CrossFireArarbia

After 13 Nuk Bombs Gaza Refuses Surrender

CrossFireArabia
October 8, 2025

Dr Fayez Abu Shammalah says the Israeli aggressor has up till now dropped 200,000 tons of explosives on Gaza.

He added this vast amount equals to 13 nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima in Japan.

The US bombing forced the hands of Japan and it surrendered. However Abu Shammalah says: Gaza, its people and resistance are still fighting and refuses to surrender.

Dr Abu Shammalah is a university professor, a freed prisoners after spending 10 years in Israel jails, is a member of the Palestine National Council, and previously a mayor of the Khan Younis Municipality.

Analyses

Gaza: Changing The Middle East Face

CrossFireArabia
October 8, 2025

By Mohammad Abu Rumman

The Al-Aqsa Flood operation marked a turning point in the modern political history of the Middle East. Its repercussions have gone far beyond the Palestinian and regional arenas, extending to the international system and reshaping the foreign policies of global powers toward the region.

The timing of the operation was particularly significant: it came at a transitional moment in the regional order, in the absence of consensus among international and regional actors on the rules of the game. While a fragile balance of deterrence existed between the so-called “Axis of Resistance”—led by Iran (alongside the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, Shiite political forces in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad)—and Israel, the latter was in the midst of a new phase of regional integration through the Abraham Accords.

Several Arab capitals had already normalized relations, and others were on their way, creating an unprecedented political landscape. This shift coincided with the declining influence of traditional Arab powers such as Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, and the rising centrality of the Gulf states. Many analysts began describing this new configuration as a “New Middle East”: wealthy, economically driven, and detached from historical conflicts—unlike the “Old Middle East,” where entrenched crises defined politics.

Turkey, meanwhile, had entered its own phase of recalibration. Once a champion of the Arab Spring and regional Islamist movements, Ankara sought reconciliation with Arab states, even attempting to restore ties with Bashar al-Assad’s regime (though rebuffed by Damascus), while focusing more narrowly on national security and northern Syria.

On the Palestinian front, Israel had grown complacent toward Gaza, convinced Hamas had no incentive to disrupt the status quo. Tensions, however, were mounting in the West Bank, with small armed groups emerging in places like Nablus, Tulkarm, and Jenin. Within Israeli and Western policy circles, talk was spreading about the prospect of a “mini-state in Gaza” as a substitute for a Palestinian state.

At the international level, President Joe Biden’s administration lacked enthusiasm for either the Abraham Accords or Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” yet it effectively followed the same trajectory: pursuing “regional peace” by integrating Israel into a new economic order and reducing the Palestinian question to daily livelihood concerns—employment, services, and economic relief in Gaza and the West Bank—rather than a political resolution.

The Al-Aqsa Flood and the subsequent two-year genocidal war in Gaza shattered these calculations and fundamentally restructured strategic assumptions. Whether the outcome will ultimately benefit or harm the Palestinian cause remains too complex to assess in simple terms, but what is clear is that the pre-October 7 regional order no longer exists.

From a Palestinian perspective, the conflict has restored international attention to the cause, leading to a renewed recognition of its centrality. In the Gulf, the previously dominant security paradigm—which cast Iran as the chief threat while framing Israel as a potential partner—collapsed entirely. A new consensus has emerged: Gulf security is inseparable from the Palestinian issue, and the notion of Israel as a “strategic friend” has been critically reassessed.

Skeptics may argue that these shifts have not altered the balance of power on the ground, and they are partially correct. Yet the strategic narrative has changed. Before October 7, the trajectory was toward the erasure of the Palestinian cause (closing UNRWA, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, normalization, and de facto annexation of the West Bank). Today, there is growing recognition—regionally and internationally—that Israeli policies themselves are the root of instability, not Iran or other regional actors. As Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla put it on X (September 25): “When weighing who poses a greater threat to Gulf security and regional stability—Iran or Israel—the evidence points clearly to Israel. Israel’s brutal behavior has made it more dangerous than an exhausted Iran. The Gulf needs a new defensive and geopolitical strategy for the Middle East beyond Iran.”

Israel, however, now perceives a surplus of power and is pressing for a new political and security order that extends beyond the occupied territories. With the partial unraveling of the Iranian alliance and the breakdown of the “Syrian corridor” that once linked Tehran to the Mediterranean, Israel has set its sights on even more ambitious goals, including the proposed “David Corridor” and establishing buffer zones around its borders in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza.

