‘We Are All Bin Gvir’
CrossFireArabia- May 25, 2026
Ali Saadeh writes:
[In translation]: The entire society is corrupt… the scum of the earth rule the land… their great arrogance will ultimately lead to a humiliating fall, God willing.
Punishing The Olive Tree
- CrossFireArabia
- May 25, 2026
By Dr Marwan Asmar
Israel’s government, soldiers and settlers destroyed between 13,000 and 14000 olive trees in the occupied West Bank in the first five months of 2026. The figures are based on different Palestinian and Israeli sources.
In May 2026 alone Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he had ordered the uprooting and destruction of 3000 trees in northern Palestine. The uprooting of these trees were ordered to be felled in a single day.
In early February, 2006 human rights’ groups reported that over 8000 trees were destroyed and a report by the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Commission (PWSC) released last Mid-May showed that 4,414 had been uprooted, destroyed and/or poisoned.
The uprooting of “Palestinian trees” by Israeli settlers backed by the Zionist army has become a normal state of affairs as it has increased viciously since October 2023 when over 37,200 olive trees were “uprooted”, “broken” and “burned” in conjunction with the Israeli war and slaughter of Gaza.
The situation spelled disaster for Palestinian farmers. In cahoots with Israeli soldiers, settlers would go down on Palestinian villages and towns and start uprooting olive trees out of sheer vandalism.
At the end of last April, this is exactly what happened when settlers from the “Adi Ad” settlement descended on the Turmus Aya village that lies to the north-east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and started to destroy and vandalize 400 olive trees.
As they did this, on Saturday night, they were guarded by the Israeli army. This attack came days after the settlers descended on the village and set fire to a house and a car there.
The attack on Turmus Aya is not an isolated incident. The village has been targeted for the past few years. The PWSC, a monitoring organization of such attacks said the Israeli army had been responsible for 1,322 of such attacks while the settlers involved for 497 acts of vandalism on different Palestinian cities with Hebron topping the list at (321), Nablus (315), Ramallah (292) and Jerusalem (203).
Statistics point out that Israel has destroyed between 800,000 and 1 million olive trees in the occupied Palestinian territories from 1967 till now. However, since that year, when Israel effectively occupied all of the Palestinian territories, it destroyed 2.5 million trees.
Besides olives, they included orange (different varieties), lemon, grapefruit and clementine trees. The Palestinian territories are known for their varieties like almond, figs, apricots, peaches and plums trees.
These trees were destroyed by the Israeli occupation for basic military takeover to expand the Palestinian lands with Israeli settlements – about 147 settlements and 224 outposts – and create the required infrastructure and roads for these since some of them resemble big cities.
In the case of the Smotrich announcement for example, and the uprooting of 3000 trees on Palestinian lands in the north West Bank, the purpose there was to expand the Israeli Shaked Industrial Park which is next to the settlement there that has the same name.
Gaza, another story
Gaza is another sad story for the Israeli genocide has affected the whole of the agricultural sector. During the last war on the Gaza Strip, Israel destroyed 1 million trees according to Fayyad Fayyad, head of the Palestinian Olive Council. The destruction literally decimated the agriculture sector of the enclave.
Prior to 7 October, 2023, Gaza had 1.1 million trees roughly producing 50,000 tons of olives every year but no more. About 98 percent of Gaza’s tree cropland has been destroyed.
Dr Mazen Qumsiyeh, a biologist at Bethlehem University, calls the destruction in Gaza an “ecocide” as statistics show that over the past two years and more, Israel has destroyed between 500,000 to 700,000 non-olive trees.
Today in Gaza everything has been razed to the ground. There had once been 35 olive oil presses in the Strip but most of these have been destroyed with only five left as of the end of last year.
The loss of a million olive trees is a $50-million-plus-loss since the total olive oil sector (West Bank and Gaza) contributed between $160 and $190 million to the Palestinian national economy as a direct result of exports to regional and international markets.
The olive oil sector accounts for roughly five percent of the Palestinian GDP and 20 percent of the agricultural sector. Further olive oil production sustains 100,000 families in the Palestinian territories.
Marwan Asmar is a writer from Amman and blogs for crossfirearabia.com
Jordan 2007! Elections and Hiccups: Looking Backwards
- CrossFireArabia
- May 20, 2026
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written more than 18 years again in October 2007 for the 7iber.com online portal and is reprinted her
Its election time! As a good non-totalitarian democrat I love the elections, when they happen that is. What I really love about the elections is the time leading up to their finale when voters go up to the polling stations and vote. Although I’ve never voted in my life, I’ve always carefully watched election campaigns, right from start to finish. They are exciting days, of banners hoisted, constituency meets, mini-rallies and all the rest of it.
