincere desire to spread Washington’s “most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.” Even if he wanted to endorse Security Council draft Resolutions that are critical of Israel it would be difficult to do so after Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu, declared on May 19 that he “especially appreciated the support of the President of the United States, our friend Joe Biden, for the right of self-defence of the State of Israel.”

In the 2020 election cycle, Mr Biden received political donations totalling $3,249,542 from pro-Israeli groups which gave $17,883,553 to the Democratic Party as a whole, including such amounts as $701,688 to Senator Jon Ossoff and $648,957 to Senator Antone Melton-Meaux. It is difficult to see how any legislator who received such generous contributions could be critical of the country in whose cause the money was provided — and the supporters of Israel in the U.S. are open about their objectives.

The Mission Statement of the organisation Pro-Israel America includes the aim of “Promoting and supporting the election of pro-Israel candidates to federal office, regardless of party” and it is interesting to consider what indignation would be expressed if supporters of some other countries had made a similar pronouncement. In a piece about allegations of Russian “interference” in the 2020 elections in the New York Times of March 16, it was stated that “Besides Russia, Iran and other countries also sought to sway the election, the [official intelligence] report said.” But there isn’t a word about Israel’s meddling by money.

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, issued a statement declaring that “Foreign malign influence is an enduring challenge facing our country. These efforts by U.S. adversaries seek to exacerbate divisions and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” But the Pro-Israel America grouping does exactly this, and announced that it had had an “outsized impact in the 2020 Congressional elections, securing a strong base of support on both sides of the aisle for the U.S.-Israel relationship,” being instrumental in sending “70 pro-Israel champions” to Congress.

There are no rules and order detectable in that example of dabbling in U.S. politics, but the Director of National Intelligence obviously does not consider that the Pro-Israel America organisation — which is only one of twenty such Israel-supporting political pressure groups — is obviously intent on “exacerbating divisions… in our democratic institutions.”

On May 22 the situation in occupied Palestine was well-described in the New York Times whose reporters wrote that “Palestinians from all walks of life routinely experience exasperating impossibilities and petty humiliations, bureaucratic controls that force agonizing choices, and the fragility and cruelty of life under military rule, now in its second half-century.” And when the cruelty surges, and the Palestinians are goaded to retaliation, there is all-out violence as there has been recently. As one Palestinian told the Times, “We can’t take an M-16 and go kill every settler. All we have are those stones. A bullet can kill you instantly. A little stone won’t do much. But at least I’m sending a message.”

The message to President Biden is that there must be rules and order in Israel and its illegally occupied Palestinian territories and that his statements and policies are not consistent with establishment of justice. It cannot be forgotten that he once declared “I am a Zionist” and that, as noted above, he got over three million dollars from U.S. supporters of Israel and its policies as regards the persecution of Palestinians.

Mr Biden says he is intent on “defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity,” but as Stratfor noted on May 22, “President Biden has chosen not to prioritize the decades-long struggle that has defied multiple attempts by his predecessors to bring about peace.” So Washington is sitting on the fence, which isn’t a good posture from which to try to demonstrate affinity for a “rules-based international order.” Israel-Palestine will again erupt in savagery and more innocent lives will be destroyed. But the Israeli lobby groups in Washington will continue to make the rules. That’s what politics is all about.

The acclaimed novel Birdsong tells a story from inside the gruelling trench warfare of 1914-18. The trenches – mere mud, and rain-soaked corridors – were separated from the German lines, by the desolate hell of ‘no man’s land’ – an indescribable flat wilderness of mud, mud and more mud, littered with broken bits of what once were men, whose remains no one dared retrieve, and the surreal black art of coiled razor wire twisted out into every imaginable shape and angle.

Across this Hieronymus Bosch landscape, the Germans laid down rolling wave after wave of intense high explosive artillery shells sending plumes of earth high up into the sky. Yet, in counterpoint to this dark and demonic backdrop, Birdsong unfolds a story of human struggle, near death and deep compassion for injured fiends. But at the core, it is a story about tunnels – those who dug them; those buried in them, as they fell in; and those who sprung out from them – as earth-worms rising – to surprise and kill the enemy.

