Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on January 28-29.2024
Video & Text/After the attack on the Al-Tanaf Base, President Biden confronts a brazen challenge from Iran: either surrender and flatter the Mullahs or take punitive measures to bring down their terrorist and jihadist regime./Elias Bejjani/January 29, 2024
Etienne Saqr - Abu Arz: How long will our Lebanese people remain silent about the farce of appointing the president by foreign ambassadors?/Etienne Saqr - Abu Arz/January 28, 2024
Patriarch Rai: Our hearts bleed for the residents of the border villages, and we do everything in our power to assist them in every possible way
Bishop Aoudi: The Crime of the Port is a Shame on Our State and Some of Our Judges; Can a Country Be Built Without Leadership, a Government with Plans, and a Just Judiciary?
Arab Intelligence warns Hezbollah of potential Israeli operation in Lebanon: LBCI’s sources
Saudi Ambassador's moves for Quintet Committee meeting: 'Defining' the next President
Le Drian is returning to Lebanon
South Lebanon escalation: Hezbollah-Israel confrontation intensifies as Netanyahu prolongs war for 'political gain'
Lebanon commends South Africa's efforts in ICJ case, seeks immediate action to 'halt Gaza genocide'
Israeli airstrikes and shelling target southern towns as Hezbollah attacks post

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 28-29.2024
Three US troops killed in Jordan, Biden vows reprisal
3 US troops killed, many hurt in drone attack in 'Jordan'
President Biden Vows Response to Killing of US Soldiers in Jordan
Biden risks deepening Middle East conflict with pressure to respond to deadly troop attack
Israeli Military Intensifies Operations in Khan Yunis Amidst International Pressure and Internal Debates
Red Sea Crisis: Economic and Geopolitical Implications Beyond Gaza
Masked gunmen kill one person in Istanbul church -Turkish interior minister
Pope expresses support for church attacked in Istanbul
German state broadcaster urges Israel to let 2 workers leave Gaza
80% of Hamas’ tunnel system intact, officials say
US sees signs of progress on deal to release hostages, bring temporary pause to Israel-Hamas war
US says its Israel policy unchanged after report on leveraging weapon sales
20,000 march in Spanish capital against Gaza ‘genocide’
Royal Navy ‘scandal’ sees UK ships unable to strike Houthis in Yemen
Iran Guards seize foreign vessel carrying ‘smuggled’ fuel
Yemeni leader urges military action to stop Houthis’ Red Sea attacks
US, Israel, Egypt, Qatar officials in Gaza talks in Paris: sourcesIsrael’s ensuing military
Israel pressures Qatar over Gaza hostages ahead of spy chiefs’ meeting
US sees signs of progress on deal to release hostages, bring temporary pause to Israel-Hamas war
Don’t punish UNRWA for alleged actions of 12 workers: Jordan FMDon’t punish UNRWA for alleged actions of 12 workers: Jordan FM
Saudi, Egyptian foreign ministers call for ceasefire in Gaza
Iran wraps up trial of Swedish EU diplomat
Fear, uncertainty and grief year after Turkiye’s quake
Britain: A warship repelled a Houthi drone attack in the Red Sea
Iraq and US begin formal talks to end coalition mission
Canada’s reversal on defense exports to Turkiye marks strategic shift within NATO
Iran says it has launched 3 satellites into space as tensions grip wider Mideast
North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off east coast
Egypt at a Crossroads: Economic Challenges and Geopolitical Pressures
South Korea says North Korea has fired several cruise missiles into the sea
Rare snowless winter threatens livelihoods of thousands in Kashmir’s ski town
India’s united opposition faces major setback

