Gaza Archives - Page 14 of 160

Palestinian State and The Poker Game

Dr Khairi Janbek
September 1, 2025

By Dr Khairi Janbek

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a politician above all else. He is dogmatist in rejecting a Palestinian state, and a pragmatist when he talks about it, but all that depends on the position taken by the United States.

Ever since one can remember from the days of the Oslo Agreements, a Palestinian state, as a term swung between two conceptions: A future project on the ground, and a slogan up-in-the-air to pander on, and as many from my generation remember the rather acerbic comment: Gaza-Jericho First of 1993 which came to be the first and the last.

The Israeli government of that time, believed that it would bring the Palestinians to independenance as interlocutors in determining the occupied West Bank of Jordan that came about by discussing the issue through a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

However, the little that was agreed upon started to be eroded by the first Netanyahu government, which at times implicitly and at times explicitly acted in the way so as to negate the Oslo agreements with impunity.

One would like to say that since then plenty of water has passed under the bridge, but when it comes to the Palestinian issue, it’s always the same water and the same bridge.

At this point one must say that everywhere in the media there are supposedly leaks and plans about the day after with regards to the Gaza Strip. However, the only consensus between the international community at large and officialdom of the Arab world, is that Hamas should surrender its weapons. But really what happens next?

Silence in the Arab world rules the scene which is in a way saying what cannot be said, which is in other words don’t involve us directly but we shall try to do what we can. This is habitually the Arab position in always being reactive rather than active.

And now on the international scene is the big drive to recognize a Palestinian state, which is for the time being affirming a point of principle, and towards which Israel is actually debating the annexation of the West Bank, as if to say, if the West Bank is reoccupied by Israel, where is this Palestine you want to recognize?

And adding insult to injury, the Washington administration has refused entry to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the PNA leadership to attend the UN General Assembly meetings. This indicates that it does not recognize that there is a leadership of the Palestinians.

However, and despite saying this, one wishes to be able to say that we might be jumping the proverbial gun, in the sense that, the issue is just a matter of tit-for-tat telling states: You recognize Palestine we take measures to counter that, but alas the Israeli annexation was contemplated long before the international recognition of a Palestinian state.

Now, what will it mean if Israel does go ahead and annexes the West Bank and cancels the Palestinian authority? Well, once again the international community, to the exclusion of the USA, will have to consider the West Bank as and Israeli occupied territory, and once again, the world will have to go back to the Security Council for an attempt to resolve the issue.

Dr Khairi Janbek is a Jordanian columnist living in Paris, France.

News

Gaza’s Lost Generation

CrossFireArabia
August 30, 2025

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) sounded the alarm on Saturday over the fate of education in Gaza, warning that more than 660,000 children have been deprived of schooling for a third consecutive year as Israel’s devastating war nears the two-year mark.

“The war in Gaza is a war on children and it must stop. Children must be protected at all times,” UNRWA said in a statement, cautioning that the enclave’s youth are at risk of becoming a “lost generation.”

While schools in the occupied West Bank are set to reopen on Sept. 1, Gaza’s classrooms remain shuttered.

The Palestinian Education Ministry said around 700,000 students in the enclave have seen their schooling suspended under bombardment, with more than 70,000 unable to take high school exams for two consecutive years according to Anadolu.

According to ministry data, Israeli attacks since October 2023 have killed at least 17,000 school students and more than 1,200 university students in Gaza, while injuring tens of thousands more.

In the occupied West Bank, dozens of students have also been killed, wounded or detained by Israeli forces during the same period.

The toll has extended to teachers and academic staff. Nearly 1,000 education workers have been killed in Gaza, and thousands more injured or detained across the Palestinian territories.

Israel has killed over 63,400 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Analyses

Israel’s World Image in The Gutter

CrossFireArabia
August 30, 2025

By Ismael Al Sharif

“This situation must end. It is blackmail, and it must end. Freeing the hostages by force would be safer than negotiating a deal that allows Hamas to survive.” – Trump

These days, leaks, press reports, and international positions are proliferating that are damaging Israel’s image severely. The most recent is a joint investigation by the British Guardian, +972 magazine, and the Hebrew website Local Call, which revealed an Israeli intelligence database showing that five out of every six Palestinians killed in Gaza until last May were civilians. Only one-sixth of the martyrs were Hamas fighters. This figure is only half what Israel previously announced.

