Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 25-26/2024
The anniversary of the Syrian army’s Withdrawal from Lebanon, scarring its humiliation, defeat and disappointment/Elias Bejjani/April 26, 2024'
You are invited to watch a film about the life of Blessed Brother Estephan Nehme, the Lebanese Maronite monk, on April 24, 25, 27
Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: Heartfelt greetings to the Armenian people on the anniversary of their genocide by the Ottoman Sultanate.
Israeli Raids Extend to North Bekaa
Hezbollah refutes Israel's claim of killing half of its leaders in southern Lebanon
Lebanon: Theft Gangs on Beirut Airport Road Terrify Passers-by
Israel in 'Offensive Action' in South Lebanon
Postponment of Municipal Polls for 3rd Consecutive Time Echoes State Failure
Parliament postpones local elections again as violence rocks south
US official warns potential for Israel-Hezbollah escalation is 'acute'
Sami Gemayel Deplores the Postponment of Municipal Elections
Geagea on Municipal Extension: FPM, Pro-Hezbollah Blocs ‘Stabbed Democracy’
W. Joumblatt to Propose a Document on the Crisis of Displaced Syrians
Southern Lebanon: Fires Ignited by Phosphorus Bombs and Heat Wave
Presidential Election: National Moderation MPs Consult with Berri and Mikati
Kataeb: Army Monopoly on Weapons, ‘Only Solution to Lebanon Crisis’
One wounded in Israeli drone strike on Baalbek's Douris
Report: Lebanon pressed on ceasefire, Hezbollah won't bow to 'intimidation'
Bassil says doesn't see Lebanon as part of 'Shiite Crescent'
Fadlallah says Hezbollah 'ready for any scenario'
Evacuation of Illegal Syrians in North Lebanon Starts
The Last Lebanon War/Amiad Cohen/The Tablet/April 25/2024

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 25-26/2024
Israel Moving Forward with Rafah Assault to Pressure Hamas on Hostages
Israel intensifies airstrikes on Gaza's Rafah before ground operation
Leaders of 18 nations call on Hamas to release hostages
New Round of Western Sanctions Against Iran
Iran-Backed Iraqi Militias Resume Attacks on U.S. Forces
Ship Comes Under Houthi Attack off Coast of Yemen
Biden Names New Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues
Hamas official says Israel ‘will not achieve’ goals in Rafah
Hamas Official Says Group Would Lay Down its Weapons If a Two-state Solution is Implemented
The Latest | Israeli strikes in Rafah kill at least 5 as ship comes under attack in the Gulf of Aden
US Coalition Warship Shoots Down Missile Fired by Yemen's Houthis over Gulf of Aden
Pro-Palestinian protests spread at US universities
White House Says ‘We Want Answers’ Over Reports of Mass Graves in Gaza
Sisi Warns of ‘Catastrophic’ Consequences of an Israeli Assault on Rafah
‘Let’s help Yemen regain ability to chart its own future,’ US envoy Tim Lenderking tells Arab News
British Royal Navy shoots down missile for first time since Gulf War in 1991 amid Houthi attacks on shipping

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on April 25-26/2024
US, Qatar and Iran: Release the Hostages!/Michel Calvo/Gatestone Institute/April 25, 2024
The World Needs a Man Like Anwar Al-Sadat/Suleiman Jawda/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 25/2024
Egypt’s New ‘Islamic Mission City’ Bodes Ill for the World/Raymond Ibrahim/Coptic Solidarity/April 25/2024
Khamenei’s war aims ...Iran’s ruler intends to establish an empire and exterminate Israelis/Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/April 25/2024
Israeli Land Confiscations on the Rise in Jordan Valley/HAZEM BADER/ AFP/This Is Beirut/April 25/2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 25-26/2024
The anniversary of the Syrian army’s Withdrawal from Lebanon, scarring its humiliation, defeat and disappointment
Elias Bejjani/April 26, 2024'
April 26, 2005, marks not just a commemoration but a pivotal moment signifying the end of a painful era that commenced in 1976 with the Syrian army's incursion into Lebanon, orchestrated by the Syrian dictator's insidious agenda to occupy and dominate Lebanon's decision-making processes. Today, the Lebanese people reflect on the withdrawal of the Assad regime's oppressive army from Lebanon. This retreat carried with it the weight of defeat, disappointment, and humiliation, brought about by the peaceful and civilized pressure of the Cedar Revolution and its allies, with both international and regional backing. However, the void left by the Syrian army has been filled by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, a terrorist, sectarian, and expansionist group, perpetuating occupation, suppressing freedom, and subjugating sovereign leaders and citizens.
While the Syrian occupation was executed by a foreign force, the Iranian occupation unfortunately operates through a Lebanese entity, yet entirely beholden to the Iranian mullahs. Hezbollah and its master in Iran and since 1982, have relentlessly sought to dismantle the Lebanese state and replace it with one subservient to the concept of Wilayat al-Faqih. Consequently, the Iranian occupation, facilitated through Hezbollah, poses a greater threat than its Syrian predecessor. Every Lebanese individual committed to Lebanon's coexistence, message, and peace must reject this occupation and tirelessly strive to rid the nation of its shackles. Ultimately, good triumphs over evil, and as Lebanon embodies goodness while the occupiers represent malevolence, Lebanon will inevitably prevail, and all occupying forces are bound for defeat, disappointment, and humiliation.
The most perilous threat among the Syrian and Iranian occupiers, in terms of national, cultural, and future prospects, lies in those Lebanese who, in name only, exhibit ingratitude and hatred. These individuals, reminiscent of the Dvil, the epitome of vileness, were once among the most beautiful angels but, through their denial of divine dignity, have fallen from grace into the abyss of hell.
Although the Syrian army withdrew on April 26, 2005, its intelligence apparatus, collaborators, and local mercenaries, under the banner of Hezbollah, persist in their treachery and deceit. They shamelessly contravene Lebanon and its people through coercion, assassination, invasion, hypocrisy, and all manner of criminal, terrorist, and mafia tactics to thwart the restoration of sovereignty, independence, and freedom. Lebanon, with its message of peace, sanctity, and civilization, remains an eternal flame against those who seek to harm it, relentlessly punishing any who dare violate the dignity, freedom, and identity of its people.
On this historic and patriotic day, let us solemnly remember the souls of our beloved homeland's martyrs, yearning for the return of our heroic refugees, despite their forced exile in Israel, and the release of our abducted compatriots languishing in the dungeons of the criminal Assad regime.
In conclusion, sacred Lebanon will endure despite all tribulations, guarded by angels and embraced by the Virgin Mother, who nurtures it with her tenderness and love.

You are invited to watch a film about the life of Blessed Brother Estephan Nehme, the Lebanese Maronite monk, on April 24, 25, 27
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/128930/128930/
لشراء بطاقات الدخول اتصل بشربل باسيل على الرقم التالي 399-7931 (416

Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: Heartfelt greetings to the Armenian people on the anniversary of their genocide by the Ottoman Sultanate.
Elias Bejjani/April 24, 2024
The Annual Remembrance Day of the Ottoman massacres against the Armenians, Maronites, Syriacs, and Chaldeans between the years 1914-1915.
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/129151/129151/
In the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is a document dating back to the year 1916, which quotes the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire at that time, Enver Pasha, as saying: “The empire must be cleansed of the Armenians and the Christians of Mount Lebanon. We eliminated the Armenians by the sword, and we will eliminate the Lebanese by famine.”
Sefo (killing by the sword): massacres targeting Assyrian Syrians and Iraqis, instigated by the Turkish army and carried out by Kurdish tribes. It began in 1914 and continued for several years, killing 400,000 Syriacs. The Turkish state denies its occurrence. Between 1914 and 2023, the proportions of Christians in the Near East declined to the point of extinction, something that only happened with the Mamluks.
Today, we also sadly remember the two hundred thousand Maronite martyrs of Mount Lebanon, who died in famine at the hands of the Ottomans from 1915-1918, in addition to the Sefo massacres, against the Chaldean Syriacs, Assyrians
Every April 24, we reiterate: Recognizing the massacres and genocide inflicted upon the Armenian, Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean peoples is a historical necessity for the path of honesty and truth.
Greetings to the resilient peoples who have preserved their collective memory, thrived, and excelled across all times and places. #Armenian_genocide #Sifo_massacres
The anniversary of the #ArmenianGenocide teaches us that justice is a cause that transcends generations and cannot be erased by the passage of years or even decades. Salutations to all  activists who have struggled and continue to struggle for the official recognition of this genocide, endeavoring to transform this solemn anniversary into a national day dedicated to purifying memory and delivering justice to the victims and their families.
From the depths of our hearts and with resounding voices, we extend our sincere salutations and reverence to the Armenian people for their unwavering commitment in defending their faith, beliefs, nationalism, existence, and civilization. Each year on April 24, the Armenian people renew their sacred vows and commitments to preserve and safeguard their faith, existence, and cause.
One hundred and nine years following the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Sultanate against the Armenian people based on religious, ethnic, racial, barbaric, and instinctual grounds, this resilient people, dispersed throughout the world, continues to hold steadfast to their faith in their Lord and their inherent right to a dignified life and just cause. One and a half million Armenian civilians, including children, the elderly, men, and women, were ruthlessly slaughtered with premeditation and design at the hands of the criminal Ottoman forces. Those who survived the atrocities were subjected to abuse, forced emigration, and homelessness.
Heartfelt greetings and commendations to this steadfast and faithful people, who were the first in the world to adopt Christianity as their official religion. They are a people who have faced adversity with faith, piety, and patience, giving rise to numerous saints and righteous individuals, and continue to produce martyrs even today.
As a Lebanese Maronite Christian, I not only empathize with the Armenian people, share in their pain, support their just cause, and uphold their faith in Christ the Redeemer and all Christian values, including love, forgiveness, and redemption, but I also take pride in the active Armenian community in my homeland, Lebanon, which has contributed and continues to contribute to its preservation and defense.
In the twenty-first century, silence is no longer acceptable under any pretext concerning the Ottoman genocidal campaigns against the Armenian, Syriac, Aramaic, Chaldean, Maronite, and Greek peoples.
Today, it is imperative for all the peoples of the world, international human rights and humanitarian organizations, and religious institutions to acknowledge the genocide inflicted upon the Armenian people and to pressure the Turkish government to recognize this genocide, followed by the implementation of all necessary humanitarian and legal measures.
Heartfelt greetings to the Armenian people on the centenary of the Ottoman genocide they endured.
It remains certain that whoever evades earthly judgment and justice will not escape the accountability, justice, and fair reckoning of the Lord on the Day of Final Judgment.

Israeli Raids Extend to North Bekaa
This Is Beirut/April 25/2024
A tanker truck was the target of an Israeli drone attack in Doures-Baalbek on Thursday, which resulted in damaging the vehicle and injuring the driver. Momentum has been increasing since yesterday night as the Israeli warplanes launched three consecutive raids on Maroun el Ras, causing property and infrastructure damage in electricity and water networks, with no reported casualties. Labbouneh and the Allam mountains were also shelled, and a fire broke out before the Civil Defense intervened. Moreover, flares were launched over border villages adjacent to the Blue Line in the cazas of Tyre and Bint Jbeil.
On the other hand, Israeli Army spokesperson Avichae Adraee wrote the following on his X account: “Last night, airforce fighters attacked Hezbollah infrastructure in Maroun el Ras region, as well as a surveillance site in Markaba, South Lebanon. Earlier, a Hezbollah building was bombed in Alma el Shaab.”

Hezbollah refutes Israel's claim of killing half of its leaders in southern Lebanon
AFP/April 25/2024
A source in the Hezbollah party denied on Thursday what the Israeli Defense Minister announced about killing half of the party's leaders in southern Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement on Wednesday that "half of Hezbollah's leaders in southern Lebanon" had been "eliminated," noting that the other half "is hiding and leaving the field to our forces' operations." A Hezbollah source told Agence France-Presse, "This is untrue and has no value; its goal is to boost the morale of the 'collapsing' army," referring to the Israeli army. The source added that the number of those killed who hold "specific responsibilities" within Hezbollah "does not exceed the fingers of a hand."

Lebanon: Theft Gangs on Beirut Airport Road Terrify Passers-by
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 25/2024
Lebanon’s airport road that links the country’s Rafik Hariri International Airport to the capital Beirut and to other areas has turned into a haven for outlaws and armed theft gangs leaving victims petrified and sometimes dead. Months after security chaos, Lebanon’s security forces decided to take action and succeeded at arresting several members of these gangs mainly of Lebanese and Syrian nationalities. The arrests took place in the southern suburbs of Beirut and in the Bekaa region. Sources following up closely on the file, said the “belated security awakening” came after a “green light” given by the Hezbollah party who lifted the cover off these gangs. “These gangs roam freely in Hezbollah’s security square (in the southern suburb of Beirut). They have turned into a burden on the party. They tend to run into the southern suburbs for shelter each time they carry out a theft”, the sources said. They tend to execute their crimes either late at night or at dawn fishing for people coming or heading to the airport, according to the sources. A security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the armed gangs tend to carefully choose the timing when road traffic is low, taking strategic positions that make their escape an easy one. He said: “More than thirty incidents have been reported since the beginning of the year”. The gangs “have exploited the absence of security presence on the airport road. Security forces do not patrol that area 24/7 like they used to before the economic crisis”.
Meanwhile, security and strategic expert, Naji Malaeb, told Asharq Al-Awsat that what is happening on the airport road is the result of self-imposed security that some people advocate for in Lebanon. He said the southern suburbs area has turned into a haven for outlaws when Hezbollah turned it into a security zone outside the state’s control. In March, a theft incident left a taxi driver dead inside the airport tunnel. Also, video footage circulating on social media recently showed two men, one of them carrying a rifle, on a motorbike chasing a man on a motorcycle. A source close to Hezbollah denied claims that the party is providing shelter for those. He said the party provides the security forces with information about gangs.

