Opinion Archives - Page 25 of 46

Gaza Cracks Trump’s Image as ‘Peacemaker’

CrossFireArabia
March 29, 2025

The Gaza ceasefire had been extremely fragile ever since its implementation on Jan. 19. Many analysts doubted that phase two would begin, and the main question was about when, not if, the ceasefire would fall apart. It came as no surprise when Israel completely ended the ceasefire on March 18 and resumed its genocidal war on Gaza, killing roughly 600 [1] Palestinians within the first four days after the truce collapsed.

It is beyond disturbing to think about what will come next for the 2.2 million people in Gaza, especially given that Israeli authorities imposed [2] a blockade on all humanitarian aid on March 2. While briefing the UN Security Council on the day Israel resumed its war, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said [3] “food is rotting and medicines are expiring.” The Israelis quickly undid all humanitarian progress achieved by international actors during the 42-day ceasefire. “Essential survival resources needed are now being rationed,” warned [4] Fletcher.

For all the misleading and outright inaccurate reporting in the Western media, it is clear that Hamas wanted phase two to begin, which was supposed to take place on March 1. However, Israel wanted phase one extended and was against moving into phase two. Had the second phase begun, Hamas would have handed over all the remaining Israeli captives. Now, amid this intense warfare, Hamas claims it is considering US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff’s “Bridge Proposal,” which aims to extend the collapsed ceasefire into next month, beyond Ramadan and Passover, to permit negotiations for a permanent ceasefire to end this war.

It is not difficult to understand why this genocide resumed on March 18. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies in the government were crystal clear that they did not support the ceasefire and wanted Israeli military operations against Gaza to resume. It was only pressure from the incoming Donald Trump administration during the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency that led Tel Aviv to agree to the tenuous ceasefire. Now that the Trump administration removed that pressure on Israel and the American president went all-out with his rhetoric about “hell” in Gaza, Netanyahu received the green light from the White House to continue the genocide.

Trump’s desires and reality

What US President Donald Trump realistically sought to achieve with his obscene rhetoric about a “clean out” [6] of Gaza and outlandish talk of transforming the war-ravaged enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East” [7] is a question for another article. Nonetheless, it is easy to conclude that such language emboldened the most right-wing and aggressive Israeli elements, including those in the government. These extremists have spent decades fantasizing about a second Nakba and establishing a Palestinian state outside Palestine.

Put simply, for Netanyahu and those around him to champion this plan of mass ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of millions of Palestinians into Egypt, Jordan, and perhaps also some Gulf Arab countries, continuing the war on Gaza is a necessary part of this process. After all, human history has shown that people don’t volunteer to leave their ancestral homeland but typically only do as a result of massive bloodshed.

The Israeli leadership understands this about the Palestinians and their quest to remain on their land. So much was on display with the leaflets [8] that Israel’s military recently dropped on Gaza, which threatened to make Trump’s plan for a “clean out” of Gaza the new reality.

To be sure, Israel’s domestic politics and Netanyahu’s own legal situation were relevant factors too. By restarting the war on Gaza, Netanyahu was able to secure stability within his own coalition. Now, not only is there no reason for him to fear more cabinet members quitting the coalition, but former Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who left in January because of the ceasefire has returned [9] due to the genocide’s resumption.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s testimony in his corruption trial, set for the day that the war on Gaza recommenced, was postponed, [10] highlighting how “security developments” [11] shield him from legal consequences for his alleged [12] breach of trust, bribery, and fraud.

A key question is, where does this all leave Trump? After all, he campaigned on being a “peacemaker” president. While delivering his inaugural address just over two months ago, Trump declared, [13] “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

At this point, Trump might find himself trapped in Gaza, preventing him from reducing the US military footprint in the Middle East. Trump is escalating conflicts in the region—from Gaza to Yemen and possibly soon Iran—that could keep the US bogged down in this part of the world, which is the opposite of his promises regarding US foreign policy if elected to a second term. It remains to be seen how Trump’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza and his escalation in Yemen—closely tied to Palestine—will impact his standing among his MAGA base.

