Israel Kills Children as World Looks on

By Luigi Daniele 

Mark these words: South Africa is likely to win the genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but by then, it will be too late to save a single civilian life. The time for robust action is now.

The resumption of the exterminatory Israeli bombardments on Gaza has killed 174 Palestinian children and toddlers in less than 48 hours, according to Defense for Children International. UNICEF has also denounced the killing of more than 130 children in a single day, representing the largest single-day child death toll among Palestinians in years. This may be the deadliest episode in the history of Israeli military actions in Palestine.

Family members of slain Israeli captives, whose names and faces have repeatedly been used to justify further attacks on Palestinians, condemned their government’s actions as another betrayal of the hostages, with Yarden Bibas writing “military pressure endangers the hostages while an agreement brings them home”, and networks of Israeli families declaring Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu chose Ben-Gvir’s return to the government over the return of the hostages from Gaza.

In the midst of this carnage, Israeli ministers declare “a society that tolerates Hamas sympathizers within it has no right to exist,” or ask the very population they are destroying to “return the hostages and remove Hamas” unless they want to pay a “far more severe price” of “total devastation.”

Ideology of destruction

The ideology of the Israeli leadership is becoming increasingly explicit: It promotes the notion that Palestinians deserve elimination and are responsible for their own destruction. It is a paradigmatically genocidal ideology, typical of all the genocides in history, construing the victim group’s existence as undeserved, its survival as an intolerable threat, brutalities against it inherently justified, ‘called for’, and the forcing of the group into inexistence as a way of restoring the natural order of things as they should have always been. After all, key Israeli ministers declared “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” Declaring the inexistence of a people equates precisely to posing the premises for its elimination.

The honesty of the genocidal narratives of the Israeli executive, coupled with the use of hunger, thirst, diseases as weapons of war, reinforces crucially the validity of South Africa’s arguments at the ICJ, and of those states intervening in support of those arguments. As an international lawyer, my guess is that South Africa, even more likely after these renewed atrocities, will win the genocide case at the ICJ.

Despite the all-time record of crimes against children, Western states keep refraining from legal action, even those intervening in other ICJ cases to affirm that, in their interpretation of the Genocide Convention, the victimization of children, as the most vulnerable and crucial component of victim groups, should bring special weight in ascertaining the existence of genocidal intent. Beyond hypocrisy and racist double standards, Palestinian children are portrayed as less human and less worthy of protection than other children.

The irresponsibility of political leaders of third states indeed continues to kill. Silent when not complicit, incapable of acting for a single sanction, some are even offering safe harbors from ICC arrest warrants to their political and business partners wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, violating their own obligations as state parties of the Rome Statute.

In sum, the lawlessness unleashed on Palestinians is indeed infecting the world (dis)order, and it is evident that Netanyahu has all the interest in descending the entire region into a state of permanent war to stay in power. The global instability deriving from the winds of regional and global wars (in which the EU is diving rather than shifting its disastrous strategic approaches) will inevitably increase authoritarian repressions against dissidents, oppositions, and alternative visions in many of the countries revolving around this tragic abyss of history. War and authoritarianism always nurture each other. It is therefore not only in the interests of the survival of Palestinians, but a political necessity against the oligarchic shifts in our own countries to demand robust action now.

Protecting lives

Palestinians need a humanitarian intervention of a multilateral coalition to protect civilian lives. This presence alone can tackle an alliance of savage powers devaluing the lives of Palestinians as less than human and extracting profits from their massacres now, while preparing to extract more profits from exterminatory wars globally tomorrow. This would offer an immediate opportunity for world powers genuinely committed to reforming the international order towards a new multilateralism based on sovereign equality, self-determination, and peaceful coexistence to prove that their words are not empty slogans.

In other words, the paradox we face is that even the selfish pursuit of national interests—let alone legal or moral obligations—should be enough to trigger decisive action like the one proposed in this reflection.

A multilateral military presence, under UN auspices, to protect Palestinian civilians appears necessary as never before, since none of them will ever be safe under occupation by forces making clear they consider their existence as a people an offense to be redressed by annihilation. Should a coalition of states promote such an action, it would enjoy the support of masses of citizens across the globe, and gain moral leadership in these dark times, marked by the unchecked rise of international criminality.

Luigi Daniele is a senior scholar at Nottingham Trent University

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Netanyahu’s Trap!

The already fragile ceasefire in Gaza was further shattered as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel had “resumed combat in full force” against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on March 18, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In the hours following Netanyahu’s announcement, Israeli airstrikes – which had already been routinely violating the ceasefire in recent weeks – killed more than 400 Palestinians, including a significant number of children. Later that day, Israeli forces launched a new ground offensive, reportedly killing at least 48 more Palestinians, according to local health workers.