Israel in 'Offensive Action' in South Lebanon
Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
Israel said Wednesday its forces were carrying out "offensive action" in Lebanon after launching cross-border strikes targeting Hamas ally Hezbollah as Israeli aircraft and tanks pounded the Gaza Strip. Since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7, Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israeli forces have traded near-daily fire, heightening fears of a wider conflict breaking out, said AFP. In war-battered Gaza, there has been mounting concern over Israeli plans to launch an assault on the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where 1.5 million people have sought refuge, many in makeshift encampments. Aid groups warn any invasion would create catastrophic conditions for civilians. However, government spokesman David Mencer said Israel was "moving ahead" with its operation in Rafah, which Israeli officials have described as the "last" major Hamas stronghold where militants may be holding hostages. Hamas meanwhile released a video of an Israeli-American man who was one of the 129 hostages Israel estimates remain in Gaza, a figure that includes 34 presumed dead. Also on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden signed a bill authorizing $13 billion in military aid to close ally Israel.
The bill also included $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza, which Biden demanded Israel allow reach Palestinians "without delay".Middle East tensions remain high more than 200 days into the devastating war, which has also seen rising violence between Israel and Iran's proxies and allies in the region. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that "many forces are deployed" along Israel's northern border, claiming the military has eliminated "half of Hezbollah's commanders in southern Lebanon" over months of violence. Israel has struck increasingly deeper into Lebanon, while Hezbollah has stepped up rocket fire and drone attacks on Israeli military bases across the border. Israeli forces are “currently carrying out offensive action throughout southern Lebanon", Gallant said, without specifying whether ground troops had crossed the border. A spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, told AFP that "we didn't detect any ground crossing today." The Israeli army had earlier said its forces struck around 40 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, with Lebanese official media reporting at least 13 strikes on several villages. The war in Gaza began with an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. In retaliation, Israel launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,262 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

Postponment of Municipal Polls for 3rd Consecutive Time Echoes State Failure
Chelsea Al Arif /This is Beirut/April 25/2024
In a legislative parliamentary session presided over by Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday, Parliament approved “extending the existing municipal and elective councils’ mandate until a date no later than May 31, 2025,” despite objections from lawmakers opposed to Hezbollah. It was the third time in a row that the local elections have been delayed. The controversial session, boycotted by the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb Party and several independent MPs and anti-Hezbollah blocs, was attended by 72 legislators ensuring the quorum to vote for the municipal elections’ postponement for yet another year. During the debate, the Democratic Gathering bloc MPs led by the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) proposed an amendment to the draft law that would defer the municipal elections until September 30, 2024. The National Moderation Bloc MPs, who attended the session, abstained from voting, reiterating their opposition to the elections’ postponement. They stressed the need to hold the elections to ensure a proper local governance of the country. Speaking on behalf of the bloc, MP Ahmad Kheir said, “We will abstain from voting on the proposed law, but we propose, instead, giving the Ministry of Interior the powers of technical extension of (the municipalities’ mandate) for a period not exceeding a few weeks.”For his part, Independent National Bloc MP Tony Frangie called for finding alternatives to secure funds for municipalities, to enable them to carry out their tasks after the elections’ postponement.
The leader of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Gebran Bassil, whose party voted in favor of the extension, sought to justify his “unconstitutional” move. “We are faced with two options, either a vacuum in the municipal facilities or the extension of their mandate. What’s happening in south Lebanon cannot be ignored, it is an additional factor, but it is not the main reason,” he said. Amal MP Ali Hassan Khalil also justified his party’s vote for the postponement saying, “It has become a reality and there will not be any elections until circumstances change.”Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who also heads the Amal Movement, had previously said southern Lebanon could not be excluded from any upcoming ballot, after the Christian Lebanese Forces, the main party opposing Hezbollah, insisted on holding the polls on time. After the session, PSP MP Wael Abou Faour told This is Beirut, “We all know that we have a situation in the south that we cannot evade. We have a war in the south. And I don’t think that it would be acceptable to separate Lebanon into two different areas. This is why we proposed as a democratic bloc that we only postpone the election until September. But our proposal was rejected.”Lebanon is supposed to hold municipal elections every six years, but cash-strapped authorities last held a local ballot in 2016. Thursday’s bill cited “complex security, military and political circumstances following the Israeli aggression on Lebanon” and especially its south, near the border, as reasons for the delay. More than 92,000 people have been displaced from their homes in south Lebanon due to the unabating violence between Hezbollah and Israel since October 8. Local councils help provide basic services to residents but their role has declined as state coffers ran dry after Lebanon’s economy collapsed in late 2019.

Parliament postpones local elections again as violence rocks south
Naharnet/April 25/2024 
Parliament on Thursday delayed municipal elections for a third time in two years in a session boycotted by the Lebanese Forces MPs, as militants in the country's south exchanged near-daily fire with Israel for over six months.Lebanon is supposed to hold municipal elections every six years, but cash-strapped authorities last held a local ballot in 2016. Parliament approved "extending the existing municipal and elective councils' mandate until a date no later than May 31, 2025," despite objections from lawmakers opposed to Hezbollah, said the official National News Agency.
The bill cited "complex security, military and political circumstances following the Israeli aggression on Lebanon" and especially its south, near the border, as reasons for the delay. Lawmakers did not set a new date for the elections, initially scheduled for 2022. Local councils help provide basic services to residents but their role has declined as state coffers ran dry after Lebanon's economy collapsed in late 2019. Municipal elections have been postponed twice previously due to funding issues. In April 2023, the Lebanese parliament had already postponed municipal elections as the deputy speaker warned holding them was "almost impossible" for the cash-strapped country after years of economic meltdown. LF leader Samir Geagea has accused Hezbollah and its allies of obstructing anew the municipal elections in Lebanon and called on the Free Patriotic Movement MPs not to attend the session. Yet, FPM chief Jebran Bassil considered that, in addition to the ongoing clashes in south Lebanon, the government is not ready to organize the municipal vote. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri had previously said southern Lebanon could not be excluded from any upcoming ballot, after the Lebanese Forces insisted on holding the polls on time. Six Change MPs left the session as they considered any legislative session unconstitutional before a president is elected. Lebanon has faced the prolonged financial crisis and months of border clashes essentially leaderless, without a president and headed by a caretaker government with limited powers amid deadlock between entrenched political barons. "The priority is to elect a president. In war, fighting also includes fortifying the domestic front," Change MP Melhem Khalaf said. "Because we stand in solidarity with our people in the south who are in dire need of electing a president, we have decided to withdraw from this session," he added. Deputy Speaker and ex-FPM MP Elias Bou Saab voted against the extension. So did Change MPs Cynthia Zararir and Halima Kaakour, independant pro-Hezbollah MP Jamil al-Sayyed, and the New Lebanon bloc, while the National Moderation bloc abstained from voting. Families of the victims and the wounded of the Beirut port blast meanwhile rallied outside parliament to demand a law that would bring justice to the blast's wounded. After the session, Geagea described the extension as "a stab by the Axis of Resistance and the FPM against democracy in order to cover their lack of popularity."

US official warns potential for Israel-Hezbollah escalation is 'acute'
Naharnet/April 25/2024 
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf has reassured that there is a prospect for diplomatically resolving the current Israel-Hezbollah conflict, while warning that “the potential for escalation is acute.”During a digital press briefing, Leaf added that the U.S. is “very much committed” to finding a diplomatic solution for the Lebanese-Israeli front. “We’ve committed the energies and efforts of an envoy, Amos Hochstein. Is the window closing? I wouldn’t put it that way so much as that there has been a high degree of volatility on that border, a very disturbing degree of volatility on that border, and of course the communities on either side of that border have had to evacuate to decamp to other parts of Lebanon, other parts of Israel, out of harm’s way,” Leaf said. Cautioning that “the potential for escalation is acute,” the U.S. official revealed that Washington has “of course cautioned Israel in terms of how it responds to attacks that Hezbollah initiated.”“We have cautioned Israel to be careful in the way it responds, and we have certainly used a number of channels and we’ve been aided by other partners in using their channels, direct or indirect, to Hezbollah to warn against entering into the fray or widening the conflict,” Leaf added. “So yes, there’s absolutely a prospect for de-escalation of a more formal kind, and then ultimately moving to a diplomatic effort to delineate the border,” she said. Responding to another question, Leaf described Hezbollah as “a terrible force that weighs against the government and the government’s own agency.”

Sami Gemayel Deplores the Postponment of Municipal Elections
This Is Beirut/April 25/2024  
Kataeb leader Sami Gemayel strongly denounced the postponement of municipal and mukhtar elections adopted by Parliament on Thursday, calling it “a continuation of the paralysis of state institutions.” Gemayel was speaking on Thursday after a meeting in Bikfaya with the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka. “With Ms. Wronecka, we discussed Lebanese concerns, starting with the postponement of municipal and mukhtar elections, which is an attempt to completely paralyze all state institutions, in addition to the legitimate rights of citizens to renew democratic life by voting,” deplored the Kataeb leader. For him, the challenge of maintaining this election would have made it possible “to confirm that Lebanon still exists, especially that we have been without a President of the Republic” since October 2022. “We have had a caretaker cabinet for two years (since the last parliamentary elections) which lacks legitimacy, not to mention the paralysis of Parliament,” Gemayel added. The meeting with the UN Special Coordinator also focused on the issue of displaced Syrians in Lebanon, and the importance of finding “a rapid, practical and lasting solution” to alleviate the pressures that have become “too heavy for Lebanon and its people to bear in light of the crises they are undergoing.”Also on the agenda were Security Council Resolution 1701, the ongoing war in southern Lebanon and the need to elect a President of the Republic. In this context, Gemayel reaffirmed his party’s constant position against Hezbollah “which continues to hold Lebanon and the decisions of the State hostage.”

Geagea on Municipal Extension: FPM, Pro-Hezbollah Blocs ‘Stabbed Democracy’
This Is Beirut/April 25/2024   
Leader of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea claimed on Thursday that the pro-Hezbollah “Moumanaa axis” and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) “are once again stabbing democracy, the right of people to choose their representatives and the establishment of public institutions.”Geagea wrote on his X account, “The flimsy argument used by these people to approve the extension of the municipal and mukhtar councils, for the third time in a row, is invalid.”“They used ongoing military operations in some areas of the South as an alibi to postpone elections in all of Lebanon, while the Ministry of Education approved holding official exams in all of Lebanon, excluding areas that are undergoing military operations.”Geagea argued that excluding an area from elections due to certain circumstances is not unprecedented, referring to the 1998 municipal elections from which the South and some villages were excluded because people had not returned to their villages under Israeli occupation. Commenting on the argument put forward by the “Moumanaa axis” that the government is not ready to hold the elections, Geagea said, “Had these MPs really cared about applying the Constitution and abiding by its deadlines, they should have questioned the government and held it responsible for any failure to meet constitutional deadlines instead of orchestrating a new extension for the municipal councils under a false argument,” he concluded.”

W. Joumblatt to Propose a Document on the Crisis of Displaced Syrians
This Is Beirut/April 25/2024   
The question of how to “unify the Lebanese position on the crisis of displaced Syrians,” which continues to weigh heavily on the Lebanese landscape, was at the heart of discussions between a Hezbollah delegation and the former President of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), Walid Joumblatt. Joumblatt had received the delegation at Clemenceau on Thursday. Joumblatt took advantage of the meeting to inform the Hezbollah delegation that “the PSP has prepared a document on the issue of displaced persons, including practical ideas, and will submit it this coming week to all political parties.”
The meeting also discussed the latest political developments on the local and regional scene, in particular, the ongoing conflict in south Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel since October 8, 2023. The Hezbollah delegation included Hussein al-Khalil, Political Assistant to the Secretary General of Hezbollah, and Wafiq Safa, Head of Liaison and Coordination for the Shiite party. On the PSP side, MPs Wael Abou Faour and Hadi Abou el-Hosn were present.

Southern Lebanon: Fires Ignited by Phosphorus Bombs and Heat Wave
AFP/This Is Beirut/April 25/2024    
As cross-border clashes continued between Hezbollah and Israel, the Israeli army fired flares and phosphorus shells on Thursday afternoon starting a fire at the Yaroun forest, while other areas that were bombarded on Wednesday, including Labbouneh, were again in flames on Thursday, due to the heat wave sweeping the country. An air strike destroyed the house of Abdallah Farah east of Alma al-Shaab, causing extensive material damage in the neighborhood. Ambulances and civil defense vehicles were dispatched to the targeted area to remove the rubble. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Sporadic artillery fire was also recorded on the outskirts of Naqoura, Alma al-Shaab, Tayr Harfa, and Dhayra. Additionally, Israeli warplanes launched an air strike targeting the area between Alma al-Shaab and Naqoura, while Israeli aircraft carried out reconnaissance flights over Tyre. Israeli media reported that “more than 4,000 (recorded) rockets have been fired since the start of the war on October 8 from south Lebanon towards Israel,” according to information from the Israeli army. For its part, Hezbollah announced that it had targeted a gathering of Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the Dhayra position “with rocket-propelled grenades.” The pro-Iranian party also said it had targeted the Margaliot artillery headquarters in northern Israel with a drone. At around 5:30 PM on Thursday, seven rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards the Israeli position of Zebqine in the Shebaa Farms.

Presidential Election: National Moderation MPs Consult with Berri and Mikati
This Is Beirut/April 25/2024     
MP Ahmad Kheir of the National Moderation bloc seemrd optimistic about a possible breakthrough on the presidential election issue. “Our initiative includes ten points, eight of which have been addressed,” he said after a meeting of the bloc’s MPs with the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, on Thursday. “Obstacles surround the last two points, but we are trying to resolve them with Berri’s help,” he added. Kheir explained that the meeting aimed to inform the Speaker of the results of the bloc MPs’ initiative to tour the various Lebanese parties. This initiative had, however, been rejected by Hezbollah. The initiative aimed to bring parliamentarians together at Nejmeh Square for informal discussions on the presidential election. At the end of these discussions, a call would be made to Berri to convene an electoral session with successive rounds until a president is elected. The National Moderation meeting comes at a time when the ambassadors of the Quintet (United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt), who support the bloc’s initiative, have resumed their tour of the various Lebanese parties in yet another attempt to break the deadlock over the presidential election. The caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, also received the National Moderation MPs. Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, Sagih Atieh said that Mikati would help them “overcome the obstacles” facing their initiative.

Kataeb: Army Monopoly on Weapons, ‘Only Solution to Lebanon Crisis’
This Is Beirut/April 25/2024     
The Kataeb party reiterated on Thursday its “total support” for the mission led by the five-nation group known as the Quintet (United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar) aimed at breaking the presidential deadlock that has persisted since October 2022 and that is “affecting all the state’s institutions.”“A rapid solution must be found to solve this issue,” said former minister Alain Hakim, who led the Kataeb delegation that visited the Mufti of the Republic, Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, to present their greetings on the occasion of Fitr. Hakim said the delegation agreed with the Sunni religious dignitary on what sovereignty implies, particularly with regard to legal weapons, in allusion to the principle that the possession of arms should be under the monopoly of the Lebanese Armed Forces, “which are the only ones capable of getting Lebanon out of the current crisis.

One wounded in Israeli drone strike on Baalbek's Douris
Agence France Presse/April 25/2024 
An Israeli drone struck Thursday a fuel truck in the town of Douris southwest of Baalbek, wounding the driver, the National News Agency said. Later on Thursday, Hezbollah targeted a group of Israeli soldiers in the Dhaira post in northern Israel while Israeli warplanes and artillery bombed the outskirts of the southern border towns of Alma al-Shaab and al-Naqoura. The strike on Douris came a day after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israeli forces were carrying out "offensive action" across southern Lebanon, as cross-border fire intensified. The violence has fuelled fears of all-out conflict between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel, which last went to war in 2006. "An Israeli drone attack hit a truck carrying fuel" for Hezbollah in the village of Douris, just southwest of the Bekaa Valley city of Baalbek, a Hezbollah source told AFP. The strike struck the truck driver, said the source, with the official National News Agency (NNA) confirming the report. Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire in the south of Lebanon since the Gaza war erupted in October. Hezbollah began the attacks against Israel on October 8 in support of Gaza. The Baalbek area is a stronghold of Hezbollah and has been struck by Israeli strikes in previous weeks. But the focus of cross-border exchanges since the Gaza war began has been southern Lebanon, about 100 kilometres away and also a bastion of Hezbollah. An Israeli army statement early Thursday said targets hit in southern Lebanon were in the area of Maroun el-Ras, Markaba and Alma al-Shaab, and included a Hezbollah observation post. On Wednesday Israel's defense minister said in a statement that "many forces are deployed on the border and IDF (military) forces are carrying out offensive action currently throughout southern Lebanon". He also said, without elaborating, that "half of Hezbollah's commanders in southern Lebanon have been eliminated" in months of violence. The Israeli army also said Wednesday that it had struck 40 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. Wednesday's strikes came after Hezbollah said it fired a barrage of rockets across the border following a strike that killed two civilians which the group blamed on Israel. The NNA said Thursday that Israeli warplanes struck overnight the southern border town of Maroun al-Rass, damaging the water and electricity infrastructure in the town and shelled flare bombs on al-Labbouneh and other border towns, causing a fire. Israeli attacks in the past seven months of border clashes have set olive groves and greenery ablaze, with caretaker Agriculture Minister Abbas al-Hajj Hassan accusing Israel of carrying out white phosphorus attacks, saying the incendiary substance had burned down more than 60,000 old olive trees. Since October 7, at least 380 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also 72 civilians, according to an AFP tally. Israel says 11 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed on its side of the border. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides.

