Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 19-20/2024
The leper’s faith teaches us that God always listens and responds to our requests when we approach Him with pure hearts/Elias Bejjani/February 18/2024
Israel says hit Hezbollah 'arms depots' in Ghaziyeh after Tiberias drone blast
Israeli strikes hit factories near southern Lebanon city of Sidon
Two air strikes hit Lebanon's Ghaziyeh, 60 km north of Israel border, witnesses say
Building collapse in Beirut suburb kills 4, search ongoing for survivors
US State Department spokesperson to Vision 2030: We do not support any escalation between Lebanon and Israel and are pushing for de-escalation
Israel-Hezbollah border clashes: Latest developments
Israeli airstrikes and shells target several southern towns
Paris, Rome to host army aid talks, Hochtsein won't visit Beirut soon
Houthi attack severely damages Lebanese-operated ship in Bab el-Mandeb Strait
Report: Hariri to return in 2025 to prepare for elections
Activists protest Rafah crossing closure at Egyptian embassy in Beirut
Foreign Affairs Ministry urges global condemnation of escalating Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon
Parliamentary delegation in London: Initiative to address war in Lebanon and presidential vacuum
Lebanon’s very existence imperiled by this escalating war of egos/Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/February 19, 2024

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 19-20/2024
Netanyahu vows to 'finish job' in Gaza, Gantz threatens Ramadan deadline for Rafah
US proposes UN resolution supporting temporary ceasefire in Gaza
Palestinians accuse Israel of 'apartheid' at UN top court
‘Credible allegations’ of Palestinian women and girls being raped and executed by Israeli troops: UN experts
Israeli military says it has recovered footage of hostage mother and children
Arab Group at UN backs Algeria’s resolution demanding Gaza ceasefireArab Group at UN backs Algeria’s resolution demanding Gaza ceasefire
Gaza Health Ministry says over 29,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel-Hamas war
Brazil's Lula recalls ambassador in Israel for talks -source
‘Our people are here to stay’: World Court hears arguments over Israeli occupation of Palestinian-claimed land
Palestinian diplomat asks top UN court to declare Israeli occupation illegal
Taliban set unacceptable conditions for attending a UN meeting, says UN secretary-general
US admiral says the fight against the Houthis in the Red Sea is the largest battle the Navy's fought since World War II
IAEA chief says Iran's nuclear enrichment activity remains high
A retired US general was scathing about Russia's performance in Ukraine: 'Their navy sucks, their air force sucks'
The keeper of the Vatican’s secrets is retiring. Here’s what he wants you to know
Bolton: ‘If Trump is elected, there’ll be celebrations in the Kremlin’

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on February 19-20/2024
Alexei Navalny: The Symptomatic Assassination of an Icon/Charles Elias Chartouni/This is Beirut site/February 20/2024
Hamas: Palestinian Civilians Are Also Terrorists/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/February 19, 2024
Killing Navalny ...The murder of his most popular political opponent is a sign of Putin’s confidence, not weakness/Vladislav Davidzon/The Tablet/February 19/2024
A Look at True Systemic Discrimination: America vs Egypt/Raymond Ibrahim/Coptic Solidarity/February 19/2024
Israel sets Ramadan deadline for feared Rafah invasion/Brad Dress/The Hill/February 19, 2024
Get ready for Gaza war to shift to West Bank/Chris Doyle/Arab News/February 19, 2024
The second candle and the international jungle/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper/February 19, 2024
Iraq’s positive trajectory serves as a beacon of hope/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/February 19, 2024
Iranian elections and the challenges of popular discontent/Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab News/February 19, 2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 19-20/2024
The leper’s faith teaches us that God always listens and responds to our requests when we approach Him with pure hearts
Elias Bejjani/February 18/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/52983/elias-bejjani-the-lepers-solid-faith-cured-him/
Don’t you know that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obedience, his servants you are whom you obey?
Christ, the Son of God, is always ready and willing to help the sinners who seek forgiveness and repentance. When we are remorseful and ask Him for exoneration, He never gives up on us no matter what we did or said. As a loving Father, He always comes to our rescue when we get ourselves into trouble. He grants us all kinds of graces to safeguard us from falling into the treacherous traps of Satan’s sinful temptations.
Jesus the only Son Of God willingly endured all kinds of humiliation, pain, torture and accepted death on the cross for our sake and salvation. Through His crucifixion He absolved us from the original sin that our first parents Adam and Eve committed. He showed us the righteous ways through which we can return with Him on the Day Of Judgment to His Father’s Heavenly kingdom.
Jesus made his call to the needy, persecuted, sick and sinners loud and clear: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) The outcast leper believed in Jesus’ call and came to Him asking for cleansing. Jesus took his hand, touched him with love, and responded to his request.
The leper knew deep in his heart that Jesus could cure him from his devastating and shameful leprosy if He is willing to do so. Against all odds he took the hard and right decision to seek out at once Jesus’ mercy.
With solid faith, courage and perseverance the leper approached Jesus and begging him, kneeling down to him, and says to him, “If you want to, you can make me clean.” When he had said this, immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was made clean. Jesus extended His hand and touched him with great passion and strictly warned him, “See you say nothing to anybody, but go show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing the things which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them.” But the leper went out, began to proclaim it much, and spread about the matter so that Jesus could no more openly enter into a city, but was outside in desert places: and they came to him from everywhere. (Mark 1/40-45)
We sinners, all of us, ought to learn from the leper’s great example of faith. Like him we need to endeavour for sincere repentance with heartfelt prayer, begging Almighty God for absolution from all our sins. Honest pursuit of salvation and repentance requires a great deal of humility, honesty, love, transparency and perseverance. Like the leper we must trust in God’s mercy and unwaveringly go after it.
The faithful leper sensed deep inside his conscience that Jesus could cleanse him, but was not sure if he is worth Jesus’ attention and mercy.
His faith and great trust in God made him break all the laws that prohibited a leper from getting close to or touching anybody. He tossed himself at Jesus’ feet scared and trembling. With great love, confidence, meekness and passion he spoke to Jesus saying “If you will, you can make me clean.” He did not mean if you are in a good mood at present. He meant, rather, if it is not out of line with the purpose of God, and if it is not violating some cosmic program God is working out then you can make me clean.
Lepers in the old days were outcasts forced to live in isolation far away from the public. They were not allowed to continue living in their own communities or families. They were looked upon as dead people and forbidden from even entering the synagogues to worship. They were harshly persecuted, deprived of all their basic rights and dealt with as sinners. But in God’s eyes these sick lepers were His children whom He dearly loves and cares for. “Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you”. Matthew(5/11-12)
The leper trusted in God’s parenthood and did not have any doubts about Jesus’ divinity and power to cleanse and cure him. Without any hesitation, and with a pure heart, he put himself with full submission into Jesus’ hands and will knowing that God our Father cannot but have mercy on His children. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”. (Matthew5/8)
We need to take the leper as a role model in our lives. His strong and steadfast faith cured him and put him back into society. We are to know God can do whatever He wants and to trust Him. If He is willing, He will. We just have to trust in the goodness and mercy of God and keep on praying and asking, and He surely will respond in His own way even though many times our limited minds can not grasp His help.
Praying on regular basis as Jesus instructed us to is an extremely comforting ritual: “Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your transgressions” (Mark 11/24-26)
The leper’s faith teaches us that God always listens and always responds to our requests when we approach Him with pure hearts, trust, confidence and humbleness. Almighty God is a loving father who loves us all , we His children and all what we have to do to get His attention is to make our requests through praying. “Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened”. (Matthew 7/8 -9)
N.B: The above piece was first published in year 2014/It is republished with Minor changes

Israel says hit Hezbollah 'arms depots' in Ghaziyeh after Tiberias drone blast
Naharnet/February 19, 2024
Violent Israeli airstrikes on Monday targeted the town of Ghaziyeh on Sidon's outskirts for the first time since the beginning of the Israel-Hezbollah border clashes. Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said the strikes targeted "Hezbollah arms depots near Sidon in response to the explosion of a hostile aircraft whose debris was found near the Tiberias area (in northern Israel) this afternoon.""We will continue to forcefully respond to Hezbollah's attacks," Adraee added. The strikes targeted two separate locations in Ghaziyeh according to media reports and video footage. NBN television meanwhile reported that the strikes hit a "cement factory" and an "oil factory."While most the exchanges in recent months have been limited to areas near the frontier, Ghaziyeh is some 30 kilometers from the nearest Israeli frontier and less than five kilometers from the city of Sidon.
One of the strikes appeared to have targeted a hangar close to the main coastal highway. The National News Agency had earlier in the afternoon reported an "enemy drone" at low altitude over the Sidon area. Video circulating on social media showed large plumes of smoke arising from at least two strikes. Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7. The Israeli military last week said it killed a Hezbollah commander, his deputy and another fighter in a strike in the south Lebanon city of Nabatiyeh. The strike on a residential building also killed seven civilians from the same family, while another strike elsewhere killed a woman, her child and stepchild. On Friday, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed that Israel would pay "with blood" for civilians it killed in Lebanon in recent days, warning the group had missiles that could reach anywhere in Israel. He warned that his Iran-backed movement has "precision-guided missiles that can reach... Eilat," on Israel's Red Sea coast, well beyond the northern towns it usually targets. The latest uptick in violence has caused international alarm, with fears growing of another full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah like that of 2006. Since October, cross-border exchanges have killed at least 269 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 40 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army.

Israeli strikes hit factories near southern Lebanon city of Sidon
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/February 19, 2024
BEIRUT: At least two Israeli air strikes hit southern Lebanon on Monday near the coastal city of Sidon, state media said. Hamas ally Hezbollah and its arch-foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7. “Israeli warplanes carried out... strikes on the town of Ghaziyeh,” the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Monday, adding that a vehicle was targeted and ambulances rushed to the scene, without providing further details. Israeli army spokesman Avichai Adraee said: “The Israeli army targeted Hezbollah warehouses near Sidon. This bombing came in response to the explosion of an enemy drone, the wreckage of which was found near the Tiberias area this afternoon.” Adraee added: “We will continue to work forcefully in response to Hezbollah's attacks.” Israeli Army Radio also confirmed that “the army targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in the Ghaziyeh attack near Sidon.” Hezbollah did not claim responsibility in this matter. An AFP photographer reported the sound of at least two successive strikes in Ghaziyeh, with dark smoke billowing across the area.
The two raids were carried out by drones and targeted both sides of the Ghaziyeh highway, which connects Sidon to the south. The first raid targeted a warehouse used to manufacture tires and generators, and the second targeted the vicinity of a factory that manufactured tiles, according to reports. The explosions led to fires igniting at both sites and causing major destruction, while the injured were transferred to hospitals in Sidon. The factories are owned by members of local families, named Khalifa and Laila. The owner of the tire factory said: “The raid hit the offices and generators, which were completely burned.” The owner confirmed that his factory did not store any weapons. A source told Arab News: “The two individuals are on the US sanctions list on charges of financing terrorism.”
While most the exchanges in recent months have been limited to areas near the frontier, Ghaziyeh is some 30 kilometers (around 20 miles) from the nearest Israeli frontier and less than five kilometers from Sidon. Video circulating on social media showed large plumes of smoke arising from at least two strikes. The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an official statement, called on “countries wishing to restore stability and calm to southern Lebanon to condemn the ongoing and prolonged Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the latest of which occurred today in the Israeli attack in the town of Ghaziyeh.”The ministry also called on the international community to “put pressure on Israel to stop its provocative attempts to expand the circle of war, and to lure Lebanon into a war that it is striving to prevent due to its threat to the security and stability of Lebanon and the entire region, and will only result in calamities and devastation.”The Israeli military last week said it killed a Hezbollah commander, his deputy and another fighter in a strike in the south Lebanon city of Nabatiyeh. The strike on a residential building also killed seven members of the same family, according to a security source, while another strike elsewhere killed a woman, her child and stepchild. On Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed that Israel would pay “with blood” for civilians it killed in Lebanon in recent days, warning the group had missiles that could reach anywhere in Israel. He warned that his Iran-backed movement has “precision-guided missiles that can reach... Eilat,” on Israel’s Red Sea coast, well beyond the northern towns it usually targets. The latest uptick in violence has caused international alarm, with fears growing of another full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah like that of 2006. Since October, cross-border exchanges have killed at least 269 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 40 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army. * With AFP

Two air strikes hit Lebanon's Ghaziyeh, 60 km north of Israel border, witnesses say
BEIRUT (Reuters)/February 19, 2024
At least two air strikes hit near the town of Ghaziyeh on Lebanon's coast around 60 km (37 miles) north of the border with Israel on Monday, according to witnesses in the area. The witnesses heard several loud booms and saw two thick black columns of smoke emanating from around the town.
Lebanon's state media said the strikes were Israeli and that one of them hit a car. In response to a query from Reuters, the Israeli military said it was "checking". Israel has been carrying out air strikes along the border area in south Lebanon against the armed group Hezbollah, which has fired rockets across the frontier. Israel has carried out strikes only rarely further north of the frontier zone. More than 170 Hezbollah fighters and nearly three dozen civilians have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Hezbollah launched rockets onto Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, according to Hezbollah's announced figures and a Reuters count of civilian deaths . Hamas fighters launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage into the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli figures. Israel's air, land and sea bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 28,000 people since then, Palestinian health officials say. Last week, two sets of Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon killed 10 civilians and several Hezbollah fighters, including a commander in the group's elite Radwan force. Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Israel would pay "in blood" for the killings of civilians. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Lebanon would "pay a heavy price" if diplomatic means failed to remove Hezbollah from the border zone.

Building collapse in Beirut suburb kills 4, search ongoing for survivors
AP/February 20, 2024
BEIRUT: A building collapsed in a southern suburb of Beirut late Monday, killing four people and injuring three others as search operations continued for more people under the rubble, a paramedic official said. The building that collapsed in the suburb of Choueifat Monday night crumbled after days of heavy rain in Lebanon. Local officials said the building was not considered safe and the municipality had ordered the four-story building evacuated two years ago out of concerns its foundations were weak. Despite the order, the owner of the building rented apartments to Syrian families. Most of the people living in the building are Syrian citizens, according to Raja Zreik of the Islamic Health Society that was taking part in rescue operations in the area. He said four people were killed. State-run National News Agency also reported that four people, two women, a man and a child were killed. Zreik told The Associated Press that two women and a boy were pulled out from under the rubble and rushed to hospital. A member of the Lebanese Red Cross told the local Al-Jadeed TV at the scene that 17 people are still believed to be under the rubble. A building collapsed in the same area earlier this month but no one was hurt as people were evacuated out of concerns it was not considered safe. Lebanon hosts some 805,000 United Nations-registered Syrian refugees, but officials estimate the actual number is far higher: between 1.5 million and 2 million.

US State Department spokesperson to Vision 2030: We do not support any escalation between Lebanon and Israel and are pushing for de-escalation
LBCI/February 20, 2024
Sam Werberg, the Regional Spokesperson for the US Department of State, affirmed that "the continuation of the war has negative and challenging effects on the Palestinians."In an interview with the "Vision 2030" program on LBCI, he said, "We are doing everything in our power and urge Israelis to end the war as soon as possible. We press for allowing humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, and we make every effort to release hostages."He added, "We do not see suitable conditions for Israelis to launch or initiate any military operation in Rafah at this time."
Werberg pointed out that "there are over a million civilians in Rafah, and any military operation must take this into consideration."He emphasized that "the United States has not seen a comprehensive plan from the Israeli side regarding any military operation in Rafah so far, and therefore, we do not support any large-scale military operation in Rafah at this time."He considered that "the future of Gaza and the West Bank will be in the hands of the Palestinians, and the decision will not be one-sided by Israel, the United States, or any other party."Werberg said, "Despite the ongoing battle and difficult conditions, we must begin discussions with our allies in the region regarding post-war plans.""We have some fundamental principles: 'No' to reoccupation in the Gaza Strip, 'No' to any reduction in Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip, and 'No' to any forced displacement of Palestinians from their lands in the Gaza Strip," he said. He added, "After this war, the Palestinian Authority must be unified between the West Bank and Gaza, and it should have the ability to provide basic services to the Palestinian people."He confirmed that the United States does not support the expansion of the war between Lebanon and Israel, and it pressures both parties to calm, stop escalation, and respect the Blue Line. It also believes that thousands of Israeli and Lebanese citizens should return to their homes on both sides of the border as soon as possible.'