Vowing to eradicate Hamas, Netanyahu described the renewed phase of state terrorism as “just the beginning”. Meanwhile, Israeli sources confirmed that the assault was conducted in “full coordination” with the United States. Also on Wednesday, Israel carried out an attack on a UN facility in central Gaza City, killing a foreign staffer and wounding five others. Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services, condemned the strike, stating: “Israel knew this was a UN compound where people were living and working. It is a well-known location.”

From the outset, Netanyahu’s office has justified the assault by accusing Hamas of preparing new attacks, refusing to release hostages, and rejecting all proposals put forward by US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and other mediators. At the UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, convened just hours after the renewed Israeli offensive, the US envoy placed exclusive blame on Hamas for the collapse of the ceasefire. According to the Israeli government, approximately 59 Israeli captives remain in Gaza, with fewer than half believed to be still alive. Hamas, however, denied rejecting the US envoy’s proposal, accusing Netanyahu of deliberately resuming hostilities to sabotage the ceasefire agreement. The group characterized Israel’s actions as a “unilateral” annulment of the existing deal.

Arab countries, including Egypt and Qatar – both key mediators in the peace negotiations – have strongly condemned Israel’s latest military escalation. On March 20, the US State Department reaffirmed the “bridge proposal” put forward by the US President Donald Trump’s administration last week. It aims to extend the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas, and remains on the table. Given this backdrop, the question arises: What is driving Netanyahu’s genocidal ambitions?


A zero-sum game?

Netanyahu appears to be maneuvering to reduce the original multiphase ceasefire agreement to just its first phase, securing the release of all Israeli hostages before resuming his military campaign in Gaza. Hamas, however, recognizes the trap. At present, neither the US nor mediators like Egypt and Qatar can offer Hamas any guarantees that if it releases all remaining hostages – both dead and alive – Israel will commit to entering the second phase of the agreement.

It is worth recalling that Israel had already delayed negotiations for the second phase, which was initially scheduled to begin 16 days after the agreement took effect. By the time phase one was set to conclude on March 1, Israel had refused to advance talks, effectively stalling the diplomatic process.

Since March 2, Israel has taken increasingly punitive measures against Gaza. According to the UN, it has blocked the entry of all lifesaving supplies, including food, medicine, fuel, and cooking gas, affecting 2.1 million people. It has also sealed off all crossing points and, on March 9, ordered a complete shutdown of Gaza’s electricity supply. The blackout has severely impacted desalination plants, which provide clean drinking water to some 600,000 people. Yet, despite these actions, Israel continues to evade accountability for its collective punishment of Gaza’s population.

What is Israel’s endgame for Gaza?

Israel appears to be accelerating efforts to implement what some critics describe as a plan to radically reshape Gaza’s demographic and political future. Netanyahu, frustrated by his failure to eliminate Hamas and achieve clear strategic objectives, is pampered by Trump’s proposal to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip. At present, Netanyahu is exploiting the geopolitical status— including high-level talks between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine and the US military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen—which have diverted international attention away from Gaza. This distraction provides him with an opportunity to escalate the attacks with fewer diplomatic constraints.

However, Netanyahu’s thirst for blood is not only deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza but also exacerbating regional tensions, pushing the Middle East toward prolonged instability. His actions risk triggering wider spillover effects, particularly in Lebanon and Syria, and further escalating an already volatile landscape. The pressing question remains: does Israel have a long-term strategy for Gaza, or is it merely waging a campaign of destruction with no viable political exit strategy? Another crucial consideration is, following their emergency summit in Cairo on March 4, how will the Arab League reconcile Egypt’s reconstruction plan with Israel’s relentless aggression?

The urgency of a concerted diplomatic and strategic effort to curb Israeli aggression and expansionism cannot be overstated. Without immediate intervention, the entire region will bear the long-term consequences of unchecked military escalation and political destabilization.

Serhan Afacan is associate professor at Marmara University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and president of Center for Iranian Studies (İRAM).

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In a Psychedelic Arab World

Dr Khairi Janbek

The Arab world has been for some time now like a theme park with all the trappings. There are zones of fun and entertainment, with bright lights, cafes and restaurants with people living in them whilst other zones stand like halls of mirrors with distort images, chambers of horror, and ghost trains with their own population.

The ones who run both zones tend to be standing outside them frequently greeting each other. But the people of the entertainment zone are always wary that the people of the other zone may envy them, so they give them enough to let them carry on with their lives as best as they can.

The obsession with the geographical and civilizational unity of the Arab world has always inflated expectations of Arab solidarity as a tool to solve the problems of Arab societies ranging from economic development and good governance, to conflict resolution.