Report: Lebanon pressed on ceasefire, Hezbollah won't bow to 'intimidation'
Naharnet/April 25/2024  
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has revealed that he has “received major warnings from the Europeans and Arabs” regarding the Israel-Hezbollah clashes, a media report said on Thursday. U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein has also told him in their latest phone call that “there is a need to cease fire in the south and not wait for the course of the war in the Gaza Strip,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported. Hezbollah has meanwhile informed Mikati and other Lebanese officials that “the threats -- regardless whether they are serious or a repetition of the intimidation campaign -- will change nothing in the decision to maintain the military support for Gaza.”Informed sources also told al-Akhbar that “the intimidation comes amid the Israeli enemy’s preparations to enter Rafah with a full US cover for an assault that might last for more than six weeks.”“It needs to halt the war of attrition on the northern front amid its inability to open two fronts at the same time,” the sources added.

Bassil says doesn't see Lebanon as part of 'Shiite Crescent'
Naharnet/April 25/2024  
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has described has current relation with Hezbollah as “ordinary.”“There was an understanding between us and the part related to protecting Lebanon is still in place while the part related to domestic policies has been shaken,” Bassil said in an interview on al-Mashhad TV. “It is a must to respect the will of the Christian component regarding the presidency and today Hezbollah is not doing that. They are practicing the opposite of what they did in 2016 when they respected this will through the election of General (Michel) Aoun as president, Bassil added. As for his warming relation with Speaker Nabih Berri, the FPM chief described the ties as “positive,” noting that “there are mutual positive intentions from the two sides with the aim of exiting the crisis.”Bassil also stressed that he does not see Lebanon as being part of the so-called “Shiite Crescent.” “I do not agree to this,” he added. The Shiite Crescent is the notionally crescent-shaped region of the Middle East where the majority population is Shiite or where the population contains a sizable Shiite minority. In recent years the term has come to identify areas under Iranian influence or control. Areas in the Shiite Crescent include Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Yemen and western Afghanistan. The term was coined in 2004 by King Abdullah II of Jordan at a time when Iran was reportedly interfering in Iraq in the run-up to the January 2005 parliamentary elections. “It is clear that the bonding line that Iran is establishing is military and it seems that it has managed to impose itself and the West is dealing with it accordingly. Amid this scene, I don’t want Lebanon to pay the price, neither through war nor through the change of its identity,” Bassil added. “Any component cannot impose anything on Lebanon,” he emphasized. Warning that “if we put the resistance ahead of the state, the state will disintegrate,” Bassil said the country needs “a consensual president who would not come with an anti-resistance vision.”

Fadlallah says Hezbollah 'ready for any scenario'
Agence France Presse/April 25/2024  
Hezbollah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah has told the National News Agency during a funeral procession in southern Lebanon that "the targeting of civilians... cannot happen without a concrete response." "Let us make this enemy understand that... we are ready for any scenario," Fadlallah said. Fadlallah's comments came as Hezbollah targeted Wednesday three posts in northern Israel in response to a strike that killed two civilians, a woman and her niece, in the southern town of Hanin. The Israeli army said it struck Wednesday 40 Hezbollah targets in an "offensive action" across southern Lebanon, claiming that "half of Hezbollah's commanders in southern Lebanon have been eliminated" in the past months of violence.

Evacuation of Illegal Syrians in North Lebanon Starts
This Is Beirut/April 25/2024   
Illegal Syrian migrants living in North Lebanon have been notified on Thursday to vacate their premises. The General Directorate of State Security announced, in a statement, that “its patrols have implemented the decision of the Governor of North Lebanon, Ramzi Nohra, asking Syrian migrants who do not have displaced status, running businesses, or occupying housing without regulatory papers, to vacate their premises.”According to the statement, Nohra’s decision appeals to Syrians living in Kfifane and Koubba, in the Batroun caza. Bsatine el-Essé had been previously notified of the same decision, and the Syrians displaced were evacuated. The State Security apparatus asserts that “these measures will continue until the end, in all Lebanese regions, in application of the decisions of the government, Central Security Council, and Governor.”

The Last Lebanon War
Amiad Cohen/The Tablet/April 25/2024
To achieve victory, Israel must force territorial losses on its enemies
I have recently concluded a four-month stint on IDF reserve duty in the north, returning home with a bitter sense of missed opportunity. The unprecedented attack by Iran on Israel on April 13 has only heightened this feeling.
When war erupted on Oct. 7, I was called up for reserve duty in Har Dov, in northern Israel, where I served as a tactical officer stationed on the Lebanese border. It was a stark contrast to my usual work at Herut, the Center for Israeli Liberty, but it provided me with a broader perspective and deeper strategic insight. Engaging with tactical considerations inevitably prompts deeper reflection on strategic imperatives. From this experience, it became evident to me that while Israel pursues tactical objectives, it often lacks strategic foresight.
I’m not alone in harboring this sense of missed opportunity. My fellow reservists feel the same, as they’ve made clear in countless conversations. At the end of the day, we did not provide security to the residents of Israel’s northern communities. Hezbollah militants continue to operate with impunity, firing at will despite sustaining losses. It’s undeniable that we fell short of our mission.
I don’t make this statement lightly. Reserve duty demands significant sacrifice. Those of us who serve put our lives, families, and businesses on hold for months at a time. Returning home feeling like we’ve failed is deeply disheartening. Yet we cannot but recognize that while we’ve done our utmost to protect Israel’s north—no small feat amid simultaneous fighting in the south—we missed a rare opportunity for meaningful change. We also anticipate being called back to duty soon to finish the job.
The Litani must serve as Israel’s new border in the north. Hezbollah will only be deterred when it has suffered the loss of territory with little hope of reclaiming it.
Finishing the job in Lebanon, though, will be impossible as long as we refuse to be clear-eyed about the day after. I focus on Lebanon in this article, since Gaza seems to have reached a point of no return; Hamas will likely be disarmed one way or another, and we will keep “mowing the lawn,” just as we did with the PLO’s violent group, the Tanzim, taking routine actions to make sure it never recovers. However, despite the different situations in Gaza and Lebanon, I believe the source of the challenge they present is the same: the IDF’s long-standing belief that asymmetrical wars against terrorist organizations cannot be decisively won.
For decades, our military establishment has assumed that engagements with Hamas or Hezbollah would be brief, aiming merely to manage the situation rather than achieve outright victory. As a result, we moved from one operation to the next in Gaza, reluctant to disrupt the status quo, until forced to act by Hamas. Now, we face a critical decision: Either we perpetuate this pattern in Lebanon, or we fight the last Lebanon war, determined to achieve a decisive victory.
War against Hezbollah represents a substantial military engagement against an adversary with tactical capabilities far surpassing those of Hamas. At the onset of the Gaza war, Hamas boasted approximately 30,000 fighters and tens of thousands of rockets. In contrast, Hezbollah commands a force of 100,000 fighters and possesses at least 150,000 rockets, many of which have longer ranges and larger warheads than those in Hamas’ arsenal. Hezbollah is also considerably wealthier: While Hamas relies primarily on income derived from the Strip’s corrupt administration, supplemented by limited financial aid from Qatar, Hezbollah operates a lucrative drug trade and a number of illicit enterprises generating hundreds of millions of dollars yearly. It also receives substantial financial support from Iran.
Hezbollah’s significant military capabilities, though, are not our primary impediment to achieving victory. Our greatest challenge lies in grappling with the uncertainty of the aftermath should we succeed in defeating Hezbollah. Instead, we spend too much time and energy agonizing over the practicalities of postwar scenarios, such as managing the civilian population. While these are valid considerations, our emphasis should be on envisioning a future where we no longer face a conventional military threat on our borders. A decisive victory in Lebanon could potentially liberate Israel from existential threats, paving the way for economic prosperity and empowering us to address long-standing domestic challenges with newfound resources and focus.
Turning this vision into reality requires learning from our past mistakes in Lebanon. During my time stationed in Har Dov in recent months, I took the opportunity to study its history. I learned about Operation Cauldron 2, conducted in 1970 by the Barak Brigade with assistance from the Golani Brigade. Our forces successfully cleared six villages in southern Lebanon from terrorists. Remarkably, these are the very same villages where we continue to fight today.
Subsequent efforts to combat terrorism in Lebanon followed, including Operation Litani in 1978, during which we advanced all the way to the Litani River before withdrawing two months later. In 1982, we achieved a significant victory in driving out our enemies entirely, only to welcome back Yasser Arafat a decade later. Each of these operations or wars resulted in nothing more than temporary, tactical takeovers. Lebanon suffered no permanent consequences for allowing terrorists to operate freely within its borders.
Our adversaries in Lebanon, much like those in Gaza, have demonstrated resilience in the face of bombing campaigns. War is never a pleasant experience, but history has repeatedly shown that whenever Israel concludes a military operation, our enemies declare victory regardless of the extent of the damage inflicted upon them. They will proudly stand amid the ruins and proclaim triumph, as victory for them lies in their survival to fight another day. Despite the destruction wrought upon their families and infrastructure, their sovereignty and territorial integrity remain intact.
To achieve a decisive victory over Hamas and Hezbollah, we must impose permanent consequences of the kind they fear most. At a minimum this includes destroying their military power and military infrastructure. More importantly, however, this must include a clear loss of sovereignty. For Gaza, this means becoming one vast Area B, with Israel exclusively in charge of security. For Lebanon, this means Hezbollah can no longer operate freely south of the Litani River. The Litani must serve as Israel’s new border in the north. Hezbollah will only be deterred when it has suffered the loss of territory with little hope of reclaiming it.
By shifting that Israeli border up to the Litani River, we will achieve a dual objective: First, we will establish a potent deterrent against Hezbollah, which has never faced territorial losses before. Second, the Litani River is a great topographical line that will allow us to defend our northern communities should Hezbollah rearm itself further north. To understand the significance of this buffer zone, try to envision the Yom Kippur War without control over the Golan Heights: Syrian divisions would have easily reached the Galilee on the war’s first day, jeopardizing Israel’s very existence. As it pertains to safeguarding Israel’s security interests, the strategic importance of the Litani line parallels that of the Golan Heights. Our wish to acquire this territory is not motivated by mystical or religious beliefs; rather, it is a pragmatic stance based on a sober analysis of the potential challenges Israel may encounter in the years ahead.
Following Iran’s attack on Israel earlier this month, we find ourselves in a challenging position. The Biden administration has made it abundantly clear that it is opposed to any retaliation against Iran. The likelihood of Israel gaining American support for any military action against Iran therefore is nil.
Israel is not without options, however. Iran’s failure to harm Israel despite launching hundreds of drones and missiles underscore the extent to which the greatest danger it poses to Israel is not through its ballistic capabilities but rather through its proxies that are directly on Israel’s borders. Of these proxies, none is as dangerous and well equipped as Hezbollah.
Absent international willingness to endorse direct military strikes against Iran, we must leverage international concerns about avoiding direct conflict with Tehran to impose a fait accompli in Lebanon, by pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani River and annexing the territory south of it. Notably, much of the population in this region has already been displaced due to Hezbollah’s military activities. Once Israel has established control, civilians uninvolved in terror activities can safely return to live there.
In terms of strategy, prioritizing the neutralization of Hezbollah holds greater significance than direct confrontation with Iran. While Iran’s arsenal consists of only a limited number of long-range missiles posing a threat to Israel, Hezbollah is positioned right on our northern border, equipped with over 150,000 rockets and missiles capable of inflicting serious damage. With its 100,000 well-trained combatants, Hezbollah poses the greatest Iranian threat we face. In truth, Hezbollah serves as an extension of the Iranian military. A decisive victory over Hezbollah needs to include both significant territorial losses providing Israel with a defensible border, and the complete degradation of their military capabilities. This will significantly diminish Iran’s capacity to threaten Israel, thus reshaping the regional power dynamics.
This time, I am hopeful that we will not miss this opportunity.
**Amiad Cohen is the CEO of Herut Center, and the publisher of the Hebrew-language intellectual journal Hashiloach.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/last-lebanon-war

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 25-26/2024
Israel Moving Forward with Rafah Assault to Pressure Hamas on Hostages
Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
Israel's biggest newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said on Thursday that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will move forward with plans for an all-out assault on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas to resume hostage negotiations. The daily said that Israel would attack Rafah to put more pressure on Hamas and increase chances for an agreement on the hostages who were taken by the militant group in its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Netanyahu's government said Israel was "moving ahead" with its plans for a ground operation on Rafah but gave no timeline. The war, now in its seventh month, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities. The offensive has laid to waste much of the enclave, displacing most of its 2.3 million people and creating a humanitarian crisis.

Israel intensifies airstrikes on Gaza's Rafah before ground operation
Nidal al-Mughrabi/CAIRO (Reuters)/April 25, 2024
Israel stepped up airstrikes on Rafah overnight after saying it would evacuate civilians from the southern Gazan city and launch an all-out assault despite allies' warnings this could cause mass casualties. Medics in the besieged Palestinian enclave reported five Israeli airstrikes on Rafah early on Thursday that hit at least three houses, killing at least six people including a local journalist. "We are afraid of what will happen in Rafah. The level of alert is very high," Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, told Reuters on Thursday. "Some are leaving, they are afraid for their families but where can they go? They are not being allowed to go to the north and so are confined to a very small area." The Gaza Strip is about 40 km (25 miles) long and between about 5 km (3 miles) and 12 km (7.5 miles) wide and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. In the seventh month of a devastating air and ground war, Israeli forces also resumed bombarding northern and central areas of the enclave, as well as east of Khan Younis in the south. Israel's stated goal is to destroy Hamas, though it is unclear how they would do so. A United Nations team visiting a site for a staging area and pier for maritime aid operations was forced to take cover in a bunker on Wednesday after the area came under attack, a spokesperson said on Thursday. They were there for "some time," but there were no injuries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet was meeting "to discuss how to destroy the last vestiges, the last quarter of Hamas' battalions, in Rafah and elsewhere," government spokesperson David Mencer said.
He declined to say when or whether the classified forum might give a green light for a ground operation in Rafah. Israel has killed at least 34,305 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities said on Thursday. The offensive has laid to waste much of the widely urbanised enclave, displacing most of its 2.3 million people and leaving many with little food, water or medical care. A U.N. expert speaking after visits to Jordan and Egypt said aid agencies were seeing an increasing number of patients suffering from the acute lack of food in the enclave. “What I've seen here was traumatising. Patients that previously arrived in Egypt primarily with explosive and other war injury related symptoms are now joined by increasing numbers of patients, often children, with chronic diseases and severe malnutrition,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told reporters in Cairo. Israel is retaliating against an Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and led to 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Iranian-backed Hamas is sworn to Israel's destruction due to its occupation of Palestinian territories.
Escalating Israeli warnings about invading Rafah, the last refuge for around a million civilians who fled Israeli forces further north earlier in the war, have nudged some families to leave for the nearby al-Mawasi coastal area or try to make their way to points further north, residents and witnesses said. But many were confused over where they should go, saying their experience over the past 200 days of war had taught them that no place was genuinely safe. Mohammad Nasser, 34, a father-of-three, said he had left Rafah two weeks ago and now lived in a shelter in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza to avoid being caught by surprise by an Israeli invasion and unable to escape. "We escape from one trap into another, searching for places Israel calls safe before they bomb us there. It is like the rat and trap game," he told Reuters via a chat app. "We are trying to adapt to the new reality, hoping it will become better, but I doubt it will." Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council said there appeared to be fewer people in Rafah, which borders Egypt. She said teams on the ground had said people expect an invasion after the Jewish Passover holiday ends on April 30. A senior Israeli defence official said on Wednesday Israel was poised to evacuate civilians before its attack on Rafah and had bought 40,000 tents that could house 10 to 12 people each.Satellite images of Mawasi between Rafah, Khan Younis and the sea, an area of sand beaches and fields and stretching only around 5 by 3 km (three by two miles), showed significant camp settlements erected over the past two weeks.
BOMBING AND BODIES
Meanwhile, a Palestinian civil defence team called on the United Nations to investigate what it said were war crimes at a Gaza hospital, saying nearly 400 bodies were recovered from mass graves after Israeli soldiers left the complex in Khan Younis. The Israeli military said allegations by Palestinian authorities that its forces had buried the bodies were "baseless and unfounded". In the north, Israeli forces continued to pound Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Zeitoun, with some residents saying Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were fighting Israeli ground forces with anti-tank rockets, mortar bombs and sniper fire. The Palestine Telecommunications Company said internet services had again been cut off in central and southern Gaza on Thursday, blaming Israeli military operations. Such outages have compounded the obstacles confronting efforts to get emergency aid to stricken civilians. An aid worker who was part of Belgium's development efforts in Gaza died in one Israeli strike, the Belgian government said on Thursday, adding it was summoning the Israeli ambassador over the incident.