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on January 28-29.2024
Frankly Speaking: Are Palestinian Christians facing extinction?/ARAB NEWS/January 28, 2024
Education can be the path toward a more peaceful future/Ehtesham Shahid/Arab News/January 28, 2024
Environmental devastation of war should not be overlooked/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/January 28, 2024
Civilian Deaths in Gaza: Relatively Low/Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute./January 28, 2024
Oct. 7 Was Worse Than a Terror Attack. It Was a Pogrom./Deborah Danan/The Tablet/January 28/2024
No justification for Europe to cling on to colonial-era treasures/Ranvir S. NayarArab News/January 28, 2024
The Ukraine crisis is going nowhere fast/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/January 28, 2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on January 28-29.2024
Video & Text/After the attack on the Al-Tanaf Base, President Biden confronts a brazen challenge from Iran: either surrender and flatter the Mullahs or take punitive measures to bring down their terrorist and jihadist regime.
Elias Bejjani/January 29, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/126497/126497/
As one reaps the whirlwind by sowing the wind, those who engage in flattery, surrender, and submission to the evil jihadist schemes of the Iranian terrorist, fundamentalist, and sectarian regime, a reality evident in both the current Biden administration and the preceding Obama administration, are bound to face inevitable consequences. These consequences include humiliation, disappointment, defeat, human losses, the tarnishing of the USA's esteemed reputation, the propagation of a culture of death, terrorism, hatred, rejection of others, wars, and deadly delusions of Iranian expansionism.
This grim reality is reflected in the actions of both Democratic Presidents Biden and Obama in dealing with the criminal, repressive, and expansionist Iranian Mullahs. Throughout their tenures, strategic miscalculations, mischievous decisions, and fatal stances unfolded:
1-The Iranian Mullahs were allowed to challenge the United States directly, leading to attacks on U.S. soldiers and bases in the Middle East.
2-Billions of dollars were funneled to the Mullahs, sanctions were lifted, and their violations were overlooked.
3-The Mullahs were given free rein to spread chaos in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza.
4-They occupied Iraq, controlled its government, and turned a blind eye to over 45 fundamentalist Shia jihadist terrorist organizations operating under the name of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which attacked U.S. bases without facing consequences.
5-In Syria, the Mullahs were allowed to sow corruption, chaos, displacement, ethnic and sectarian cleansing, and support criminal militias like Hezbollah.
6-Complete freedom was granted to finance the terrorist and jihadist Hamas movement, leading to an invasion of Israel and unprecedented humanitarian disasters for the Palestinians.
7-The Yemeni Houthis were removed from terrorism lists, allowing Iran to control them and turn them into a terrorist threat.
8-Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, was allowed to occupy Lebanon, dismantle its state, control its borders, and terrorize its people.
In summary, the Obama and Biden administrations endorsed the crimes, terrorism, fundamentalism, barbarism, expansionism schemes, and jihadism of the Iranian regime. They prevented international justice from holding Iran accountable for its actions, aiding in the expansion of Iranian influence to the point of targeting the U.S. Al-Tanaf base, resulting in the death and injury of American soldiers and civilians.
Today, America faces a choice: either strike the head of the Iranian snake within Iran itself and eliminate this cancerous jihadist and terrorist threat, or allow the Mullahs the freedom to exert military and sectarian control over the entire Middle East, transforming into a nuclear state that threatens not only the region but also global peace, stability, and security.
**The writer, Elias Bejjani, is a Lebanese expatriate activist.
Writer's email address: Phoenicia@hotmail.com
Link to the writer's website: http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com

Etienne Saqr - Abu Arz: How long will our Lebanese people remain silent about the farce of appointing the president by foreign ambassadors?
Etienne Saqr - Abu Arz/January 28, 2024
What a Shame
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/126491/126491/
The ambassadors of the Quintet committee pave the way for announcing the qualifications and stances of the new Lebanese president.
Every time we read this news, we feel ashamed and humiliated, and we wonder: How long will our people remain silent about the farce of appointing the president by foreign ambassadors, until it becomes a familiar and acceptable reality?
And how long this humiliating and unique phenomenon will continue and persist?
And how long will the honorable people in our country remain silent and content with this abnormal and disgraceful reality as if it were a predetermined fate?
When will the October 17 revolution return to the streets and squares to overturn the table on the head of this despicable ruling system, leading the country to the path of salvation?
Friends of Lebanon ask us every day, "Why are you surrendering to this reality? Solutions always start from within, and if you don't help yourselves, no one will help you... What are you waiting for?"
These are crucial questions that demand answers, and our answer is: If the people ever want life, they must inevitably challenge destiny, not submit to it.
For you, Lebanon.
Etienne Saqr - Abu Arz
(Free translation from Arabic by: Elias Bejjani)

Patriarch Rai: Our hearts bleed for the residents of the border villages, and we do everything in our power to assist them in every possible way
NNA/January 28, 2024
Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai presided over Sunday's Mass at Our Lady's Church in the patriarchal headquarters in Bkerke. He was assisted by Bishops Samir Mazloum and Hanna Alwan, with the participation of several bishops, priests, and nuns. The sermon, titled "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" (Matthew 25:35), focused on social love as a cornerstone for comprehensive personal growth, liberating individuals from obstacles hindering their human, cultural, economic, and moral development. The Patriarch highlighted the role of the state and its officials in serving citizens by ensuring dignified living conditions and overall personal growth. He expressed sorrow over the dire situation in Lebanon, blaming corrupt individuals who exploit the crippled state, preventing the election of a president to continue their mismanagement. Patriarch Rai conveyed the pain of residents in southern border villages who feel abandoned by the state and its neglect of responsibilities. He quoted letters from the villagers expressing the psychological pressures of war and the daily horrors they endure, especially the impact on children's education due to forced school closures. The Patriarch denounced the failure, chaos, and anxiety resulting from this distressing reality and called for urgent action to address the grievances of the border villages. He expressed solidarity and commitment to assisting them through various means in collaboration with those with good intentions.
Patriarch Rai also criticized the closure of real estate departments in Mount Lebanon, demanding the Ministry of Finance to address the blatant negligence. He questioned the intentional destruction of state institutions by some officials, emphasizing the need for rectification amid the presidential vacancy and general disorder. Patriarch Rai concluded by offering prayers for divine grace to enable them to see the face of Christ in the faces of "our younger brothers" and to serve them with love and humility.