Tunnels were the secret weapon of WW1. They was the answer to the merciless aerial bombardment unleashed by the crushing mass of a superior military machine. Battalions would enter the trenches 800 strong, and emerge after the barrage, with a mere 100-200 living men. Yet on they went – volunteers digging tunnels through the mud to rise, like ghosts, upon a sleeping enemy.

The western doctrine of overwhelming fire-power was born there. In the next war (WWII), it was all about the (indiscriminate) bombing of civilian populations (in Germany and Japan) to break – psychologically – their will to fight. This approach dug in. It became the principal tool in the western tool box. Churchill used airborne firepower in the Middle East between the wars, and absolute air superiority remains the inner heart to current U.S. and NATO strategy.

What is the point here? It is that this whole ark of military strategy rooted in massive aerial bombardment – reaching back to the 1920s, and pushing forward until today in Gaza, is expiring. It has become obsolescent (at least in the Middle East), just as did trench warfare in the wake of 1918.

Tunnels (now, much more sophisticated ones), have gained renewed life as the answer to massive aerial bombardment on civilian terrain as a prime psychological tool of war. They mark the end of a strategy. Swarm missiles, and smart drone clusters are today’s inflection points: the ‘new’ warfare – just as much a game-changer as was the advent of the longbow (in the 1300s). They have become, as it were, somehow Hamas’, Hizbullah’s, the Houthi’s and Iran’s ‘alt’ Air force.

It is clear that the Hamas rocket barrage took Israel (and Washington) by surprise. t may not have sunk in fully, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will never be the same again. Why?

To be very clear, what has happened is firstly, that just as WWI troops found a partial response to the rolling German artillery bombardments of their positions through their shallow, collapse-prone tunnels, so Iran, Hizbullah, the Iraqi resistance and the Houthis have upgraded the strategy to deep (30 meter), fortified underground positions – effectively to emasculate Israel’s Air Power – and, if anything, to turn the Israeli air power in-on-itself , damaging Israel’s image, whilst burnishing that of the Palestinians.

Secondly, Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, killing 230 Palestinians, including 65 children precisely has turned the outside world against it. And, for the first time, there is a serious debate in the U.S. about support for Israel’s entrenched system of control over the Palestinian territories, and its creeping annexation of Palestinian lands – unchecked for years by an acquiescent United States.

But why should this time different from previous episodes? What has changed? In a word: the woke revolution – a “new Democratic normal”. With America and parts of Europe now viewing their own histories of settlement, ethnic cleansing and colonialism as toxic aberrations that should be redeemed, it has become possible to say things today in the U.S. about Israel long thought, but held hitherto in pectore; that earlier would have brought heaven and earth crashing down upon the career of anyone uttering them. No more.

Thirdly, a growing number of politicians who staked their careers on building the Oslo two-state solution, finally are coming to acknowledge that the facts on the ground make Oslo a fantasy. “The Oslo framework is done, it’s over,” said Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian diplomat and politician who played a lead role in the Arab Peace Initiative two decades ago: “I’m a two-stater by training. I’m a one-stater by reality”.

The key pillars to Oslo have been seen as chimaera: That demography alone would compel Israel to implement a two states outcome; that Palestinian security co-operation would assuage Israeli hesitations to endorse a Palestinian state; and thirdly that a Palestinian state would bring an end to occupation. All these key assumptions have proved false.

The U.S. and the Europeans however have no idea what to do about the situation, beyond calling for a return to ‘normality’ – one that permits Israelis ‘to return to the beach’, and the Palestinians ‘to their cage’, as one commentator, caustically remarked about the meaning of ‘normal’.

Possibly, the western daze about what to do goes someway to explaining their surprise at the Gaza events. Whilst the West looked for its liberal, secular solution, Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah quietly were forging a quite different response – one that would change the whole paradigm. In practice, the 2006 Lebanon war was a ‘dress rehearsal’. It marked the ‘end of the beginning’ of this new mode of swarm drone and missile warfare; and this latest Gaza war (together with the more sophisticated, smart missiles and drones now surrounding Israel) represents its coming into maturity. It is a concerted, closely co-ordinated move. Hamas though, preferred to make its Gaza début a wholly Palestinian move.