What’s more alarming is that Israel’s own reports are based on numbers from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, figures Israel and the United States have long denied.

Leaks attributed to Aharon Haliva, former head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman), dating back to March 2024, justified the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians. “For every Israeli killed, 50 Palestinians must be killed in return, regardless of whether they are children,” he said. This statement is not merely a slip of the tongue but reflects a hardline religious and ideological current and embodies a systematic political and military strategy.

Two American mercenaries working for the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” appear to admit that the Israeli army working with the US mercenaries bear direct responsibility for targeting hundreds of starving Palestinians with indiscriminate fire.

In this context, the United Nations confirms the Gaza Strip is facing the most severe phase of a man-made famine, not attributed to a natural disaster.

As a result of the popular demonstrations sweeping the streets of Europe and Australia, which have put significant pressure on their governments, criticism has begun to emerge from even Israel’s closest allies.

The Danish Sovereign Wealth Fund announced it was withdrawing its investments from the Israeli entity, and Germany has suspended arms exports there. In a British parliamentary session on 22 July, Foreign Secretary David Lammy stated: “I firmly believe the actions of the Israeli government are causing enormous damage to Israel’s standing globally.” These escalating positions reflect a growing shift in the positions of its allies.

The Israeli media, along with the pro-Israeli global media—one of Israel’s most important soft power tools—are failing to counter these reports, leaks, and shifting positions among its allies.

War criminal Netanyahu himself acknowledged the failure of the Israeli media and its pro-Israel media to repair the deteriorating image of the Jewish state. Logic would have required Israel to improve its media image by halting the massacres and allow humanitarian aid to enter.

Instead, he denied all these accusations and launched an attack on its closest allies, reminding Germany of its Nazi era and its actions would only serve “terrorism” and be a “reward to Hamas.” The Zionist Foreign Ministry also summoned the ambassadors of the above countries and reprimanded them.

War criminal Netanyahu pressured the social media to alter their algorithms. Leaked documents reveal that Twitter and Facebook already restricted posts deemed to be anti-Israel and/or sympathetic to the tragic plight of our people in Gaza. He did not stop there, but went on to criminally assassinate the journalists, the latest of which at the Nasser Hospital, killing four journalists at once, to silence voices and intimidate the media workers from carrying out their mission.

War criminal Netanyahu would not have dared to display such arrogance, defiance, and indifference without American support, as he always relies on “Big Brother” to compensate for his material and moral losses. Take the example of Charles Kushner—Jared Kushner’s father and the US ambassador to France— who wrote an open letter to President Macron, published in The Wall Street Journal.

He expressed his “deep concern about the sharp rise in anti-Semitism in France,” accusing the French government of failing to take sufficient steps to counter it. He also noted that Paris’s critical statements about Israel and its efforts to recognize a Palestinian state “encourages extremists, fuels violence and endanger Jewish lives.”

The letter coincided with the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Paris and the halt to the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps, a symbolic reminder of a tragic past.

However, France rejected and condemned the letter, and the US State Department quickly came out in support of the US ambassador there.

Netanyahu’s motto is: Those who have an ally like the United States have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.

This is a translated piece written by Ismael Al Sharif and published in the Arabic Addustour newspaper in Amman.

News

The Pen Will Not Break!

CrossFireArabia
August 27, 2025

On behalf of myself, journalist Rasha Ahmed, I pledge to continue to carry the message of truth and speaking the truth.

We will carry to spread the word and message of all our martyred journalists…

The message of Hassan, Moaz, Mariam, Anas, Heba, Ahmed, Sherine, Ibrahim, Mohammed, and all those who died documenting the truth of the murders against our people.

The coverage will continue, the pen will not break, and the voice will not be silenced.

The Israeli war machine has killed around 246 journalists in Gaza since 7 October 2023 whilst over 400 have been maimed and injured.

Analyses Opinion

Israel: A Bad Brand in World Markets

CrossFireArabia
August 27, 2025

By Ramzy Baroud

In an important step toward the economic isolation of Israel due to its genocide in Gaza, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global has decided to divest from yet more Israeli companies.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest, with total investments in Israel once estimated at $1.9 billion. The decision to divest was taken gradually but is consistent with the Norwegian government’s growing solidarity with Palestine and rising criticism of Israel.