The author is the CEO of Gulf States Analytics

[1] https://www.euronews.com/2025/03/22/israel-orders-idf-troops-to-advance-deeper-into-gaza-as-renewed-operation-expands

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/02/middleeast/israel-halts-gaza-humanitarian-aid-intl-hnk/index.html

[3, 4] https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1161246

[5] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-intensifying-gaza-strikes-press-hamas-into-freeing-hostages-defence-2025-03-21/

[6] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/27/middleeast/trump-clean-out-gaza-middle-east-intl/index.html

[7] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trumps-gaza-israel-plans-riviera-rcna190748

[8] https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-drops-leaflets-saying-no-one-will-care-if-gazans-vanish

[9] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/18/israels-ben-gvir-to-rejoin-netanyahus-government

[10,11,12] https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/report-netanyahus-testimony-corruption-trial-postponed-due-gaza-war

[13] https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/01/the-inaugural-address/

Opinion

The Middle East Octopus

Dr Khairi Janbek
March 29, 2025

By Dr Khairi Janbek

When we think of contemporary Iran, one always believes that the Arab Middle East had always been dominated by three Non-Arab American allies: Iran of the Shah, Turkey and Israel. One thinks that those “neighborhood police stations” were the guarantors of stability through their convergence, and at times contradictions in the age of Cold War and oil. However, the Shah of Iran was deposed and the anti-communist Cold War ended, but that didn’t mean that oil stopped becoming important nor that both Russia and China were no longer threats.

One would say, that the rehabilitation of Iran and possibly turning it into a negotiations partner aims at keeping the third angle of the police stations triangle going, because non of the Arab countries, no matter how much they tried, could never replace Iran, because no “Arab police station” is permitted to emerge as a third angle.

Having said that, it would be beyond naive to think that the expansion of Iran’s power and influence happened by stealth or escaped the notice of the US and NATO. After all, Iran grew to become a Red Sea country through its influence on the Houthis in Yemen, a Mediterranean country through its influence in Syria as well Lebanon through Hezbollah, and the major Gulf country through its supporters in Iraq. In fact this Iranian domination of space is what has created a common space between all its long arm organizations in the region.

Essentially, if we compare Iran to an octopus, all those various groups are its tentacles, and they all serve the purpose of Iran’s strategic interests, albeit not through a push-button approach, but through not taking any action which would not please their master Iran. Of course, this puts Iran in a strong position to be a major player in the region and an inescapable negotiations partner for the US, which is also convenient for the Americans, in order to remind their Arab allies who is their protector in a region policed by Turkey, Israel and Iran.

Of course, this takes us to the point of saying that, for all intents and purposes, for the Americans a trusted adversary is more important than distrusted friends, and that it would be absurd to think that all those long arms of Iran in the Arab world can be amputated by military means; they certainly can be weakened, but without the consent of Iran and without the right price, so long as it remains behind them, nothing much can change.

At this point, from what one can only see, is that no one in their right mind or otherwise, will permit a war to emerge in which Israel is pitted against Iran and the US as well as NATO putting all their weight behind Israel and forcing the Arabs to choose their camp. That would be the scenario of the end of the world as we know it , or with major civil wars in the Arab countries controlled by the tentacles of Iran, and no one wants that.

Dr Janbek is a Jordanian writer based in Paris

Opinion

Houthi Missiles, Trump and The Israeli depth

CrossFireArabia
March 27, 2025

The Houthis are back firing at the heart of the Israeli depth. The military escalation is increasing despite US President Donald Trump’s warning that the Yemeni group, also called Ansar Allah, are set to be destroyed. But there is no proof of that as yet!

Ever since Israel restarted its military campaign on Gaza on 19 March, exactly two months after it ceased its military operations on the enclave, the Houthis reinitiated its trajectories, drones and hypersonic missiles on Israel. It adopted an eye-for-eye point of view — that is as long as Israel stops humanitarian aid to Gaza, Houthi missiles would continue on the Zionist state.

The latest Houthi ballistic missiles were fired Wednesday during the day, a first-time shocker for these trajectories are delivered in the middle of the night. It was reported by the Hebrew media that millions hurried to underground shelters where sirens went off in 250 cities, towns, and settlements to the chagrin of many Israelis whose lives were turned upside down in the war on Gaza.