Leaders of 18 nations call on Hamas to release hostages
Agence France Presse/April 25/2024
The leaders of the United States, Britain, France and more than a dozen other countries called in a joint statement Thursday for Hamas to release the scores of hostages it is holding, the White House said. "We call for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for over 200 days. They include our own citizens," the leaders said.

New Round of Western Sanctions Against Iran
This Is Beirut/AFP/April 25/2024
US sanctions against Iran were tightened again on Thursday, targeting the country’s military drone industry, alongside similar sanctions by Canada and the UK, almost two weeks after Tehran’s attack on Israel. The UK on Thursday joined the United States and Canada in announcing a fresh set of sanctions against Iran’s drone and missile industries after its recent attack on Israel. Tehran launched its first direct military assault on Israeli territory in retaliation for an April 1 air strike – widely blamed on Israel – that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Damascus. Iran’s large-scale attack involved more than 300 drones and missiles, most of which were shot down by Israel and its allies including Washington and London, causing little damage. The United States and Britain announced widespread sanctions on Iran last week, targeting individuals and companies involved in the Iranian drone industry.
The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said the latest sanctions would target two individuals and four companies closely involved in Iran’s network of drone production. Trade sanctions against Iran would also be expanded by introducing new bans on the export of components used in its produce of drones and missiles, it added. “The Iranian regime’s dangerous attack on Israel risked thousands of civilian casualties and wider escalation in the region,” Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement. “Alongside our partners, we will continue to tighten the net on Iran’s ability to develop and export these deadly weapons.”The UK already has over 400 sanctions imposed on Iran, including designations against the  Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in its entirety and many of those responsible for the attack on Israel.
‘Facilitating and financing’
The US Treasury Department also targeted Iran’s military drone program on Thursday, sanctioning more than a dozen individuals, companies and ships it said played a key role in “facilitating and financing” clandestine sales of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the country’s defense ministry. “Iran’s Ministry of Defense continues to destabilize the region and world with its support of Russia’s war in Ukraine, unprecedented attack on Israel, and proliferation of UAVs and other dangerous military hardware to terrorist proxies,” US Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement. “The United States, in close coordination with our British and Canadian partners, will continue to use all means available to combat those who would finance Iran’s destabilising activities,” he added. Thursday’s joint sanctions come a week after Washington targeted 16 people and two companies involved in Iran’s UAV program, as well as components for the drones used in the attack against Israel. The UK government separately targeted seven individuals and six companies for enabling Iran to continue its “destabilizing regional activity, including its direct attack on Israel.”Alongside its sanctions against Iran’s UAV program, the US also targeted five companies providing parts for Iran’s steel industry, and an automaker involved in providing “material support” to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The European Union imposed its own set of sanctions on Ira

Iran-Backed Iraqi Militias Resume Attacks on U.S. Forces
FDD/April 25/2024
Latest Developments
U.S. forces at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq shot down approximately two drones on April 22, according to U.S. officials. This was the second attack in 24 hours against U.S. troops, coming after Iran-aligned militants targeted U.S. forces in Rumalyn, Syria, with multiple rockets.
The Pentagon confirmed “two unsuccessful attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria,” which were the first against U.S. troops there since February 4. The Pentagon stated that the launcher used in the first incident was destroyed by a coalition aircraft “in self-defense after a failed rocket attack.” A group reportedly affiliated with the Iran-backed militia Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) claimed that attacks on U.S. forces had resumed. However, this statement was quickly denied by KH’s official Telegram page, stating that the allegation of resumed attacks was “fabricated news.”
Expert Analysis
“Iran-backed terrorists repeatedly attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria beginning on October 17. For weeks, the Biden administration failed to respond with strength, essentially inviting those attacks to continue. That’s exactly what happened, and three American servicemembers ultimately lost their lives. The White House should learn from that experience and not wait weeks this time before responding with decisive force. We need to build a pattern of responses that encourages those contemplating attacks on our forces to think twice.” — Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power
“Tehran and its proxies seek to expel the United States through force and terror. A withdrawal of American troops in Iraq and Syria, who are supporting the Defeat-ISIS campaign, could lead to the reemergence of the extremist caliphate and would hand Tehran a strategic victory. Both enemies seek not only the extinction of the State of Israel but the deaths of Americans as well. Washington must seek a policy of peace through strength and not back down against those who attack our service members.” — Mike Daum, FDD Research Analyst
Deterring Attacks on U.S. Forces
Between October 17, 2023, and February 4, 2024, Iranian proxies attacked U.S. forces 165 times in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. The United States responded only with approximately nine limited airstrikes before the fatal Tower 22 attack in Jordan on January 28, which killed three American servicemembers. After that attack, the United States responded by striking 85 targets in Iraq and Syria. Less than a week later, a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed a KH commander who was responsible for attacks on U.S. forces. After that U.S. military action, there were no more attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, or Jordan for at least 75 days.
Iran’s Proxies Threatened to Resume Attacks
Despite the pause in attacks on U.S. forces, Iranian proxies in Iraq threatened to resume attacks if the Iraqi government did not secure an agreement for U.S. troops to withdraw from the country. U.S. forces are in Iraq and Syria to help ensure the ISIS caliphate remains defeated. The Iraqi prime minister and President Joe Biden met in Washington last week, issuing a joint statement on April 15 that did not mention any U.S. withdrawal.

Ship Comes Under Houthi Attack off Coast of Yemen
Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
A ship traveling in the Gulf of Aden came under attack Thursday, officials said, the latest assault likely carried out by Yemen's Houthis over Israel's ongoing war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The attack comes after the US military said early Thursday an allied warship shot down a Houthi missile targeting a vessel the day before near the same area. The Houthis claimed Wednesday's assault, which comes after a period of relatively few attacks on shipping in the region over Israel’s ongoing war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In Thursday's attack, a ship was targeted just over 25 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Aden, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said. The captain “reports a loud bang heard and a splash and smoke seen coming from the sea,” the UKMTO said. “Vessel and all crew are safe.”The attack was also reported by the private security firm Ambrey. The Houthis did not immediately claim the attack, though it typically takes them hours to acknowledge an assault. European Union forces separately shot down a drone launched from Houthi territory on Thursday, Gen. Robert Brieger said. The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, seized one vessel and sank another since November, according to the US Maritime Administration. Houthi attacks have dropped in recent weeks as the group has been targeted by a US-led airstrike campaign in Yemen and shipping through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has declined because of the threat.
American officials have speculated that the Houthis may be running out of weapons as a result of the US-led campaign against them and firing off drones and missiles steadily in the last months. However, Wednesday's attack was the first one by the Houthis in some time. An explosion struck some 130 kilometers (80 miles) southeast of Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden, the UKMTO said. Early Thursday, the US military’s Central Command said the explosion came from a coalition warship shooting down the missile likely targeting the MV Yorktown, a US-flagged, owned and operated vessel with 18 US and four Greek crew members. “There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition or commercial ships,” Central Command said. Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, claimed the attack but insisted without evidence that the missile hit the Yorktown. Saree also claimed the Houthis targeted another ship in the Indian Ocean, without providing proof. The Houthis have made repeated claims that turned out to not be true during their yearslong war in Yemen. The Houthis have said they will continue their attacks until Israel ends its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians there. The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage. Most of the ships targeted by the Houthis have had little or no direct connection to Israel, the US or other nations involved in the war.

Biden Names New Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues
Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
US President Joe Biden on Thursday appointed Lise Grande as the new special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, the State Department said in a statement. Grande, who replaces David Satterfield, is currently head of the independent US Institute of Peace. She previously worked for the United Nations for more than 25 years, a career that included running aid operations in Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan. The United Nations has long complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza in the six months since Israel began an aerial and ground offensive against the Gaza Strip's Hamas. Israel's military campaign has reduced much of the territory of 2.3 million people to a wasteland with an unfolding humanitarian disaster since October, when Hamas ignited war by storming into southern Israel. Satterfield said on Tuesday that Israel has taken significant steps in recent weeks on allowing aid into Gaza, but considerable work remained to be done as the risk of famine in the enclave is very high.

Hamas official says Israel ‘will not achieve’ goals in Rafah
AFP/April 25, 2024
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: A senior Hamas official told AFP on Thursday that Israel would fail to meet its stated goals of defeating the Palestinian militant group and freeing hostages by invading the southern Gaza city Rafah.
“Even if (Israel) enters and invades Rafah, it will not achieve what it wants,” Ghazi Hamad said in an interview over the phone from Qatar, where a number of senior figures from Hamas’s political bureau are based. Hamad said Israel had “spent nearly seven months in Gaza and invaded all areas and destroyed a lot, but so far has not been able to achieve anything of its main goals, whether eliminating Hamas or returning the captives.” Israel has vowed to move on with the planned military operation in Rafah, despite international outcry and concern for about 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in the city. There are fears of huge civilian casualties and countries including Israel’s top ally and weapons supplier the United States have warned Israel against sending troops into Rafah. “We have spoken with all parties involved in the conflict... about the seriousness of invading Rafah and that Israel is heading toward committing additional massacres and additional genocide,” Hamad said. “This will undoubtedly threaten the negotiations because it is clear from this declared position that Israel is interested in continuing the war and aggression and has no intention of continuing negotiations and reaching an agreement,” he said.
Qatar, the United States and Egypt, have been mediating talks to secure a truce and the release of hostages, but those have stalled for days. An Egyptian delegation is however set to travel to Israel on Friday to kickstart a new round of talks, Israeli media reported citing unnamed officials.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said Israel’s war cabinet was meeting Thursday “to discuss how to destroy the last battalions of Hamas.” On Wednesday, Mencer said that since Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza on October 27, the army has destroyed “at least 18 or 19 of Hamas’s 24 battalions.”Officials say the remaining battalions are in Rafah — the main target of the impending assault.
Most Gazans taking refuge in Rafah are sheltering in makeshift camps, and even before the start of the expected ground invasion, the city near the Egyptian border has been suffering regular Israeli bombings.Hamad argued the planned invasion was exposing contradictions in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance on Gaza. “Netanyahu is stumbling because, on the one hand, he wants to return the captives to their families, as he says, but at the same time, he puts them in great danger, as his army deliberately killed many hostages.”Israel’s army has admitted to mistakenly killing some hostages in Gaza.
Hamad accused Netanyahu of “manipulating and procrastinating” in a bid to “deceive the Israeli public that there are negotiations and deceive the international community as well that there are negotiations.”He said the Israeli prime minister was “trying to twist the truth” and claim that “Hamas is the obstacle in these negotiations.”Hamad said Qatar and Egypt were “making great efforts to reach an agreement,” but argued “the Israeli side unfortunately deals with the matter foolishly and is very confused.” Hamad also told AFP that Hamas which took power in Gaza in 2007, was already working on plans for the territory after the war. He said the group was “working on the post-war phase to ensure that there is a great effort to rebuild the Gaza Strip and provide the necessities for a decent life.”Palestinian militants took around 250 hostages to Gaza during Hamas’s October 7 attack that triggered the war.
Israeli officials say 129 hostages are still held in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead. The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, Israelis and foreigners, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas in Gaza has killed 34,305 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Hamas Official Says Group Would Lay Down its Weapons If a Two-state Solution is Implemented
Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press the group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders. The comments by Khalil al-Hayya in an interview Wednesday came amid a stalemate in months of cease-fire talks. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by the militant group officially committed to Israel’s destruction. But it's unlikely Israel would consider such a scenario. It has vowed to crush Hamas following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks that triggered the war, and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militants in negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage exchange, struck a sometimes defiant and other times conciliatory tone.
Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, Al-Hayya said Hamas wants to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by the rival Fatah faction to form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank. He said Hamas would accept “a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with the international resolutions,” along Israel’s pre-1967 borders. If that happens, he said, the group's military wing would dissolve. “All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army,” he said. Over the years, Hamas has sometimes moderated its public position with respect to the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But its political program still officially “rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea" — referring to the area reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes lands that now make up Israel. Al-Hayya did not say whether his apparent embrace of a two-state solution would amount to an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or an interim step toward the group’s stated goal of destroying Israel. There was no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian Authority — the internationally recognized self-ruled government that Hamas drove out when it seized Gaza in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was left with administering semi-autonomous pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority hopes to establish an independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. While the international community overwhelmingly supports such a two-state solution, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government rejects it. The war in Gaza has dragged on for nearly seven months and cease-fire negotiations have stalled. The war began with the deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which the Hamas-led group killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas dragged some 250 hostages into the enclave. The ensuing Israeli bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to local health authorities, and displaced some 80% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million.
Israel is now preparing for an offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled to.
Israel says it has dismantled most of the initial two dozen Hamas battalions since the start of the war, but that the four remaining ones are holed up in Rafah. Israel argues that a Rafah offensive is necessary to achieve victory over Hamas.
Al-Hayya said such an offensive would not succeed in destroying Hamas. He said contacts between the political leadership outside and military leadership inside Gaza are “uninterrupted” by the war and “contacts, decisions and directions are made in consultation" between the two groups.
Israeli forces "have not destroyed more than 20% of (Hamas’) capabilities, neither human nor in the field,” he asserted. “If they can’t finish (Hamas) off, what is the solution? The solution is to go to consensus.”In November, a weeklong cease-fire saw the release of more than 100 hostages in exchange for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. But talks for a longer-term truce and release of the remaining hostages are now frozen, with each side accusing the other of intransigence. Israeli and US officials have accused Hamas of not being serious about a deal. Al-Hayya denied this, saying Hamas has made concessions regarding the number of Palestinian prisoners it wants released in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages. He said the group does not know exactly how many hostages remain in Gaza and are still alive. But he said Hamas will not back down from its demands for a permanent cease-fire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops, both of which Israel has balked at. Israel says it will continue military operations until Hamas is definitively defeated and will retain a security presence in Gaza afterwards. “If we are not assured the war will end, why would I hand over the prisoners?” the Hamas leader said of the remaining hostages. Al-Hayya also implicitly threatened that Hamas would attack Israeli or other forces who might be stationed around a floating pier the US is scrambling to build along Gaza's coastline to deliver aid by sea. “We categorically reject any non-Palestinian presence in Gaza, whether at sea or on land, and we will deal with any military force present in these places, Israeli or otherwise ... as an occupying power,” he said. Al-Hayya said Hamas does not regret the Oct. 7 attacks, despite the destruction it has brought down on Gaza and its people. He denied that Hamas had targeted civilians during the attacks — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — and said the operation succeeded in its goal of bringing the Palestinian issue back to the world’s attention. And, he said, Israeli attempts to eradicate Hamas would ultimately fail to prevent future Palestinian armed uprisings.
"Let’s say that they have destroyed Hamas. Are the Palestinian people gone?” he asked.