Israel-Hezbollah border clashes: Latest developments
Naharnet/February 19, 2024
Israeli warplanes carried out Monday several airstrikes on the southern border towns of Yarin, al-Bustan, and Odeisseh. The Israeli army said its warplanes attacked "Hezbollah infrastructure" in the southern border town of Dhayra.
On Sunday, Hezbollah had attacked seven posts in northern Israel, three of them in the occupied Shebaa Farms. The border region has seen near daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah since October 8 when Israel waged a war on Gaza following Hamas' attack on southern Israel. The cross-border exchanges have killed at least 268 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also 40 civilians. On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army. The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of residents on both sides of the border and Israel has repeatedly warned that it might use force against Hezbollah to secure its residents' return amid ongoing indirect negotiations over a political solution. Across the tense Israeli-Lebanese border, fighting has heated up last week. Rocket fire from Lebanon killed an Israeli soldier on Wednesday. In response, an Israeli airstrikes killed a Hezbollah commander, two other operatives and 10 Lebanese civilians, prompting Hezbollah to fire a salvo of rockets into northern Israel and threaten to expand the conflict. Hezbollah is a major political party in Lebanon with a sizeable rocket and infantry force. It fought Israel to a standstill in a previous war in 2006. It receives backing from Iran, which relies on it to pressure Israel, its archenemy. They have been engaged in low-intensity fighting since the start of the Gaza war. Both sides say they don’t want another war but there are constant fears that things could slip out of control.

Israeli airstrikes and shells target several southern towns
Naharnet/February 19, 2024
Israeli warplanes on Sunday carried out a strike on the Abou al-Laban neighborhood in the southern border town of Aita al-Shaab, the National News Agency said. Warplanes also targeted two houses in the southern town of Yaroun, causing no casualties, NNA said. Israeli artillery shelling meanwhile targeted the Beit Leef valley. The Israeli army for its part said it targeted "Hezbollah infrastructure" in Yaroun and "eliminated threats" with artillery shelling on Alma al-Shaab and Dhayra. Hezbollah had on Saturday attacked six Israeli posts in northern Israel and the occupied Shebaa Farms. Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7. The cross-border exchanges have killed at least 268 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also 40 civilians. On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army. The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of residents on both sides of the border and Israel has repeatedly warned that it might use force against Hezbollah to secure its residents' return amid ongoing indirect negotiations over a political solution.

Paris, Rome to host army aid talks, Hochtsein won't visit Beirut soon
Naharnet/February 19, 2024
Paris is preparing to hold a conference for supporting the Lebanese Army in late February and another conference will be held in Rome in early March for the same purpose, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday. “This continues the proposal that the French have presented as to strengthening the Lebanese Army (in south Lebanon) with surveillance towers and carrying out training for its soldiers,” the daily said. Diplomatic sources meanwhile told al-Liwaa newspaper that U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein had told those whom he met recently that he would not be visiting Lebanon soon. A prominent parliamentary source told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that Hochstein will not visit Beirut because he has not yet agreed with Israel on a blueprint for ending hostilities and implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. “Hochstein has not ceased his mediation and he is still in daily contact with Beirut and Tel Aviv to keep the situation in the South under control and prevent its escalation in a manner that would lead to expanding the war,” the source added. “Lebanon is clinging to the U.S. mediation,” the source went on to say.Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7. The cross-border exchanges have killed at least 268 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also 40 civilians. On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army. The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of residents on both sides of the border and Israel has repeatedly warned that it might use force against Hezbollah to secure its residents' return amid ongoing indirect negotiations over a political solution.

Houthi attack severely damages Lebanese-operated ship in Bab el-Mandeb Strait
Associated Press/February 19, 2024
A missile attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels damaged a Belize-flagged Lebanese-operated cargo ship traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, forcing the crew to abandon the ship, authorities said Monday. The Iran-backed Houthis also claimed they shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone, something not immediately acknowledged by U.S. forces in the region. However, the Houthis have downed U.S. drones before. Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it was conducting new airstrikes targeting the rebels, including one that targeted the first Houthi underwater drone seen since they began launching attacks on international shipping in November. The ship targeted in the Houthi attack Sunday reported sustaining damage after "an explosion in close proximity to the vessel," the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center reported. "Military authorities report crew have abandoned the vessel," UKMTO said. "Vessel at anchor and all crew are safe."Houthi Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree issued a statement claiming the attack, saying the vessel was "now at risk of potentially sinking.""The ship suffered catastrophic damages and came to a complete halt," Saree said. "During the operation, we made sure that the ship's crew exited safely." The private security firm Ambrey reported the British-registered, Lebanese-operated cargo ship had been on its way to Bulgaria after leaving Khorfakkan in the United Arab Emirates. Ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic.com analyzed by The Associated Press identified the vessel targeted as the Rubymar. Its Beirut-based manager could not be immediately reached for comment. The Houthis later also identified the ship as the Rubymar. Ambrey described the ship as being partially laden with cargo, but it wasn't immediately clear what it had been carrying. The ship had turned off its Automatic Identification System tracker while in the Persian Gulf early this month. Since November, the rebels have repeatedly targeted ships in the Red Sea and surrounding waters over Israel's war targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for trade among Asia, the Mideast and Europe. Those vessels have included at least one with cargo for Iran, its main benefactor. Meanwhile, the U.S. military's Central Command reported it carried out five airstrikes targeting Houthi military equipment. Those strikes targeted mobile anti-ship cruise missiles, an explosive-carrying drone boat and an "unmanned underwater vessel," Central Command said. "This is the first observed Houthi employment of a UUV since attacks began in Oct. 23," Central Command said.

Report: Hariri to return in 2025 to prepare for elections
Naharnet/February 19, 2024
Ex-PM and al-Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri will return to Lebanon in the spring of 2025 to prepare for the 2026 parliamentary elections, Mustaqbal sources said. “He will engage in the battle, carrying a host of projects that need a significant parliamentary bloc,” ad-Diyar newspaper quoted the sources as saying.He is seeking to “reinvigorate the Sunni community and return it to the decision-making sphere,” the sources added. Hariri had visited Lebanon earlier this month to mark the 19th anniversary of the assassination of his father ex-PM Rafik Hariri and hold meetings with a number of political leaders and members of his al-Mustaqbal Movement. Hariri served as the prime minister of Lebanon from 2009 to 2011 and 2016 to 2020. Hariri's surprise announcement of an intent to resign, broadcast on November 4, 2017 on Saudi state TV, has widely been seen as part of the Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy conflict in Lebanon, and triggered a dispute between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The resignation was later suspended, following then-President Michel Aoun's request to "put it on hold ahead of further consultations."On 29 October 2019, amid the 2019–20 Lebanese protests, he announced his resignation, and that of his cabinet. He was designated as prime minister on October 22, 2020 but failed to form a government, resigning on July 15, 2021. On January 24, 2022 he announced that he was suspending his involvement in political activities and did not run in the parliamentary elections on May 15, 2022.

Activists protest Rafah crossing closure at Egyptian embassy in Beirut
Associated Press/Agence France Presse/February 19, 2024
Activists blocked Monday the road leading to the Egyptian embassy in Beirut in protest against the closure of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Egypt, which controls the Rafah border crossing, has repeatedly warned against any "forced displacement" of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert. Demonstrators held up banners with slogans against Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, accusing him of being an accomplice in the blockade, genocide and displacement of the people of Gaza. Ahead of a planned Israeli offensive targeting the border city of Rafah, Egypt is building a wall and is leveling land near its border with the Gaza Strip. Israel's defense minister has said it has “no intention” of pushing Palestinian civilians across the border into Egypt. However, the preparations on the Egyptian side of the border in the Sinai Peninsula suggested that Cairo is preparing for such a mass ejection, a scenario that could threaten a 1979 peace deal with Israel that's been a linchpin for regional security. “The state of Israel has no intention of evacuating Palestinian civilians to Egypt,” Yoav Gallant told reporters. “We respect and value our peace agreement with Egypt, which is a cornerstone of stability in the region as well as an important partner.” A report by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, drafted six days after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw over 250 others taken hostage, included a proposal of moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in the northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. As Israel is pushing ahead with its planned offensive into Rafah, the situation is increasingly desperate there. People lack adequate food, water, electricity and medical care, and they are under regular Israeli bombardment.

Foreign Affairs Ministry urges global condemnation of escalating Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon
LBCI/February 20, 2024
In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants called on "all countries interested in restoring stability and calm to southern Lebanon to condemn the ongoing and escalating Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the latest of which was the Israeli assault in the town of Ghaziyeh - southern Lebanon."The statement urged "the international community to pressure Israel to stop its provocative attempts to expand the circle of war and lure Lebanon into a war it is striving to prevent, given its threat to the security and stability of Lebanon and the entire region, which will only result in woes and destruction."

Parliamentary delegation in London: Initiative to address war in Lebanon and presidential vacuum
LBCI/February 20, 2024
The parliamentary delegation visiting London, initiated by MP Fouad Makhzoumi, highlighted the dangers facing Lebanon as a result of the ongoing war in the south and the ongoing vacancy in the presidency. The members of the delegation spoke about these two topics and other topics, such as the issue of displaced Syrians and financial and administrative reforms. A meeting was held at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office with Charles King, Director of the Middle East Office, Tariq Ahmad, Minister of State for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Commonwealth and United Nations, and Kylie Garrett, responsible for the Lebanon Office. While there was a British emphasis on the necessity of implementing Resolution 1701 by the Lebanese and Israeli sides and continuing communication to prevent the spread of war in Lebanon, the British stressed that electing a president was a priority to keep pace with any future settlements. In the next two days, the parliamentary delegation will continue discussions and dialogues in the British capital regarding the Lebanese situation. Members of the delegation, led by MP Makhzoumi, have prepared papers concerning the political and economic situation, trying to make it a road map out of the crisis.

Lebanon’s very existence imperiled by this escalating war of egos
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/February 19, 2024
Intensifying regional conflict is being fueled by a raging war of words as extremist Israeli leaders relentlessly beat the drums of war against Lebanon. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pledged to intensify operations against Hezbollah, warning that Israel could attack to a depth of 50 km toward “Beirut and anywhere else.” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah reciprocated with a threat that Hezbollah’s “precision missiles” could target any location from Kiryat Shmona in Israel’s north to Eilat in the south. Nasrallah further asserted: “The enemy will pay the price of spilling blood with their own blood,” and pledged to “escalate resistance activity at the battlefront.”
At last week’s Munich Security Conference, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz warned that, if a diplomatic solution is not found, Israel will be forced to act to remove Hezbollah from the border in order to return 70,000 displaced Israelis to their homes. “In such a case, Lebanon will also pay a heavy price,” he said. He failed to mention that nearly 100,000 Lebanese have also been displaced by the conflict, a number that will soar in the event of a full Israeli invasion. Lebanon’s already bankrupt economy has suffered further damage estimated at $1.6 billion.
A newspaper poll suggested that 71 percent of Israelis want a major military operation against Lebanon. A politically mortally wounded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may find it difficult to resist such pressures as an illusory route to rebuilding his popularity, even though it would be massively destructive for both sides, given Hezbollah’s huge missile arsenals and Israel’s access to unlimited US weaponry.
The Gaza carnage has aroused global anger, but war in Lebanon would be an entirely different prospect
The rapid trajectory of this escalation illustrates how such retaliatory cycles can be self-feeding: Israel in recent days struck Nabatieh and Al-Sawana, resulting in numerous civilian casualties, and Hezbollah retaliated by firing dozens of rockets into northern Israel. More than 170 Hezbollah fighters are among the 200 Lebanese deaths so far.
This trajectory is further reinforced by Israel’s remorseless airstrikes on Iran’s proxy assets in Syria, including the assassination of Republican Guard leadership figures. Hezbollah-aligned paramilitaries have been strengthening their presence in southwest Syria with the objective of ensuring that Israel would be fighting on a widened northern front in the event of conflict fully erupting.
In the view of Israeli military hawks, the encircling chain of Iranian proxies linking Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sanaa makes it necessary for Israel to strike a blow against this amassed “resistance” before it becomes all prevailing. Indeed, Israel’s direct war with Tehran appears to have already begun, with a series of devastating sabotage attacks against gas infrastructure across Iran. Israel has in the past used such tactics against Iranian military and nuclear sites.
Immediately after Oct. 7, only vigorous US diplomatic intervention deterred a vengeance-thirsty Netanyahu from striking an immediate and massive blow against Hezbollah. With the recent deterioration in relations between the prime minister and US President Joe Biden, America’s ability and will to moderate Israeli military policy is diminished. Despite supposedly working to end the conflict, the US is preparing to send large volumes of additional weaponry to Israel.
French and US initiatives for defusing the crisis are premised upon the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, i.e., Hezbollah withdrawing to behind the Litani River. This is a dim prospect in the current circumstances, unless Hezbollah is offered political concessions, which would be destabilizing for Lebanon; or if Israel militarily intervened to enforce Hezbollah’s withdrawal, which would result in a bloodbath.
Cooler heads should compel disengagement from this collision course and put citizens’ lives first
The Gaza carnage has aroused global anger, but war in Lebanon would be an entirely different prospect: first, because it would enmesh the US and Western and Arab states further into the conflict, but also because of the vast Lebanese global diaspora, including highly influential figures. Lebanese citizens of the Shiite-majority rural south take enormous pride in building and establishing their homes so, like the massive destruction of 2006, the bombardments of recent weeks have been particularly traumatic. Likewise, the massive disturbances to agriculture due to shelling, phosphorus bombs and cluster munitions, as well the displacement of laborers, have taken their toll. Citizens who have already lost so much fear that far worse is yet to come.
With Netanyahu basing his political choices on gambits for remaining in power, Biden premising his Gaza policies on requirements for reelection, Nasrallah seeking to match Israel’s bellicose language blow for blow and Russian President Vladimir Putin perpetuating his own conflict in order to avoid having to lose face, international politics has become a grudge match of posturing, muscle-flexing egos and warmongering rhetoric. Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and the wider region risk utter destruction because of these strongmen’s refusal to back down, with zero regard for the millions of civilians who have been caught in the crossfire. Netanyahu has never hidden his lifelong aim to kill off the two-state solution. The current conflagration, international disarray, the failure of global institutions and a vengeful hawkish consensus within Israel toward illusory maximalist solutions offer him the perfect opportunity to permanently destroy Palestinian dreams of statehood.
Nobody believes Nasrallah wants war, but he has too often been a prisoner of his own fire-breathing rhetoric and the agenda of his Iranian paymasters. Addressing the Lebanese public last week, Nasrallah claimed: “We are faced with two options: resistance or surrender. The option of resistance is the least costly, and the price of surrender is very high.” Have Nasrallah’s memories of how Israel incinerated southern Lebanon in 2006 not been reinforced by the Gaza genocide?
With Israel’s extreme-right regime willing to stop at nothing to destroy Lebanon and aspirations for Palestinian nationhood, scattering Arab citizens to the four winds, both sides’ mutual provocations resemble two racing cars hurtling toward each other. Cooler heads should compel disengagement from this collision course and put citizens’ lives first. The only way to prevent the conflict’s regionalization is an immediate halt to the Gaza mass murder.
We all stand with the people of Gaza, but allowing the precious Lebanese nation to be utterly destroyed as collateral damage in this infernal battle of egos could never further the Palestinian cause one iota.
**Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 19-20/2024
Netanyahu vows to 'finish job' in Gaza, Gantz threatens Ramadan deadline for Rafah
Associated Press/February 19, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off growing calls to halt the military offensive in Gaza, vowing to "finish the job" as a member of his War Cabinet threatened to invade the southern city of Rafah if remaining Israeli hostages are not freed by the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israel's government has not publicly discussed a timeline for a ground offensive on Rafah, where more than half the enclave's 2.3 million Palestinians have sought refuge. Retired general Benny Gantz, part of Netanyahu's three-member War Cabinet, represents an influential voice but not the final word on what might lie ahead. "If by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue to the Rafah area," Gantz told a conference of Jewish American leaders. Ramadan, expected to begin March 10, is historically a tense time in the region. As cease-fire negotiations struggle after signs of progress in recent weeks, Netanyahu has called demands by Gaza's ruling Hamas militant group "delusional." The United States, Israel's top ally, says it still hopes to broker a cease-fire and hostage-release agreement, and envisions a wider resolution of the war sparked by Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. The U.S. also says it will veto another draft U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire, with its U.N. ambassador warning against measures that could jeopardize "the opportunity for an enduring resolution of hostilities."But Netanyahu opposes Palestinian statehood, which the U.S. calls a key element in a broader vision for normalization of relations between Israel and regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia. His Cabinet adopted a declaration Sunday saying Israel "categorically rejects international edicts on a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians" and opposes any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. The international community overwhelmingly supports an independent Palestinian state as part of a future peace agreement. Netanyahu's government is filled with hard-liners who oppose Palestinian independence. Netanyahu wants Israel to achieve "total victory" over Hamas. In response to international concern over a Rafah offensive, he has said Palestinian civilians will be evacuated. Where they will go in largely devastated Gaza is not clear. The suggested timing for the offensive came as the World Health Organization chief said southern Gaza's main medical center, Nasser Hospital, "is not functional anymore" after Israeli forces raided it in Khan Younis last week. Israeli strikes across Gaza continued, killing at least 18 people overnight into Sunday, according to medics and witnesses. A strike in Rafah killed six people, including a woman and three children, and another killed five in Khan Younis, the main target of the southern Gaza offensive in recent weeks. Associated Press journalists saw the bodies. "All those who were martyred were those whom the Jews asked to move to safe places," said a bystander after the Rafah strike, Ahmad Abu Rezeq. In Gaza City, which suffered widespread destruction early in the war, an airstrike flattened a home, killing seven people, including three women, according to relative Sayed al-Afifi. Israel's military rarely comments on individual strikes and blames civilian casualties on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas.
UN SAYS RAIDED HOSPITAL NO LONGER FUNCTIONS
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a WHO team was not allowed to enter Nasser Hospital on Friday or Saturday. In a post on X, he said about 200 patients remain, including 20 who need urgent referrals elsewhere. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said at least 200 militants surrendered at the hospital. He also claimed that Hamas in Khan Younis is defeated, and that Hamas is largely leaderless in Gaza. He gave no evidence to support the claims. The Gaza Health Ministry said 70 medical personnel were among those arrested, along with patients, leaving 150 patients without medical care. It said Israel refused to allow patients, including newborns, to be evacuated to other hospitals. The military says it is looking for the remains of hostages inside Nasser Hospital and does not target doctors or patients. The Oct. 7 attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage. Militants still hold around 130 hostages, a fourth of them believed to be dead. Most of the others were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November. The war has killed at least 28,985 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. On Sunday it said 127 bodies were brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours. Around 80% of Gaza's population have been displaced, and a quarter face starvation. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, said 123 aid trucks entered Gaza through Israel's Kerem Shalom border crossing Sunday and four trucks of cooking gas entered through the Rafah crossing with Egypt. That's well below the 500 trucks entering daily before the war. In the occupied West Bank, a shootout erupted when Israeli forces went to arrest an armed suspect in the town of Tulkarem. The military said the suspect was killed, and a member of Israel's paramilitary Border Police was severely wounded. It described the target of the raid as a senior militant. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed. The war in Gaza has threatened to ignite wider conflict in the region. The U.S. Central Command said it conducted five self-defense strikes Saturday against cruise missiles and drones in area of Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group.
US OPPOSES A NEW CEASE-FIRE RESOLUTION
Algeria, the Arab representative on the U.N. Security Council, has circulated a draft resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza, and rejecting the forced displacement of Palestinians. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the draft "will not be adopted" and runs counter to Washington's efforts to end the fighting. The U.S. vetoed previous resolutions that had wide international support. The U.S., Qatar and Egypt have spent weeks trying to broker a cease-fire and hostage release, but Qatar said Saturday the talks "have not been progressing as expected."Hamas has said it will not release all remaining hostages without Israel ending the war and withdrawing from Gaza. It also demands the release of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including top militants.

