An Eye For an Eye

CROSSFIREARABIA – Israelis will not rest if the Palestinians don’t get their independent homeland and statehood to live free just as was the case before 1948 when Israel was forcibly created.

This present Israeli war on Gaza has shown that clearly.

While the Israeli war machine may have destroyed, nay, obliterated the whole of the enclave, the strip continues to be filled with resistance fighters who move above and below grounds with their weapons fighting their enemies.

Israel, its leaders, politicians and military, long propped up by American weapons have long known that but they continue to destroy rather than own up to Palestinian aspirations and the fact that the incessant conflict will not end otherwise.

In this war, slaughter, genocide – going into its second year now and shows no signs of stopping but on the contrary moving northwards to Lebanon – there developed a sense of equilibrium and proportionality although on a much smaller scale judging from the vast different of the protagonists.

Israel used massive bombs on civilians and sent them into a whirl of displacements, while Hamas continually fired rockets and missiles on the settlements and military bases surrounding Gaza and further beyond.

The immediate effect of that was the mass evacuation of the Israeli population from all these settlements, in effect as soon as the Israeli big guns started to ‘hammer’ the cities, town, villages and hamlets of northern Gaza soon after 7 October, 2023.

Displacement

Today, the Jewish settlements, more likely big towns and cities with high tech infrastructure stand empty; their populations have long been moved to hotels and guest houses by the extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, for their safety.

They still wait their return but there is no end in sight as to when will this happen. The late Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, just before he was killed by Israel, said the occupation entity will not rest in peace, neither will the Jews return to their homes, until the bombs on Gaza stop.

Hezbollah had taken up the fight with Israel soon after 7 October as a support to Gaza through rocketing its northern parts with missiles. This process also set off a mass drove of Israelis to leave their homes, like their counterparts in the south, to be housed in a hotel accommodation away from the bombs and raging fires.

As the war genocide on Gaza continued in the following months, the return of these settler Israelis to their homes continued to be foggy, unknown. Many of these settlements and conurbations like Kiryat Shmona and Maalot today stand empty like ghost towns.

In Gaza around 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million were forced into internal displacement, continually moving between areas from the north of Gaza to its southern border.

Likewise, the number of Israelis that were displaced was, initially estimated at 400,000 people with an extra 60,000 forced to leave when Hezbollah increased their missiles on the north after June 2024.

While they have been living in hotel accommodation many Israelis have been trying to get out of the country over the past months with the figures ranging from 500,000 up to a million.

Further to that about a quarter of Israelis polled by the Kan official channel, say they are truly thinking of leaving the country and 14 percent of them are supporters of Likud and the extremist rightwing parties. Indeed, soon after 7 October, the Ben Gurion Airport became filled with travelers as Hamas rockets started to land on Tel Aviv.

The airport is filled again today with travelers because of incoming missiles from Hezbollah from the north and the occasional ballistic missiles coming all the way from Yemen by the Houthis and/or the fright Israelis got from the recent incoming 200 missiles they saw in their skies from Iran.

There is no doubt that ordinary Israelis are under a lot of strain with sirens going off and on, all the time signaling for them, to go into the underground shelters. Video clips see them running asunder to the shelters, and who wouldn’t be scarred?

After all, the people of Gaza and now Lebanon are experiencing it all the time. For them however, there are no sirens, no warnings of 2000-pound bombs being dropped on their heads with no questions asked; their slaughter appear to be “manageable” foe western states who sell weapons to Israel.

The war can stop anytime. Hostages, around 110 from the original 250, can be returned anytime if there is a ceasefire but the Israeli prime minister is stuck on bringing them home by force, or so he says.

 Meanwhile Israelis are literally running. One videoclip in a Tel Aviv mall show people moving hastily to ahead, no doubt, to the underground shelters as the sirens blast all over.

Thus, there is a military equation that is being played out here: ‘You bomb us we will bomb you’. The Israeli army must realize that this is what is happening, and the stakes of the war game just keep getting higher and higher with Israel headed by Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, being lead to the abyss.  

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In 1st Year of Genocide Israel Kills 146 Doctors

The Gaza Health Ministry announced, Sunday the Israeli occupation army killed 146 doctors of different specialties in its one-year of genocide in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu news agency reported.

In a statement, the ministry highlighted that in the past year the health system has been devastated whilst stressing  most medical supplies and medications have been exhausted. 

It emphasized that 83% of medical supplies and 60% of medications are unavailable in hospitals and health centers.

The ministry revealed there are 25,000 patients and injured Palestinians who require medical attention outside Gaza.

Targeting Medical Staff

In a report cited by the Quds News Network published 17 September, the Health Ministry said Israeli occupation forces killed 1,151 Palestinian health workers since 7 October, 2023.

A total of 986 were named in the new report, while personal data for the remaining 165 was still being verified.

The ministry said the delay in the verification process was due to Israeli authorities withholding the victims’ bodies or their remains being buried under rubble.

At least 165 of those killed were doctors, 260 nurses, 300 management and support personnel, 184 health associate professionals, 76 pharmacists, and 12 other health workers.

“The Palestinian sector has been subjected to a systematic attack by the occupation forces that has affected all its components,” the ministry noted.

Health facilities were the target of direct and repeated Israeli raids and air strikes, it added, which has crippled the health system and left hundreds of thousands of war victims facing “imminent death”.

More than 300 health workers have also been arrested by Israeli forces.

Gaza Genocide Continues

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza. 

Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7. 