As the expectations go unmet, popular frustration at the weakness of one nation, prompt further calls for solidarity accompanied with anger from the other Arab people, however, it seems, and for all intents and purposes, the pan-Arab hopes seem to be always unreasonable. In fact when the colonialists thought that the Arab peoples should be grateful to each have their own nation-states across the geographical span, the Arab peoples, as a whole, felt cheated for not having a single, one-state to represent them.

As for the current Palestinian tragedy, its roots in recent terms have been planted in 1974, when the late King Hussein was put under extreme pressure to accept the notion that, the PLO, being the sole representative of the Palestinian people, in other words transferring the Arab burden of the Palestinian problem to the shoulders of the late Yasser Arafat.

Of course, one is not going to repeat the horrors which came after that regarding this issue, but the idea that the Palestinian issue being an Arab cause, ended there and then. The Palestinian issue went from being a political issue, to a mere human rights concern, with the option for the Arab states to support according to the levels of anger expressed by their own populace regarding the Palestinian people’s plight.

It was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that struck the final nail in the coffin of the illusion that there can be an Arab solution to Arab problems, but even this illusion did not apply to the Palestinian problem, because that concern was gone almost two decades earlier.

So today, it is natural for sympathy for the Palestinians to direct its call to the international community to react, because frankly this is the only quarter which can do something, whatever it may be, because the realization had set in from before that the Arabs will not do anything.

We live in times now, in which no Middle Eastern regime, in addition to those having a state within a state inside them, will be ever permitted to ever threaten Israel by the Trump administration, be that through the threats of dividing countries, or in throwing them to the jaws of poverty and destruction through economic extortion; in fact, we are in the era of enforced ugly peace.

Dr Janbek is a columnist based in Paris France.

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Israel, Trump and the Latest Bombing of Gaza

Israel relaunched its bloody war on Gaza, with vehemence and callousness and with the blessing of the Donald Trump administration in the White House.

Its back to the “good old bloody days” of murder, mayhem and slaughter of mostly innocent women and children who have no part in the current war waged between Israel and Hamas.

Unwilling to quench its thirst for blood, Israel relaunched its war on the 364-kilometer Gaza Strip by killing over 322 people in the first five hours of early morning Tuesday while everyone was fast asleep.

Up until then it has been a “slight” rest bite reached through a ceasefire on 19 January between Hamas and Israel through US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators bringing an end to the daily killing of Gazans that today stands at 48,500 people.

Everyone is asking if the ceasefire is wrecked and stands in ruin on day 525, the total length of the carnage started on the people of Gaza soon after 7 October 2023, when about 1200 Israelis were killed.

Whatever the politics of the recent war, it has become amply clear the Israel slaughter has not been aimed at Hamas fighters, which it couldn’t eradicate even after 15 months of war on the Islamic organization but resulted in the mass killing of the women and children of Gaza.

The latest spate of dropping bombs on the people of Gaza, facilitated by the United States which stands as complicit in this genocide, sees no end light, but is seen as just the beginning although Gaza and its infrastructure is already annihilated with its people displaced and living in the wild and under the skies.

The world stands and waits to see, if the genocide will continue from this day onwards, or is it just a pressure tool to get Hamas to release the 59 or so Israeli prisoners it currently holds. If the latter is the case however, Hamas has long shown, it has a long breath and will not release the prisoners that originally were around 250 and now stands at the current number through exchange deals with the fact that the Israeli army has killed around 23 of them in failed rescue operations.

The latest bombings, carried from the air starting from the south of the strip on the southern city of Rafah, Nuseirat, Al Shati and Maghazi camps, and Deir Al Balah in the center of the enclave, including Gaza city and the destroyed northern areas, speaks of dark days are expected ahead.

Hamas are yet to respond militarily. There are couple of issues to consider here. Hamas officials have been talking to the Trump administration officials in the last couple of weeks about different paths.

Will that continue, particularly after this bloody debacle. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who long wanted to destroy Hamas, and thus the war to continue, said this time around, the latest military operation in Gaza is being carried out “in consultation” with Trump and his associates.

If this is the case, the latest Israeli deadly spate, may not last long, particularly because Trump is on record of stating that he doesn’t want the war to continue but wants to end it which means he will not continue to supply Israel with weapons indefinitely and there will come a time when he will stop.

But that might be a while before that and he may continue to tolerate the mass bombing of Gaza. However, since he is talking to different parties through his envoy Steve Witkoff, he will likely “manage” what Israel continues to militarily do in the Gaza Strip and be involved in a “stop-go” war process.

The problem with Trump is that also he is looking for different objectives in Gaza. He first wanted to displace its 2.2 million people to neighboring countries like Jordan and Egypt. Now, he appears to be retracting from this position because of Arab and world pressure.  