US proposes UN resolution supporting temporary ceasefire in Gaza
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters)Michelle Nichols/February 19, 2024
-The United States has proposed a rival draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would underscore the body's "support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practicable," according to the text seen by Reuters on Monday. Washington has been averse to the word ceasefire in any U.N. action on the Israel-Hamas war, but the U.S. draft text echoes language that President Joe Biden said he used last week in conversations with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The U.S. draft text also "determines that under current circumstances a major ground offensive into Rafah would result in further harm to civilians and their further displacement including potentially into neighboring countries."Israel plans to storm Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than 1 millions Palestinians have sought shelter, prompting international concern that such a move would sharply worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The draft U.S. resolution says such a move "would have serious implications for regional peace and security, and therefore underscores that such a major ground offensive should not proceed under current circumstances." It was not immediately clear when or if the draft resolution would be put to a vote in the 15-member council. The U.S. put forward the text after Algeria on Saturday requested the council vote on Tuesday on its draft resolution, which would demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield quickly signaled that it would be vetoed. Washington traditionally shields its ally Israel from U.N. action and has already twice vetoed council resolutions since Oct. 7. But it has also abstained twice, allowing the council to adopt resolutions that aimed to boost humanitarian aid to Gaza and called for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses in fighting.
The U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar are seeking to negotiate a pause in the war and the release of hostages held by Hamas. Algeria put forward an initial draft resolution more than two weeks ago. But Thomas-Greenfield said the text could jeopardize the "sensitive negotiations" on the hostages. The Gaza war began when fighters from the Hamas militant group that runs Gaza attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. In retaliation, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza that health authorities say has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians with thousands more bodies feared lost amid the ruins.

Palestinians accuse Israel of 'apartheid' at UN top court
Agence France Presse/February 19, 2024
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki told the UN's top court Monday his people were suffering "colonialism and apartheid" under the Israelis, as judges weigh the legal consequences of Israel's occupation. "The Palestinians have endured colonialism and apartheid... There are those who are enraged by these words. They should be enraged by the reality we are suffering," Al-Maliki said. The ICJ is holding hearings all week on the legal implications of Israel's occupation since 1967, with an unprecedented 52 countries expected to give evidence. Nations including the United States, Russia, and China will address judges at the Peace Palace in The Hague, seat of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The minister urged the court to declare the occupation illegal and order it to stop "immediately, totally and unconditionally.""Justice delayed is justice denied and the Palestinian people have been denied justice for far too long," he said. "It is time to put an end to the double standards that have kept our people captive for far too long." In December 2022, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ for a non-binding "advisory opinion" on the "legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem." While any ICJ opinion would be non-binding, it comes amid mounting international legal pressure on Israel over the war in Gaza sparked by the brutal October 7 Hamas attacks. The hearings are separate from a high-profile case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel is committing genocidal acts during the current Gaza offensive. The ICJ ruled in that case in January that Israel must do everything in its power to prevent genocide and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
On Friday, it rejected South Africa's bid to impose additional measures on Israel, but reiterated the need to carry out the ruling in full.
'Prolonged occupation' -
The UN General Assembly has asked the ICJ to consider two questions.
Firstly, the court should examine the legal consequences of what the UN called "the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination". This relates to the "prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" and "measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem". In June 1967, Israel crushed some of its Arab neighbours in a six-day war, seizing the West Bank including east Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Israel then began to settle the 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles) of seized Arab territory. The UN later declared the occupation of Palestinian territory illegal. Cairo regained Sinai under its 1979 peace deal with Israel. The ICJ has also been asked to look into the consequences of what it described as Israel's "adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures." Secondly, the ICJ should advise on how Israel's actions "affect the legal status of the occupation" and what are the consequences for the UN and other countries. The court will rule "urgently" on the affair, probably by the end of the year.
'Despicable' -
The ICJ rules in disputes between states and its judgements are binding although it has little means to enforce them. However, in this case, the opinion it issues will be non-binding although most advisory opinions are in fact acted upon. The ICJ has previously issued advisory opinions on the legality of Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia and apartheid South Africa's occupation of Namibia. It also handed down an opinion in 2004 declaring that parts of the wall erected by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory were illegal and should be torn down. Israel is not participating in the hearings and reacted angrily to the 2022 UN request, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it "despicable" and "disgraceful". Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that while advisory opinions are non-binding, "they can carry great moral and legal authority" and can eventually be inscribed in international law.

‘Credible allegations’ of Palestinian women and girls being raped and executed by Israeli troops: UN experts
EPHREM KOSSAIFY/February 19, 2024
NEW YORK: UN experts on Monday expressed alarm over “credible allegations of egregious human rights violations” against Palestinian women and girls in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. They are being arbitrarily executed, arbitrarily detained, raped or threatened with sexual violence, the experts said, adding that these alleged acts may constitute “grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute.”They called for the perpetrators to be held accountable, and for victims’ families to receive “full redress and justice.”The experts cited instances of Palestinian women and girls being reportedly arbitrarily executed in Gaza, often together with family members, including their children. “We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing,” they said. “Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces.”The independent experts include the working group on discrimination against women and girls, the special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, and Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. They expressed concern about the arbitrary detention of “hundreds of Palestinian women and girls, including human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers, in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October.”They have reportedly been subjected to “inhuman and degrading treatment, denied menstruation pads, food and medicine, and severely beaten,” the experts said, adding that on at least one occasion, female detainees were put in a cage and left without food in the rain and cold. The UN experts also expressed distress at reports of multiple forms of sexual assault against Palestinian female detainees, including being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli officers. “At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the experts said, adding that that photos of female detainees in “degrading circumstances” were also reportedly taken by Israeli soldiers and uploaded online. They also expressed concern that “an unknown number of Palestinian women and children, including girls,” have gone missing after contact with the Israeli army in Gaza. “There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said. “We remind the Government of Israel of its obligation to uphold the right to life, safety, health, and dignity of Palestinian women and girls and to ensure that no one is subjected to violence, torture, ill-treatment or degrading treatment, including sexual violence.”The experts called for an independent, impartial, prompt, thorough and effective investigation into the allegations, and for Israel to cooperate.

Israeli military says it has recovered footage of hostage mother and children
JERUSALEM (Reuters)/February 19, 2024
The Israeli military released footage on Monday which it said showed Israeli woman Shiri Bibas and her two small children being moved by Palestinian militants in Gaza shortly after the family was kidnapped in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The security camera footage showed what appeared to be a young woman carrying a child on her shoulder as she was wrapped in a long, light coloured covering in the yard of a building and transferred into a car. The army said the footage was recovered a few days ago and came from the area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. It said the images showed Shiri Bibas as well as her sons Ariel, who was aged four when he was kidnapped, and Kfir, the youngest hostage seized, who was nine months old at the time. "The footage shows the terrorists wrapping Shiri and her babies in a sheet, trying to hide them," chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a news briefing, adding that the footage came from the day of their abduction. "From the information available to us, we are concerned for the well-being of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir," he said, adding that the family was held by a group called the Mujahideen Brigades. The Bibas family released a statement calling for their immediate release. "We desperately call on all decision makers in Israel and worldwide involved in negotiations: Bring them home immediately," the family said. The Bibas family - Shiri Bibas, her husband Yarden, as well as the two children, were kidnapped from Nir Oz kibbutz near Gaza and are among 134 hostages still held in Gaza. More than 100 others, including most of the children abducted on Oct. 7, were released by Hamas during a brief ceasefire in November but the fate of the Bibas family remains unknown. The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which Israel said 1,200 people were killed, triggered the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, in which health officials in the Hamas-run territory say more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Arab Group at UN backs Algeria’s resolution demanding Gaza ceasefireArab Group at UN backs Algeria’s resolution demanding Gaza ceasefire
ARAB NEWS/February 20, 2024
RIYADH: The Arab Group at the United Nations backed Algeria’s draft resolution submitted to the UN Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the Saudi Press Agency said early Tuesday. “We strongly support the draft resolution presented by Algeria and strongly urge all members of the Security Council to vote in favor of it,” a statement by the group said. It stressed that the draft resolution is consistent with the priorities of the group and the broader international community, which call for a ceasefire, determining the necessary scope for delivering humanitarian aid, and opposing forced displacement. The statement further said the humanitarian situation is rapidly deteriorating due to restrictions imposed by Israel, despite Resolutions 2712 and 2720, as well as efforts by the Egyptian authorities to facilitate the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid. The Security Council must take immediate action according to calls from the international community and global public opinion demanding a ceasefire, the group added.

Gaza Health Ministry says over 29,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel-Hamas war
AP/February 19, 2024
RAFAH, Gaza Strip: Israel’s assault in Gaza has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, the territory’s Health Ministry said Monday, marking another grim milestone in one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” against Hamas after the militants’ Oct. 7 attack on Israeli communities. He and the military have said troops will move soon into the southernmost town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. The United States, Israel’s top ally, says it is still working with mediators Egypt and Qatar to try to broker another ceasefire and hostage release agreement. But those efforts appear to have stalled in recent days, and Netanyahu angered Qatar by calling on it to pressure Hamas and suggesting it funds the militant group.The conflict has also brought near daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group that frequently threaten to escalate.
Israeli warplanes on Monday carried out at least two strikes near the southern port city of Sidon in one of the largest attacks near a major city, wounding 14 people, Lebanese state media said. The Israeli military said it attacked Hezbollah arms depots near Sidon in retaliation for a drone that exploded in an open field near the northern Israeli city of Tiberias earlier Monday. In Gaza, the Health Ministry said the death toll had risen to 29,092 since the start of the war, around two-thirds of them women and children. More than 69,000 Palestinians have been wounded, overwhelming the territory’s hospitals, less than half of which are even partially functioning. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 men, women and children hostage. After a round of exchanges for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel in November, around 130 remain captive, a fourth of them believed to be dead. Palestinians carry bags of flour they grabbed from an aid truck near an Israeli checkpoint, as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, February 19, 2024. (REUTERS)
The Israeli military released a video Monday showing what is believed to be the youngest hostage, his brother and mother being led through the streets of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis soon after their kidnapping on Oct. 7.
The video provides evidence that Shiri Bibas and her two young boys, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, who was 9 months old at the time, survived the initial kidnapping. The boys are the only children who remain in captivity, along with their mother.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman, said the army is “very concerned” about the family’s wellbeing. He said the army found the videos in security cameras seized during its offensive in Khan Younis.
The video appears to show Bibas, wrapped in a blanket, being led through a dirt street by her captors as she carries Ariel. The military said it believed that Kfir was in a baby sling and could not be seen under the blanket.
The infant with red hair and a toothless smile has become a symbol across Israel for the helplessness and anger over the hostages still held in Gaza. Their father, Yarden Bibas, is also still in captivity.
In a statement, the extended Bibas family said the videos “tear our hearts out.” They made a desperate plea for negotiations to release all of the hostages. In January, the family and hundreds of activists marked Kfir’s first birthday in what his family called “the saddest birthday party in the world.”
With thousands of Palestinians detained by Israel since the war began, an Israeli human rights group reported that Palestinians inside Israeli prisons face daily violence from guards, who enter cells and beat inmates with batons, kicks and fists without provocation in abuse it said could amount to torture. Physicians for Human Rights— Israel said in a report Monday that detainees reported guards urinating on them and forcing them to kiss the Israeli flag and to strip. Prisoners are also held in overcrowded cells and deprived of water for long periods, it said.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern about hundreds of Palestinian women and girls in Israeli detention. It said there were credible reports that at least two were raped, and others “subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault,” including being stripped naked and searched by male officers and being photographed “in degrading circumstances.”
Israel says it has killed over 10,000 Palestinian militants but has provided no evidence for its count. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames the high death toll on Hamas because the militant group fights in dense residential neighborhoods. The military says 236 of its soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground offensive in late October. On Sunday, Benny Gantz, a member of Netanyahu’s three-man War Cabinet, warned that the offensive would expand to Rafah if the hostages are not freed by the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, expected around March 10.
Israel has said it is developing plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah, but it’s not clear where they would go in the devastated territory, large areas of which have been flattened. Egypt has sealed the border and warned that any mass influx of Palestinians could threaten its decades-old peace treaty with Israel.
Already, the war has driven around 80 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza from their homes and has left a quarter of the population starving, according to UN officials. The United States says it is still pushing for a truce and hostage-release, and that it would veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire because it conflicts with those efforts. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, a senior official in Hamas, Khalil Al-Haya, repeated the group’s demands for releasing the remaining hostages — an end to Israel’s assault, the withdrawal of its troops from Gaza and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including top militants. He also said regional stability hinges on the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state — though he did not specify what its borders should be.
Netanyahu has rejected Hanas’ demands. In a speech before American Jewish leaders on Sunday, he said pressure should be applied on Qatar, which played a key role in mediating last year’s ceasefire and hostage release deal.
“Qatar can press Hamas as no one else can. They host Hamas leaders, Hamas is dependent on them financially,” Netanyahu said. “I urge you to press Qatar to press Hamas because we want our hostages released.”
Majed Al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, dismissed Netanyahu’s remarks as “a new attempt to stall and prolong the war for reasons that have become obvious to everyone,” alluding to the Israeli leader’s domestic political troubles. Qatar denies funding Hamas and says its provision of aid to Gaza in recent years was carried out in full coordination with Israel, the US and other parties.“The Israeli prime minister knows very well that Qatar has been committed from day one to mediation efforts, ending the crisis and freeing the hostages,” Al-Ansari said.