The Latest | Israeli strikes in Rafah kill at least 5 as ship comes under attack in the Gulf of Aden
The Canadian Press/The Associated Press/ April 25, 2024
Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip killed at least five people.
More than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it prepares for an offensive in the city. The Israeli military has massed dozens of tanks and armored vehicles in the area in what appears to be preparations for an invasion of Rafah.
In central Gaza, four people were killed in Israeli tank shelling.
A ship traveling in the Gulf of Aden came under attack Thursday, officials said, the latest assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, a top Hamas political official told The Associated Press that the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
The war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, around two-thirds of them children and women.
Currently:
— Ship comes under attack off coast of Yemen as Houthi rebel campaign appears to gain new speed
— Satellite photos show new port construction in Gaza Strip for US-led aid operation
— Some campuses call in police to break up pro-Palestinian demonstrations, while others wait it out
— Chef José Andrés says aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes represented the ‘best of humanity’
— UN report says 282 million people faced acute hunger in 2023, with the worst famine in Gaza
— EU military officer says a frigate has destroyed a drone launched from Yemen’s Houthi-held areas
— Hamas official says group would lay down its weapons if a two-state solution is implemented
Here is the latest:
ISRAEL MASSES MILITARY VEHICLES ALONG GAZA BORDER
JERUSALEM -- The Israeli military has massed dozens of tanks and armored vehicles along its border with the southern Gaza Strip in what appears to be preparations for an invasion of the border city of Rafah.An Associated Press journalist saw the movement of the vehicles on Thursday near Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, which is next to Rafah. Israeli leaders say Rafah is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza after more than six months of war. Despite widespread international opposition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to invade the city, located along the Egyptian border, as part of his plan to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel. Some 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza’s population, have crammed into Rafah, most of whom fled fighting elsewhere in the territory. The international community, including the U.S., fears an Israeli operation will endanger civilians. Israel says it is preparing a plan to evacuate civilians before carrying out any operation in Rafah.
UK ISSUES NEW SANCTIONS ON IRAN
LONDON – The U.K. on Thursday imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran over its unprecedented attack on Israel on April 13. The sanctions are meant to hold Iran accountable for its attack and to deter further such activity. It’s the second set of sanctions the U.K. has imposed since the attack. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s office issued a statement saying the sanctions target Iran’s drone and missile industries. The new sanctions are on two people and four companies that are involved in Iran’s drone production, the statement said. They were announced in coordination with the U.S. and Canada.
The U.K. has also announced a plan to expand trade sanctions by introducing new bans on the export of components used in drone and missile production to Iran.
BIDEN AND OTHERS CALL ON HAMAS TO RELEASE HOSTAGES
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders issued a joint statement Thursday calling for Hamas to release hostages held in Gaza, the latest attempt at public pressure to advance negotiations over a potential cease-fire with Israel. The statement was issued by Biden and the leaders of 17 other countries, all of which have citizens who are missing or were taken hostage during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. The other countries are Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
Here is the statement: "We call for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for over 200 days. They include our own citizens. The fate of the hostages and the civilian population in Gaza, who are protected under international law, is of international concern. "We emphasize that the deal on the table to release the hostages would bring an immediate and prolonged cease-fire in Gaza, that would facilitate a surge of additional necessary humanitarian assistance to be delivered throughout Gaza, and lead to the credible end of hostilities. Gazans would be able to return to their homes and their lands with preparations beforehand to ensure shelter and humanitarian provisions. “We strongly support the ongoing mediation efforts in order to bring our people home. We reiterate our call on Hamas to release the hostages, and let us end this crisis so that collectively we can focus our efforts on bringing peace and stability to the region.”
GIRL WHO WAS ORPHANED IN HAMAS ATTACK PLAYS IN OVAL OFFICE
WASHINGTON — Abigail Edan, the 4-year-old girl who was orphaned and kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, played in the Oval Office during a meeting with President Joe Biden. The president, before leaving Thursday on a two-day trip to New York, recalled Wednesday's tender visit to reporters, saying “it went really well.” He said Abigail did a lot of playing around on the swing set on the White House lawn, as well as in the Oval Office. Biden said he received a note from her family, recounting that as Abigail was riding home, she said: “You know, I love Joe Biden.”A U.S. official who earlier Thursday described the meeting said Abigail also crawled through a small door at the bottom of the president’s desk, a spot that was made famous decades ago in a photo of John F. Kennedy and his son.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting, said Biden met for about an hour with members of Abigail’s family who have been taking care of her. Abigail has joint American and Israeli citizenship. She was held by Hamas for nearly seven weeks before being released. Her visit came as the United States increases pressure on Hamas to accept a deal that would free more hostages and implement a cease-fire in Gaza.
— Associated Press journalist Christopher Megerian contributed.
PIER FOR US-LED PROJECT TO BRING AID TO GAZA COMES UNDER FIRE
JERUSALEM — An under-construction pier for a U.S.-led project to bring aid into the Gaza Strip came under fire Wednesday, forcing U.N. officials to take shelter there, Israeli and U.N. officials said.No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault, which the Israelis described as a mortar shell attack.
Authorities said that no one was wounded. The attack marks a shaky start to the construction of the pier, a project that the U.S. is spearheading to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza. A Hamas official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the militant group will resist any foreign military presence involved with the port project.
EU MILITARY OFFICER SAYS FRIGATE DESTROYED DRONE LAUNCHED FROM HOUTHI-HELD AREAS
NICOSIA, Cyprus — A top European Union military officer said that a frigate that’s part of an EU military mission in the Red Sea to protect merchant shipping destroyed a drone launched from an area in Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels on Thursday morning. Austrian Gen. Robert Brieger, who is chair of the EU’s military committee, said that it would be crucial for the bloc to “conserve resources” over the long haul because the threat posed by Houthi attacks “will not disappear” due to its connection to the Israel-Hamas war. “The task given to the military is simply to protect merchant ships and to show the public that the European Union is not willing to accept a terrorist organization will interrupt the freedom of movement at sea,” Brieger said. Brieger said that he’s asking EU members to provide the necessary resources to the EU mission dubbed Aspides — Greek for “shields.”He said that it’s the first time that the EU has launched a naval operation in a hostile environment that’s twice the size of the 27-nation bloc, calling it a “litmus test” that the bloc will pass successfully.
US COLLEGES TURN TO POLICE TO QUELL PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTS
AUSTIN, Texas — With graduations looming, student protesters doubled down early Thursday on their discontent over the Israel-Hamas war on campuses across the United States as universities, including ones in California and Texas, have become quick to call in the police to end the demonstrations and make arrests.
While grappling with growing protests from coast to coast, schools have the added pressure of May commencement ceremonies. At Columbia University in New York, students defiantly erected an encampment where many are set to graduate in front of families in just a few weeks. Columbia continued to negotiate with students after several failed attempts — and more than 100 arrests — to clear the encampment, but several universities ousted demonstrators Wednesday, swiftly turning to law enforcement when protests bubbled up on their campuses. Police peacefully arrested student protesters at the University of Southern California, hours after officers at the University of Texas at Austin aggressively detained dozens in the latest clashes between law enforcement and those protesting the Israel-Hamas war on campuses nationwide.
SHIP COMES UNDER ATTACK IN THE GULF OF ADEN
JERUSALEM — A ship traveling in the Gulf of Aden has come under attack, the latest assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over Israel’s ongoing war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The attack comes after the U.S. military said early Thursday an allied warship shot down a Houthi missile targeting a vessel the day before near the same area. The Houthis claimed that Wednesday assault, which comes after a period of relatively few rebel attacks on shipping in the region over Israel’s ongoing war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In Thursday’s attack, a ship was targeted just over 25 kilometers southwest of Aden. That’s according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center.
GAZA HEALTH MINISTRY REPORTS 43 DEAD IN THE LAST DAY
BEIRUT — The Gaza Health Ministry says the bodies of 43 people killed in Israeli strikes have been brought to local hospitals over the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 64 wounded people. The ministry’s latest report, issued Thursday, brings the overall Palestinian death toll from the Israel-Hamas war to at least 34,305. It says another 77,293 have been wounded. The Health Ministry doesn’t distinguish between fighters and civilians in its tallies, but it has said that women and children make up around two thirds of those killed. The Israeli military says it has killed some 13,000 militants, without providing evidence. The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragging some 250 hostages back to Gaza.
ISRAELI STRIKES ON RAFAH KILL AT LEAST 5
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian hospital officials say Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip have killed at least five people.
Among those killed in the strikes overnight and into Thursday were two children, identified in hospital records as Sham Najjar, 6, and Jamal Nabahan, 8.
In central Gaza, four people were killed in Israeli tank shelling, and their bodies were brought to a hospital. Family members told The Associated Press they were killed as they tried to move to northern Gaza, where Israel’s military is preventing people from returning to their homes. Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive against the Hamas militant group to the city on the border with Egypt despite calls for restraint, including from the United States. The Israel-Hamas war was ignited by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and another 250 abducted. The war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but has said that around two-thirds of those killed were women and children. The war has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities and left a swath of destruction. Around 80% of the territory’s population have fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.

US Coalition Warship Shoots Down Missile Fired by Yemen's Houthis over Gulf of Aden
Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
A warship — part of a US-led coalition protecting shipping in the Mideast — intercepted an anti-ship ballistic missile fired over the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday, the American military said, marking a new attack by Yemen's Houthis after a recent lull. The Houthis claimed the assault, which comes after a period of relatively few attacks on shipping in the region over Israel's ongoing war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, The Associated Press said. The explosion happened some 130 kilometers (80 miles) southeast of Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said in a statement. Early Thursday, the US military's Central Command said a coalition warship shot down the missile likely targeting the MV Yorktown, a US-flagged, owned and operated vessel with 18 US and four Greek crew members. “There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition or commercial ships," Central Command said. Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, claimed the attack but insisted without evidence that the missile hit the Yorktown. Saree also claimed the Houthis targeted another ship in the Indian Ocean, without providing proof. The Houthis have made repeated claims that turned out to not be true during their yearslong war in Yemen. The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, seized one vessel and sank another since November, according to the US Maritime Administration. Houthi attacks have dropped in recent weeks as the militias have been targeted by a US-led airstrike campaign in Yemen and shipping through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has declined because of the threat. American officials have speculated that the Houthis may be running out of weapons as a result of the US-led campaign against them and firing off drones and missiles steadily in the last months. The Houthis have said they would continue their attacks until Israel ends its war in Gaza. The ships targeted by the Houthis largely have had little or no direct connection to Israel, the US or other nations involved in the war. The group has also fired missiles toward Israel, though they have largely fallen short or been intercepted.

Pro-Palestinian protests spread at US universities
Associated Press/April 25/2024
With graduations looming, student protesters doubled down early Thursday on their discontent of the Israel-Hamas war on campuses across the country as universities, including ones in California and Texas, have become quick to call in the police to end the demonstrations and make arrests. While grappling with growing protests from coast to coast, schools have the added pressure of May commencement ceremonies. At Columbia University in New York, students defiantly erected an encampment where many are set to graduate in front of families in just a few weeks. Columbia continued to negotiate with students after several failed attempts — and over 100 arrests — to clear the encampment, but several universities ousted demonstrators Wednesday, swiftly turning to law enforcement when protests bubbled up on their campuses. Police peacefully arrested student protesters at the University of Southern California, hours after officers at the University of Texas at Austin aggressively detained dozens in the latest clashes between law enforcement and those protesting the Israel-Hamas war on campuses nationwide. Tensions were already high at USC after the university canceled a planned commencement speech by the school's valedictorian, who publicly supports Palestine, citing safety concerns. After scuffles with police early Wednesday, a few dozen demonstrators standing in a circle with locked arms were detained one by one without incident later in the evening.
Officers encircled the dwindling group sitting in defiance of an earlier warning to disperse or be arrested. Beyond the police line, hundreds of onlookers watched as helicopters buzzed overhead. The school closed the campus.
Hours earlier in Texas, hundreds of local and state police — including some on horseback and holding batons — bulldozed into protesters, at one point sending some tumbling into the street. Officers pushed their way into the crowd and made 34 arrests at the behest of the university and Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott, according to the state Department of Public Safety. A photographer covering the demonstration for Fox 7 Austin was in the push-and-pull when an officer yanked him backward to the ground, video shows. The station confirmed that the photographer was arrested. A longtime Texas journalist was knocked down in the mayhem and could be seen bleeding before police helped him to emergency medical staff. Dane Urquhart, a third-year Texas student, called the police presence and arrests an "overreaction," adding that the protest "would have stayed peaceful" if the officers had not turned out in force.
"Because of all the arrests, I think a lot more (demonstrations) are going to happen," Urquhart said. Police left after hours of efforts to control the crowd, and about 300 demonstrators moved back in to sit on the grass and chant under the school's iconic clock tower. In a statement Wednesday night, the university's president, Jay Hartzell, said: "Our rules matter, and they will be enforced. Our University will not be occupied." North of USC, students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, were barricaded inside a building for a third day, and the school shut down campus through the weekend and made classes virtual. Harvard University in Massachusetts had sought to stay ahead of protests this week by limiting access to Harvard Yard and requiring permission for tents and tables. That didn't stop protesters from setting up a camp with 14 tents Wednesday following a rally against the university's suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war are demanding schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies enabling its monthslong conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus as graduation nears, partly prompting a heavier hand from universities. At New York University this week, police said 133 protesters were taken into custody, while over 40 protesters were arrested Monday at an encampment at Yale University. Columbia University averted another confrontation between students and police earlier Wednesday. University President Minouche Shafik had set on Tuesday a midnight deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations for another 48 hours. On a visit to campus Wednesday, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, called on Shafik to resign "if she cannot bring order to this chaos.""If this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard," he said. On Wednesday evening, a Columbia spokesperson said rumors that the university had threatened to bring in the National Guard were unfounded. "Our focus is to restore order, and if we can get there through dialogue, we will," said Ben Chang, Columbia's vice president for communications. Columbia graduate student Omer Lubaton Granot, who put up pictures of Israeli hostages near the encampment, said he wanted to remind people that there were more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas. "I see all the people behind me advocating for human rights," he said. "I don't think they have one word to say about the fact that people their age, that were kidnapped from their homes or from a music festival in Israel, are held by a terror organization."Harvard law student Tala Alfoqaha, who is Palestinian, said she and other protesters want more transparency from the university. "My hope is that the Harvard administration listens to what its students have been asking for all year, which is divestment, disclosure and dropping any sort of charges against students," she said. On Wednesday about 60 tents remained at the Columbia encampment, which appeared calm. Security remained tight around campus, with identification required and police setting up metal barricades. Columbia said it had agreed with protest representatives that only students would remain at the encampment and they would make it welcoming, banning discriminatory or harassing language.

White House Says ‘We Want Answers’ Over Reports of Mass Graves in Gaza
Washington/Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
US officials have been in touch with Israeli counterparts about deeply disturbing reports of mass graves being found in Gaza, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday. "Those reports were deeply disturbing," Sullivan said at a news briefing. "We have been in touch at multiple levels with the Israeli government. We want answers. We want to understand exactly what happened." UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Tuesday he was "horrified" by the destruction of the Nasser and Al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza and reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies there, according to a spokesperson. Palestinian authorities reported finding hundreds of bodies in mass graves at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis this week after it was abandoned by Israeli troops. Bodies were also reported at the Al-Shifa site following an Israeli special forces operation.

