Gaza Archives - Page 107 of 155

Quarter of Jews Want to Leave Israel After Gaza

CrossFireArabia
October 6, 2024

A poll revealed, Saturday, about a quarter of Israelis have been thinking about leaving the country and settling abroad in the past year, due to the “current political and security situation,” the Jewish media reported.

The latest poll by the Israeli official Kan channel, showed 23 percent of Israeli respondants “thought about leaving the country in the past year, starting from October 2023 till October 2024), due to the current political and security situation.”

⚡️Around a quarter of Israelis report that in the past year, they have considered leaving the country.—Kann Hebrew. pic.twitter.com/r8pgB7YmRi
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) October 5, 2024

However the poll also showed that 67 percent of Israelis said they “did not think about leaving the country,” but the rest refused to answer the question.

Revealing is the fact that 14 percent of those who support the government coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have thought about leaving, compared to 36 percent of the opposition parties’ supporters.

Thus the poll showed “secularists are more inclined to leave, compared to Haredi (religious) Jews.”

The Kan channel’s survey showed however, that negative migration – that is Israelis leaving the country – was evident even before 7 October with the numbers of people exiting exceeding the number of new immigrants coming to Israel.

Kan stated this trend of negative migration seems to be continuing for 2024 which could worsen.

Last September, official Israeli data by the Central Bureau of Statistics showed a significant increase in this phenomenon with more than 40,000 leaving in the first seven months of 2024.

In 2023, about 55,300 citizens immigrated from Israel, compared to 38,000 who immigrated in 2022, according to the same source as reported by the Anadolu news agency.

Analyses

Don’t Forget The West Bank Slaughter!

marwan
October 5, 2024

By Imran Khalid

Amid the ongoing violence and devastation in Gaza, much of the world has turned a blind eye to the equally volatile but less overt conflict simmering in the West Bank. While not as brutally visible as Gaza’s plight, the situation in the West Bank is equally dangerous, threatening to ignite unrest that could destabilize the Palestinian Authority and fuel ethnic cleansing.

Israel has steadily expanded settlements, demolished homes, and seized large swaths of land, targeting civilians in the process. Yet, global attention remains fixated on Gaza and Israel’s escalating war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is as if the world has forgotten that just a year ago, many feared the West Bank, not Gaza, would become the primary battleground between Israelis and Palestinians. Over the past two decades, the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has diverged significantly between Gaza and the West Bank. After Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza, the region was left without Jewish settlers, creating a different kind of friction compared to the West Bank. [1]

What is happening now in the northern West-Bank is the Gazafication of all Palestinian land.
The Israeli army is attacking with massive troops, including airplanes, and is about to invade a central hospital in Jenin. Early this morning Israel’s Foreign Minister tweeted about the… pic.twitter.com/lirmYax4uA
— MK Aida Touma-Sliman (@AidaTuma) August 28, 2024

Settlements are expanding day by day

On March 22, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the largest West Bank land seizure since 1993, setting a new course for Israeli settlement policy [2]. The move by Smotrich to declare 800 hectares in the Jordan Valley as state land paves the way for further development of settlements in this area sharing some 50 kilometers with Jordan.

For the Palestinians, who distrust such moves, seeing them as serious threats to the creation of an independent Palestinian state — this feels like a knife in their back. It is the latest land grab that Palestinians see as a last step before creating an independent and contiguous state. Settlement expansion — which set a record last year, according to Israeli monitoring group Peace Now — has cast doubts over the feasibility of a two-state solution. The largest threat to the long term stability of the land is that, with each designation of land as state property, the probability of having peace shrinks. The ongoing expansion of settlements, land confiscation, and rising settler violence — often carried out with impunity — only compound the difficulties. In some cases, this is further exacerbated by the incident in which the Israeli army is providing either direct or tacit support.

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health has stated that 716 Palestinians have died in the West Bank from Israeli military and settler violence since Oct. 7, including 160 children. Today, more than 5,750 have been wounded and over 10,000 detained in siege [3]. Nearly all arrests take place without going through a proper legal process, with the detainees imprisoned under Israel’s “administrative arrest” system – a method that bypasses international standards and in many cases denies those held the right to see either an attorney or even forthright details of the charges against them.