Wednesday will be remembered as a hard day for many as the ballistic missiles, which according to the Israeli army were intercepted and shot down from the air by counter trajectories. Such a series of Israeli military actions sent an intense amount of debris hurling down across a wide area of central and southern Israel including in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts are saying it’s back to the old days of attempting to readdress the strategic equilibrium of Houthis and Hezbollah missiles targeting the Israeli depth. While Hezbollah is on the border with Lebanon, the Houthi missiles, and their success in reaching their targets, were fired all the way from Yemen, 2000 kilometers away into Israel.

This time, and like before during the course of 2024 where hundreds of trajectories were fired on the Zionist entity, the hypersonic missile was meant for the Ben-Gurion Airport, a busy hub for international travelers. Because of the timing of the trajectories it was reported that a significant number of the incoming planes had to be diverted and re-routed to Larnaca in Cyprus as a stopover and wait for the calm to set in.

Again this is a first-time development because the disruption usually lasted for no more than 30 minutes whilst this time around it paralyzed the airport and its aviation systems and meant to send a Houthi signal to the Israelis and their American allies especially, that this would be the status quo from now on unless the onslaught on Gaza is stopped and humanitarian aid allowed in the enclave.

Today, the incoming missiles on the different parts of Israel have been almost daily, at least for the last one week. This is seen as a signal that a new and forceful strategic approach is being adopted by the Houthis who are daring the Americans despite their daily military strikes on Yemen that Israel would continue to be a legitimate target.

The American navy through its USS Harry Truman destroyer in the Red Sea is striking Yemen with such force and vehemence whilst assuring the Israelis that they will do the job and end the Houthi presence.

But this is not having the military effect the Americans would like it to have for Yemen is a big country with its harsh setting and difficult geographical terrain that makes such strikes seem like ‘bee stings” rather than painful blows. On Tuesday, the US struck different locations in Yemen 17 times and before that the strikes were carried out with the same level of intensity.

But the Houthis are not being brought to their knees, a proving fact that has cost the preceding Biden administration an estimated $2 billion to attempt to rein in the Houthis but with no apparent success despite the level of destruction inside the country for Yemenis, across-the-board, and not just the Houthis, have proven to be a formidable force over the years.

It’s still too early to see for how long Trump will follow in the footsteps made by former US president Joe Biden. This is bearing in mind that the new man in the White House doesn’t like to spend US money and therefore will likely lose steam as the days pass bye and especially because the Houthis started to target the US destroyer and any other ships going to Israel with the group determined to continue to upset the international trading system unless their is a reprieve on Gaza.

The above-analysis is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website.

Opinion

‘All Attempts at Displacing Gazans Failed’ – A Historical Outline

CrossFireArabia
March 27, 2025

By Ismael Al Sharif

One of the most widely circulated press items in the Gaza War was a photo in Al-Dustour daily in its 11 March, 1971 edition under an “Evacuation of the Gaza Strip Begins,” headline. This image traveled around the world, confirming the importance of print journalism and its continued role as a primary source of information for documenting events, and its enduring presence despite digital developments.

Al-Dustour witnessed pivotal moments in the repeated attempts to empty Gaza of its population. The idea of displacing the residents of the Strip began in the early 1950s, when a number of military personnel, bureaucrats, and senior UNRWA officials met and took out old maps to discuss possible displacement destinations. After lengthy discussions, it was decided to push Gaza’s residents toward the vast, sparsely populated Sinai Desert.

The plan targeted the displacement of approximately 60,000 people, equivalent to a quarter of Gaza’s population at the time. Despite the start of preparations, the idea was met with categorical rejection by the residents of the Gaza Strip, who clung to their land and refused to leave.

In 1956, the Zionists occupied the Gaza Strip during the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt. David Ben-Gurion, along with senior military commanders, attempted to forcibly displace the population of the Strip to the West Bank and Sinai. However, pressure from the United States prevented the plan from being implemented and the attempt was foiled. A year later, the occupation was forced to withdraw from Gaza.

In 1967, Moshe Dayan devised a plan aimed at forcing as many residents of the Gaza Strip as possible to emigrate to the West Bank and Egypt. Some residents were eventually deported to the West Bank, but the plan did not achieve the desired results, as relatively few residents left Gaza.