Sisi Warns of ‘Catastrophic’ Consequences of an Israeli Assault on Rafah
Asharq Al Awsat/April 25/2024
Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday warned against any Israeli military assault on Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Presidential spokesman Ahmed Fahmy said that Sisi’s concerns came during a telephone call with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte. Sisi warned against what he described as “catastrophic” humanitarian consequences of any military act on Rafah, according to the Arab World Press. The spokesman added in a statement published by the Egyptian presidency on its Facebook page that the war in Gaza must be brought to a halt, pointing to the dire consequences of an aggression against Rafah and its impact on regional peace and stability. “It emphasizes the need for the international community to implement the related UN resolutions”, he said according to the statement. Fahmy also pointed out that Sisi and Rutte stressed the need for joint swift efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza to allow the entry of humanitarian relief aid to the Palestinians in the Strip. They also emphasized the importance of reaching a two-state solution to restore regional stability and peace. On Tuesday, head of Egypt’s State Information Service Diaa Rashwan confirmed that Egypt has never discussed any plans with the Israeli side of a ground invasion on Rafah, denying reports published in US newspapers on this matter. He stressed Egypt’s “firm and well-known” stance and complete rejection of this assault. “The Egyptian leadership has warned that any assault on Rafah will lead to massacres, heavy human losses, and widespread destruction", he stated. Moreover, Egyptian security sources said that military and security coordination between Egypt and Israel over any Israeli incursion into Rafah did not mean approval of it. Egypt welcomed the return of Palestinians northwards from Rafah, believing it to be in the interest of the population, the sources added.

‘Let’s help Yemen regain ability to chart its own future,’ US envoy Tim Lenderking tells Arab News
EPHREM KOSSAIFY/Arab News/April 25/2024
NEW YORK CITY: Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in response to Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in Gaza must not derail the peace process in Yemen, Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, has said. Since the war in Gaza began in October last year, attacks by the Houthis on commercial and military vessels in the strategic waterways have caused significant disruption to global trade. The Iran-backed armed political and religious group, formally known as Ansar Allah, views itself as a part of the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” against Israel, the US and the wider West. It has threatened to continue its attacks on vessels until Israel ends its assault on Gaza. Since January, the UK and the US, in coalition with five other countries, have responded with retaliatory strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
The US will halt these retaliatory strikes when the Houthi militia stops its attacks on shipping, Lenderking told Arab News in an interview, placing responsibility for de-escalating the situation in the militia’s hands.
“The onus (is) on the Houthis to stop the Red Sea attacks,” he said. “That can prompt us all to begin to dial back, to de-escalate, to return the situation in Yemen to where it was on Oct. 6, which had considerably more promise and possibility than what exists now, and that’s where we want to return the focus.”
Lenderking called on Iran to “stop fueling the conflict (and) stop smuggling weapons and lethal material to Yemen, against UN Security Council resolutions.”
Yemen had never been so close to peace before the process was derailed by the latest regional turmoil, said Lenderking. The Yemeni civil war has gone on too long, he said: “It must stop.”
“The Yemeni people (have) suffered from this war for eight years now. They want their country back. They want their country (to be) peaceful. They don’t want foreign fighters in Yemen. They don’t want the Iranians in Sanaa. They don’t want the IRGC, the (Islamic) Revolutionary Guard (Corps) wandering around in Sanaa.
“Let’s help Yemen regain its country and its ability to chart its own future. That’s what the US so, so dearly wants.”
He added: “We’re trying very hard to marshal and maintain an international effort to keep the focus on Yemen’s peace process, on the very critical humanitarian situation. “But look at what’s crowding us out: Terrible tragedy unfolding in Gaza. Russia’s war in Ukraine. Afghanistan. Sudan. There are many competing crises that are dominating the attention of the US and the international community.”
While the war in Yemen is linked to other conflicts raging in the region, the UN has recently said the world owes it to the Yemenis to ensure that resolving the war in Yemen is not made contingent upon the resolution of other issues, and that Yemen’s chance for peace does not become “collateral damage.”
“We cannot escape what’s happening in Gaza,” said Lenderking. “Not one single day goes by when the people I talk to about Yemen don’t also talk about Gaza. So we know this is a searing and very, very important situation that must be dealt with. “This situation is holding up our ability to return the focus to the peace process in Yemen, to take advantage of a road map that was agreed to by the Yemeni government and by the Houthis in December, and get the Houthis to refocus their priorities not on Red Sea attacks — which are hurting Yemenis by the way, hurting Yemen — but to the peace effort in Yemen itself.”
Speaking during a UN Security Council briefing last week, Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy for Yemen, said the threat of further Houthi attacks on shipping persists in the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza — the urgent need for which was underscored by the recent escalation in hostilities between Israel and Iran.
Lenderking said: “We continue to hear from the Houthis that these (two) issues are linked and that (the Houthis) will not stop the attacks on Red Sea shipping until there’s a ceasefire in Gaza.
“We believe there’s essential progress that could be done now. There are 25 members of the Galaxy Leader crew, the ship that was taken by the Houthis on Nov. 19 last year, still being held. “They’re from five different countries. There is no reason why these individuals, who are innocent seafarers, are being detained in Hodeidah by the Houthis. Let them go. Release the ship. There are steps that could be taken. We could continue working on prisoner releases.
“These kinds of things will demonstrate to the Yemeni people that there’s still hope and that the international community is still focused on their situation.”
Lenderking said it would be a “terrible tragedy” to squander the progress toward peace that had been made in the previous two years.
A truce negotiated in April 2022 between the parties in Yemen had initially led to a reduction in violence and a slight easing in the dire humanitarian situation in the country. Two years on, the UN has lamented there is now little to celebrate.
“Detainees we had hoped would be released in time to spend Eid with their loved ones remain in detention,” said UN envoy Grundberg. “Roads we had hoped to see open remain closed. “We also witnessed the tragic killing and injury of 16 civilians, including women and children, when a residence was demolished by Ansar Allah (Houthi) individuals in Al-Bayda governorate.”The humanitarian situation in Yemen has also become markedly worse in recent months amid rising food insecurity and the spread of cholera. Edem Wosornu, director of operations and advocacy at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told the Security Council in the same briefing that the situation had deteriorated further after the World Food Programme suspended the distribution of food aid in areas controlled by the Houthis in December 2023. This pause followed disagreements with local authorities over who should receive priority assistance and was compounded by the effects of a severe funding crisis on WFP humanitarian efforts in Yemen. “The most vulnerable people — including women and girls, marginalized groups such as the Muhamasheen, internally displaced people, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, and persons with disabilities — still depend on humanitarian assistance to survive,” said Wosornu. Wosornu also voiced concern about an increase in cases of cholera in Yemen amid the deterioration of public services and institutions.
“The re-emergence of cholera, and growing levels of severe malnutrition, are telling indicators of the weakened capacity of social services,” she said.
“Almost one in every two children under five are stunted, more than double the global average: 49 percent compared to 21.3 percent.
“Emergency stocks of essential supplies are almost depleted. And water, sanitation and hygiene support systems need urgent strengthening.”
The humanitarian response plan for Yemen is only 10 percent funded, with funding for its food security and nutrition programs standing at just 5 percent and 3 percent respectively, according to an informal update presented to the Security Council by the OCHA this week.
Wosornu appealed to the international community to take urgent action to help fill the funding gaps. Commenting on the funding shortage, Lenderking said: “When there’s a genuine possibility of a Yemen peace process, donors will take note of that and respond. But the fact that we’re in this limbo, where the peace process is on hold while the Houthi is continuing these attacks (in the Red Sea), that I think is to be blamed on the Houthis because they’re derailing what was a legitimate peace process. “But once we can get back to that, I think we could call on the international community to say, look, there is a ray of hope. There is a process. There is a commitment. The US is supporting an international effort. We can get the donors to come back to Yemen, despite all of the competition for these very scarce resources.”