Brazil's Lula recalls ambassador in Israel for talks -source
SAO PAULO (Reuters)/February 19, 2024
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has recalled his ambassador to Israel for talks, a source in Brazil's foreign ministry said on Monday, as a diplomatic scuffle plays out over the president's recent comments about Israel's war in Gaza. The Brazilian ambassador had previously been summoned by Israel's foreign minister for a reprimand following comments by Lula likening the war against Hamas militants in Gaza to the Nazi genocide during World War II. "What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments," said Brazil's president, known as Lula, before offering up a comparison. "In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews," said Lula last weekend during an African Union summit in Addis Ababa. Earlier on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Lula is not welcome in the country until he takes back his comments.

‘Our people are here to stay’: World Court hears arguments over Israeli occupation of Palestinian-claimed land
David Shortell, Amir Tal, Lauren Iszo and Eyad Kourdi, CNN/February 19, 2024
The International Court of Justice began hearing historic oral arguments Monday over the Israeli occupation of territory claimed by Palestinians, thrusting the decades-old debate before a panel of international judges as the region remains locked in an unprecedented war. Fifty-two countries will participate in arguments at The Hague over the six-day hearing – more than any other case heard by the court in its history. The case stems from a 2022 request for an advisory opinion by the UN General Assembly. The 15 judges on the court will be asked to consider, as the General Assembly wrote, “the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”The court, established after World War II as a way for countries to resolve disputes without conflict, will likely take months to issue a ruling. The ICJ opinion will be advisory, not binding. Monday’s case is separate from the proceedings held in January over an accusation from South Africa that Israel was committing genocide in its war against Hamas following the October 7 attacks.
That case saw an overwhelming majority of the court order Israel to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, while stopping short of calling for Israel to suspend its military campaign, as South Africa had requested. At the time, Israel had already indicated it would not accept the ICJ’s ruling, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office writing on X that “nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.”
Dueling perspectives
Monday’s case concerning the West Bank began with remarks from Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki. “Successive Israeli governments have given the Palestinian people only three options: displacement, subjugation or death,” al-Maliki said. “But our people are here to stay, they have a right to live in freedom and dignity in their ancestral land. They will not forsake their rights.”Al-Maliki called for an end to “double standards in handling the Palestinian issue,” advocating for the ICJ to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. “The right to self-determination does not lapse by statute of limitations and is non-negotiable, and the Israeli occupation must end without conditions,” he said on Monday. “It is time to put an end to the double standards that have kept our people captive for too long. International law has to be applied to all states.
“This court must declare Israel occupation is illegal and must end it completely and unconditionally,” al-Maliki added. But Lior Haiat, a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, criticized the Palestinian Authority for what he called “distorting reality and avoiding direct negotiations” by seeking a unilateral legal ruling from the ICJ. “By hurling false accusations and creating a fundamentally distorted reality, the Palestinian Authority is trying to turn a conflict that should be resolved through direct negotiations and without external impositions into a one-sided and improper legal process designed to adopt an extremist and distorted narrative,” Haiat said. Haiat condemned the Palestinian leadership for allegedly ignoring acts of terrorism, inciting antisemitism, and misrepresenting the conflict’s legal framework, urging a return to direct negotiations to resolve the conflict.
Echoing Haiat’s sentiment, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) rejected the ICJ’s legitimacy to discuss the “legality of the occupation,” viewing it as an attack on Israel’s right to defend itself against existential threats. In a written statement, the office emphasized its determination to counteract what it perceives as an attempt by the Palestinians to bypass negotiations. “Israel does not recognize the legitimacy of the discussion at the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding the ‘legality of the occupation’ – a move designed to harm Israel’s right to defend itself against existential threats,” the statement read. Representatives from the various countries participating in the case will deliver their remarks starting Tuesday. Israel is not scheduled to speak but has made a written submission. Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War. It later unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem and withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza, though it has for years exerted control on the enclave through a near-total blockade. Under the Oslo Accords peace agreement, the West Bank was separated into three distinct areas with control split between locations by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel today has full administrative and security control over 60% of the West Bank area while the PA has nominal control over Palestinian population centers. There are an estimated 700,000 Israeli settlers illegally living in the West Bank. All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law and by much of the international community. Israel disputes that, distinguishing settlements it has authorized from those it has not.
*CNN’s Ivana Kottasová, Abbas Al Lawati and Joshua Berlinger contributed to this report.

Palestinian diplomat asks top UN court to declare Israeli occupation illegal
Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill/February 19, 2024
Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riyad al-Maliki asked the United Nations’s top court to declare Israeli occupation of the West Bank illegal at a historic hearing opened in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. The Palestinian diplomat focused on the war in Gaza for much of the case proceedings Monday and told the International Court of Justice that “2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, are besieged and bombed, killed and maimed, starved and displaced.”“More than 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, including in Jerusalem, are subjected to colonization of their territory and racist violence that enables it,” he said, The Associated Press reported. Al-Maliki called the Israeli occupation “annexation and supremacist in nature” and pressed the court to declare “that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must end immediately, totally and unconditionally.”The U.N. General Assembly requested a nonbinding advisory opinion into Israel’s policies in the occupied territories, which prompted Monday’s proceedings. Israel has sharply criticized the hearings, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Monday the nation does not recognize their legitimacy. “The discussion at The Hague is part of the Palestinian attempt to dictate the results of the political agreement without negotiations,” Netanyahu said. In a letter published Monday, Israel said the questions put to the court are prejudiced and “fail to recognize Israel’s right and duty to protect its citizens,” address Israeli security concerns or acknowledge Israel-Palestinians agreements to negotiate issues, including “the permanent status of the territory, security arrangements, settlements, and borders,” the AP reported. Al-Maliki said a court opinion in their favor could increase chances for peace, telling reporters, “This ruling could help both Palestinians and Israelis to finally live side by side in peace, mutual security and dignity.” Israel’s letter, however, suggested that outcome would have the opposite effect. The letter criticized the hearing’s portrayal of “villain and victim,” saying such characterizations only bring the two parties further away from peace.
“While the request made to the Court seeks to portray it as such, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a cartoon narrative of villain and victim in which there are no Israeli rights and no Palestinian obligations,” the letter said. “Entertaining such a falsehood can only push the parties further apart rather than help create conditions to bring them closer together.”

Taliban set unacceptable conditions for attending a UN meeting, says UN secretary-general
DOHA, Qatar (AP)/February 19, 2024
The Taliban set unacceptable conditions for attending a U.N.-sponsored meeting about Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday. Taliban demands included the exclusion of Afghan civil society members from the talks in Doha, Qatar, and treatment that amounted to official recognition of the Taliban as the country’s legitimate rulers, Guterres said at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in Qatar. The Taliban seized power in 2021, as U.S. and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war. No country recognizes them as Afghanistan’s government, and the U.N. has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place. The two-day meeting in Doha brought together member states and special envoys. But the Taliban didn’t attend because their demands had not been met. “I received a letter (from the Taliban) with a set of conditions to be present in this meeting that were not acceptable,” Guterres told a news conference. “These conditions denied us the right to talk to other representatives of Afghan society and demanded a treatment that would, to a large extent, be similar to recognition.” While he denied the Taliban absence was damaging the process, he said it would have been useful to discuss the meeting’s conclusions with them. “It did not happen today. It will happen in the near future. I think we will find a solution to allow for the participation of the Taliban.”Taliban officials were not immediately available for comment. The biggest point of contention between the international community and the Taliban are the bans imposed on women and girls. The Taliban insist the bans are a domestic matter and reject criticism as outside interference, but Guterres said meeting participants agreed it was essential to revoke the restrictions. Another is the appointment of a U.N. special envoy, which the Taliban oppose. Guterres said there needed to be “clear consultations” with the Taliban to have clarification of the envoy’s role and who it could be to “make it attractive” from their point of view. He said it was in the Taliban’s interests to be part of the consultations.

US admiral says the fight against the Houthis in the Red Sea is the largest battle the Navy's fought since World War II
Kwan Wei Kevin Tan/Business Insider/February 19, 2024
The Red Sea conflict is one of the largest battles the US Navy has fought in decades, a US admiral says. "I think you'd have to go back to World War II," Vice Adm. Brad Cooper said on CBS's "60 Minutes." He said the Navy had committed about 7,000 sailors to the Red Sea. A US Navy admiral says the conflict against the Houthis in the Red Sea is one of the largest naval battles the US has fought in decades. "I think you'd have to go back to World War II where you have ships who are engaged in combat," Vice Adm. Brad Cooper told the "60 Minutes" host Norah O'Donnell in an interview that aired Sunday. "When I say engaged in combat, where they're getting shot at, we're getting shot at, and we're shooting back," he continued. Cooper, the deputy commander of the US Central Command, told CBS's "60 Minutes" that the Navy had committed about 7,000 sailors to the Red Sea. CBS reported that the Navy had fired about 100 standard surface-to-air missiles against Houthi missiles and drones. Since mid-November, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been attacking shipping vessels sailing through the Red Sea. These attacks, the rebels have said, are a response to the Israel-Hamas war. Cooper said it was "crystal clear" that the Houthis couldn't have mounted those attacks without Iranian support. "For a decade, the Iranians have been supplying the Houthis. They've been resupplying them. They're resupplying them as we sit here right now, at sea," Cooper told O'Donnell. "We know this is happening. They're advising them, and they're providing targeting information." The US has formed an international naval coalition to protect ships passing through the area in response to the attacks. Besides shooting down Houthi missiles and drones, the US has been intercepting Iran's attempts to smuggle weapons to the Houthis. On Thursday, the US Central Command said the US Coast Guard seized more than 200 packages of illegal weapons bound for Yemen last month. The statement said the shipment, which included ballistic missile components and explosives, had originated in Iran. "It's very clear that we are degrading their capability. And every single day they attempt to attack us, we're eliminating and disrupting them in ways that are meaningful," Cooper told O'Donnell.

IAEA chief says Iran's nuclear enrichment activity remains high
BRUSSELS (Reuters)/Julia Payne/February 19, 2024
Iran continues to enrich uranium well beyond the needs for commercial nuclear use despite U.N. pressure to stop it, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday, adding he wanted to visit Tehran next month for the first time in a year to end the "drifting apart". Speaking to Reuters after he briefed EU foreign ministers on the subject, the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog said that while the pace of uranium enrichment had slowed slightly since the end of last year, Iran was still enriching at an elevated rate of around 7 kg of uranium per month to 60% purity. Enrichment to 60% brings uranium close to weapons grade, and is not necessary for commercial use in nuclear power production. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons but no other state has enriched to that level without producing them. Under a defunct 2015 agreement with world powers, Iran can enrich uranium only to 3.67%. After then-President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of that deal in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions, Iran breached and moved well beyond the deal's nuclear restrictions. Between June and November last year, Iran slowed down the enrichment to 3 kg per month, but jumped back up to a rate of 9 kg at the end of the year, the watchdog, known as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), previously reported. The increase came soon after Tehran barred a third of the IAEA's core inspections team, including the most experienced, from taking part in agreed monitoring of the enrichment process. "This slowdown, speedup thing is like a cycle that for me does not alter the fundamental trend, which is a trend of constant increase in inventory of highly enriched uranium," said Grossi. A spokesperson for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation was not immediately available for comment. The IAEA warned at the end of 2023 that Tehran already had enough material to make three nuclear bombs if it enriches the material now at 60% to beyond 60%. "There is a concerning rhetoric, you may have heard high officials in Iran saying they have all the elements for a nuclear weapon lately," Grossi said. He said the concern was all the higher because of what he termed current circumstances in the Middle East, a reference to tensions over Israel's war with Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza. "We seem to be drifting apart... Iran says they are not getting incentives from the West, but I find this logic very complicated to understand because they should work with us... It should never be contingent on economic or other incentives."Before visiting Tehran, Grossi is to fly to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Iran and the Middle East, along with Ukraine. Russia is a signatory of the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), alongside the U.S., China, France, Britain and Germany. The deal lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities. "Russia has a role to play on Iran. It has played a role in the past as a JCPOA country and in the current circumstances where JCPOA is all but disintegrated, something must fill the void," he said.
UKRAINE
Grossi said he saw a decrease in military operations around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe. Fears of a serious nuclear incident were high when Russian forces took over the facility in 2022 and again following the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam last year. "There hasn't been a militarization, any deployment of heavy artillery," he said, adding that nearby combat zones and recurring blackouts remained a worry. "The minimum staff required to look after the plant in the current situation is there," he said. Grossi said the minimum staffing was still met despite about 100 members refusing to sign a new contract with Russia's Rosatom that took over operations of the idled plant in 2022.
SANCTIONING ROSATOM
The EU has so far held back on sanctioning Russia's state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom or any of its subsidiaries despite numerous calls to target that industry. Europe still relies heavily on Rosatom which supplies nearly 50% of the world's enriched uranium. "Many companies in the West depend on Russian supplies - enriched uranium or fuel... The consensus is sanctioning Rosatom would not be realistic and it's impractical. It would put the nuclear industry at a standstill in many countries," Grossi said. Reducing dependence on Russia's nuclear sector would cost Europe billions, Grossi said, and he saw no immediate shift away. He added that the larger issue was infrastructure and incentives, and projections of rising uranium demand globally."Frankly, I see an increased presence of Russian uranium enrichment capabilities in the world rather than a decrease," he said.