Prospective candidates, some running for the very first time and of which we are expected to know and vote for, hoist their banners across streets and roundabouts, screaming at the electorate to vote for them because they are the best candidates.
This is the 15th elections for the 15th Lower House, and parliament in Jordan has consistently been in session since 1989, after a long absence of parliamentary life in the country. I am proud to say I covered the 1993 elections, the 1997 ones, and just about missed the 2003 elections because of being away from Jordan.
In all these years, the excitement never faded. Islamic Action Front candidates continuously stood under the IAF banner, but this was never the case with the other political parties, such as the nationalists, the leftists, the middle-of-the-roaders and the tribalists. Although a lot of parties came on the scene after 1993, like Al Ahad, Al Yaqatha and Al Risala and still many others, for some reason or another, many of their candidates preferred to stand as independents arguing they are known for their own independent political personalities rather than as representatives of their parties.
Is this a wrong attitude? Well, maybe. However, once some of them were elected to the Lower House of Parliament, they revealed their true political colors and supposedly argued on party-political lines. Ironically, most of the electorate never knew what those lines were when the MP was just a candidate running for a seat. Many of these parliamentarians argued that they stood a better chance of getting into parliament as individuals rather than under the banner of their political parties. This is due to the belief that such organizations were still seen as relatively new and unknown, despite the fact that many, including leftists, Arab nationalists and Baathists parties, had existed in the 1960s and 1970s, but many of which were effectively banned.
They may of course have been right in their assumptions as political parties were just made legal in the early 1990s, and have thus needed time to be nurtured. As independents, the negative connotations of belonging to political parties would wither away among the electorates who needed to get used to voting for candidates on party political platforms. But the problem with running on independent tickets is that it actually perpetuated individualism, parochialism and depended on the appeal to family, kinship and tribal relations. In past Jordanian parliamentary elections, and even today, the tribal bloc vote has been very important in deciding who wins and who loses.
The effect of this frustrates the process of developing political parties, which, except for the Islamic Action Front, remains weak, ineffective and are no more than talking shop. They have even been used by established politicians to further their own individual political ends and causes. This stands contrary to the need for building modern, strong political parties designed to make democracy and the democratic experiment effective.
Realizing that there is a lot to say about the tribal vote, sometimes political candidates, even Islamists, have been known to appeal to kinship and family relationships as a means of getting into parliament. Once they do, they start the usual game of political party meandering under the parliamentary dome.
That may also be why election banners and slogans on roads are no more than hackneyed, clichéd phrases emptied from their political content. They are read for what they are: brief formulaic statements, lacking the resonance of strong, vibrant agendas and political manifestos that promise change and development, as is the case with elections in more mature democracies around the world.
Political parties in Europe, for instance, are big machines with national and local clout. Everyone, especially the main personalities, know who they are, what they stand for, and what they hope to do once they form the government, or become the party in the majority. In this part of the world, the political culture, machinations and value systems are different and have to be treated differently.
However, in the final analysis, a political party is a political party in which ever part of the world it belongs to; sharing little differences with its counterparts. That’s why such parties have to be strong, come out of their closed shops and enclosures, and appeal to the masses; become broad-based with clout in order to be listened to by decision-makers.
In all fairness however, we have to be gentle with our political parties by understanding the history and the context of where they came from. It took political parties in the western world, centuries to develop and become the national institutions they are today.
They emerged through political struggles and a great deal of pushing and shoving.
But does that mean we have to take that long? Not necessarily, the element of transition from one era to another can take place quickly, but it has to be supported by the state and government. There has to be a political will for democracy, where parties are nurtured rather than left alone.
Jordan is doing well despite different hiccups, but the Arab world in general has to pull itself by the bootstraps if it is to enter into a meaningful political era where representation, democracy and political pluralism is seen as healthy for a society. Our problem now is to move faster in order to catch up with the rest of the world, and develop politically.
In the meantime, let’s for a minute stop and enjoy the political actions of the electoral campaign.
Iran is Writing The Final Chapter!
