Mauritania is not a marginal country or a geographical anomaly. It is a country of silent history, long patience, and sovereignty that cannot be bought. It is the land of jurists who taught the deserts the meaning of light, and poets who made pulpits of wisdom from the sands.
Our president visited the United States, as Arab and African presidents do, not to beg or sign anything that violates conscience, but to knock on the doors of partnership and convey the voice of a small country with great pride. Has every visit to the West become an accusation? Is anyone who meets with an American official considered suspect in the eyes of those writing from behind the media veil?
Mauritania stands independently, making its own decisions, and choosing its partnerships, far removed from dependency or empty alignment.
We know that there are those who are unhappy to see Nouakchott sitting with Washington without tutelage and negotiating its interests without permission.
We say it without hesitation, and in a high-pitched voice: Mauritania is not about to normalize relations with the Zionist entity, not now or tomorrow.
Not only because it would be a betrayal of a principle, but because normalization, for Mauritanians, is an unforgivable sin, as long as Israel occupies Arab land, desecrates our holy sites, and persecutes our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.
Anyone who knows this people knows that Palestine, in their conscience, does not represent a card in political discussions, but rather a constant, unwavering call.
The President of the Republic, Mr. Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, known for his political moderation and adherence to national principles, has never wavered from his position in support of Palestine, and neither he nor his government has issued any indication of a deviation from this line.
We write not to offend, but to preserve the weight of this position. We respond not because we are weak, but because we refuse to have the image of an entire nation reduced to a single, insinuating line, or to have a fleeting accusation pinned on his sovereign visit. Mauritania is built on principles, not on momentary positions.
It is read through its history, not through tweets written from behind a political veil.
If you want the truth, Mauritania has never sought testimony from anyone, and it will not accept anyone dictating whom to visit or whom to talk to.
It follows its own path, does not sway where the wind blows, nor does it follow an extended shadow. It sits with the great, engages in dialogue with partners, and raises the Palestinian flag in its heart as well as in its streets. It does not need anyone to remind it of those who have always been with it, in good times and bad.
The writer is a member of the Mauritanian Parliament
The avowed declared intention of Benjamin Netanyahu, remains the destruction of Hamas, as he repeatedly says that the war against Hamas will not stop until it is totally disarmed and there will no more ‘Hamastan’.
This is while on the other side of the world is President Trump who is very much interested in a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages while blowing hot and cold in his habitual manner of ambiguity regarding the future of of the Islamic organization.
This may cause a divergence of views between Netanyahu and Trump in their up coming discussions, despite the fact that Trump went the extra mile as he threatened to withhold aid to Israel if Netanyahu is taken to court whilst Netanyahu responded by returning the compliment, saying that a couple-of-months ceasefire and the release of the living hostages as well as the dead bodies, are not mutually exclusive with the ultimate aim of destroying Hamas.
Admittedly, one always had one’s own doubts about the destruction of Hamas, probably because one always believed that the objectives of Israel’s foreign policy is to have a weakened PNA by Hamas and Hamas weakened by the PNA, which meant that neither should be destroyed, rather, to be weakened as circumstances required.
However, having said that, the most recent menacing Israeli government voices are talking about more dangerous developments, the first being taking control of the West Bank, which basically means either the end of the PNA or merely becoming an Israeli Bantustan administration, rendering the concept, let alone the fact, of a Palestinian state superfluous.
While the other development, is the call for Gaza , with or without Hamas, to be under a future Arab administration. Now which Arabs are going to be part of this administration is still unclear, but certainly the implications are clear, basically the financing of reconstruction which requires wealthy Arab participation, by default a participation of normalizing Arabs with Israel, with enough muscle to keep Hamas at bay, armed or otherwise.
In any case something may well be hammered in Washington when Trump meets Netanyahu, and the Arabs are bound to know its consequences.
Palestinian authorities in Gaza said Friday that narcotic pills had been found inside US-dispatched flour bags in the Israeli-besieged enclave.