British Royal Navy shoots down missile for first time since Gulf War in 1991 amid Houthi attacks on shipping
ARAB NEWS/Arab News/April 25, 2024
LONDON: A British Royal Navy destroyer shot down a ballistic missile on Wednesday for the first time since the first Gulf War in 1991, the UK’s defense secretary told The Times newspaper. In a report published Thursday, Grant Shapps told the newspaper that HMS Diamond used its “Sea Viper” missile system to target the weapon, which Yemen’s Houthi militia said they used to target two American ships in the Gulf of Aden and an Israeli vessel in the Indian Ocean. The Iran-backed group said its missiles targeted US ship Maersk Yorktown, an American destroyer in the Gulf of Aden and Israeli ship MSC Veracruz in the Indian Ocean, its military spokesman Yahya Sarea confirmed. It is the first such attack from the Yemeni militia in two weeks in the region, where Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers have been deployed to protect commercial ships since the Houthis initiated strikes on global shipping in November last year in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. “The Yemeni armed forces confirm they will continue to prevent Israeli navigation or any navigation heading to the ports of occupied Palestine in the Red and Arabian Seas, as well as in the Indian Ocean,” Sarea said on Wednesday. Shapps said the latest Houthi attack was an example of how dangerous the world was becoming and how “non-state actors were now being supplied with very sophisticated weapons” from states such as Iran. His comments came after UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week pledged to increase spending on British defense to 2.5 percent of national income, something Shapps said was “so vital” given continued tensions in the Middle East.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 25-26/2024
US, Qatar and Iran: Release the Hostages!
Michel Calvo/Gatestone Institute/April 25, 2024
The United States, France, Germany, Russia and Argentina, who had dual nationals taken hostage, did not try to bomb Hamas infrastructure and places where Hamas hid. Instead, they let Israel do it and then accused Israel of destroying the Gaza Strip.
Rather than putting any pressure on Qatar and demonstrating in front of Qatari-owned hotels in France, the United States and elsewhere in Europe, the families of the hostages have been putting pressure on the Israeli government, thereby doing exactly what Hamas would presumably like them to do. They are "working" for Hamas -- and against their own interests -- in the hope of seeing more hostages released. By their actions the value of the hostages only increases.
The demonstrators are doing what Hamas cannot do by itself: they are dividing Israel so that the unity government loses its strength in the negotiations, as well as any ability to bring the hostages home sooner -- a triumph that was successfully accomplished by the IDF, left unfettered.
The hostages are not the Israeli government's to deliver. They are unfortunately under the total the control of Hamas, Qatar and Iran --which is where the pressure should be applied, not on the government of Israel.
The only way a new Israeli government might negotiate the release of hostages would be by placing Israel's entire population in incalculable danger. Any new Israeli leader hand-picked and pushed through by the current US administration would most likely be expected to agree to a terrorist Palestinian state next to Israel -- meaning that the Israel would not be able to cross its border, if necessary, in "hot pursuit" of terrorists, and that the new state would soon be militarized, officially or not. Even if a new, sovereign Palestinian state were supposedly demilitarized, it would still be free to form alliances with any other entity it liked, including Iran, Al Qaeda or ISIS.
Qatar said it would invest in France 10 billion euros and in exchange France said it would be happy to try to save the terrorist group Hamas.... Everyone wins -- except the hostages held by Hamas.
Without the US military base there, Qatar knows that it would be a rich, targetable oil-rig. America, "in exchange," it seems, agreed to let Hamas continue its terrorist activities support the US quest for a Palestinian state. No remaining hostages were released; perhaps they were not even talked about.
Even though American citizens are among those still held hostage in Gaza, the US appears to have sided with the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, and their terrorist-supporting patrons, Qatar and Iran.
Even though American citizens are among those still held hostage in Gaza, the US appears to have sided with the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, and their terrorist-supporting patrons, Qatar and Iran. Pictured: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a citizen of the United States and Israel who is being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, appears, with his left hand amputated, in a Hamas propaganda video published on April 24, 2024.
This is not the first time that Muslims have launched attacks against non-Muslims and taken hostages.
We did not hear the President of the Cairo's Al-Azhar University, nor Egypt and Jordan, Muslim states that entered into a peace agreement with Israel, condemn Hamas for having taking Israeli, American, Chinese, French, German, Russian, Filipino and Thai hostages.
They could not condemn it: taking captives is authorized by the Qur'an (9:5; 23:1-5; and 70: 30-35), so long as the captives are not Muslims. ISIS accordingly justified transforming Yazidi hostages into sex slaves.
Biden (USA), Cameron (GB), Macron (F), Scholz (D), Harris (IRL), Jakobsdóttir (IS), Sánchez (E), Meloni (IT), Golob (SLO), however, appeared surprised. They and their respective advisors were apparently not aware of that fact.
International customary law, however, forbids the taking of hostages. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits the taking of hostages (Geneva Conventions, common Article 3, 1). It is also prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention and is considered a grave breach thereof (Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 34 and Article 147).
"It is generally acknowledged by the international community that the taking of hostages is one of the most vile and reprehensible of acts. This crime violates fundamental individual rights—the right to life, to liberty and to security—that are protected by binding legal instruments such as the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the worldwide level, and the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights and the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms on the regional level. The United Nations General Assembly has stated that the taking of hostages is an act which places innocent human lives in danger and violates human dignity."
The Rome Statute defines "enslavement" in its Article 7(2)(c) :
"Enslavement means the exercise of any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over a person and includes the exercise of such power in the course of trafficking in persons, in particular women and children.
Article 7(1)(c), Crimes against humanity, of the Rome Statute considers enslavement as a crime against humanity:
1. For the purpose of this Statute, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
It is not surprising, therefore, that several Muslim states (Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen) are not parties to the Rome statute. Qatar voted against it.
The International Convention against the Taking of Hostages (1979) develops international cooperation between states in devising and adopting effective measures for the prevention, prosecution and punishment of all acts of taking hostages as manifestations of international terrorism.
State parties of the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages (1979), pursuant to its Article 6 - Paragraph 1 must:
"When an alleged offender is present [this includes accomplices] in the territory of a Party, and it is 'satisfied that the circumstances so warrant', in accordance with its law, take the person into custody, or take such other measures to enable any criminal or extradition proceedings to be instituted. The limited discretion is common to the conventions, but must be exercised reasonably and in good faith".
Egypt has been a party to this Convention since October 2, 1981. Egypt did not arrest the Hamas officials who came to Cairo to discuss the hostage deal in February, March and April 2024.
Russia has been a party to this convention since June 11, 1987. It did not arrest the Hamas officials who came to Moscow in October 2024.
Qatar has been a party to this convention since September 11, 2012. It did not arrest Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashaal who are, under Article 1 (b) of the Convention, participants and accomplices of the hostage taking act.
These Hamas leaders are living with family members in Qatar's capital Doha, in its luxury hotels and villas, at the same time as Qatar hosts a vast American military presence in the Al-Udeid Air Base.
Turkey, a party to this convention since August 15, 1989, also did not arrest any Hamas leaders in Turkey.
Although France has been a party to this convention since June 9, 2000, and the United States since December 7, 1984, neither country requested of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey to arrest the leaders of Hamas living there, who may be accomplices or participants in the hostage-taking act.
The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict reported on March 4, 2024:
"Based on the information gathered by the mission team from multiple and independent sources, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across the Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations. Across the various locations of the 7 October attacks, the mission team found that several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head. Although circumstantial, such a pattern of undressing and restraining of victims may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence. [Paragraph 12]
At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. [Paragraph 13]
With respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing. [Paragraph 17]
The team mission also received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity and has reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing." [Paragraph 71]
Based on first-hand accounts of released hostages there are reasonable grounds to believe that female hostages were also subjected to other forms of sexual violence. [Paragraph 72]
For more, see the full report.
To this day, neither US President Joe Biden nor the above-mentioned European leaders have contested that Jewish men, women and children were taken hostage to the Gaza Strip, and that some women, men, boys and girls have been used as "sex slaves" there.
These are world leaders who care so much about international law and must certainly be anxious to prevent the occurrence of such practices on their non-Muslim citizens.
They could all diplomatically ask the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, all the Muslim States:
If the Qur'an and the sharia authorize Muslims to take non-Muslims hostage to serve as sex slaves. And, if so, is the international law that they profess in violation of the Qur'an?
If their respective states condemn the practice of taking non-Muslims hostage for abuse as sex slaves?
And if it is in conformity to international law?
If taking hostages and forcing them to serve as sex slaves are authorized by the Qur'an and the Sharia based on 7th Century practice, then "international customary law" on this subject is not so customary: 1.6 billion Muslims would be authorized to do so. Consequently, all non-Muslims, such as the rest of the world population, could be authorized to take as hostages Muslim women, men, boys and girls to serve as their sex slaves.
Precedents
Taking hostages is hardly new. It was used in 1979 when 52 Americans were taken hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran during 444 days and only released in 1981. In 1990, Saddam Hussein held 100 Europeans. In 2002, 850 people were taken hostage in a Moscow theater by Chechen Muslims and then killed.
Centuries ago, pirates captured merchant ships, took the crews and enslaved them. Some raided the European coasts. Between the years 1500 and 1800 more than a million Muslims were enslaved in Europe and another 2 million Christians suffered the same fate in North Africa and the Middle East.
The United States twice went to war against the Barbary States of Tripoli, Tunis and Algeria, between 1801 and 1805 and again in 1815. The Ottoman eastern Mediterranean was the scene of intense piracy. The second operation ended after a fleet of British and Dutch ships bombarded Algiers and its harbor defenses for nine hours. A treaty was signed in September 1815. The British Consul and 1,083 other Christian slaves were freed and the U.S. ransom money repaid.
In 1786, when the Ambassador of Tripoli in London was asked by a delegation of American Commissioners about "their pretentions to make war upon Nations who had done them no Injury":
"The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise."
How the negotiations with Hamas were conducted
Hostages and sex slaves are still being held in Gaza by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Gazan population. In February, after long and difficult negotiations,112 hostages were released. There remain at least another 134 hostages.
This circumstance leads us to examine how the American, the French, the Germans, the Russians and the Argentinians who had nationals (dual) taken as hostages in Gaza negotiated their release.
The United States, France, Germany, Russia and Argentina, who had dual nationals taken hostage, did not try to bomb Hamas infrastructure and places where Hamas hid. Instead, they let Israel do it and then accused Israel of destroying the Gaza Strip.
French President Emmanuel Macron initially asked for a European coalition, similar to the coalition that fought ISIS, then reneged and asked for a permanent ceasefire.
More than half the estimated 250 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas had foreign nationality from 25 different countries, including 54 Thai nationals.
The conditions and payments made for the release of the non-Israeli hostages (from Thailand, Nepal, China, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Philippine, etc.) remain a part of secret diplomacy.
138 of the Israeli hostages also had foreign nationality, including 2 Argentinians, 6 Russians, 12 Americans, 12 Germans and 6 French.
The Argentinian, German, American, French leaders decided to do their own negotiations with Hamas through Qatar. Putin invited Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Moscow and three Russian hostages were thereafter released. Argentina's President Javier Milei went to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, prayed and cried there.
Coincidence or miracle, the two Argentinians were then rescued by Israelis soldiers in a successful military operation in Rafah.
Israel negotiated the release of some hostages and released Palestinian terrorists in exchange. Since then, Hamas has continued to reject all proposals.
To analyze the negotiation process and the efficiency of the negotiation teams we must try to think (1) what Hamas wants, (2) what Hamas can give to the Israeli government, (3) what the Israeli government wants and (4) what the Israeli government can give in return.
1. What Hamas wants:
a. The destruction of Israel and its Jewish population, or at least driving all Jews out of the Holy Land.
b. To provoke a war of all Muslims against Israel.
c. To divide Israel's population and the fall of the Israeli government hoping that this will lead the Muslim population of Judea and Samaria and the Muslim states to launch a general war against Israel.
d. The release of terrorist Muslim prisoners held by Israel. Such a release would demonstrate that the Jews are humiliated and that the Hamas did what the Qur'an asks from any Muslim, namely, to humiliate the Jews.
e. To preserve the last Hamas brigades in the Gaza strip.
f. To frighten the Jews that what happened on October 7, 2023 will happen again and again.
g. To reconstitute its terrorist power in Gaza and regain complete control of its population.
h. To release some hostages one after the other over a very long period of time in order to lead the American and the European governments to put pressure on Israel for a cessation of the war and overthrow the present Israeli government and replace it with one that will presumably be more terrorist-friendly.
i. To murder some hostages from time to time and to give some information that bodies of hostages are in certain places, for Israel to find them and to demonstrate to the world and the hostage families that the war was lost.
2. What Hamas can give Israel:
a. Some hostages, by small groups, until the last hostage is released, alive or dead. The process could take years to humiliate the Jews and divide them.
3. What Israel wants:
a. The release of all the hostages
b. The destruction of all the remaining Hamas brigades.
c. Control of the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza's border with Egypt.
d. The destruction of all the tunnels there that permitted Hamas, with the complicity of the Bedouin tribes, the Egyptian police and military and the United Nations, to seize all of Hamas's sophisticated armaments and munitions.
e. To prevent the Hamas from continuing to control the Gaza Strip and be able to repeat the October 7, 2023 pogrom.
4. What Israel can give Hamas:
a. The release of some more Muslim prisoners in exchange of hostages without being humiliated.
b. To permit some Hamas leaders to leave Gaza safely without being humiliated
c. To withdraw the Israeli army from part or all of the Gaza Strip and to permit some people to return to the north of the Gaza Strip.
d. To prevent chaos in the Gaza strip.
Until now, about half the hostages have been released in exchange for some Muslim terrorist prisoners.
Anyone having experience with the strategy of international negotiations will immediately conclude that the manner the Israeli government and the hostage families have conducted themselves raises serious questions.
Rather than putting any pressure on Qatar and demonstrating in front of Qatari-owned hotels in France, the United States and elsewhere in Europe, the families of the hostages have been putting pressure on the Israeli government, thereby doing exactly what Hamas would presumably like them to do. They are "working" for Hamas -- and against their own interests -- in the hope of seeing more hostages released. By their actions the value of the hostages only increases.
When they put the focus on the Bibas children, the price of their release in Hamas's eyes only increases. It is not surprising that Hamas did not release them; instead they preferred to release lesser hostages of lesser value.
Families of hostages are now asking the Israeli population to bring down the duly-elected government of Israel supposedly to obtain the release of all the hostages. They do not understand that they are unwittingly "working for" Hamas, who are ready for negotiations over the return of hostages (even dead) to take years.
Some demonstrators in Israel are ready to disrupt the democratic process at almost any cost. The Knesset was elected for a five-year period. The demonstrators are doing what Hamas cannot do by itself: they are dividing Israel so that the unity government loses its strength in the negotiations, as well as any ability to bring the hostages home sooner -- a triumph that was successfully accomplished by the IDF, left unfettered.
The hostages are not the Israeli government's to deliver. They are unfortunately under the total the control of Hamas, Qatar and Iran --which is where the pressure should be applied, not on the government of Israel.
Has the US applied any pressure at all on Qatar, Iran or Hamas? Rather, the US lifted sanctions on Iran and given its regime through grants, hostage exchange ransoms and non-enforcement of oil sanctions "closer to $60 billion."
The only way a new Israeli government might negotiate the release of hostages would be by placing Israel's entire population in incalculable danger. Any new Israeli leader hand-picked and pushed through by the current US administration would most likely be expected to agree to a terrorist Palestinian state next to Israel -- meaning that the Israel would not be able to cross its border, if necessary, in "hot pursuit" of terrorists, and that the new state would soon be militarized, officially or not. Even if a new, sovereign Palestinian state were supposedly demilitarized, it would still be free to form alliances with any other entity it liked, including Iran, Al Qaeda or ISIS.
Instead of showing unity, Israeli Minister-without-portfolio Benny Gantz went to Washington, where he was apparently invited to bring down Israel's elected government. Shortly after his visit, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, perhaps imagining that Israel is a subservient vassal of the US, called, in the most insulting way imaginable , for new elections in Israel, in a clear effort to overthrow Israel's democratically-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.
To no one's astonishment, Biden concurred.
Some Israelis have been engaging riots to bring down their own government – a triumph of which Hamas could only have dreamed.
To divide Israeli society even further, Israel's Attorney General and the police did not even attempt to punish the rioters for their blocking of roads and highways.
How the allies of Israel became the allies of Hamas
France
Hamas and Qatar certainly gained something during the negotiations for the release of dual-national hostages. On February 27, 2024, Macron received the Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad, who came with a large ministerial and business delegation. It was a "state visit" with great pomp.
Meanwhile, in February, France, apparently keen on bolstering its relations with Qatar and achieving greater influence in the Middle East, sealed a strategic partnership with the Emirate.
In turn, Hamas's great patron, Qatar, which has substantial investments in France, including the Paris Saint-Germain football club, pledged to invest up to ten billion euros in France.
In exchange, France, while repeating its "opposition to an offensive against Rafah" called for an "immediate and permanent ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas, to prevent Israel from destroying Hamas's remaining brigades and the tunnels between Egypt and Rafah that have permitted Hamas to increase its military force. Later, with President El-Sisi of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, Macron demanded an immediate ceasefire.
In short, Qatar said it would invest in France 10 billion euros and in exchange France said it would be happy to try to save the terrorist group Hamas. France will sell some state properties to Qatar and will be able to reimburse a small part of its huge public debt that reached €3 trillion at the beginning of 2023. Everyone wins -- except the hostages held by Hamas.
France knows that Qatar finances terrorists and promotes fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood ideology. It is an Islamist ideology invites the Muslims to wage Jihad on all non-Muslims -- Jews, Christians, idolaters, polytheists, pantheists, non-believers, Hindus, and Buddhists -- but France ignores it.
Germany
Together with his support for Israel, Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with the Emir of Qatar on October 12, 2023 in order to maintain good relations with the emirate. Indeed, an agreement was signed in March 2023 between Qatar and Germany, wherein Qatar committed to supply Germany with up to two million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year for 15 years, beginning in 2026.
Coinciding with this visit, members of Scholz's ruling coalition criticized plans to import more LNG from Qatar. Four German hostages were released in November 2023. At least Germany did not forget them.
Simple pressure made by the members of the Germany's ruling coalition induced Qatar to have these four hostages released. Nevertheless, Germany needed more gas from Qatar, so it jumped on the bandwagon, asked for the cessation of the war, opposed any operation in Rafah and suggested the recognition of a Palestinian state -- all evidently as a reward for terrorism.
The United States
On March 5, 2024, the US and Qatar announced "several new milestones, including an amendment to the bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement... the two sides emphasized the strategic significance of Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.... They also discussed future upgrades to the base to increase efficiency and sustainability."
This agreement extends the US military presence in Qatar for another 10 years. The base can house more than 10,000 troops. Qatar committed billions to upgrade the facilities for the US airmen at the base.
Without the US military base there, Qatar knows that it would be a rich, targetable oil-rig. America, "in exchange," it seems, agreed to let Hamas continue its terrorist activities support the US quest for a Palestinian state. No remaining hostages were released; perhaps they were not even talked about.
Some weeks before those discussions, the Biden administration asked for the cessation of the war and opposed any operation in Rafah, meaning that Israel would not be able to put an end to the remaining Hamas brigades. The Biden administration asked Israel to stop the ground war without having the hostages released. It issued not-very-veiled threats to Israel that the US would stop sending armaments to Israel even while Israel continued to be attacked by Hezbollah in the north. The US also launched the idea of recognizing a "Palestinian state" and bringing down the Israeli government.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken falsely claimed that there was not enough humanitarian aid into Gaza, falsely implied that Israel deliberately inflicts on the Gazan population conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction -- not Hamas, which was stealing most of the aid for its own use. According to Article 2(c) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, it looked as if these heads of state were trying to pin a war crime on Israel.
US opposition to Israel entering Rafah was lifted in exchange for a soft Israeli retaliation against Iran for its massive drone and ballistic missile attack on Israel this month.
The hostages are still in the hands of Hamas. Girls and women, men and boys, can continue to be held as sex slaves in Gaza and raped, tortured or murdered.
Even though American citizens are among those still held hostage in Gaza, the US appears to have sided with the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, and their terrorist-supporting patrons, Qatar and Iran.
In other parts of the world, "More than 365 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith" with many facing genocide. No state so far has filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about that. What prevents South Africa from filing a case at the ICJ?
The Islamic Republic of Iran will in all likelihood soon have nuclear bombs. It may well try to use them on Israel, the "Little Satan". The US administration still pretends that it is not aware that one Iranian nuclear bomb exploding high above the United States would be enough to send the "Big Satan", America, back to the Middle Ages.
In fairness, the US has been sending Israel truly impressive help but that could be erased by other "priorities" tomorrow.
Muslims in New York, Illinois and Michigan are already calling for "Death to America," and Biden, who wants their votes, seems to be trying to accommodate them. In the meantime, terrorists-in-waiting have been rioting on American university campuses, with only a few exceptional members of Congress willing to confront them.
"Never Again" has been overtaken, at least for now, by "Death to America", "Death to Israel", "Kill them all".
*Michel Calvo was born in Tunis, Tunisia. An expert in international law, he was a member of the International Court of Arbitration representing Israel. He is the author of The Middle East and World War III: Why No Peace? with a preface by Col. Richard Kemp, CBE.
© 2024 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

The World Needs a Man Like Anwar Al-Sadat
Suleiman Jawda/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 25/2024
Wherever you look in this world in flames, you are struck by how desperately it needs a man like Anwar Sadat. The world does not need a man like Sadat because of his famously chic style, the trademark pipe in his mouth, and the dark skin tone that distinguished him, nor does it need him because he was a first-class orator with an exceptionally distinguished command of language...
While he deserves recognition for those things, they are not the reason we need him. We need him because he was a man who believed in peace like he believed in God and pursued it throughout the ten years he spent in the presidential palace. And as we remember, he succeeded.
In a famous televised interview, an American broadcaster asked Sadat what he would like said about him after he leaves this world. He did not hesitate or quickly close his eyes in search of a suitable answer as those answering questions on screen often do. He immediately told the interviewer what he wanted written on his tombstone: "He lived for his principles and died for peace.”
It was as though the gates of heaven had opened for him at that moment, receiving his prayers and wishes. Indeed, he died on the day of the October Victory celebrations, he sat still in full military uniform and celebrating with "his children,” as he liked to call them at every military parade.
German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was among his closest friends and greatest admirers. The Chancellor was particularly impressed with Sadat’s intellect, and in his later years, Schmidt often remarked that whenever he was following a problem anywhere in the world, he wished his friend Anwar Sadat were alive to deal with it.
When the fox of US politics, Henry Kissinger, wrote his book on global leadership, he chose to discuss six leaders he had known or read about. Sadat was one of them. Kissinger was evidently not looking to flatter the deceased; rather, he understood enough about minds and convictions to place Sadat where he rightfully belonged.
When Anwar Sadat waged the October War of 1973, he did not see it as an end in itself. Fighting a war is not an end but the means for achieving peace. This is exactly what happened in the post-war period, as Sadat and his soldiers emerged victorious.
Interestingly, Henry Kissinger was himself among the reasons that Sadat waged the war. Had the fox of American politics been even slightly responsive to the overtures Sadat had made before the conflict, the war would not have been instigated. Sadat would not have taken this route, and the casualties who fell would not have perished. In the period leading up to the war, Sadat had sent envoy after envoy to the United States to test the waters, urging the Americans to intervene and facilitate an agreement that would allow Egypt to recuperate the territory in Sinai that had been occupied. However, Uncle Sam did not pay him any mind.
On one occasion, an envoy of Sadat went to Kissinger and urged him to push for peace in his capacity as Secretary of State. Kissinger’s response convinced a reluctant Sadat to go to war. Kissinger told the envoy that he did not have time to waste on discussions with a defeated party, stressing that the vanquished do not have the right to speak like victors.
When the envoy returned with this response, Sadat kept it to himself and realized that he, too, would be wasting his time if he continued to negotiate with the Americans. He saw no alternative to changing the situation on the ground at any cost. Later on, Sadat may have thanked Kissinger to himself for alerting him to a matter he had not previously considered.
Sadat fought a 16 day-war in 1973, with hostilities beginning on the 6th of October and ending on the 22nd. Once he felt that he had achieved his objective, he ended the conflict and went back to pursuing peace, which was the only path he wanted to take. If he had been given a choice before the war, he would not have opted for it. He was compelled to take this route after he realized that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv were as committed to peace as he was.
Those who have read the memoirs of his wife, Jehan Sadat, know that she pleaded with him to pardon acquaintances of hers whom he had decided to imprison two weeks before he passed away. These individuals opposed the painstakingly negotiated peace treaty with Israel, mocking and ridiculing it. Sadat knew that the Israelis could exploit such opposition, as they were looking for any excuse to back out of the agreement and free themselves of its commitments. Israeli withdrawal from the agreement would have meant squandering this rare opportunity for peace, and he was not willing to risk or squander it.
The date on which the peace agreement stipulated that Israel would give Egypt the remainder of Sinai back, April 25, 1982, had been six months away, and Sadat saw nothing but that day. Thus, he told his wife that everyone whom he had chosen to imprison two weeks before his passing- not only those she was advocating for- would be freed in the evening on April 25th. His plans show that imprisonment, like war, was not an end in itself but a means to an end.