In 1971, while the late Yitzhak Shamir was serving as military governor of the Gaza Strip, he decided to forcibly displace the population. He bulldozed thousands of homes and forced a number of residents onto buses and transported them to the city of Al-Arish. But the plan failed, as the population quickly returned to Gaza, supported by pressure from Arab countries and major powers, which prevented the plan from being fully implemented.

غزة تستغيث… والأمة مسؤولة
تحت القصف والحصار، يقف أهل غزة شامخين، ثابتين رغم الدمار. في كل بيت شهيد، وفي كل شارع جرح ينزف، لكن الإرادة لا تنكسر!
نصرة فلسطين واجب كل حرّ، بالكلمة، بالموقف، بالدعم الفعلي. فماذا قدمنا اليوم؟#غزة_تقاوم #فلسطين_قضية_أمة #FreePalestine #لن_نخذلهم pic.twitter.com/8cL3XIiBKT
— Gaza Family under Siege 🇵🇸 (@diaa_jendia) March 23, 2025

With all attempts at direct displacement having failed, the Zionists found themselves in a predicament; neither killing nor enticement persuaded the people of Gaza to leave their homeland. The occupation then changed its strategy, devising a plan to systematically and slowly destroy Gaza through siege, starvation, and repeated military escalation. Once again, however, the Gazans foiled the plan and held their ground, refusing to leave.

In 1992, the “Greater Gaza” project was proposed during the term of Yitzhak Rabin. Secret plans were drawn up to impoverish the Strip, making life there nearly impossible, and drive its residents to emigrate to Sinai. However, this plan, too, failed.

In 2004, then-Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter devised a plan bearing his name, believing he had found the ideal solution to displace the population of Gaza by encouraging what he called “voluntary migration,” particularly to European and Gulf countries. However, this plan also failed, and the people of Gaza remained steadfast in their land, refusing to leave.

In 2014, the Israeli occupation relaunched its first plan, seeking to remove the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip and push the population of the Strip toward Egyptian territory. However, Egypt confronted and thwarted this plan, preventing it from achieving its goals.

Then came the Trump administration’s so-called “Deal of the Century,” which included unofficial clauses regarding the transfer of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai. The US administration exerted pressure on Cairo to implement this plan, but Egypt categorically rejected it, also leading to its failure.

Then came the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which Israel exploited to carry out the largest genocide ever carried out, with the aim of displacing the people of Gaza. It practiced murder and siege, cutting off their basic necessities of life, hoping to force them to leave. However, despite the brutality of the aggression, Gaza stood firm, thwarted the plan, and emerged victorious with its unbreakable will.

Trump returned once again to revive his plan, this time attempting to displace the people of Gaza through what he called “soft displacement.” However, he clashed with a tough king who firmly confronted this plan and rejected it without hesitation.

The Zionist entity, with American support, failed to adhere to the temporary truce with Hamas, and the war of extermination resumed, amid a stifling siege, famine, and a scarcity of water and medical services.

Over the decades, the Zionist entity attempted to exterminate and displace the people of Gaza, sometimes by force and sometimes by enticement. But Gaza stood firm, and the banner of steadfastness was passed down from generation to generation. Just as this banner was passed down from generation to generation, so too was the banner of defending the holy sites, passed from one Hashemite king to the next.

The commandments of our forefathers became ingrained in our conscience: to always stand with Palestine. Over these long years, Al-Dustour newspaper has stood with the Palestinian cause, exposing the enemy’s schemes and mobilizing support and backing for justice. Al-Dustour has been a witness to history, conveying Gaza’s voice and echoing its steadfastness. At every critical moment, it was present, documenting, exposing, and defending the truth without hesitation.

A day will come, decades from now, when future generations will pass on images from Al-Dustour’s editions that documented this phase of the conflict with the enemy, testifying to Gaza’s steadfastness and the resilience of its people in the face of attempts at genocide and displacement. Just as Al-Dustour has always been present in the battles of steadfastness, Gaza will remain engraved in its conscience: An immortal story and an indelible symbol.

Ismael Al Sharif is a columnist in Ad Dustour newspaper in Jordan.

Opinion

Israel Kills Children as World Looks on

CrossFireArabia
March 26, 2025

By Luigi Daniele

Mark these words: South Africa is likely to win the genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but by then, it will be too late to save a single civilian life. The time for robust action is now.