In 2006, Israel was also taken by surprise. Amos Harel recalls that anyone present in the room when “Dan Halutz, the proud IDF chief of staff at the beginning of the Second Lebanon War, will never forget his briefing to the press on the eve of Friday, July 14, 2006. Halutz ticked off the list of the IDF’s achievements, headed by a massive hit on the Hezbollah mid-range missile system (the details of which were minimal at the time). He was attempting to convince the reporters that the army had reacted suitably to the abduction of two reserve soldiers two days earlier. All of a sudden, a note was brought to him with news of the [Hizbullah cruise missile] hit on the Israeli navy missile ship INS Hanit opposite the shores of Beirut. In a war, surprises aren’t only chalked up in one direction.”

In fact, the IDF in 2006 were bombing a feint. Hizbullah had built those tunnels to fool the IDF. They leaked false intelligence that Israel absorbed. The real missile silos were safe and intact – and the missile volleys continued for nearly a month. Is it probable that Hizbullah passed on such strategic advice to Hamas? Of course they did.

Today, it is a similar story. Israel is spinning victory (rooted in its destruction of Hamas tunnels), yet facing failure – as in 2006. Credible reports suggest that the IDF strategy hinged on its confidence that they had mapped the Gaza tunnels. So that when the army deliberately launched the rumour of an impending Gaza ground invasion, they calculated that the Hamas leadership immediately would take to the tunnels, which the Israeli Air Force would then bomb, thus burying the movement alive. Only it didn’t happen – Hamas’ leadership were not in those tunnels, and the missiles did not cease.

Aluf Benn sums it up, in Haaretz (where he is editor-in-chief):

“You can feed the public with news broadcasts arrogantly talking about “the painful blows we’ve delivered to Hamas” and showcase the pilot who killed an Islamic Jihad commander – while forgetting that this was an advanced fighter jet with precision armaments attacking an apartment building – as a modern-day version of Judah the Maccabee or Meir Har-Zion. But all these layers of makeup can’t cover up the truth: The military has no idea how to paralyze Hamas’ forces and throw it off balance. Destroying its tunnels with powerful bombs revealed Israel’s strategic capabilities without causing any substantive damage to the enemy’s fighting abilities.

Assuming 100, 200 or even 300 fighters were killed, would this bring down Hamas rule? Or its command and control systems? Or its ability to fire rockets at Israel? The shrinking number of quality targets is evident in the growing number of civilian casualties as the campaign has continued…”.

Well, there was one Israeli contrarian who was not locked into the prevailing mindset: “The sharpest critic of the army brass in recent years, warned that the next war would be fought on the home front – [and] that Israel had no answer to attacks involving thousands of missiles – and which its land forces aren’t able to fight”. That was Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brik’s warning, but as so often with contrarians, he was ostracised and ignored.

The long ark of the strategy of bombing civilian terrains (justified by saying that terrorists are hiding there), may be reaching its ‘sell-by’ date, as Human Rights become the touchstone of foreign policy (as well as commanding domestic U.S. policy).

This carries implications for the U.S. and NATO, as much as for Israel. Would the NATO bombing of Belgrade with full impunity for 78 days be feasible again in today’s ‘values’ climate?

A ceasefire has been ‘agreed’ (though, as what often occurs with Egyptian ‘mediation’, the parties already dispute what purportedly was agreed between them). A ceasefire may mark a pause in the Gaza battle, but by no means the end to a war.

The last reason why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be same again is that the collective eruption across historical Palestine has unified and mobilised the Palestinian people – under Hamas’ military leadership. The latter are perceived as the only force capable of protecting Al-Aqsa mosque – threatened by settler attempts to seize it; or burn it – a real threat with the potential to inflame Muslims across the globe.

As Gaza quietens for now, the next phase to this war likely will centre around Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem and the 1948 Palestinian communities within Israel. Israelis face a new reality: Hamas is not ‘over there’, but is everywhere around them; and furthermore, they also know that the possibility of the (likely) coming Right-wing coalition in Israel acquiescing to this new paradigm is zero.