A retired US general was scathing about Russia's performance in Ukraine: 'Their navy sucks, their air force sucks'
Mia Jankowicz/Business Insider/February 19, 2024
At a time when Ukraine is struggling badly to defend itself, he said there's "too much negativism."Hodges said the West should "body slam" Russia in order to defend a young democracy. A retired US general slammed Russia's performance in Ukraine, even as President Vladimir Putin's forces seized hold of a key town in the east of the country. Ben Hodges, who previously commanded United States Army Europe, gave a brutal assessment of Russia's achievements so far, telling the Kyiv Independent: "their navy sucks, their air force sucks, and they've lost half a million soldiers."It's unclear where Hodges got this casualty figure from. Current estimates of Russians killed or wounded since 2022 vary between 315,000, per a senior US defense official, and just over 400,000, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Defence. However, the UK's Ministry of Defence said in January that Russia was on track to have lost half a million by the end of the year. Hodges' remarks came as Ukraine ceded the eastern town of Avdiivka after a grinding fight that is estimated to have cost Russia more than 400 tanks, as well as many thousands of soldiers. Despite Ukraine's high-profile struggles, Hodges said he believes there's "too much negativism" around its fight with Russia. He also said that the West needs to "body slam" Russia in defense of the young democracy it invaded. "After 10 years, Russia had every advantage, and they still only occupy 18% of Ukraine," he said, referring not only to the full-scale invasion that began in 2022 but also Russia's annexation of Crimea and the proxy fighting that began in Donbas in 2014. Hodges' statements come at an extremely perilous moment for Ukraine's defense. The country has seen international support waver, a change in military leadership, and is faced with a vastly more numerous and better-supplied enemy. Russia has put its economy on a war footing, risking long-term economic decline but causing a temporary boom. Hodges has argued that US spending on Ukraine's defense is extremely cost-effective for American interests. "The monetary cost is trivial, a few per cent of our normal defence spending, and it is delivering enormous value for money," he wrote in The Telegraph late last year. He added: "Russian land combat power and large parts of its air and naval capability have been nullified for a period of years at the very least: deterring that combat power by our normal methods costs us many times as much." Despite not being able to make any significant territorial gains in 2023, Ukraine has kept up steady pressure, notably on Russia's air force and navy. It claims to have reduced Russia's Black Sea Fleet by a third and, as of Monday, to have shot down six Russian fighter jets in the space of just three days. Hodges argued that Russia is the country that is "weak on the inside" and that the US and the wider West should support Ukraine "not out of fear, but out of opportunity.""Here's a young, democratic country fighting for its survival, but if Ukraine is successful, it will fix European security problems for decades," he said.

The keeper of the Vatican’s secrets is retiring. Here’s what he wants you to know
VATICAN CITY (AP)/February 19, 2024
The Vatican has been trying for years to debunk the idea that its vaunted secret archives are all that secret: It has opened up the files of controversial World War II-era Pope Pius XII to scholars and changed the official name to remove the word “Secret” from its title. But a certain aura of myth and mystery has persisted — until now. The longtime prefect of what is now named the Vatican Apostolic Archive, Archbishop Sergio Pagano, is spilling the beans for the first time, revealing some of the secrets he has uncovered in the 45 years he has worked in one of the world’s most important, and unusual, repositories of documents. In a new book-length interview titled “Secretum” to be published Tuesday, Pagano divulges some of the unknown, lesser-known and behind-the-scenes details of well-known sagas of the Holy See and its relations with the outside world over the past 12 centuries.
In conversations over the course of a year with Italian journalist Massimo Franco, Pagano delves into everything from Napoleon’s sacking of the archive in 1810 to the Galileo affair and the peculiar conclave — the assembly of cardinals to elect a pope — of 1922 that was financed by last-minute donations from U.S. Catholics. “It’s the first time and it will also be the last because I’m about to leave,” Pagano, 75, said in an interview with The Associated Press in his archive office, ahead of his expected retirement later this year.
Pope Leo XIII first opened the archive to scholars in 1881, after it had been used exclusively to serve the pope and preserve documentation of the papacies, ecumenical councils and Vatican offices dating from the 8th century.
With 85 kilometers (53 miles) of shelving, much of it underground in a two-story, fireproof, reinforced concrete bunker, the archive also houses documentation from Vatican embassies around the globe as well as specific collections from aristocratic families and religious orders.
While often the source of Dan Brown -esque conspiracies, it functions much as any national or private archive: Researchers request permission to visit and then request specific documents to review in dedicated reading rooms.
Pagano keeps a close eye on them from a giant television screen perched to the side of his desk, which provides a live, closed-circuit feed to the reading rooms downstairs. Most recently, scholars have been flocking to the archive to read through the documents of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope who has been criticized for not having spoken out enough about the Holocaust.
Pope Francis ordered the documents of his pontificate opened ahead of schedule, in 2020, so scholars could finally have the full picture of the papacy. The Vatican has long defended Pius, saying he used quiet diplomacy to save lives and didn’t speak out publicly about Nazi crimes because he feared retaliation, including against the Vatican itself. Pagano is no apologist for Pius and stands out among Vatican hierarchs for his willingness to call out Pius' silence. Specifically, Pagano says he cannot square Pius’ continued reluctance to publicly condemn Nazi atrocities even after the war ended. “During the war we know that the pope made a choice: He could not and would not speak. He was convinced that an even worse massacre would have happened,” Pagano said. “After the war, I would have expected a word more, for all these people who went to the gas chambers.” Pagano attributes Pius’ continued, post-war silence to his concerns about the creation of a Jewish state. The Vatican had a long tradition of supporting the Palestinian people and was concerned about the fate of Christian religious sites in the Holy Land if the territories were turned over to the newly created state of Israel. Any word from Pius about the Holocaust even after the war “could have been read in political terms as a support for the foundation of a new state,” Pagano said.
In the book, Pagano doesn't hold back about his disdain for the incomplete research behind Pius’ sainthood cause, which is now apparently on hold as scholars dissect the newly available documentation. The two Jesuit researchers who compiled Pius' sainthood dossier, the late Revs. Peter Gumpel and Paolo Molinari, relied only on the partial, 11-volume compilation of the papacy's documents that was published in 1965, Pagano revealed. “Neither Father Gumpel nor Father Molinari ever set foot in the Apostolic Archive,” he says in the book. He said he believed Pius' sainthood cause should have waited until the full archive of the pontificate was catalogued and available, and scholars had time to draw conclusions.
“Written documents must weigh heavily on the life of a servant of God, you can’t ignore the archives,” Pagano told Franco, the journalist. “But the postulation by the Jesuits wanted to bypass it.”Aside from the well-known stories of Vatican intrigue, the book also reveals some novelties, including the origins of the important financial relationship between the U.S. church and the Vatican that continues today and dates back to the 1922 conclave. Pagano said that after Pope Benedict XV died, the camerlengo — the cardinal in charge of the papal treasury and accounts — went to his safe and discovered it was “literally empty. There wasn’t a paper, bank note or coin.” It turns out Benedict wasn’t terribly responsible fiscally, and left the Holy See somewhat in the red when he died on Jan. 22 of that year. Papal coffers were always used to fund the conclave to elect a new pope, meaning the Holy See was in a cash crunch at a time when Europe was still reeling financially from World War I. The book, for the first time, reproduces the encrypted telegrams in which the Vatican secretary of state asked his ambassador in Washington to urgently wire “what you have in the safe” so that the vote could take place.
According to the telegrams, the Vatican embassy sent what U.S. churches had collected from the American faithful, down to the cents: $210,400.09, allowing the vote that eventually elected Pope Pius XI. Pagano suggests that Francis' 2019 decision to remove the word “Secret” from the archive's name and rename it the “Vatican Apostolic Archive” was perhaps another financial nod to the wealthy U.S. church — a rebranding to remove any negative connotations and thus encourage potential donations, primarily via “Treasures of History,” a new U.S.-based foundation that supports the archive.
At the end of the interview, Pagano proudly showed visitors one of the archive’s prized possessions, which he keeps in an otherwise nondescript wooden armoire near the entrance of his office. There, behind plate glass and illuminated with special lights, is the original 1530 letter from British nobles urging Pope Clement VII to grant King Henry VIII an annulment so he could marry Anne Boleyn. As is well known, the pope refused and the king went ahead and got married, breaking with Rome. “You can say that here we are at the birth of the Anglican Church,” Pagano says as he holds up a light-tipped pointer to show off the red wax seals of some of the signatories. Pagano delights in revealing how the document survived: When Napoleon Bonaparte famously seized the Vatican archives in 1810 and carted them off to Paris, Pagano’s predecessor as chief archivist rolled up the 1530 letter and hid it inside a secret drawer in a chair in the archive antechamber. “The French never found it,” Pagano says proudly, keenly aware that an archivist’s main job is to preserve the archive.

Bolton: ‘If Trump is elected, there’ll be celebrations in the Kremlin’
Nick Robertson/The Hill./February 19, 2024
Former national security adviser John Bolton went after former President Trump on Sunday, warning that the Russian government would cheer on Trump’s reelection because they see him as an “easy mark.”“If Trump is elected, there’ll be celebrations in the Kremlin,” Bolton said in an MSNBC “Inside with Jen Psaki” interview Sunday. “There’s no doubt about it because Putin thinks that he is an easy mark.”Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Trump in the past but nearly endorsed President Biden last week. The Russian leader said Biden would make a “more predictable” president, and is whom he would prefer to win the election.Bolton brushed the comments off, however, saying Putin “really outdid himself” in the statement’s “disinformation.”Trump has long held up his good relationship with Putin as an example of his foreign policy expertise, but Bolton said the former president is merely playing into Putin’s hands. He specifically criticized Trump for refusing to pin the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Putin. Navalny was reported dead on Friday, and domestic Putin critics and foreign leaders, including President Biden, have labeled it a likely political assassination.
“Well, heaven forbid [Trump] say anything critical of Vladimir Putin,” Bolton said. “Look, accidents don’t happen in those kinds of Russian prison camps.”Trump made his first comments on Navalny’s death Monday, after Bolton’s interview, comparing the death to his own legal situation. He did not call out Putin, as other leaders have.Trump similarly did not criticize Putin for the 2020 attempted assassination of Navalny by poisoning, while many foreign leaders did blame Putin.“It’s obviously part of the pattern. He simply doesn’t want to criticize his friend Putin, because in Trump’s mind, if he’s got a good relationship with Putin, the U.S. has a good relationship with Russia,” Bolton continued. “This is the kind of thing that tells Putin that Trump simply doesn’t know what he’s doing.”Referring to the 2018 Helsinki, Finland, summit between Trump and Putin, Bolton said it was a good thing that the pair’s one-one-one conversation was dominated by Putin. Bolton was present in Helsinki with the former president as his national security adviser. “The less time Trump is actually saying anything to Vladimir Putin, that’s a good thing,” he said of the summit. Bolton also warned about Trump’s mounting legal fees and judgements, noting that foreign powers could use his financial situation as leverage for foreign policy goals. Trump was levied a massive $355 million ruling last week in a New York business fraud case and was ordered to pay another $83 million in a defamation case last month. “I think this is one of the demonstrations why Trump really is not fit for office,” Bolton said. “He is consumed by these troubles, his family is consumed by them. And I think foreigners will try to take advantage of it one way or another. They may be doing it already.”

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 19-20/2024
Alexei Navalny: The Symptomatic Assassination of an Icon
Charles Elias Chartouni/This is Beirut site/February 20/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/127185/127185/
The assassination of dissident leader Alexei Navalny is no fait divers. It brings us back to picture the nightmares of the deaths of the Gulag convicts, the “banality of evil” (Banalität des Bösen) and the steadfastness of the internal opposition to Vladimir Putin. It highlights the deep-seated fears of the cynical and bloody autocrat and the suffocating yoke of state terrorism in Russia. The assassination of the prominent dissident underlines the complementarity of internal repression and external warmongering.
The democratic and vocal opposition to the heavy-handed autocracy is experiencing Putin’s determination to eradicate it once more. Heir to a longstanding tradition of state murder and terrorism that trails back and forth between Ivan the Terrible and the Bolsheviks, the Putin autocracy has logged a long list of political assassinations*. Putin’s imperial agenda is paired with the consolidation of the terrorist state and harsh internal repression. The trail of political assassinations is meant to dissuade opponents and create a sense of political irreversibility and moral helplessness.
This political murder is part of a larger criminal pattern that features the Bolshevik legacy and the demeanor of the emerging autocracies and hallmarks the rising Cold War. Far from being restricted to the Russian autocracy, the neo-totalitarian trend is forging its way on a double track, with external warmongering and internal hard-fisted repression. The democratic oppositions in Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba are dealing with the same criminality at the crossroads between domestic violence and international destabilization. The convergence of these two tracks is no coincidence and seems to be defining the incoming strategic and political fault lines of a new era. This observation brings us back to the conventional wisdom bequeathed by the erstwhile Cold War era: strategic containment and economic sanctioning at the international level align with the support of domestic oppositions and the underwriting of their endeavors.
The bolting rise of the neo-fascist trends comes with a set of challenges that extend between strategic security, geopolitical quandaries and geo-strategic and economic dilemmas. States have to set their choices and give up on political gyrations. First, the future of international governance is raising serious questions about the democratic credentials and consensual credos of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council and their institutional conglomerate. Second, the stipulations of international economic governance and its political conditionalities must be considered (World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Labor Organization…). Third, the Human Rights normative governance must be looked at along with its incidence on realpolitik and the domestic realm of politics. And finally, it is also time to reevaluate adherence to the democratic and liberal tenets which frame international institutions. Otherwise, it would be difficult to see how the future of international governance could survive and navigate the troubled waters of a disintegrating global order, which is coupled with the ascent of totalitarianism.
Observing the international scenery conveys a bleak picture that makes us wonder whether the global community even has a chance to uphold a minimal consensus when normative discrepancies are growing exponentially, politics of subversion have no more bounds and security threats have become so pervasive. These challenges need to be addressed forthrightly at a time when strategic security hazards are building up in every direction: state terrorism, political violence, nuclear threats and fierce repression.
Donald Trump’s latest statement about withdrawing from the transatlantic alliance and inviting Putin to attack America’s European allies is not political trivia broadcast by an eccentric politician. China’s imperial aspirations and its politics of repression, Erdogan’s double game regarding his membership with NATO and partnership with the EU and the savage repression of liberal and ethnic oppositions cannot go on endlessly. Iran’s waffling politics towards military nuclearization, destabilization in the Middle East and state terror are still unhinged. The continuum between organized criminality, state terrorism, Islamist terrorism and political subversion all across South Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East is building cumulative evidence of a decaying global order and its destructive cycle of conflicts.
The assassination of Alexei Navalny features the whole political career of Putin, who kept a sustained record of political murder and international political subversion (four consecutive wars). This murder is not an incidental trait, it is the insignia of a new political era that questions democracy, liberal politics and world peace. This political crime disputes the political future of Russia and European and transatlantic security, and it puts the future of Ukraine at stake. Western democracies are impelled to double down on their support to Ukraine, pursue their containment policies all across the various geopolitical spectrums, strengthen the resolve of the internal oppositions and build alternative political platforms.
The new Russian martyrology extends the memorialization of the Soviet Gulag, the crimes of the cultural revolution in China, the killing fields of Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the political executions of Castro and Che Guevara, the summary trials and death sentences of the Islamic regime in Iran and those of Al-Qaeda and IS. The execution of Alexei Navalny is a tough reminder and a dire warning.
*Dissidents: Alexander Litvinienko, Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov, Alexander Perepilichny, Anna Polikovskaya, Ravil Maganov….
*Oligarchs: Roman Abramovich, Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Guzinski, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Potanin, Alexander Smolinsky, Vladimir Vinogradov.