Will he backdown and order Israel for a quick “fix” and or let the war on Gaza continue by which time Hamas, will once again, start fighting Israel again, both in the Strip and through endlessly targeting its major cities, towns, settlements for the past 15 months.

Despite the fact that Trump said that “all hell will break lose” on Gaza if the war doesn’t stop and Hamas is not brought to heed, the US president is choosing to forget the Houthis, despite mass bombing them in the last couple of days. They promised they will continue to strike Israel if it continues to stand as an obstacle to humanitarian and food delivery to Israel and will not be deterred by US and British bombing of Yemen. And to prove their point, a ballistic missile was fired on the same day, Tuesday, after the Israeli bombing of the Strip.

Hence what Trump wants and what he will get on the ground are two different things. His wish to end the Israel-Hamas war and establish a “new Gaza” will not be achieved through parochial thinking.

The Palestinians are on the ground, they have no wish to go anywhere while Hamas continues to have a formidable fighting capability and have no qualms to going back to war. The fact they are talking to the mediating parties, including the US doesn’t mean they are ready to put their guns down and leave the grounds of Gaza.

Netanyahu must realize that unless he wants the whole Middle East region to be engaged in a perpetual long-term war. The question is Trump and the United States military establishment prepared for that?

The above-analysis is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website.

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How Do You Deal With a ‘Political Earthquake’?

The Middle East has long been accustomed to dramatic events and repeated surprises. However, it is undeniable that what came before October 7 is fundamentally different from what followed.

This shift is not only due to the ongoing wars that have spread beyond Gaza to other fronts, nor solely because of the consequences these conflicts have triggered across the region. More significantly, it has exposed the harsh realities the region faces, from the collapse of the concept of the state and its implications to the erosion of national identities and the emergence of new ethnic, sectarian, and geographical standards reshaping political maps.

Over the past years, the failure of the nation-state model, coupled with its reduction to authoritarian concepts, has played a pivotal role in deepening the psychological division in many countries, a division that, in many cases, precedes geographical fragmentation.

In the current geopolitical landscape, Gaza is no longer the Gaza we once knew. With the absence of a viable Arab-led solution, the US administration, despite its often-contradictory diplomatic statements, still keeps the depopulation of Gaza on the table as a practical resolution. Meanwhile, the West Bank is experiencing Israeli operations aimed at bringing about a radical transformation, one that all parties may soon have to accept as a new reality.

Syria, too, has entered a state of turmoil that makes it increasingly difficult to revert to its former political and territorial structure. Whether through shifts in internal power dynamics or anticipated geographical and political changes, Syria is on a path of transformation.

These unprecedented changes, which directly impact Jordan, impose urgent requirements for adaptation and strategic engagement with new realities. This new era demands a shift in priorities, making “Jordanian-focused thinking” a fundamental approach to navigating the geopolitical and security challenges unfolding across the region.

This strategic recalibration must take place on three levels. The first involves managing relations with the current U.S. administration, which has been in the White House for only a few weeks yet has already triggered a geopolitical earthquake on the global stage. For Jordan to remain a key regional player, it must employ new tools and diplomatic tactics that emphasize effectiveness and tangible results, especially considering that this administration is highly focused on reassessing the utility of aid provided to its allies.

The second is the regional shift, where several key issues stand out. The evolving relationship with Israel, which is shifting dramatically and deteriorating from bad to worse, requires a reconsidered strategy for future engagement. The relationship with Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, demands greater attention, not only because Saudi Arabia remains the only pillar of stability in the region but also due to its economic and political influence, which could prove crucial for Jordan in the coming phase. In this context, the concept of “political and economic integration” should be the foundation for shaping and strengthening ties between the two countries.

Perhaps the most pressing regional challenge is Jordan’s approach to Syria. Changes are already unfolding in the areas adjacent to Jordan’s northern border, creating a new reality that Jordan must navigate carefully. It is imperative to formulate a strategy that not only secures borders but also leverages new political and economic configurations to serve Jordan’s long-term interests.

The third is the domestic, and most important recalibration, how does Jordan adapt to these external shifts and their internal repercussions? This phase demands a new political discourse and a fresh approach to managing internal affairs. Shielding Jordan from external shocks, narratives of fragmentation, sectarian polarization, and social discord requires a two-pronged strategic response: strengthening the bureaucratic system and reinforcing national identity.

This necessitates a well-crafted national narrative, a reinvigoration of collective national consciousness, and tangible policy actions that signal the beginning of a new phase of resilience and transformation, one that will be the defining test of the coming period.

Dr Amer Al Sabaileh is a columnist in the Jordan Times

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