Egypt’s New ‘Islamic Mission City’ Bodes Ill for the World
Raymond Ibrahim/Coptic Solidarity/April 25/2024
Foreign students at an already constructed portion of the new Islamic city
At a time when Saudi Arabia seems to be retracting from its longtime role of spreading Wahhabi (“radical”) Islam to the world, the Egyptian government has launched a project that indicates it wants to take on the mantle of overseer and disseminator of Islamic education and da‘wa.
An entire new city, alternatively known as “Islamic Mission City” or simply “New Islamic City,” was recently reported as being built in New Cairo, Egypt. With President Sisi’s full and enthusiastic support, its purpose is to accommodate thousands of more international students to study at Al Azhar University, commonly seen as the Muslim world’s most prestigious Islamic university, before going home and “sharing” their knowledge.
The new city is being built over 172 acres of land and will easily be able to hold about 24,000 extra students (with separate sections for 17,700 males and 6,000 females). One of the city’s mosques will be able to hold 1,500 worshippers.
This promises to be a major expansion from the current capacity of the two other “Islamic” cities in Cairo and Alexandria, which collectively house 3,000 students. All of them hail from around the world (according to the latest tally, 106 nations). Most of them are offered partial or full scholarships, including lodging, paid for from Al Azhar’s budget (currently 20 billion Egyptian Pounds) which is fully financed by the state, that is, by taxpayers—15% of whom are Coptic Christians (they who are regular recipients of Islamic teachings).
Al Azhar’s schooling system—which is autonomous and does not fall under the supervision of Egypt’s ministry of Education—currently serves 2.6 million students (a number that grows every year). It offers courses from First Grade primary school to post-graduate studies.
This new “Islamic” city is quite the development. Not only does it underscore the degree to which Islam continues to play a major and growing role in the lives of Muslims—it is impossible, for instance, to find a similar development among Christians—but the connection to Al Azhar is further telling as to what sort of Islam will be taught to and eventually disseminated in the home nations of these many thousands of students hailing from 106 nations.
On the one hand, officialdom presents Al Azhar as the voice of “reason” and “moderation”—hence why Barack Hussein Obama chose that Islamic institution to give his “new beginning” speech in 2009. Of Al Azhar, he said:
For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning…. As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.
On the other hand—that is, back in the real world—Al Azhar is the Muslim world’s most prestigious school precisely because it treats the study of rigorous Islam seriously and with care. It does not teach politically correct or “progressive” Islam—the sort of Islam the West dreams of—but authentic (fundamentalist) Islam.
Indeed, not a few Muslims, including former students, accuse it of promoting the same brand of Islam that terrorist groups such as ISIS live out. After being asked why Al Azhar, which is in the habit of denouncing secular thinkers as un-Islamic, refused to denounce the Islamic State as un-Islamic, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr said:
It can’t [condemn the Islamic State as un-Islamic]. The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar’s programs. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world [to establish it]. Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate. Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like not building churches, etc. Al Azhar upholds the institution of jizya [extracting tribute from religious minorities]. Al Azhar teaches stoning people. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?
Similarly, while discussing how the Islamic State burned some of its victims alive—most notoriously, a Jordanian pilot—Egyptian journalist Yusuf al-Husayni remarked that “The Islamic State is only doing what Al Azhar teaches.” He then pointed to a standard text (by Ibn Kathir) used by Al Azhar that extolls the exploits—or rather atrocities, including burning infidels alive—that Islam’s early heroes engaged in.
After two Coptic churches were bombed in Egypt, leaving 50 Christian worshippers dead, Dr. Islam al-Behery—a popular Muslim theologian whose incessant calls to reform Islam so irked Al Azhar that it accused him of “blaspheming” against Islam, leading to his imprisonment in 2015—was interviewed on the Egyptian television program (Amr Adib’s kul youm, or “Every Day”). After offering various details concerning the radicalized curriculum of Al Azhar, he estimated that “70-80 percent of all terror in the last five years [in Egypt] is a product of Al Azhar.”
According to a standard Al Azhar text that that al-Behery quoted from, “whoever kills an infidel [or kaffir, a non-Muslim] his blood is safeguarded, for the blood of an infidel and believer [a Muslim] are not equal.” (Here is how this discriminatory teaching regularly plays out in Egypt when Christians are murdered.)
Political commentator Dr. Khalid Montaser once marveled that, “at this sensitive time—when murderous terrorists rest on [Islamic] texts and understandings of takfir [accusing Muslims of apostasy], murder, slaughter, and beheading—Al Azhar magazine is offering free of charge a book whose latter half and every page—indeed every few lines—ends with ‘whoever disbelieves [in Islam] strike off his head’”?
One need look no further than to the head of Al Azhar—its Grand Imam, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, once named the “most influential Muslim in the world”—to understand what the university is all about. While saying one thing to the West—namely, what it wants to hear about “tolerance” and “coexistence,” as in the fraternal but farcical documents he and Pope Francis sign—he is (when speaking Arabic) on record legitimizing virtually everything that is otherwise dismissed in the West as a product of “radical” thinking, including the punishment of apostates and blasphemers, and the inferior status of women and religious minorities.
But when asked to denounce the Islamic State as “un-Islamic,” al-Tayeb refused: “It’s amazing,” opined Egyptian talk show host Ibrahim Eissa:
Al Azhar insists ISIS are Muslims and refuses to denounce them. Yet Al Azhar never ceases to shoot out statements accusing novelists, writers, thinkers—anyone who says anything that contradicts their views—of lapsing into a state of infidelity. But not when it comes to ISIS!
Al-Tayeb has also pronounced Christians and Jews as “infidels”—a rather deadly classification in Islam—and called on Muslims in the West not to assimilate but keep their Islam in their “hearts.”
Most recently, Al Azhar, under al-Tayeb’s leadership, issued a fatwa all but declaring open season on every Israeli citizen, with little by way of distinguishing civilians from combatants.
Now, a much greater number of Muslim minds from all around the world are set to be exposed to and ultimately indoctrinated in the same sorts of teachings that gave rise to ISIS, before returning to their countries of origin—from the U.S. to Indonesia, from Australia to Norway—where they will be in charge of spreading the message of fundamentalist Islam among otherwise “moderate” Muslims.

Khamenei’s war aims ...Iran’s ruler intends to establish an empire and exterminate Israelis
Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/April 25/2024 |
I’m sure you’ve heard commentators describe the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel as “rivals” engaged in a “tit-for-tat” conflict. That misinterprets reality.
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “supreme leader” since 1989, seeks to establish a new Middle Eastern empire. Israelis, by contrast, only want to survive as an independent nation within a slice of their ancient Jewish homeland.
They would like nothing better than to enjoy amicable relations with Iranians, as they did prior to Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979.
I should add: Substantial evidence suggests that most Iranians do not hate Israelis. Nor would most Iranians suffer under the jackboot of an antisemitic, misogynist, coercively religious ruling class if they had a choice.
As for the fate Mr. Khamenei envisions for Israelis, we saw a preview on Oct. 7.
Genocide is what he indisputably intends.
Apologists for Tehran insist that its proxy, Hamas, gleefully burned babies and raped young women to “resist Israeli occupation.” That would be a despicable claim even if the Israeli government had not withdrawn every last Jew from Gaza in 2005. Two years after that, Hamas established a dictatorship and began not infrequently launching rockets at Israelis. Israel’s Iron Dome prevented most of those weapons from reaching their intended victims.
Israelis also constructed a high-tech border fence that, they were confident, would keep them secure on the ground.
Most Israelis have now come to realize that “deterrence by denial” – a purely defensive posture – allowed Hamas’ threat to metastasize. They now see the necessity for the imposition of significant costs on aggressors – “deterrence by punishment.”On April 1, an Israeli air strike killed Mohammad Reza Zahedi, an Iranian general deployed to Damascus to assist Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Shia militias in Syria, as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. He reportedly was involved in the 10/7 attacks.
In retaliation, Iran’s rulers on April 14 launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel – the first time they had ever attacked Israel not using proxies but from Iranian soil. The attack failed thanks to the air-defense capabilities of Israel, the U.S., and other countries.
After that, President Biden urged Israelis to “take the win” – to be satisfied with deterrence by denial. But that would have been an invitation to Tehran to try, try again. So, on April 19, Mr. Khamenei’s 85th birthday, Israel hit targets close to a nuclear facility and an airbase in Isfahan, in central Iran. Russian-built S-300 missile defense systems proved ineffective.
The damage was not extensive – it wasn’t intended to be – but the message was loud and clear: You attacked us, and our shield stopped you. Now you have felt the tip of our sword which you cannot block.
This long war is far from over.
In that regard, recall that soon after entering the White House in 2009, Barak Obama stated plainly, as had previous presidents, Democrats and Republicans, that the U.S. has “core national security interests in making sure that Iran doesn’t possess a nuclear weapon and it stops exporting terrorism outside of its borders.”
He set out to achieve that goal with many carrots and few sticks. “We have provided a path whereby Iran can reach out to the international community, engage, and become a part of international norms,” he said. “It is up to them to make a decision as to whether they choose that path.”
What followed, as former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren noted in an essay last week in The Free Press, was “a relentless spate of Iranian aggressions,” including attacks on U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf, support for al-Qaeda, and attempts to “assassinate the Saudi and Israeli ambassadors (including me)” in Washington D.C. Mr. Oren added: “Most egregiously, Iran constructed secret underground nuclear facilities and developed an intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system.”
President Obama’s response was the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which failed to “make sure” that the jihadist regime would never “possess a nuclear weapon” it could use to threaten “Death to Israel” and “Death to America!”Instead, the JCPOA provided economic benefits to Iran’s leaders in exchange for their vague promise to make progress more slowly on their nuclear weapons program.
They were not asked to curb their development of missiles and support for terrorists. Three years later, President Trump withdrew from that deal and imposed sanctions that debilitated Iran’s economy. But when Joe Biden moved into the White House in 2021, he attempted to revive Mr. Obama’s deal in an even weaker form. He has since provided Mr. Khamenei with billions in funds that had been frozen, allowed some sanctions to expire, and failed to enforce others. He has made no serious effort to block Iranian oil sales.
Nor has he held Mr. Khamenei responsible for deploying Shia militias to attack American bases in the Middle East, or for providing weapons and other assistance to Tehran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen who have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea. Almost all of Mr. Khamenei’s nuclear advances – and there have been many – have occurred during the Biden administration. Last Friday, the foreign ministers of the G-7 (the U.S. and six other Western nations) released a statement asserting their “determination that Iran must never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.”It’s doubtful that those words on paper prompted Mr. Khamenei to reassess his grand ambition to establish a nuclear-armed, anti-American empire in league with the nuclear-armed, anti-American regimes in Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang. He continues to regard the Jewish state as a cancer to be extirpated.
That’s why what we’re witnessing is no rivalry or game of tit for tat. It’s a battle in a long war, one that will shape the world our children inherit.
*Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times.

Israeli Land Confiscations on the Rise in Jordan Valley
(HAZEM BADER/ AFP)/This Is Beirut/April 25/2024
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, hectares of land have been confiscated by Israel in the occupied West Bank, while all eyes are on Gaza. As he fed his sheep costly fodder, Palestinian farmer Talib Edais looked wistfully at the hills where his herd had grazed for free until an Israeli decision last month. “Do you see these troughs? We had to sell some sheep to feed the others. Within a year, we will not have any sheep left,” the 65-year-old told AFP at his farm near the Jordan Valley village of Jiftlik in the occupied West Bank. In March, Israeli authorities declared 8,000 dunams (800 hectares) adjacent to Edais’s home – an area including his sheep’s grazing grounds – as state land, a move that often leads to restrictions on Palestinians’ access. Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and established settlements that are deemed illegal under international law, has for decades seized land in the Palestinian territory. But according to Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, this year has already broken a record for most land grabs, which in many cases lead to settlement expansion. The advocacy group said that 10,971 dunams of West Bank land have been seized by Israel so far in 2024, as much of the world’s attention has been focused on the devastating Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip since October 7. The previous yearly record, according to Peace Now, was 5,200 dunams seized in 1999. Declaring an area as state land makes the Israeli government its owner, and technically should not affect farming or other uses until the lot is reallocated for development or handed over to private owners. However, Peace Now found in 2018 that “99.76 percent of state land allocated for any use in the occupied West Bank was allocated for the needs of Israeli settlements.”
Law in ‘the hands of settlers’
From the lot that Edais and 50 of his relatives have lived on since 1976, near the Jordanian border, the farmer can see the nearby settlement of Masua and an Israeli army base. Before the Israeli seizure order had even taken effect, he said settlers captured his sheep, claiming the animals had entered an off-limits area. To retrieve them, his family was made to pay 150,000 shekels (about $39,500) to the Jordan Valley Regional Council, an administrative body of about two dozen settlements including Masua. Rights groups have decried the increasing use of similar tactics that encourage Palestinian displacement from lands coveted by settlers. The Israeli defense ministry body responsible for Palestinian civil affairs, COGAT, and the office in charge of state lands, did not respond to repeated requests by AFP for comment. Hamad Audi, a 55-year-old construction worker who lives in Jiftlik, told AFP that what had happened to Edais came as no surprise. “The law is in the hands of the settlers, and the state (Israel) stands with them,” Audi said. According to him, many houses in the village have been handed demolition notices by Israeli authorities, and one was already demolished. In March, 206 dunams (51 acres) bordering Jiftlik were declared as a state-owned archaeological site and placed under the authority of the Jordan Valley settlement council. The area – a rocky mound where a former British Mandate-era prison and an Ottoman-era building stand – is now inaccessible to Palestinians living right next to it.
Displacement fears
Some 490,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank alongside three million Palestinians. While settlements have consistently expanded under successive Israeli administrations, “in the last year we’ve seen a lot of developments,” said Yonatan Mizrahi, director of settlement watch for Peace Now.
Israel’s government, formed less than a year before the Gaza war broke out, includes extreme-right parties who support settlement expansion and politicians who call for the annexation of the West Bank. To Audi, Palestinian life in the area is in danger. “I expect that the population of the entire Jordan Valley area will be displaced,” he said. According to Mizrahi, many Israelis believe that “the Jordan Valley should be in Israeli hands no matter what” due to its geographical location as a buffer zone between the West Bank and Jordan – with which Israel has signed a peace deal in 1994. Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley, many of them farm-based, “have very little power,” Mizrahi added. Beyond land seizures, he said some of the recent government decisions concerning the West Bank include the expansion of the Jordan Valley Regional Council’s jurisdiction and increased funding for settlements. And unauthorised settler outposts, which are technically illegal not only under international law but under Israeli law too, have increasingly been given official approval. Edais, the herder, said he believes that Israel has used the Gaza war to accelerate its land grabs in the West Bank. “They found (…) an excuse to expel people,” he said, “but here, there is no war! The war in Gaza is 200 kilometers away from us.”
Louis Baudoin-Laarman, with AFP