Hamas: Palestinian Civilians Are Also Terrorists
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/February 19, 2024
When Hamas decided to drag the entire population of the Gaza Strip into another war with Israel on October 7, it did not care what would happen to Palestinian civilians.
If the hostages were indeed held in an apartment of a Palestinian family, this shows that Hamas has no problem placing Palestinian civilians in harm's way.
Consequently, Hamas has no right to complain about the death of civilians in the war it initiated against Israel while it uses its own people to hold innocent kidnapped Israelis.
Hamas leaders leading lavish lives in Qatar and Lebanon do not care about the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, nor do the leaders of the terrorist organization who are hiding in the vast network of sophisticated tunnels in the Gaza Strip. All they care about is their own survival
"The humanitarian aid is being stolen by those who call themselves resistance fighters. They claim they are defending us, but they are stealing all the aid coming into the Gaza Strip and then they sell it to the people for a very high price." — Palestinian man in Gaza, X (twitter.com), February 16, 2024.
On February 15, sources in the Gaza Strip reported that Hamas terrorists killed Ahmed Abu al-Arja, a Palestinian boy, while he was trying to get food for his family.
[T]he participation of some Palestinian civilians in the October 7 massacre and the kidnapping of Israelis is extremely worrying: it illustrates that a large number of people in the Gaza Strip actually do support Hamas and its terrorism against Israel.
The participation of some Palestinian civilians in the October 7 massacre and the kidnapping of Israelis is extremely worrying: it illustrates that a large number of people in the Gaza Strip actually do support Hamas and its terrorism against Israel. Pictured: A Hamas terrorist and Palestinian civilian accomplices enter Kibbutz Be'eri to murder, rape and torture Jews, on October 7, 2023. (Image source: Kibbutz Be'eri security camera)
Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, leaders of the Iran-backed terrorist group have been trying to distance themselves from the atrocities by holding Palestinian civilians responsible for some of the crimes, including the murder, beheading, rape, torture, kidnapping, mutilation and burning of hundreds of Israeli men, women, and children.
These are the same civilians that Hamas has long been using as human shields in its Jihad (holy war) to murder Jews and obliterate Israel.
First, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, then it accuses them of perpetrating atrocities against Israelis.
Although many of the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel were equipped with GoPro cameras that documented their crimes against Israelis, the leaders of the terrorist group are trying to send a message to the world that most of the atrocities against Israelis were not committed by their men. Instead, they argue, many of the crimes were perpetrated by Palestinian civilians who infiltrated the border after Hamas terrorists destroyed the security barrier during the invasion.
Hamas is right. Many ordinary Palestinians did participate in the October 7 assault on Israel. The civilians, however, could not have entered Israel without Hamas's tearing down the security fence. The truth is that thousands of Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians participated in the carnage.
The participation of Palestinian civilians in the attack on Israel, though not surprising, refutes the claim by human rights organizations that ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip are not involved in the Israel-Hamas war.
Even Hamas leaders have publicly implicated Palestinian civilians in the October 7 atrocities.
In early February, after Israeli security forces managed to rescue two Israeli hostages who were being held in an apartment near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Hamas sought to distance itself from the abduction.
Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas official, claimed that the two Israeli men were being held by Palestinian civilians, not Hamas terrorists. "The two [Israeli] detainees were in a civilian apartment and were captured by Palestinian citizens on the 7th of October," Nazzal told the Arabic media outlet Al-Araby. "There was no clash [between the Israeli commandos] and [Hamas's military wing] Izaddin al-Qassam."
The Hamas leader's claim that the Israeli hostages were held by Palestinian civilians is yet further proof of how Hamas continues to use residents of the Gaza Strip in its terror activities. If the hostages were indeed held in the apartment of a Palestinian family, this shows that Hamas has no problem placing Palestinian civilians in harm's way.
Consequently, Hamas has no right to complain about the deaths of civilians in the war it initiated against Israel while it uses its own people to hold innocent kidnapped Israelis. Does anyone seriously believe that the Palestinian civilians were holding the hostages without Hamas's knowledge?
If Hamas did not know that the hostages were being held by a Palestinian family, then why are its leaders negotiating – through Qatar and Egypt – to reach a deal with Israel to exchange Israeli hostages for prisoners? Why doesn't Hamas tell the Qataris and Egyptians to negotiate directly with the Palestinian civilians who are believed to be holding Israelis in the Gaza Strip?
This was not the first attempt by Hamas to blame Palestinian civilians for the October 7 carnage.
On October 22, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya claimed that Palestinian civilians and members of other Palestinian factions who crossed the border into Israel kidnapped dozens of Israelis and hauled them back into the Gaza Strip.
During the same month, Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri also blamed Palestinian civilians for committing most of the atrocities against Israelis:
"When the people in the Gaza Strip heard that the border had been breached and that the Israeli army in the area had collapsed, several young men and gunmen entered [Israel], and this caused a state of chaos.
"There were [Israeli] civilians who were captured by people who entered, as ordinary people, who captured them and brought them into the Gaza Strip."
Al-Arouri was later killed in an Israeli airstrike on his hideout in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
Hamas leaders leading lavish lives in Qatar and Lebanon do not care about the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, nor do the leaders of the terrorist organization who are hiding in the vast network of sophisticated tunnels in the Gaza Strip. All they care about is their own survival. They have already proven that they are prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of Palestinians rather than release the remaining 136 Israeli hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip are undoubtedly surrounding themselves with many of the Israeli hostages to avoid being killed or captured by Israeli security forces.
When Hamas decided to drag the entire population of the Gaza Strip into another war with Israel on October 7, it did not care what would happen to Palestinian civilians. Hamas did not even bother to alert its people to prepare for the war.
Hamas's disregard for the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was best reflected by Mousa Abu Marzouk, member of the Hamas political bureau. In an interview with Russia Today TV on October 27, 2023, Abu Marzouk was asked:
"Many people are asking: You have built 500 kilometers of tunnels, why haven't you built bomb shelters, where civilians can hide during bombardment?"
The Hamas leader replied:
"We have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed. These tunnels are meant to protect us [Hamas] from the [Israeli] airplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels. Everybody knows that 75% of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees, and it is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect them."
Hamas's most common uses of human shields include firing rockets from within, or near, heavily populated civilian areas; placing military infrastructures, such as tunnels, headquarters and bases in or near civilian areas, and combating the Israel Defense Forces from or near residential and commercial areas. Hamas also uses "expendable" civilians for dangerous intelligence-gathering missions.
Jehad Saftawi, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who founded RefugeeEye, a non-profit organization that supports refugee journalists, revealed on February 13 that Hamas had built tunnels beneath his family home in Gaza City, adding:
"Since Hamas's violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, the bustling and beautiful streets I knew have been dominated by terrorist chaos. Hamas is driven by an ideological stand originating in the concept of annihilating the state of Israel and replacing it with an Islamic Palestinian one. In striving to make this a reality, Hamas has continued to normalize violence and militarization in every aspect of public and private life in Gaza."
Saftawi recounted how his family discovered that Hamas terrorists were digging a tunnel under the new house that his family was building, after the woman living across the street from the new house's site contacted them:
"She would hear sounds of loading and unloading and feel the vibrations of digging coming from the empty piece of land behind our houses. She suspected someone was digging a tunnel."
When he confronted the masked Hamas terrorists who were at the site, Saftawi was told by one of them that they would continue as they pleased:
"He [the masked man] said I should not be afraid and that this would just be a small closed room to remain buried underground. No one can enter or exit. He said that only in the case of an Israeli ground invasion in this area and the displacement of residents would these rooms be used to supply weapons. "
According to Saftawi, he told the Hamas terrorist: "We don't want to live above a stockpile of weapons."
"When something goes unspoken for so long, it begins to feel impossible that the truth will ever be known. I always looked forward to a time in the future when my family and others like us would be allowed to speak about these tunnels, about the perilous life Hamas has forced upon Gazans. Now that I am determined to speak openly about it, I don't know if it even matters.
"My family evacuated to the south [of the Gaza Strip] shortly after October 7. Months later, we received photos of our house and neighborhood, both of which are in ruins. I may never know if the house was destroyed by Israeli strikes or fighting between Hamas and Israel. But the result is the same. Our home, and far too many in our community, were flattened alongside priceless history and memories.
"And this is the legacy of Hamas. They began destroying my family home in 2013 when they built tunnels beneath it. They continued to threaten our safety for a decade – we always knew we might have to vacate at a moment's notice. We always feared violence. Gazans deserve a true Palestinian government, which supports its citizens' interests, not terrorists carrying out their own plans. Hamas is not fighting Israel. They're destroying Gaza."
Saftawi is able to speak out against Hamas because, like many tens of thousands of Palestinians, he too has fled the Gaza Strip since the terrorist group seized control of the coastal enclave in 2007. Most Palestinians who are still in the Gaza Strip are too afraid of retaliation to tell the truth about Hamas's repressive measures against its own people.
In recent weeks, several Palestinians have complained that Hamas was stealing the humanitarian aid delivered to the Gaza Strip. According to one Palestinian man:
"The humanitarian aid is being stolen by those who call themselves resistance fighters. They claim they are defending us, but they are stealing all the aid coming into the Gaza Strip and then they sell it to the people for a very high price."
A Palestinian woman noted:
"We hear about the aid but we don't know where the aid goes. You can find most of the aid being sold in the markets. There is a big octopus that controls the market and raises the prices. Where are our leaders who have abandoned us? Why don't they come and suffer with us? The leaders [of Hamas] are hiding underground and others are hiding in hell, while the people are suffering."
On February 15, sources in the Gaza Strip reported that Hamas terrorists killed Ahmed Abu al-Arja, a Palestinian boy, while he was trying to get food for his family.
The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip have paid a hugely painful price for Hamas's decision to hurl them into a savage confrontation with Israel.
Yet the participation of some Palestinian civilians in the October 7 massacre and the kidnapping of Israelis is extremely worrying: it illustrates that a large number of people in the Gaza Strip actually do support Hamas and its terrorism against Israel. Unless the Palestinians rise up against Hamas and distance themselves from the terrorist group and its Jihad against Israel, they will continue to suffer – and the price they pay will continue to soar.
**Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
**Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on X (formerly Twitter)
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Killing Navalny ...The murder of his most popular political opponent is a sign of Putin’s confidence, not weakness
Vladislav Davidzon/The Tablet/February 19/2024
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s preeminent political prisoner and opposition leader, has been assassinated by Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. His death was announced on Friday by the Russian Penitentiary Service in the midst of the Munich Security Conference, marking the grim anniversary of the infamous policy-setting anti-Western speech that Putin had delivered at that same conference in 2007. This time, Putin’s message to the West was written in blood.
The charismatic anti-corruption activist’s killing took place in the infamous Polar Wolf Siberian penal colony to which he had been transferred in December ahead of next month’s presidential elections. Navalny had spent the last three years being shuffled around ever more brutal Russian penal colonies, in the process becoming the world’s most prominent political prisoner. According to reports in Russian outlets, his death was preceded by the arrival of Federal Security Service (FSB) personnel at Polar Wolf and the disconnecting of CCTV cameras at the facility. Navalny’s body, which reportedly bears marks of bruising in keeping with an attempt to resuscitate a victim of cardiac arrest, is currently unaccounted for, most likely to keep an autopsy from being performed.
Navalny is the latest in a series of high-profile opposition leaders and dissidents to be assassinated by the Russian state. Putin’s most visible and outspoken opponent had spent the last three years imprisoned under the most austere and barbarous conditions that Russia’s prison camp system offers. In fact, Putin had been so terrified of the challenge that Navalny posed to his system that he has spent years steadfastly refusing to utter his name. The murder of the Kremlin’s most audacious and charismatic political opponent—one who earned his political stature through his superhuman courage—a month before upcoming elections sends an unmistakable message to any other Russians countenancing opposition to Putin’s police state.
The son of a Soviet army officer, Navalny will be remembered by history as the opposition figure who constituted the most serious challenge to Putin’s quarter-century-long rule. Tough and physically imposing, Navalny was also a lawyer by training who brought idealism for a better and “more beautiful Russia” to Russians beaten down by the corruption and brutality of Putin’s rule. He made the dream of a normal Russia into a reasonable one. The Anti-Corruption Foundation that Navalny and his team created in 2011 found ways to cleverly circumnavigate the Kremlin’s de facto taboo on opposition politics through the deft exposure of the system’s immense inefficiency and corruption. The foundation was eventually declared an extremist organization a decade later and banned in Russia much like al-Qaida, the Taliban or Islamic Jihad, in part for documenting Putin’s network of lavish hideaways and special conveniences, including a “ghost train” equipped with a Turkish bath, a private operating room, and a cosmetology suite.
With his vital charisma, organizing skills, roguish impertinence and endless energy, the handsome Navalny seemed to represent the most viable successor to Putin. As a young political activist, Navalny took hard nationalist positions while competing for the nationalist vote and made ugly comments about Muslims and Georgians—and was kicked out of the opposition Yabloko party for doing so. This would presage his obstreperous relations with other Russian opposition movements and leaders.
Idealistic hopes or fantasies of regime transition in Russia on the back of mass street protests seem more far more distant now than they were before the attack on Ukraine and Navalny’s death.
Yet while most opposition leaders who had not fled or been killed wound up compromising in one way or another with the diktats of the system, Navalny was not the compromising kind. As I wrote in January 2022 in Tablet, where I profiled Leonid Volkov, the head of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation: “Navalny’s elevation suggested that the choosing of the leadership of the Russian opposition is mostly a process of natural selection, the law of survival of the fittest. The Kremlin has spent years systematically co-opting softer and more compromise-oriented opponents, removing them from the Russian political arena.”
Navalny and his team had at first been allowed to compete in the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections. Yet the Kremlin quickly learned to cease underestimating him when that campaign came perilously close to succeeding (the Navalny camp’s claims that the mayoral election had been stolen remain entirely plausible). The next year would see Navalny placed under house arrest while his brother was sentenced—hostage-style—to a prison term on trumped-up financial charges. Navalny was not allowed to challenge Putin directly during the 2018 election cycle.
Soon enough, the paranoid Putin ordered Navalny’s preemptive murder. The FSB officers who were tasked with carrying out the assassination in August 2020 would deploy Novichok—a powerful military-grade synthetic nerve agent. Slipped into Navalny’s underwear, it was meant to vaporize a man’s nervous system and essentially melt his brain. A lesser man would not have survived the poisoning, but the intervention of German physicians in Berlin saved Navalny’s life. A lesser man would also not have made a full physical recovery from the nerve damage.
“Navalny’s body,” wrote the investigative journalist Christo Grozev in reference to the Russians’ previous attempt to murder him, “is still being hidden from his family. Just a reminder that the previous time the FSB kidnapped his comatose body, they spent two days “cleaning up his body” and his clothes from traces of Novichok, before (thinking) they could safely hand him over.”
The injured Navalny slowly relearned how to write and speak. Courageous almost beyond all rational comprehension, he refused to stay abroad and to share the historical fate—oblivion, irreverence, and redundancy—of generations of exiled Russian opposition figures before him. Aided by the Bellingcat team of investigative researchers, Navalny called his would-be assassin posing as his purported superior—cavalierly recording the hapless thug’s confession.
In January 2021, Navalny returned to Moscow in a plane filled with international journalists who broadcast his detainment and arrest and his final kiss with his wife at the airport. It was the sort of full-frontal challenge to Putin’s system that the regime was clearly unwilling to tolerate. A quick show trial later, he would be banished to a penal colony outside of Moscow.
The techniques the Russian prison system used to brutalize Navalny—sleep and food deprivation, bullying by fellow inmates, stints of forced isolation, purposeful lack of medical care—would have annihilated a weaker and less vigorous man. These were methods and settings taken straight out of the Soviet Gulag playbook first described by Solzhenitsyn.
Navalny knew exactly what he was returning to. His was a courageous and humanistic gamble—that of placing his own body at the direct mercy of Putin’s apparatus of repression—in the quixotic hope of igniting a popular uprising. It was also a gamble that was always likely preordained to failure. Putin’s Russia had by that time already reverted to late-Soviet levels of state repression. Attempting to foment a revolution in the midst of a Russian winter was always a nonstarter.
The historical antecedent for Navalny’s fate is surely the failed Decembrist uprising: a noble revolt of liberal army officers and patriotic reformers in 1825 that followed in the wake of the death of Emperor Alexander I. Russian history is filled with remarkably brave and idealistic dissidents making heroic and quixotic stands against the autocratic state. History records the names and fates of the bravest among them. It is to this long list that Navalny has now added his name, with no sign that the rule of the czars and their modern-day successors will be ending anytime soon.
It remains uncertain which leaders will be able to pick up the mantle of the opposition in the wake of Navalny’s death. Many Russian intellectuals and commentators view Navalny’s murder as foreclosing any possibility of a nonviolent democratic movement against the regime. Navalny’s murder showcases the naked brutality of a system without an off-ramp from ever-escalating repression against its own population and the use of violence against internal political challengers. Which is not to say that Navalny’s murder was an admission of weakness or political anxiety. Rather, Putin killed Navalny and withheld his body in the run-up to an election because he was confident that he could get away with it.
It is perhaps also not coincidental that Navalny’s death comes a week after the release of broadcaster Tucker Carlson’s slavishly fawning Moscow interview with Putin, during which the Russian president rambled on about the history of Kyivan Rus for half an hour to the mesmerized American. Carlson is currently in the midst of organizing and facilitating a pro-Putin campaign on the American political right, which, in addition to the interview with the Russian dictator, included a social media propaganda tour of Putin’s Russia complete with gee-whiz marveling at the wonders of ersatz Russian McDonald’s meals and the glories of the Moscow subway system.
Despite the shopworn naiveté of Carlson’s observations, which echoed the claims made by generations of useful leftist idiots like Bernie Sanders, who similarly admired the Moscow subway system and other Soviet attainments on his honeymoon trip in 1988, only a year before the Berlin Wall came down, the broadcaster’s campaign has had success in decreasing support among conservatives for arming the Ukrainians. The current military aid package to Ukraine is now stuck without a vote in Congress: House Speaker Mike Johnson has not put the foreign aid bill up to a vote because of opposition from elements of his base. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have just pulled their forces out of the encircled eastern city of Avdiivka, and proclaimed to the world that their army is running out of ammunition, signaling the increasing likelihood of broader Russian conquests of Ukrainian territory in the spring.
The historian Sergey Radchenko’s conclusion was appropriately bleak: “With Navalny’s death, Russia has symbolically turned the corner. There is no more faith, nor any more hope, and no longer any prospect for that ‘beautiful Russia of the future’ that Navalny tried so hard to keep alive in our collective imagination.” The prominent Russian journalist Mihail Zygar wrote that “we dreamed of him being the President of Russia. He was our future for so long. Now we no longer have that future, and we will have another. Alexei will always be with us and will become much more than a President. He will be the messiah of the Russian future.”
However, idealistic hopes or fantasies of regime transition in Russia on the back of mass street protests seem far more distant now than they were before the attack on Ukraine and Navalny’s death. A political transition in Russia would now almost certainly take place at the level of a palace coup or following Putin’s own death. Much of the core constituency of potential pro-democracy protests have long since fled Russia, after the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine when Russia passed new conscription and mobilization laws. Russian men who take to the streets to protest now risk being detained and sent to fight in the front lines in Ukraine.
The stakes for protesting the regime are infinitely higher than they were when Navalny and his people had first called on Russians to engage in mass uprisings three years ago. Which is why the vigils and impromptu flower-laying ceremonies commemorating Navalny, which were disrupted by Russian riot police all across the nation this weekend, were predominantly made up of women.
On Friday afternoon, U.S. President Joe Biden proclaimed that “Putin is responsible” for the killing and that there was “no doubt” that President Vladimir Putin’s government bore responsibility. Three years after having threatened Putin’s Kremlin with “devastating consequences” if Navalny were to die in prison, those effects have so far been nil.
Perhaps most significantly from Putin’s point of view, the killing of a prominent opposition head sends a clear, direct message to other Russian opposition leaders who are currently in prison and may envisage themselves as symbols of a future democratic Russia. Here, the liberal West does have options. It can and should demand the facilitation of Red Cross visits for political prisoners such as the British Russian journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, whom the Kremlin has already tried to kill twice. If there are no consequences for Navalny’s death, it seems likely that Putin’s hit list will only get longer.
**Vladislav Davidzon is Tablet’s European culture correspondent and a Russian American writer, translator, and critic. He is the Chief Editor of The Odessa Review and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and lives in Paris.