Taking a leading role along with Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia, Norway has been a vocal European critic of the Israeli genocide and man-made famine in Gaza, actively contributing to the International Court of Justice’s investigation into the genocide, and formally recognizing the state of Palestine in May 2024. This diplomatic and legal stance, coupled with its financial divestment, represents a coherent and escalating effort to hold Israel accountable for the ongoing extermination of Palestinians.

The Israeli economy was already in a state of free-fall even before the genocide. The initial collapse was related to the deep political instability in the country, a result of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government’s attempt to co-opt the judicial system, thus compromising any semblance of “democracy” remaining in that country. This resulted in a significant lowering of investor confidence.

The war and genocide, beginning on October 7, 2023, only accelerated the crisis, pushing an already fragile economy to the brink. According to reports from the Israel Ministry of Finance, foreign direct investments in Israel fell by an estimated 28 per cent in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

Any supposed recovery in foreign investments, however, was deceptive. It was not the outcome of a global rallying to save Israel, but rather a consequence of a torrent of US funds pouring in to help Israel sustain both its economy and the genocide in Gaza, along with its other war fronts.

Israel’s Gross Domestic Product was estimated by the World Bank to be around $540 billion by the end of 2024. The war on Gaza has already taken a considerable bite out of Israel’s entire GDP. Estimates from Israel itself are complex, but all data points to the fact that the Israeli economy is suffering and will continue to suffer in the foreseeable future. Citing reports from the Bank of Israel and the Ministry of Finance, the Israeli business newspaper Calcalist reported in January 2025 that the cost of the Israeli war on Gaza had already reached more than $67.5 billion. That figure represented the costs of the war up to the end of 2024.

Keeping in mind that the ongoing war costs continue to rise exponentially, and with other consequences of the war, including divestments from the Israeli market by Norway and other countries, future projections for the Israeli economy look very grim. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the Israeli economy, already in a constant state of contraction, shrunk by another 3.5 per cent in the period between April and June 2025.

This collapse is projected to continue, even with the unprecedented US financial backing of Tel Aviv. Indeed, without US help, the precarious Israeli economy would be in a much worse state. Though the US has always propped up Israel, with nearly $4 billion in aid annually, the US help for Israel in the last two years was the most generous and critical yet.

Israel is the recipient of $3.8 billion of US taxpayer money per year, according to the latest 10-year Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016. Equally, if not more valuable than this large sum are the loan guarantees, which allow Israel to borrow money at a much lower interest rate on the global market. The backing of the US has, therefore, enabled investors to view the Israeli market as a safe haven for their funds, often guaranteeing high returns. This applies to the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund as it did to numerous other entities and companies.

Now that Israel has become a bad brand, affiliated with unethical investments due to the genocide in Gaza and growing illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank, the US, as Israel’s main benefactor, has stepped in to fill the gaps.

The US emergency supplemental appropriations act of April 2024 allocated a total of $26.4 billion for Israel. While much of the money was earmarked for defense expenditures, in reality, most of it will percolate into the Israeli economy. This amount, in addition to the annual military aid, allows the Israeli government to minimize spending on defense and allocate more money to keep the economy from shrinking at an even faster rate.

Additionally, it will free the Israeli military industry to continue producing new, sophisticated military technology that will ensure Israel’s continued competitiveness in the arms market. The military-industrial complex, a significant part of the Israeli economy, is thus not only sustained but given a fresh impetus by American aid, ensuring the war machine continues to function with minimal financial disruption.

All of this should not diminish the importance of divestment from the Israeli financial system. On the contrary, it means that divestment efforts must increase significantly to balance out the US push to keep the Israeli economy from imploding.

Moreover, this should also make US citizens, who object to their government’s role in the genocide in Gaza, more aware of the extent of Washington’s collaboration to save Israel, even at the price of exterminating the Palestinians. Indeed, the flow of funds from the US is not a passive action; it is an active collaboration that directly enables the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His forthcoming book, ‘Before the Flood,’ will be published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include ‘Our Vision for Liberation’, ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Jordan Times