- CrossFireArabia
- May 20, 2026
By Ziyad Farhan Al-Majali
In major wars, results are not always measured by the ‘noise volume’, number of airstrikes, or the extent of the military maps displayed on TV screens. Sometimes the noise is louder than the decisive action, and the roar is stronger than the ability to end the battle.
From this perspective, the Israeli-American war on Iran can be read as a tumultuous moment in the history of regional conflict. Here however, it was not the final moment which Israel desired and was looking for.
Tel Aviv wanted to present the war as its declaration of its superiority, one that would be final. It wanted to say that its reach could penetrate deep inside Iran, that the old balance of deterrence was broken, and that the aftermath of the strike would not be the same as it was before.
Therefore, Israel’s “lion roar” was to be loud from the very beginning: Threatening rhetoric, painful strikes, psychological warfare — a clear attempt to portray Iran as a state exposed to Israeli and American power.
But the roar by itself, however loud it boomed, was not enough to bring about a political end. True, Iran suffered heavy blows, with sensitive facilities, infrastructure and sites sustained significant damage, finding itself facing a broad economic, military, and psychological siege and pressure.
Yet, despite all this, the war did not topple the Iranian government, nor did it remove the state from the regional equation, nor did it end its nuclear program as a negotiating issue, nor did it break its deterrent and maneuvering capabilities.
Herein lies the central paradox of this war. Israel raised the stakes to their highest points, but it did not achieve a decisive victory. Israel sought to eliminate the so-called Iranian threat with a single strike or a series of blows, only to discover that Iran is not a military site that can be wiped off the map, nor a single facility whose destruction would end the conflict.
Rather, it is a deep-rooted, expansive state with multiple levers of pressure: From the Strait of Hormuz to Lebanon, from missiles to air corridors, from allies to the capacity for long-term patience. Iran is a tough nut!
Perhaps the most dangerous revelation of the war is that it did not produce a definitive answer, but rather raised even greater questions. Can military force alone reshape Iran? Can bombing impose a stable political settlement? Will weakening Tehran lead to its expulsion from the region, or will it push it to rebuild its influence more cautiously and covertly? Was the war the beginning of the end, or the start of a new phase of a postponed conflict?
Iran emerged from the war wounded, but it didn’t exit the negotiating table. It appeared battered, but it did not collapse. Maybe besieged but it is still holding cards. Whilst today Iran might be in a predicament, but it has not lost its ability to negotiate, to threaten, and wait for the next move.
This is precisely is what is making the outcome far more complex than what Israel has tried to portray: The war may have succeeded in inflicting pain on Iran, but it did not eliminating the Iranian state and its apparatus.
While Israel may have achieved a significant show of force, it did not achieve an outright and decisive victory. The decisive outcome it sought remained incomplete, and the deterrence it aimed to restore remained contingent on what would follow after the war: Would Iran back down? Would it retaliate? Would it accept American terms? Would it open the Strait of Hormuz according to Washington’s wishes? And would the Lebanese front be detached from Tehran’s calculations, or would it remain part of the long-term equation of retaliation?
Therefore, the war does not appear to be the end of the conflict with Iran, but rather a new chapter in a broader, protracted struggle. In this chapter, Israel raised its voice to the maximum, but it could not write the final chapter. States do not fall through mere bluster, regional projects do not end with a single blow, and conflicts that have accumulated over decades are not resolved in days, no matter how intense the fighting is.
In short, Israel’s “roar” was loud, perhaps painful, and perhaps unprecedented in some aspects, but it was not enough to topple Iran or remove it from the scene. The din of war has risen, the region has been shaken, and calculations have shifted, but Iran remains on the precipice, not outside history.
Therefore, the most accurate description of this phase is not a complete Israeli victory, nor an Iranian resistance without cost, but rather a war whose end is not yet in sight: A war in which Israel roared loudly, but was not able to bring down Iran.
This article was reproduced from the Jo24 Arabic website in Jordan and appears in the www.crossfirearabia.com.
Gaza Fishermen Dream of Life Prior to 7 Oct
- CrossFireArabia
- May 19, 2026
CROSSFIREARABIA – The fishing industry, once a pillar of the Gaza economy, now stands in total devastation due to Israel’s continuing war on the 364-kilometer Strip that doesn’t seem to stop despite the fact that a ceasefire was signed on 10 October, 2025.
Zakaria Bakr, General-Secretary of the General Union of Workers in Fishing and Marine Production affirmed that the Gaza fishing sector — which for decades has been a primary source of income for thousands of families and a key pillar of food security — is now in ruins because of the more than two and a half years of Israeli bombing on the Gaza Strip, including on its beaches and coastal areas. Its a narrative of devastation.