In a statement, Gaza’s government media office said prescription painkiller Oxycodone was found by Palestinians inside flour bags they received from US-run aid distribution points in Gaza.
“It is possible that these pills were deliberately ground or dissolved inside the flour itself, which constitutes a direct assault on public health,” it warned according to Anadolu.
The media office held Israel fully responsible for this “heinous crime” aimed at spreading addiction and destroying the Palestinian social fabric from within.
“This is a part of the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinians,” it said, calling Israel’s use of drugs a “soft weapon in a dirty war against civilians.”
Israel has crafted a plan to establish four aid distribution points in southern and central Gaza, which Israeli media say aims to evacuate Palestinians from northern Gaza into the south.
The Israeli mechanism was opposed by the international community and the UN, which came as an alternative attempt by Israel to bypass the aid distribution through UN channels.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 549 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded by Israeli fire near aid centers and UN food truck locations since May 27.
Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing over 56,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
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.
Israel’s latest strike on Iran had nothing to do with dismantling the Iranian (civilian) nuclear program. Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that “the timing was fixed back in November 2024,” the real zero hour was designated only to undercut possible diplomatic framework that could have legitimized Iran’s nuclear development under international, verifiable, supervision.
This war is not a preemptive blow against Iran —it is a preemptive strike against diplomacy itself. The Trump administration made a grave error by keeping Israeli officials closely informed of the sensitive progress in the secret negotiations. This privileged access allowed Israel to strategically time its military strike to sabotage diplomatic efforts at a critical juncture—undermining further progress just as it was beginning to take shape, and before any agreement could fully mature.
Multiple independent leaks had pointed to progress in the Oman brokered negotiation between the U.S. and Iran, inclusive of intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, capped enrichment, and restart of oil exports under strict monitoring. An agreement of that sort would have undercut Israel’s decades-long doctrine that only isolation and coercion can keep Iran “in its box.”
Rather than accepting a rules-based diplomatic framework that Netanyahu could not control or veto, he chose to hinder the potential agreement—with F-35s and cruise missiles.
This war is also part of Israel’s long-standing obsession with maintaining its monopoly on nuclear technology in the Middle East. Far from a purely defensive measure, Israel’s broader strategy has consistently aimed at preventing any regional power from acquiring—not only the infrastructure required to develop nuclear capabilities—but even the scientific expertise and human capital necessary to pursue such knowledge.
Hours after the first explosions, U.S. officials solemnly declared, “America did not take part.” But the denial was tactical, not principled. By remaining officially aloof, the Trump White House hoped to keep a seat at any revived negotiating table while still wielding the Israeli strike as leverage. Donald Trump’s own split-screen rhetoric—calling the raid “excellent,” threatening Iran with “more to come,” yet urging Tehran to “make a deal”—spelled out the gambit: let Israel be the cudgel while the United States courts concessions.
On the other hand, and in response to American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, claim that the U.S. is “not involved in strikes against Iran,” Israel declared that every phase of the attack had been “closely coordinated” with the Pentagon and that that US provided “exquisite intelligence” to attack Iran.
The yawning gap between the two narratives served both capitals. In Washington, it allowed officials to reassure anxious allies that the U.S. was not actively escalating another Middle East war. In Tel Aviv, Netanyahu exploited the ambiguity to provoke Iran into retaliating against U.S. forces—potentially drawing Washington deeper into Israel’s war. At the same time, he sent a calculated message to domestic hawks and regional adversaries: that Israel still enjoys unwavering American backing.
Netanyahu’s sinister calculus was familiar and transparent from Israel’s book to drag the US into its endless wars: derail the diplomatic channel, then dare Washington to pick up the pieces while Israel enjoys another round of strategic impunity.
Even in a region where Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war and genocide in Gaza, Israel’s choice to strike residential neighborhoods—ostensibly targeting senior officers, civilian leaders, and nuclear scientists—crosses a perilous line. The laws of armed conflict draw a bright red distinction between combatants and civilians; by erasing it, Israel has handed Iran moral and legal grounds to retaliate in kind. If Tehran targets the private homes of Israeli leaders and commanders, Tel Aviv cannot plausibly cry victim after setting that precedent.