A Look at True Systemic Discrimination: America vs Egypt
Raymond Ibrahim/Coptic Solidarity/February 19/2024
Generally speaking, which nations are more prejudiced and discriminatory—Western or non-Western nations? Listening to Western media, the answer seems clear enough: the West, still dominated by ethnically white people, is rife with systematic racism, unlike the much more egalitarian, non-white and non-Western world. Nor does it seem to matter how many non-whites advance in the West. Recently, for instance, Charles Quinton Brown Jr, an African-American, was promoted to Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs. Along with the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, this means that the US Military’s top positions are occupied by black men. African-Americans, in fact, hold all sorts of public and official offices, including former president, Barack Obama, and current Vice President Kamala. Before Brown Jr, Colin Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, and later became Secretary of State. He was succeeded by Condoleezza Rice. There are, moreover, many black senators, governors, and congressmen; successful black CEOs, physicians, scientists, and professors; and, of course, black athletes. Most notably in the media—from big budget Hollywood to local advertisements—blacks appear to be overly represented than their respective population might warrant.
Despite this, America, we are regularly informed, is a highly prejudiced nation. Allow me, therefore, to delineate how a truly prejudiced nation behaves.
When it comes to minority status, Egypt’s Coptic Christians and America’s blacks have something in common: both groups account for roughly 15 percent of their nations’ populations. And that is where their similarities end. If from America’s small black population, many make it into important and prestigious positions, Muslim Egypt’s Christian population are nowhere to be found in any of that nation’s positions of leadership. Consider a few statistics:
On Jan. 17, 2023, Presidential Decree #12 was announced in Egypt. It listed 100 newly appointed vice-presidents of the State Council. Only one of them was a Christian. As Coptic Solidarity had observed then , “This is one more proof—if proof was needed—that severe and systemic discrimination against Egypt’s indigenous Christian Copts is a state policy, sanctioned by the President personally.”
It was, to be sure, just the latest instance of overt discrimination. A few months earlier, in September, 2022, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued several other presidential decrees for the appointment of new deputy prosecutors. Out of 516 hires, a paltry five—meaning less than 1 percent—were Christians. (Meanwhile, the Egyptian embassy in Washington D.C. boasts of Sisi’s efforts to ensure “meritocracy in civil service.”)
One month before that, in August, 2022, the president of Cairo University assigned 31 new directors, deputy directors, managers, and researchers to head a number of departments, including those of agriculture, medicine, engineering, nursing, dentistry, statistical research, and African Studies. Not a single one of them was Christian. All were Muslim.
Before that, in March, 2022, 98 female judges took the legal oath in preparation for assuming judicial roles in Egypt’s State Council. This was considered a major and unprecedented advancement. Since its inception 75 years earlier, not a single woman had sat on the podium of the State Council court—and now 98 are. Yet, not one of them is a Christian—again, despite the fact that the Copts account for between 15 percent of Egypt’s population, suggesting that at the very least 14 of the 98 should have, for proper representation, been Christian.
The list of areas where Egypt’s Christians hit an invisible (or rather very visible) ceiling of between 0-2 percent of total hires is long; it goes from the military to the police, from academia to local governance, from public companies to media.
Such overt discrimination persists in even less “formal” occupations. Take football (American soccer), for example—a very popular national pastime in Egypt. As Coptic Solidarity has repeatedly reported (here, here, and here), and as Aid to the Church in Need noted in a February, 2022 report,
Christians make up around 15 percent of the population of Egypt and are as football-crazy as their Muslim neighbours, but there is not a single Copt in the national team….There are no official statistics on the number of Copts in Egypt, but estimates vary between 10 percent and 20 percent. … The fact that no Copts, of any denomination, are represented in top-level football, and therefore in the national team, stings.
Incidentally, all of this is a reflection of the growing radicalization of Egypt. After all, even by Egypt’s “modest” standards, in the few tumultuous but “Liberal” decades preceding the Free Officers’ coup (the “1952 Revolution”), it was possible for Copts to occupy posts such as Foreign Minister, Minister of Defense, Prime Minister, and Speaker of the Parliament. Such things are unimaginable under the current regime, which is a de-facto alliance between the military and Islamists (despite all pretense otherwise).
In short, and to get a better idea of the ongoing diminution of Christian representation in Egypt, imagine for a moment if blacks, who make up 13.6 percent of America, held 0 percent of all important and prestigious positions in the nation, including in media, and between 0-2 percent of virtually every other decent job. What would be said of the U.S.—and how would its progressives howl?
Meanwhile, little is said of Egypt, and no one but its Christians howl (in an echo chamber).
At any rate, here is a stark reminder that discrimination—to say nothing of outright persecution and even slaughter—is not limited to race.

Israel sets Ramadan deadline for feared Rafah invasion
Brad Dress/The Hill/February 19, 2024
Israeli officials appear to have set a deadline to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah — the largest refugee camp in the coastal territory — for the Muslim holy day of Ramadan on March 10.
Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war Cabinet, delivered an ultimatum at a Sunday event with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group for the American Jewish community.
“The world must know — and Hamas leaders must know — that if by Ramadan the hostages are not home, then the fighting will continue, including in Rafah,” Gantz said at the event. Israel has argued it must move into Rafah, which hosts more than a million Palestinians sheltering from the war, to ensure the complete military defeat of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. But the looming offensive is spurring major concerns from human rights groups and emergency responders on the ground, who warn that any invasion of Rafah could trigger a huge loss of civilian life and upend humanitarian efforts in the Gaza strip. Rafah, which borders Egypt, is the only place where humanitarian aid is consistently entering Gaza, and Israeli military operations there could hinder what few basic necessities many Palestinian civilians have access to, including food, water and medical aid. “Military operations in Rafah could lead to a slaughter in Gaza,” said Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s emergency relief coordinator, in a statement last week. “They could also leave an already fragile humanitarian operation at death’s door.”To address those concerns, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered his military to draft a plan to evacuate civilians before the invasion. Israel’s main ally, the U.S., has backed a move into Rafah, but only if a plan is created to keep civilians safe.
Speaking at the same conference as Gantz over the weekend, Netanyahu said it was necessary to root out Hamas everywhere they are hiding, arguing “we cannot leave a quarter of Hamas’s terrorist battalions intact.”
“Once you destroy the battalions, there is no organized command and control structure,” he said. “You’re left with individual terrorists, which we mop up with ground action.”Although military and regional political analysts warn that Hamas represents an ideology and will be extremely difficult to wipe out, Israel insists the group’s military capabilities can be degraded, and Netanyahu has said victory is within reach.
Israeli troops invaded Gaza a few weeks after Hamas launched a deadly Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, kidnapping 240 people and killing some 1,200. More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
Israel’s military has since swept across nearly the entire Gaza Strip, including in the north and central-southern areas, where forces are wrapping up operations in the city of Khan Yunis. The war so far has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, including both combatants and civilians, according to Gaza health authorities run by Hamas. With the Rafah operation imminent, Israel is facing pressure from the Biden administration to protect civilian lives with an evacuation plan.
“Without that credible plan, a major operation in Rafah would be a disaster,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said last week.
Meanwhile, Arab neighbors are pushing Netanyahu not to invade the refugee camp. Egyptian officials have reportedly threatened to shatter a decades-old peace treaty with Israel if troops move into Rafah, which could send Palestinians over the border and into Egypt and possibly displace them permanently.
Netanyahu said over the weekend that he will not “surrender to any pressure.”
“Whoever wants to prevent us from operating in Rafah is telling us in effect to lose the war,” he said. “I will not allow this.”

Get ready for Gaza war to shift to West Bank
Chris Doyle/Arab News/February 19, 2024
If in doubt, escalate. This may as well be the motto for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since Oct. 7. This is a man for whom “total victory” equals total destruction and for whom peace may mean prison. Bibi knows the polls. He knows that the knives are sharpened and at the ready; that the ides of March are fast approaching for this Israeli Caesar.
Until that day of reckoning, when everyone expects him to be unceremoniously ousted from his residence in Balfour Street, Netanyahu feels he has no choice but to go all in. The likelihood is that he will not hesitate to order a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah in the coming days. He is prepared to risk Israel’s relations with the US, with regional partners and even Israeli security for this end. In this, it must be remembered that he has the backing of many mainstream Israeli politicians, including his likely successor Benny Gantz. Many Israelis, including many of the families of the 134 remaining hostages, believe Netanyahu has sacrificed them in the cause of his own political survival.
If the above analysis is broadly accurate, Netanyahu has a massive problem when some form of calm descends on what remains of Gaza. When Rafah is flattened, with no doubt the percentage of destroyed and damaged buildings in Gaza heading more in the direction of 80 percent from its current 60 percent, major Israeli operations will inevitably be scaled back. Even for Netanyahu, dropping expensive bombs on rubble makes little sense.
The assumption must be that the medium-intensity conflict with Hezbollah is not one that the Israeli government wishes to escalate. The risks to all are just too high, too punitive.
This leaves the West Bank, including Jerusalem. Here, Netanyahu can secure the full backing of his coalition and the ever more powerful settler movement for a major onslaught, up from the mid-level variety currently in play.
Even for all those in Israel who have pushed for the recolonization of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is indisputably the big prize
Remember that, even for all those in Israel who have pushed for the recolonization of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is indisputably the big prize. The settlers have been busily pushing Palestinians off their lands in Area C, which makes up some 62 percent of the West Bank — another process of ethnic cleansing alongside the massive process in Gaza. As the Israeli group Peace Now has reported, 2023 was, “for the settlement enterprise, probably the best year since the Oslo Accords,” with record numbers of units advanced. Some 26 new outposts were established and 21 Palestinian communities forced from their homes. But if there was to be a major Israeli military operation akin to Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the settlers would expect far more territorial plunder. Various areas would be in their sights. In the South Hebron Hills, the settlers see a job to be completed. East of Ramallah has also been a target zone. In the Jordan Valley, 20 Palestinian families had been kicked off their lands by mid-December last year. Israeli soldiers have denied Palestinians access to water as another way to force them off their land.
Thousands of settlers have been armed, given military uniforms and incorporated into “regional defense” battalions. Many of these settlers have a proven track record of violence against Palestinians.
Once an area is “sterilized” — an official term meaning that it is free of Palestinians — the settlers will establish a raft of new outposts to formalize the theft of land. The Palestinians in the West Bank have already been softened up. Israeli armed forces have been targeting much of the north, including invading refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem and Nablus.
Since Oct. 7, the Palestinian economy in the West Bank has been squeezed ruthlessly by the Israeli authorities. Palestinians have not been able to work in Israel or in settlements. Draconian restrictions on movement have likewise served to cripple economic activity. Last October, half of Palestinian farmers were unable to harvest their olives as a result of Israeli restrictions, according to estimates by the Palestinian Farmers’ Union. The Israeli measures have included blocking the entrances to numerous Palestinian villages, immiserating the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. These are the most intense and devastating series of closures since the height of the Second Intifada. All of this is exacerbated by Israel holding on to Palestinian customs revenues.
Netanyahu will wink at the settler extremists, who know all too well how to provoke their Palestinian neighbors
How will all of this be ignited? The fast-track option for Netanyahu is Jerusalem. This is the tried and tested way to set the West Bank on fire. Ramadan is approaching. Tensions in the Old City will rise, as ever. This may well be the time for Netanyahu to foment the explosion. He has done so before. In some ways, it would be the reverse of 2014, when Jerusalem got out of control and Netanyahu turned to invading Gaza. This time, smashing up Jerusalem may follow Gaza.
The radioactive core of this will be Al-Aqsa. Any actions or even rumors of actions to change the status quo there typically leads to a Palestinian reaction. Netanyahu will wink at the settler extremists, who know all too well how to provoke their Palestinian neighbors.
The other old city that could be set alight is in Hebron. This is home to some of the most violent extremist settlers, the ideological brethren of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. They also see an opportunity to eject the Palestinians from the center of this ancient Palestinian city.
Ben-Gvir can sense an opportunity to foment discord. “We should not allow residents from the (Palestinian) Authority to enter Israel in any way” during Ramadan, he said. “We cannot take chances and risks … It can’t be that women and children are hostages in Gaza and we allow Hamas victory celebrations on the Temple Mount.” Israeli media reports suggest Netanyahu agrees with him. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians worship at Al-Aqsa during Ramadan. In recent years, this month has been particularly fraught.
All this is massively dangerous, including for Israel. Inflaming the West Bank and violating Al-Aqsa could tip the whole region to the upper levels of conflict. How will Hezbollah react, let alone other groups?
Can anything or anyone stop Netanyahu taking the region onto this perilous roller coaster ride? The answer is yes, but the signs that this will happen are slim. His Israeli opponents have not kicked him out. President Joe Biden has all the tools, all the levers. The questions are about his motivation and will. As yet, both have been found wanting. So, do not be surprised when the carnage shifts from Gaza to the West Bank. Netanyahu needs a forever war and he knows how to deliver.
*Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London. X: @Doylech