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health,  41,870 Palestinians have been killed, and 97,166 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7, 2023.

Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip. 

Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’. 

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/live-blog-one-year-of-genocide-massacres-in-central-gaza-rocket-barrages-towards-israel-day-367/embed/#?secret=xh5pqP3eY2#?secret=MkAHUcDdzk Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children. 

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety according to the Palestine Chronicle.

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‘This Key is The Only Thing Left of Our Destroyed House’

Editor’s Note: On the first anniversary of the bloody 7 October, 2023, I reprint the story I wrote on Mariam Abu Daqqa that was scribbled early this year and published in countercurrents. I then wrote Journalist Abu Duqqa gave us an insight of how she felt about her demolished house in Gaza which the Israelis long destroyed. Together with her family, she lived in a six-story building of six apartments hosting scores of family members, relatives and neighbors. All this, is now rubble and wreckage. Abu Daqqa continues to report on the mayhem in Gaza despite the fact more than 120 of her colleagues were targeted and killed since 7 October, the biggest crime in the history of mankind.  Today the number of journalists killed have shot up to 175.

“This small key which I hold in my hand, used to be a key to my apartment,” she tells the camera in a daze.

“This is what has remained from our house, a key to a home that no longer exists,” she laments in an absent-minded way.

“Our house had been targeted long time and was finally struck and demolished into the ground,” she says this almost tracing the steps of when it collapsed into the ground and how they escaped.

“Our house was part of a three-story building of six apartments with our storerooms in the basement where we kept the rest of our belongings, odd stand, table, chair, bric-a-bracs and other things which we thought that we might need one day. 

“Too late now. No more, everything had been targeted, destroyed, perished into thin air. What remained of it is this key – the house of memories, of childhood, the home of the family, our forgotten laughter and happy times,” Mariam talks in reverie.  

“From the day I knew our home was targeted I kept thinking, and on a daily basis, just thoughts that came to my mind about how are we going to live after the war, ‘where will we live, is it here, somewhere else, where, which part of town.’

Idol thoughts but very real, everything of ours is destroyed, blocks of apartments long gone and what remained turned into debris and wreckage. I don’t think that we will even find a house to rent. Thinking about this is difficult and painful, a creepy character in my head bellows in the back of my mind.

Who is going to rebuild our houses and all the other houses. I try and think about working hard again to make money to rebuild our home but what about the others all, the great majority of the people of Gaza have left their homes hastily and with just this key….”

The scale of destruction in Gaza is phenomenal. Figures can’t tell the truth. One has to see the images to fathom what the Israelis did right across the strip to be able to comprehend the extent of their vengeance – mass murder, mass destruction of property, a genocide for years to come. 

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$17.9B Aid to Israel Makes US Complicit in Slaughter

The amount of military aid America has provided to Israel in the past year makes it undoubtedly complicit in the genocide and slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

The US has spent a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the start of the war on Gaza, according to a report by Brown University’s Costs of War project, released on the anniversary of the ongoing Israeli genocide war on Gaza on 7 October 2023.

According to Brown University, an additional $4.86 billion has been allocated to bolster military deployment in the Middle East, including the campaign against Yemen.

Yet, despite all of this, American presidential candidates are proudly pledging to uphold their unconditional and unwavering support for Israel as a way to promote themselves in the upcoming elections.

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Abu Obeida Outlines a New ‘Attrition Phase’ of Resistance

Retired military Maj-Gen Fayez al-Duwairi said Abu Obeida’s speech, Hamas Qassam Brigades spokesman – heralds a new phase of resistance against the Israeli occupation.

Abu Obeida gave a speech on the occasion of the first anniversary of Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa and coincided with the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance factions against the Israeli occupation forces in the so-called Gaza envelope.

Duwairi explained that as stressed in Abu Obeida’s speech this coming phase of the battle is the stage of attrition, which means the resistance still has the ability to continue to confront the Israeli occupation  army in the next phase.

Duwairi explained Abu Obeida’s announcement about the continuing attrition operations shows the Palestinian resistance is benefiting from its redeployment in the main axis of Rafah, Netzarim, buffer zones and in the incursion operations in areas such as Jabalia.

“We are facing a new phase of military operations that will pose a major challenge to the Israeli occupation in the long term,” he added.

Al-Duwairi addressed the issue of external support for Israel, stressing on the relationship between the occupation and some Western countries, led by the USA, plays a decisive role in the continuation of Israel’s s aggression on the Strip.

Al-Duwairi pointed out that Abu Obeida’s speech included clear criticism of Arab countries, accusing them of abandoning the Palestinian people, and sent a support message to the resistance in the West Bank, praising the efforts of the fighters there and calling for an escalation of operations against the occupation.

Regarding the file of Israeli prisoners held by the resistance, Al-Duwairi indicated Abu Obeida’s speech reveals the possibility of this file entering a “dark tunnel”, which further complicates the situation and makes the fate of the prisoners unknown.

Al-Duwairi believes that the next stage will witness an escalation in military and attritional operations against the occupation, in light of the field changes and internal and external pressures facing the Israeli entity.

This is Abu Obeida’s 28th speech since the Al-Aqsa flood, and comes three months after his last speech on 7 July.

Today, Monday, marks the first anniversary of the start of Israel’s war on Gaza which resulted in more than 139,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and elderly people.

Despite the passage of one year since the start of the war, Israel has failed to achieve any of its declared goals, especially recovering prisoners from the Strip and eliminating the capabilities of Hamas and the rest of the resistance factions as stated in Al Jazeera.

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