In response, a tentative regional coalition has begun to take shape, bringing together Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Qatar, with notable support from Turkey and Pakistan. The latter signed a defense pact with Saudi Arabia following Israel’s strike on Qatar and has since become more engaged in regional diplomacy. While fragile and constrained, this alignment presents a rare historic opportunity to rebuild a regional balance of power and establish a new deterrence framework.

Another striking development is the shift in Europe’s stance toward Israel. For the first time, Israel has lost significant ground in Western public opinion and media narratives, particularly among younger generations and in universities. This has pushed Israel closer to isolation—a position from which former U.S. President Donald Trump had tried to rescue it through his proposed Gaza peace plan, which was largely about securing U.S. and Israeli interests, without offering real guarantees for Palestinian statehood or ending the occupation.

In conclusion, it is still too early to judge the full strategic consequences of the Al-Aqsa Flood and the war in Gaza. Scenarios remain open, and outcomes uncertain. Yet one thing is indisputable: the region today is no longer what it was before October 7.

Abu Rumman is an Academic Advisor of the Politics and Society Institute and Professor of Political Science in The University of Jordan and published this article in The Jordan Times.

Opinion

Trump and The Oil Jar

CrossFireArabia
October 8, 2025

By Rashad Abu Dawood

A long time ago when our mom wanted to send us to sleep she would always tell us the story of the ‘oil jar’.

She would start by saying: Should I tell you about the oil jar? We’d say in one voice: Yes, tell us. She would repeat: Should I tell you it or not…the story of the oil can and we would plead again: Yes. But every time, the affirmation would sink lower as we would yawn incessantly till we fell sleep.

https://www.addustour.com/articles/1521982

As we grew up we found there was no story to tell, she would repeat the oil jar tale so that we forget and go to sleep. I remember the story as I follow the news on the Trump’s mysterious 20-point plan on Gaza; there is no point among the 20 that are clear except the one on the handover of the hostages. The rest need astrologers and psychologists to decipher.

And there are others that say the plan is a “Trumpian trap” coordinated with Benjamin Netanyahu to free the hostages from the grip of Hamas while there there is no exact date for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, no time detail for the entry of aid to the enclave to help the starving people and most important there are no guarantees to the Palestinian side that everything would be ok.

The only guarantee is that of Trump; there is no UN, no Russia, no China, the biggest powers on the international scene. There is no Security Council whose Article 7 emphasizes the use of military force against the party that opposes the execution of the agreement.

Unfortunately, the US president is not a man of his word. He says something and says the exact opposite the same day and even in the same sentence. This what is the meaning of “peace through strength?” We understand that peace is derived through negotiations; And what about the meaning of “Hamas must agree are face the gates of hell”.

Gaza has experienced: Trump has not kept to his promises for when the US hostage Eidan Alexander was released last May Trump praised the Hamas step, regarding it as a goodwill gesture towards the US. He saw the release as a “historic day” on the way to end the barbaric war on Gaza.

But what happened to this historic day as described by the US president? The Netanyahu government become a wild beast with the Israeli army killing on average 100 Palestinians a day and with those injured double that number not to say anything about the starvation of tens of thousands.

The Israeli army increased its force on the enclave, invaded Gaza City and today it controls 80 percent of the enclave. We have no choice but to pretend that we believe in Trump and see what’s going to happen next and have to wait to see the outcome of his statements as the fairytale about the oil jar.

This opinion was written by originally written in Arabic.

Opinion

Many Faces of Colonialism

CrossFireArabia
October 5, 2025

By Ismail Al Sharif

“I don’t admit that a wrong was done to the Native Americans in America or the Blacks in Australia. Rather, stronger peoples of a higher standard than the rest of the world came and took their place… That’s the way of life” – Churchill.

Last 26 August, US ambassador to Turkey—and President Trump’s special envoy to Lebanon—went up to the press conference podium following the US delegation’s meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun. In a familiar scene repeated in world capitals, journalists in the crowded room rushed to ask their questions simultaneously, all seeking direct answers from the ambassador.