The second candle and the international jungle
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper/February 19, 2024
The masters of the profession taught us not to fall under the weight of the event, not to jump to hasty final conclusions and to put the scene within the context of history and geography. We must pay attention to the deep spirit in the arena of events, the arsenal of hatred and the temptation of revenge. Thus, we were trained to feel some anxiety when confronted with coups and earthquakes. I was part of a press delegation shortly after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war. On the Iranian side of the border, I witnessed two Iraqi soldiers escort an old Iranian man “to a safe place” from his house, where he was hiding. The man’s face showed signs of fear and humiliation, and I wondered about the extent of revenge Iran would carry out when it had the opportunity.
Decades later, the world watched Gen. Qassem Soleimani dancing with the Iraqi militias after the withdrawal of the American forces that had uprooted Saddam Hussein’s regime.
I was also worried when the US military pounced on Saddam’s regime based on accounts that it had ties to Al-Qaeda and possessed mobile biological weapons facilities. Some victories carry within them signs of their eventual collapse, especially when the party with enormous power fails to understand what is taking place underneath the scene of its victory.
I also felt anxious as I was leaving a meeting with a Syrian official and received a phone message saying Rafik Hariri had been assassinated in Beirut.
I was worried when I traveled from the Middle East to witness the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It was no secret that the wall was both a state border and an imperial frontier. Empires do not usually disappear without bloody feasts, even if they are delayed. I did not know that day that a young KGB officer had quickly destroyed his documents near where he was stationed by the wall and fled back into Russia’s depths. The officer’s name was Vladimir Putin.
I remembered the masters’ lessons when I walked down Arbat Street in Moscow under Boris Yeltsin. The sight of Red Army officers’ uniforms displayed with their medals for a handful of dollars was cruel and terrible. History is a strict teacher. Russia scratches its wounds under the snow and then rises to start a great fire. And this is what happened.
In a few days, Putin will extinguish the second candle of the “special military operation” that he launched on Feb. 24, 2022, to correct both history and geography. He dispatched the Red Army to chase the “Nazis” in Ukraine, which he asserted was a country that would not have existed had it not been for a mistake committed by Stalin. After the advisers leave, he will celebrate alone. The czar is always one and alone. He will smile sarcastically. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week ordered his forces to withdraw from the city of Avdiivka in front of Russian forces after aid and ammunition were delayed due to the “wars” raging in the corridors of the US Congress.
Russia scratches its wounds under the snow and then rises to start a great fire. And this is what happened.
Zelensky’s position reminded me of a remark made by late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, that “the one who is covered by the Americans is naked.” The same phrase could be said by Putin to Zelensky.
Putin has the right to be sarcastic. The leaders of the West did not accept that he could not lose … that he went to Ukraine to punish the entire West and to launch a major coup against a world that was born from the collapse of the wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union.
Most likely, he will also ridicule the “comrades” who were quick to surrender and made it easy for their countries to jump off the Soviet train. He will also mock those who danced with joy at joining the NATO paradise under the American era. He has the right to ridicule those who, in the wake of his forces’ invasion of Ukrainian territory, were quick to believe that he had committed the mistake of his life and his setback near Kyiv would push him to accept a settlement to save face.
Putin has the right to mock those who flocked to the Ukrainian capital, believing that the time had come to discipline the man sitting on Stalin’s throne. He also has the right to mock those who besieged Russia with color revolutions and NATO experts. Today, they are discovering that he is advancing to besiege them by manipulating the borders of the Ukrainian map.
He has the right to celebrate because he seemed to be a master at circumventing Western sanctions, at concealing the number of Russian casualties from his people … because the performance of his country’s economy surpassed experts’ expectations … because his ability to produce munitions far exceeds that of the aging continent, which is consumed by fear of the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the Oval Office. There is no harm in the Kremlin master resorting to the arsenal of Kim Il Sung’s heir or drones from the countries of Ayatollah Khomeini’s successors. Your only mission in war is to win. He brilliantly exploited his country’s massive nuclear arsenal to deter the West from committing the adventure of victory. A nuclear arsenal is useful without even using it. This message is extremely dangerous for the future of the world.
A journalist monitors the pulse of the world and reports to readers. Are we exaggerating if we say that the world is passing a very dangerous turning point? How can we be reassured in a world that has lived for months with this horrific massacre in Gaza and is unable or reluctant to rein in the Israeli killing machine?
Moreover, the fragility of the Middle East does not need evidence. There is no international police guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. International legitimacy does not have the ability to stop roaming missiles and drones traveling in many directions.
The Russian coup through Ukraine is also accompanied by a coup led by the North Korean leader near the Asian powder kegs. Then, if the world concedes to Putin the right to redraw the Ukrainian map, how can it reject China’s right to restore Taiwan as a matter of “returning the branch to the origin?” The Gaza crisis also showed the scale of the Iranian coup in the Middle East. Iran is troubling America and Israel through four Arab maps.
Putin has the right to celebrate. But I wish he would worry a little. He engaged his country in a terrible arms race with the West, which continues to increase its defense budgets. The master of the Kremlin, who is the master of missiles, should pay a little attention to the fact that the West’s capabilities are enormous, especially their technological power. The Soviet Union was not killed in war, but in the battle for the model and prosperity.
Putin has the right to celebrate. The Wagner leader came and went. Alexei Navalny came and went. Russia has a weak memory.
• Ghassan Charbel is editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
X: @GhasanCharbel

Iraq’s positive trajectory serves as a beacon of hope
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/February 19, 2024
Iraq is moving in a direction aimed at fostering socioeconomic developments. One of the key pillars of the country’s transformation lies in its approach to attracting foreign direct investment and prioritizing infrastructure development, thereby setting the stage for sustainable growth and improved living standards for its citizens. In a landmark move signaling the commitment of Iraqi authorities to the nation’s development, the parliament last year approved a record-breaking budget for the years 2023 to 2025. This historic budget, totaling 198.9 trillion Iraqi dinars ($153 billion), earmarks substantial funds for critical infrastructure projects and expansion of the public sector.
With Iraq’s population projected to double by 2050, the allocation of resources to infrastructure development is not only a necessity but a strategic imperative.
The significance of this budget cannot be overstated. First of all, decades of underinvestment have left the nation’s infrastructure in dire need of repair and modernization. Roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and utilities have suffered neglect, hindering economic growth and impeding social progress.
By prioritizing infrastructure development, the government is laying the groundwork for a more resilient and prosperous Iraq that is capable of accommodating its burgeoning population and fostering economic diversification.
By prioritizing infrastructure development, the government is laying the groundwork for a more resilient and prosperous Iraq
It is also important to point out that the plan to recruit more than half a million new public sector workers underscores the government’s commitment to addressing unemployment and bolstering public services. This creation of jobs will not only reduce unemployment but also stimulate consumer spending and drive demand, further fueling economic growth.
Secondly, the Iraqi administration has embarked on a resolute campaign to tackle corruption, acknowledging that this not only impedes development but also corrodes public trust in governmental institutions. Corruption diverts valuable resources from essential public services and serves as a significant deterrent to potential investors by undermining confidence in the integrity and transparency of the business environment.
Anti-corruption efforts are a fundamental pillar of effective governance. The restoration of accountability, transparency and ethical conduct are prerequisites for attracting foreign direct investment and fostering a conducive climate for business growth and investment.
The Iraqi administration’s multifaceted anti-corruption approach, which aims to root out malfeasance at all levels of government, includes reforms within the state institutions responsible for combating corruption, stringent rules on financial disclosures by senior officials and the establishment of a specialized security force dedicated to investigating corruption cases.
These measures have sent the clear message that corruption will not be tolerated and perpetrators will be held accountable. The important issue here is that cracking down on corruption not only restores confidence in Iraqi governance, it also makes the country more attractive to foreign investors. In other words, transparency and accountability are cornerstones of a thriving investment climate and Iraq’s commitment to upholding these principles is a testament to its seriousness about reforms and progress.
In addition, recognizing the need for diversification and sustainable growth, Iraqi authorities have embarked on ambitious initiatives designed to attract foreign investment and forge international partnerships. One such endeavor is the Development Road project, a large-scale infrastructure initiative that aims to improve connectivity and enhance Iraq’s geoeconomic significance.
Iraq’s positive trajectory is a testament to the resilience and determination of this nation and its people
The project represents a pivotal step in Iraq’s journey toward economic diversification and global integration. Its twofold objective is to reduce the country’s reliance on oil revenue while simultaneously elevating Iraq’s stature as a pivotal nexus for regional and international trade.
Strategically located at the crossroads between the Gulf, Asia and Europe, Iraq offers inherent advantages as a transit point for goods and commodities. By capitalizing on this advantageous geographical position, the Development Road project seeks to harness the full potential of transit trade and logistics, thereby unlocking previously untapped revenue streams and catalyzing economic expansion.
Through the development of modern transportation infrastructure and logistical networks, Iraq’s aspirations include streamlined trade flows, reduced costs and enhanced efficiency, thereby attracting investment and fostering sustainable growth.
In doing so, Iraq will not only mitigate the risks associated with overreliance on oil but also diversify its economy, fortifying its resilience against external shocks and laying the foundation for a more prosperous future.
Partnerships that have been forged with foreign stakeholders, notably including China, also exemplify Iraq’s steadfast dedication to fostering robust international cooperation aimed at mutual prosperity. These collaborations represent a strategic alignment of interests, wherein Iraq seeks to leverage the expertise, resources and technological advancements of foreign partners to advance its own developmental goals.
By engaging in joint endeavors encompassing infrastructure projects, investment initiatives and technological exchanges, Iraq is poised to reap multifaceted benefits that extend beyond mere economic gains.
Through such partnerships, the country can also gain access to cutting-edge technologies, best practices and innovative solutions, thereby enhancing its capacity for sustainable development and bolstering its competitive edge in the global arena. Moreover, these collaborations facilitate the transfer of knowledge, enhancement of skills and development of human capital, thereby empowering Iraq to build a more resilient and dynamic economy capable of weathering future challenges.
By embracing a collaborative approach to international engagement, therefore, Iraq not only fosters mutual prosperity but also reinforces its position as a key player on the global stage.
By prioritizing infrastructure development, combating corruption and fostering foreign investment, Iraq is laying the groundwork for sustainable growth and prosperity. As the nation continues down its path of reform and renewal, it serves as a beacon of hope. Iraq’s positive trajectory is a testament to the resilience and determination of this nation and its people.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian American political scientist. X: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Iranian elections and the challenges of popular discontent
Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab News/February 19, 2024
Two elections will be held in Iran on March 1. These elections will be the first to be held since the outbreak of the national uprising following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian-Kurdish woman, in September 2022. To avoid any risk of protests and to protect the system (“nezam”) from internal turbulence, the Guardian Council has filtered the candidates for these two elections and eliminated most of the critical candidates and moderate voices. The other objective is to have the shortest electoral period possible to control the political process and avoid the emergence of spontaneous critics during the electoral campaign. For the parliamentary elections, the campaign for candidates for the 2024-2028 legislature will be launched on Feb. 22 and will last for one week. The Guardian Council has announced that the candidacies of 14,912 people have been accepted to contest the 290 seats.
According to IRNA, Ali Motahari will be the head of the list of the political current close to Ali Larijani, the former speaker of the Iranian parliament who is considered to be a moderate conservative. Motahari, a former moderate deputy and a controversial figure, was disqualified from the 2020 legislative elections, but his candidacy has been validated for the upcoming vote.
Despite the presence of Motahari, most of the moderate candidates have been excluded. The Etemad newspaper published a press release signed by 110 “moderate” political and civic activists, in which they denounced the “purge” of candidates carried out by the Guardian Council. The paradox of the moderate political voices from the establishment of the Islamic Republic is that, despite their marginalization from the political system, they continue to call for a high turnout in the elections.
Despite the presence of Motahari, most of the moderate candidates have been excluded
Concerning the election for the Assembly of Experts, the disqualification of former President Hassan Rouhani is a blow for the future of the moderate factions of the Islamic Republic, especially in the context of the succession of the supreme leader. Rouhani was considered as a potential successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he was president from 2013 until 2021. This exclusion opens a new era of consolidation of power for the Iranian hard-liners and reinforces the candidacy of President Ebrahim Raisi, as well as that of Mojtaba Khamenei, to succeed the aging Khamenei.
According to official Iranian media, Rouhani has sent two letters to the Guardian Council asking it to present the reasons for his disqualification. Furthermore, the Association of Combatant Clergy, a conservative body, and the Society of Teachers of the Qom Seminary published a joint list for the 16 seats in Tehran for the Assembly of Experts. On this list appears the name of Mostafa Pourmohammadi, whose candidacy was initially rejected by the Guardian Council but later accepted after an appeal. Nevertheless, only 26 candidates have been approved to contest the 16 available seats in Tehran.
The official narrative promoted by Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi considers that “election engineering” is the enemy’s keyword to reduce voter turnout. Despite this narrative, the challenge of participation will be the second main factor determining the future of elections in the Islamic Republic after the supreme leader’s succession. According to a recent independent survey on participation in the upcoming elections, the turnout will be the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic. The poll found that only about 15 percent of Iranian voters intend to vote in the parliamentary elections, while 77 percent said they would not vote and about 8 percent are undecided.
Moreover, according to the government’s official polls, participation in the elections process will be at its lowest level since the revolution in 1979. The Iranian Students Polling Agency recently announced that only 27.9 percent of the Iranian people said they would participate in the elections. In contrast, 36 percent said they would not participate at all. A regime insider has mentioned that turnout in the parliamentary election is likely to be as low as 15 percent in the capital.
A regime insider has mentioned that turnout is likely to be as low as 15 percent in the capital
This low participation rate is a consequence of the supreme leader’s choice not to have any internal competition, so that he can focus on the unity of the establishment and organize an orderly succession process. The economic crisis and the weakening of the national currency in the context of the regional tensions will also be a defining factor in the decision of Iranian citizens to participate or not in the upcoming elections.
The reformist factions will not participate in the parliamentary elections because they consider that the system is not open and fair. Despite this decision, most Iranian opponents have already lost faith in the possibility of reform in the Islamic Republic, even on economic and social issues. The failure of the reform movement is one of the factors explaining the outbreak of anti-system protests between December 2017 and the fall of 2022.
Despite the lack of popular support for the reformist factions, they were banned from participating in the 2020 parliamentary elections, as well as the presidential election of 2021. The 2024 elections will open a new era of the hard-liners’ total control of the political system, thus ensuring the reelection of Raisi in 2025, his accession to the presidency of the Assembly of Experts — putting him in charge of choosing the next supreme leader — and the promotion of a hard-liner to the position of supreme leader after the end of Khamenei’s tenure.
The only uncertainty regarding the parliamentary elections seems to be about the reelection of Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, as some radical conservatives want to remove him from his position. This internal conservative struggle will contribute further to public disaffection and alienation, especially against the backdrop of the publication of the salaries of Iranian lawmakers. They receive a monthly salary of more than 2 billion rials per month, or about $4,000. This is more than 20 times the salary of an ordinary government employee.
The rise of economic inequalities in Iranian society, as well as the perceived privileges of political figures, will probably increase the gap between the political elite and most of the Iranian population, despite the regime’s efforts to ensure a massive turnout in the upcoming elections.
*Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami is the founder and president of the International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah). X: @mohalsulami