The two-state solution is being destroyed by Israel

The Israeli government is being accused more and more of implementing an annexation plan in the West Bank. The ramifications of this should alarm all nations that have historically supported a two-state solution, as verbal assurances and well wishes do little to mitigate the reality that Israeli security forces now operate at will in Area A — sovereign Palestinian Authority territory under the Oslo Accords [4].

Adding to this escalating tension are the inflammatory statements from Israeli officials. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz over the weekend compared the military operations in Jenin and Tulkarm to those in Gaza, saying that we are at “war in every sense.” [5] His proposal of a similar evacuation process along the frontier where Palestinian civilians could be temporarily moved will only serve to add further fuel to the fire in an already volatile region.

Israel’s assault on the occupied West Bank is the biggest attack since 2002.

The Israeli military has cut off access to food, destroyed vital infrastructure and killed dozens of civilians in a matter of days.

Here’s what Palestinians in the West Bank are facing. pic.twitter.com/qOfG9Y0wjO
— AJ+ (@ajplus) September 3, 2024

Despite domestic political turmoil, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has artfully dodged blame as violence in Gaza and the West Bank rumbles on. He has practically dismissed calls for a two-state solution and openly defied the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu refuses to yield, a position that has crippled the fragile peacekeeping efforts in Gaza and aggravated fears of renewed violence in the West Bank. Netanyahu has now many excuses that could provide convenient cover for changes aimed at further entrenching Israeli control over the region.

The fate of the major part of the West Bank is crucial; without it, any prospective two-state solution will be dashed. Within Netanyahu’s ruling coalition are elements who seem intent on this very outcome, exerting considerable influence over the prime minister. In this context, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz’s inflammatory rhetoric about the West Bank is more than just careless language — it may be a deliberate signal of the government’s intentions. As Netanyahu’s administration edges closer to what appears to be a calculated annexation strategy, the international community should question whether this is not only a consequence of policy but its very purpose.

[1] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-explained-israels-2005-gaza-disengagement-plan-and-full-siege-order-4466132

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/22/israel-seizes-800-hectares-of-palestinian-land-in-occupied-west-bank

[3] https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/humanitarian-situation-update-204-west-bank

[4] https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240326-israel-s-largest-land-seizure-since-oslo-accords-deals-fresh-blow-to-palestinian-statehood

[5] https://www.timesofisrael.com/katz-slams-borrell-for-saying-he-called-for-displacement-of-west-bank-palestinians/

This opinion is reprinted from the Anadolu news agency.

Opinion

To Great Gaza After 1 Year

marwan
October 5, 2024

By Awni Rajoub

A year has passed, and Gaza is still under fire, burning daily under a barrage of bombs and missiles. A year of total destruction, killing and displacing women, the elderly, and children. More 42,000 martyrs, including thousands of innocent children, fell victim to a war machine that knows no mercy.

Despite all this, and despite the ongoing pain, Gaza is still standing, steadfast, and resisting.

Doesn’t this represent the greatest victory for the human spirit? Doesn’t this express greatness and an invincible sense of belonging to the land and the homeland?

O Islamic nation, the Arab nation, where are you?

Gaza is screaming in pain, under its rubble are children waiting for hope, and its women are burying their sons under the dirt.

In the face of all this destruction, Gaza continues to resist. It resists the most hateful military force the world has ever known. An enemy that does not distinguish between a child, an elderly person, and a woman, an enemy that strikes without mercy, without compassion.

Gaza has no water, no medicine, no food. Yet its people eat the bark of trees and the grass of the earth to stay alive, to remain alive.

But they do not live only to survive, they live to fight. To tell the whole world: We are here, we do not die, we are not defeated.

One year since Israel’s war on Gaza began, more women and children have been killed by the Israeli military than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades. #CeasefireNOW pic.twitter.com/cwP9mFb7kH
— Oxfam in Jerusalem (@oxfamjerusalem) October 3, 2024

As for you, O Arab nation, O Muslim nation of two billion, where are you from Gaza? Where is your anger? Where is your conscience? Where is your jealousy for your brothers and sisters in Palestine?

While you are swaying with joy and dancing in your streets, Gaza is burying its sons.

While you are silent, Al-Aqsa is being desecrated, and the land is being raped.

Where are you from this? How can you allow yourselves to remain silent in the face of this injustice?

But despite everything Gaza refuses to be broken. Gaza does not ask for pity, it asks for justice.