The resumption of the exterminatory Israeli bombardments on Gaza has killed 174 Palestinian children and toddlers in less than 48 hours, according to Defense for Children International. UNICEF has also denounced the killing of more than 130 children in a single day, representing the largest single-day child death toll among Palestinians in years. This may be the deadliest episode in the history of Israeli military actions in Palestine.

Family members of slain Israeli captives, whose names and faces have repeatedly been used to justify further attacks on Palestinians, condemned their government’s actions as another betrayal of the hostages, with Yarden Bibas writing “military pressure endangers the hostages while an agreement brings them home”, and networks of Israeli families declaring Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu chose Ben-Gvir’s return to the government over the return of the hostages from Gaza.

In the midst of this carnage, Israeli ministers declare “a society that tolerates Hamas sympathizers within it has no right to exist,” or ask the very population they are destroying to “return the hostages and remove Hamas” unless they want to pay a “far more severe price” of “total devastation.”

Ideology of destruction

The ideology of the Israeli leadership is becoming increasingly explicit: It promotes the notion that Palestinians deserve elimination and are responsible for their own destruction. It is a paradigmatically genocidal ideology, typical of all the genocides in history, construing the victim group’s existence as undeserved, its survival as an intolerable threat, brutalities against it inherently justified, ‘called for’, and the forcing of the group into inexistence as a way of restoring the natural order of things as they should have always been. After all, key Israeli ministers declared “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” Declaring the inexistence of a people equates precisely to posing the premises for its elimination.

The honesty of the genocidal narratives of the Israeli executive, coupled with the use of hunger, thirst, diseases as weapons of war, reinforces crucially the validity of South Africa’s arguments at the ICJ, and of those states intervening in support of those arguments. As an international lawyer, my guess is that South Africa, even more likely after these renewed atrocities, will win the genocide case at the ICJ.

Despite the all-time record of crimes against children, Western states keep refraining from legal action, even those intervening in other ICJ cases to affirm that, in their interpretation of the Genocide Convention, the victimization of children, as the most vulnerable and crucial component of victim groups, should bring special weight in ascertaining the existence of genocidal intent. Beyond hypocrisy and racist double standards, Palestinian children are portrayed as less human and less worthy of protection than other children.

The irresponsibility of political leaders of third states indeed continues to kill. Silent when not complicit, incapable of acting for a single sanction, some are even offering safe harbors from ICC arrest warrants to their political and business partners wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, violating their own obligations as state parties of the Rome Statute.

In sum, the lawlessness unleashed on Palestinians is indeed infecting the world (dis)order, and it is evident that Netanyahu has all the interest in descending the entire region into a state of permanent war to stay in power. The global instability deriving from the winds of regional and global wars (in which the EU is diving rather than shifting its disastrous strategic approaches) will inevitably increase authoritarian repressions against dissidents, oppositions, and alternative visions in many of the countries revolving around this tragic abyss of history. War and authoritarianism always nurture each other. It is therefore not only in the interests of the survival of Palestinians, but a political necessity against the oligarchic shifts in our own countries to demand robust action now.

Protecting lives

Palestinians need a humanitarian intervention of a multilateral coalition to protect civilian lives. This presence alone can tackle an alliance of savage powers devaluing the lives of Palestinians as less than human and extracting profits from their massacres now, while preparing to extract more profits from exterminatory wars globally tomorrow. This would offer an immediate opportunity for world powers genuinely committed to reforming the international order towards a new multilateralism based on sovereign equality, self-determination, and peaceful coexistence to prove that their words are not empty slogans.

In other words, the paradox we face is that even the selfish pursuit of national interests—let alone legal or moral obligations—should be enough to trigger decisive action like the one proposed in this reflection.

A multilateral military presence, under UN auspices, to protect Palestinian civilians appears necessary as never before, since none of them will ever be safe under occupation by forces making clear they consider their existence as a people an offense to be redressed by annihilation. Should a coalition of states promote such an action, it would enjoy the support of masses of citizens across the globe, and gain moral leadership in these dark times, marked by the unchecked rise of international criminality.

Luigi Daniele is a senior scholar at Nottingham Trent University