Bakr said the systematic targeting of the fishing industry by Israeli occupation forces has lead to its near-total collapse.
Speaking to Quds Press, Bakr said that this targeting has included an almost complete ban on fishermen and preventing them from going a few hundred meters after the shoreline; a situation made with vehemence soon after 7 October, 2023 when Israel launched a destructive war on the Strip and with no let up.
Bakr added that lethal force started to be used against fishermen not to step even meters into the Gaza blue shorelines. They still take the risk because of the miserable economic situation they have been reduced to. But this has proved costly for more than 230 of them have been shot dead at point blank range.
The union chief says hundreds have been arrested as well, explaining the fishing sector has been subjected to mass destruction affecting up to 95 percent of its infrastructure, with fishing boats ruined and warehouses struck either by Israeli gunboats and/or missiles from the air.
UN figures as well testify to this fact, stating the fishing infrastructure include ice factories, storage facilities, maintenance workshops and wholesale fish markets which have been destroyed over the past two-and-a-half years of slaughter.
This has led to the near-total collapse of the fishing industry, depriving thousands of families of their only source of income. Today, it’s a stark contrast. Prior to October 2023, there were 4200 registered fishermen with 6000 support workers on the boats and the fishing sector sustained around 100,000 people in Gaza but no more.
The destruction of the sector has created an additional food security crisis. Before October 2023, the fish total annual tonnage production stood at 5,410 according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Today, its less than 7.3 percent.
It is indeed a hard life for fishermen. Before October 2023 Gaza fishermen used to catch between them, 15,000 to 20,000 kilos, daily. Now, it is down to a trickle with UN feeds reporting a mere 2 to 5 kilograms of fish daily, and I dare say, if they can pass the Israeli gunboats and snipers who are waiting near the coast.
Bakr added that what Gaza’s fishermen are going through from the Israeli gunboat harassment is a blatant violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly the rights to work, life, and dignified living. It directly contradicts the core principles established by the International Labour Organization regarding safe working conditions and the protection of workers, he pointed out.
Bakr said despite the hopelessness of the sector, his union continues to be active, recently sending letters to several international organizations to present them with the grim reality facing the fishing sector in Gaza. These organizations included the United Nations, the International Labour Organization, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as other international and human rights institutions.
“We informed these institutions, on behalf of the fishermen of the Gaza Strip, of the scale of the catastrophe facing this labor-intensive sector, which represents one of the oldest and most important economic, social, and cultural components of Palestinian life and society, and which today, is facing one of the harshest humanitarian and professional crises of modern times,” he added.
He noted that the union has called on international institutions to take a number of urgent measures, most notably providing immediate international protection for fishermen while working at sea, pressuring for the lifting of restrictions on access to fishing areas in a safe and unrestricted manner, and halting all forms of targeting against fishermen and their equipment.
He also called for support in rehabilitating the fishing sector, including boats and related infrastructure, providing urgent assistance programs for affected families, and dispatching fact-finding missions to document violations against fishermen and issue official reports on them.
Bakr stressed that what Gaza’s fishermen are enduring today represents “a stain on the conscience of the international community,” which remains powerless in the face of depriving civilian workers of their most basic rights to work and life.
He called on international institutions to assume their legal and humanitarian responsibilities and to take urgent action to put an end to this tragedy, ensuring that Gaza’s fishermen can safely return to the sea and restore their legitimate right to work and live with dignity.
A once proud fishing industry, today, it is not, thanks to the Israeli bombardment that topped over 100,000 tons of explosives and dynamite. Fishermen and their families will never forgive the hateful and vengeful Israelis who today reduced their sector to 50 small boats for the entire 40-kilometer coastline that stretches from Rafah in the south to Israel in the north.
The Gaza fishing industry once used to have 2000 fishing vessels with more than a 1000 motorized boats and 900 rowboats generating $10-15 million to Gaza’s local economy, 3 percent of the entire Palestinian GDP.
“All my money is gone. Out of my big 17-meter boat and 10 smaller boats, nothing remains but metal sticking out of the water. The sea was an integral part of the Gazan economy; fishermen would feed their families with their catch and could make a good living. Now, everything is in ruins,” says Jamal Al Moodi, a once proud Gaza fisherman.
Dr Asmar is a writer based in Amman and is the editor of www.crossfirearabia.com