While it bleeds Gaza is telling the world: Israel is an occupying state, a state that kills children, a state that displaces innocents. Israel deserves nothing but condemnation and isolation from the international community. How does the world accept the continuation of this brutal occupation? How does it allow these crimes to go unpunished?

Gaza, a symbol of pride and dignity, we owe you for standing up despite all the wounds, despite all the pain. You are the one thar remains, your people will remain free.

Thank you Gaza, we have learned from you the meaning of steadfastness. We have learned from you that resistance is not an option, but a duty and a right.

You are dignity, you are hope and the desired

Gaza, Gaza in the heart of every Arab

Gaza, victory and joy in the hearts of all Arabs

Tomorrow is near for those who see it

This article was translated from Jordan24.

Features

Last Will of a 10-Year-Old

CrossFireArabia
October 2, 2024

This 10-year-old Palestinian girl, Rasha, left her will before she was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home in the Gaza Strip. Rasha bequeaths that her clothes be distributed to those in need and that her belongings be shared among her female cousins.

News

After Gaza Regional War Looms

CrossFireArabia
October 2, 2024

As the war in Gaza enters its second year, the Palestinian enclave is now unrecognizable, with most areas reduced to rubble. The Palestinian death toll exceeds 41,000 while over 95,000 people have been injured, a large number of them facing life-changing injuries. Thousands of people are estimated to be still buried under the rubble.

At the same time, 97 out of 251 people abducted in Israel on 7 October 2023, are still held hostage by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, denied humanitarian visits. This horrific attack also cost the lives of 815 civilians.

Both Israel and Palestinian armed groups have committed a series of violations of international law resulting in significant civilian harm and the widespread destruction of key infrastructure across Gaza.

Over the last 12 months, each attack against civilians and civilian objects has further undermined the rules of war. This sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the stability and security of the region and beyond.

The devastation in Gaza has been fueled by the supply of foreign weapons from a wide range of States. These arms, including the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas, have caused staggering levels of civilian harm.

As a result, civilians in Gaza have had nowhere safe to go amid near constant bombardment and ground operations. This was apparent within weeks of the outbreak of war. This is why we at Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) were among the first organizations to call for a #CeasefireNow.

Nearly 365 days after the start of the war in Gaza, we continue to call for an immediate ceasefire, the protection of civilians, and unfettered humanitarian access.

We now extend this call to Lebanon, where recent strikes have resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties and displaced more than one million people. With nearly 90 percent of Lebanon’s population living in urban areas, Israel’s continued used of heavy explosive in populated neighborhoods will undoubtedly cause further harm to civilians.

We are also gravely concerned about the ongoing retaliatory attacks between the Houthis, Israel, and its allies. These strikes have already targeted vital infrastructure, including power plants and seaports in Yemen, such as the Hodeidah port—a critical lifeline for delivering food and humanitarian aid to the Yemeni population.

With Israeli strikes in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, as well as Iran’s missile attack against Israel on Tuesday evening, we stress the urgent need for immediate de-escalation across the region to prevent further civilian suffering, which has already reached unbearable levels.

Immediate action is necessary to halt the growing human cost.

We demand:

All warring parties to cease all their attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, including the designated so-called ‘safe zones’ in Gaza, and to stop violating international humanitarian and human rights laws.
The immediate release of hostages and all individuals detained unlawfully in Gaza and Israel.
All warring parties to allow unconditional, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access to affected populations.
An immediate end to the transfers of arms to Israel and Palestinian armed groups. In particular, we call for an end to US arms transfers to Israel, including the passage of recently introduced US Senate resolutions to suspend sales of weapons documented in extensive civilian harm and repeated apparent violations of international law.
All countries and world leaders to use their influence to secure an immediate ceasefire, ensure the protection of civilians and compliance with international humanitarian law, and support de-escalation across the region.
All warring parties to stop using explosive weapons in populated areas.
International, independent, and transparent investigations into all allegations of violations of international law, and ensure those responsible are held accountable.

It’s now time for international leaders and warring parties to demonstrate political courage and moral leadership, to prevent the world from falling into a state of normalized lawlessness, and to abdicate the double standards.

What has unfolded in Gaza and the region for the last 12 months is unparalleled in its intensity, brutality and scope. The response of global powers to this reality will shape the future of warfare for the better or the worse.

This statement is made by by Hichem Khadhraoui, executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict and posted on Reliefweb