The first wave of Iranian retaliation—targeting the Israeli Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, among other sites—marks the beginning of a new kind of war, one unlike anything Israelis have faced in previous conflicts. For the first time, a state with advanced missile capabilities has shown both the resilience to absorb the initial strike and the capacity to hit back ] deep inside Israel—an experience unprecedented in Israel’s 77 years of existence.
Unlike the sporadic and largely asymmetrical conflicts with non-state actors like the Resistance in Lebanon and occupied Gaza, this confrontation introduces a level of state-to-state warfare that challenges Israel’s long-held military superiority and assumptions of deterrence. What has unfolded so far with the Iranian retaliation is a harbinger of a more symmetrical and likely prolonged confrontation—one in which Israel’s own centers of power may be within range, and where the frontlines are no longer confined to Gaza, the West Bank, or southern Lebanon, but centered into the very core of Tel Aviv.
In the coming days, Washington’s true measure will be taken after the smoke clears. If U.S. Aegis destroyers in the Gulf or antimissile batteries in the region are activated to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones, America will cease to be an observer and become a co-belligerent.
Such presumably “defensive” steps quickly metastasize: one intercept invites another, and each exchange digs the United States deeper into a conflict created by a foreign country. History offers bleak guidance. Once American troops engage, momentum overrides strategy and the dynamics of war supplant planning. Political leaders feel compelled to “finish the job,” costs spiral, U.S. interests go unsecured, and the chief beneficiary is almost always the Israeli security establishment that triggered the crisis.
At the end of the day, Netanyahu’s success will not be measured by how many centrifuges he cripples or how many Iranian scientists he murders. It will be measured by whether he can lock the United States into yet another made-for-Israel Middle East war, paid for—strategically, financially, life, and morally—by Americans.
If Washington truly opposes escalation, it must say no—publicly and unequivocally—to any role in shielding Israel from the blowback it just invited. Anything less is complicity disguised as caution, and it will once again confirm that Israeli impunity is underwritten in Washington, even when it torpedoes America’s own diplomacy and ignites yet another Israeli-engineered war.
– Jamal Kanj is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle
More than 20 countries and the EU have urged Israel to lift blockade of aid delivery into Gaza Strip and enable the UN and humanitarian organizations to work independently and impartially.
In a joint statement, foreign ministers of the countries including Australia, Canada, Japan and France, stressed that the population faces starvation and Gaza’s people must receive the aid they desperately need.
Recalling that Israel’s security cabinet is said to have approved a new model for delivering aid into Gaza, which the UN and our humanitarian partners cannot support, the statement stressed that humanitarian principles matter for every conflict around the world and should be applied consistently in every warzone.
“ Humanitarian aid should never be politicised, and Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change,” the readout said.
“As humanitarian donors, we have two straightforward messages for the Government of Israel: allow a full resumption of aid into Gaza immediately and enable the UN and humanitarian organisations to work independently and impartially to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity.”
The statement reiterated an immediate return to a ceasefire and working towards the implementation of a two-state solution, “the only way to bring peace and security to Israelis and Palestinians and ensure long-term stability for the whole region.”
The joint statement was signed by EU officials and the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
Israel, which abandoned the Jan. 19 ceasefire with Hamas, has kept all crossings into Gaza closed to food, medical, and humanitarian aid since March 2, deepening an already severe humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Sunday that Tel Aviv will permit the entry of “a basic quantity of food” for Gaza’s population “to prevent the emergence of a hunger crisis.”
He said a famine “could jeopardize the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariot,” referring to a new phase of Israel’s ground offensive in northern and southern Gaza.
The Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive against Gaza since October 2023, killing more than 53,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children according to Anadolu.
CrossFireArabia
Dr Khairi Janbek