This time, however, the ambassador confronted the Arab journalists addressing them with a tone of arrogance filled with contempt. He said: “The moment things turn into chaos, as if you were behaving like animals, we will leave immediately. Behave in a civilized manner; this is the essence of the problem in this region.” He then reiterated: “Please remain calm… The moment things devolve into animal-like chaos, we will withdraw immediately.”

His remarks sparked a wave of anger and condemnation. The Lebanese Journalists Syndicate demanded an official apology, while the Lebanese presidency issued a statement expressing its rejection of these offensive remarks. Ambassador Tom Barrack was later forced to backtrack, acknowledging his use of the term “animal” was inappropriate.

But Barrack is merely a recurring example of a colonialism that has not changed. He reminds us of Leopold II, King of Belgium, who displayed Africans as exhibits in humiliating human zoos. He is no different from the ex-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, the war criminal who called Palestinians “human animals.”

He is a natural extension of a deeply-rooted colonial mentality, embodied in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Ottoman Empire’s legacy as spoils of war, or the Berlin Conference, when Bismarck distributed the African continent as gifts among the European colonial powers. The bitter truth is that colonialism’s view of us has never changed.

In the past, they labeled us as barbarians and savages and described our peoples as backward and our races as inferior. These old colonial terms evolved, cloaked in glittering and attractive slogans such as sustainable development, good governance, spreading democracy, protecting human rights, promoting reform, fighting terrorism, and establishing peace. But the essence and ultimate goal remained the same: Plundering our wealth and tightening control over our peoples.

In the Belgian Congo under Leopold II, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rubber-mining companies imposed mandatory production quotas on African villages, and anyone who failed to meet the required quota had their hands amputated as punishment. Today, the same scene is being repeated in different forms: A million Iraqi children being killed to control oil under the false pretext of “weapons of mass destruction.”

In Gaza, the most heinous crimes of modern genocide are being committed to plunder gas resources, simply because Hamas dares to challenge Western hegemony and refuses to submit to it.

Barrack represents the naked face of colonialism, without embellishment or falsification; he is the blunt and frank expression of the Western view of us. In an interview with National News on 22 September, he stated with shocking clarity: “We don’t trust any of you; our interests are incompatible. The term ‘ally’ is inaccurate in describing our relationship with you, but our relationship with Israel is completely different; it is an exceptional and emotional relationship. As for peace, it is just an illusion that will never be achieved. Might makes right, and I personally oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

In a subsequent statement to Al Jazeera, Barrack went further, saying with disdain: “There is no such thing as the Middle East; it is just a collection of scattered tribes and villages.” As for the countries you claim exist, they were created by the British and the French.”

Barrack’s statements may have been intentional and deliberate, aiming to reveal the true face of the colonial project, as part of an American strategy to pressure the Arabs in the context of redrawing the map of the region. Perhaps the deeper goal behind this rhetoric is to implant concepts of backwardness, impotence, and division deep within our collective consciousness, so that we internalize and believe in them, and thus act accordingly, making it easier for colonial powers to subjugate us and impose their control over us.

The late intellectual Edward Said expressed this truth profoundly when he said: “The most dangerous form of domination is not direct military occupation, but rather internalizing and believing the stereotype that the colonizer paints about us.” From this perspective, every word Barrack utters is not merely a passing blunder or a spontaneous slip of the tongue, but rather a clear embodiment of a deeply rooted colonial mentality that views Arabs, Muslims, and all other oppressed peoples of the earth as inferior and worthless to Westerners.

Similarly, the late intellectual, thinker and activist Frantz Fanon, and one of the prominent pioneers of anti-colonial thought, emphasized that true and most dangerous colonialism begins when we view ourselves through the eyes of the colonizer. Therefore, the first and fundamental step on the path to true liberation is to reject these imposed terms, which seek to define our inferior status and portray us as nations of lesser value and civilization than others.

We are not merely the “Middle East,” the “Third World,” or the “developing countries,” as they like to classify us. We are an ancient nation with deep roots in history. We are the bearers of one of the greatest and oldest human civilizations, the Arab-Islamic civilization, with our authentic and deeply-rooted identity, our immortal Arabic language, our deeply-rooted culture, and our history spanning thousands of years. We have made sublime civilizational contributions to the progress of humanity as a whole, and we are a beacon that has illuminated the paths of science, thought, knowledge, and enlightenment for the world.

This article by Ismail Al Sharif was originally written in Arabic for the Addustour daily.

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