Bishop Aoudi: The Crime of the Port is a Shame on Our State and Some of Our Judges; Can a Country Be Built Without Leadership, a Government with Plans, and a Just Judiciary?
NNA/January 28, 2024
Bishop Elias Aoudi, the Orthodox Archbishop of Beirut and its surroundings, led the Mass at St. George's Cathedral in the presence of a congregation of believers. Following the Holy Gospel, Aoudi delivered a sermon in which he stated, "Spiritual insight is a gift from God that many lack, preventing them from recognizing the truth, which is Christ, the God who enlightens our hearts and grants us wisdom, understanding, and the ability to discern. In the darkness of the days we live in, only the light of the Lord can illuminate our path, and only the Lord can ask us: 'What do you want me to do for you?' Let our answer to this question be connected to the salvation of our souls, so that when saved, we act guided by the divine light for the salvation of this country." He emphasized that souls tainted by sin are unable to see clearly, leading the country into the abyss, driven by its sins and interests. Aoudi asserted that the salvation of the country can only come through purified souls, repentant and remorseful, with minds enlightened, hearts compassionate, and thoughts pure, working to find solutions to the country's problems instead of pursuing personal interests and competing for influence.
The Metropolitan questioned whether a country can be built without effective leadership to coordinate the ruling group and unify the body's members. He also questioned the possibility of building a country without a government that formulates and implements reform plans, as opposed to drafting budgets that, as most MPs agree, are disastrous for the country. Aoudi further questioned whether a country can be built without a just and impartial judiciary that does not remain silent in the face of injustice or compromise the truth. He deemed the crime of the port as a disgrace to the country and some judges, not only for failing in their duty to uncover the truth and administer justice but also for contributing to its cover-up, obstructing the investigation due to the political influence wielded by those in power who avoid appearing before the investigating judge. Aoudi criticized the disregard shown towards the victims' lives and the lack of importance given to the pain of their families. He lamented that those injured have not received justice or attention from the state, with some still suffering.
In conclusion, Aoudi called for trust in the Lord at all times, urging people to cry out to Him alone, not towards any earthly leader, as He is the merciful Savior with no savior but Him. He encouraged believers to believe in Him, placing all their hopes on Him and seeking Him, as guided by our Holy Scriptures.

Arab Intelligence warns Hezbollah of potential Israeli operation in Lebanon: LBCI’s sources
LBCI/January 28, 2024
Recent intelligence gathered by major global powers indicates that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with the Israeli army, is prepared to initiate a war against Lebanon. This action hinges on their inability to compel Hezbollah to comply with United Nations Resolution 1701. LBCI has obtained sources revealing that an unnamed Arab nation has provided intelligence to Hezbollah. This information points towards Tel Aviv's plans to launch a significant military operation within Lebanon, potentially escalating tensions in the region. With these developments unfolding, February is expected to be a pivotal month, particularly with the anticipated return of US envoy Amos Hochstein and French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian to Beirut. Their presence underscores the critical balance between diplomatic efforts and the looming possibility of war. The international community is closely monitoring the situation, awaiting the outcomes of these diplomatic engagements.

Saudi Ambassador's moves for Quintet Committee meeting: 'Defining' the next President
LBCI/January 28, 2024
The Quintet Committee is attempting "to accomplish the challenging task of determining the specifications for the next President, as expectations vary regarding the timing of the election and the handover of governance 'in any of the four seasons,'" according to the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Anbaa. This article was originally published in and translated from the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Anbaa. In this context, the movements of the Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Bukhari, come as a prelude to the expected meeting of the Quintet Committee next month, if not postponed. For this purpose, he held a consultative meeting with the ambassadors of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in Lebanon, Omani Ahmed bin Mohammed Al-Saadi and Qatari Saud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in addition to charge d'affaires in Beirut, Abdullah Al-Shaheen.
He also visited the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, Youssef Absi, at his residence. Therefore, the Arab and international movements indicate that the "knot" of linking the presidential file to stopping the war will automatically be "untied" if the Lebanese agree to overcome this dilemma.
According to the opinion of a French guest in a special council meeting, "You, the Lebanese, allowed us and others to intervene in your affairs [...] Countries act in line with their interests."

Le Drian is returning to Lebanon
LBCI/January 28, 2024
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Anbaa has learned that the French presidential envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, is returning to Lebanon, and the French Embassy in Beirut has initiated the necessary preparations for his visit. This article was originally published in and translated from the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Anbaa. The information indicates that "the outcome is known in advance, involving more procrastination and wasting additional time without reaching presidential elections amid ongoing internal division and the lack of 'maturity' in external consensus."

South Lebanon escalation: Hezbollah-Israel confrontation intensifies as Netanyahu prolongs war for 'political gain'
LBCI/January 28, 2024
Despite the International Court of Justice's decision in the South Africa lawsuit against Israel and its significance, it remained limited in providing effective measures to halt Israeli occupation from continuing its acts of genocide. This article was originally published in and translated from Lebanese online newspaper Al-Anbaa. It is expected that Tel Aviv will dismiss it and continue its war against the Palestinian people. Israel's history of violating international laws and norms, coupled with the Israeli officials' reactions to the court's decision and the ongoing intentional killing of civilians in Gaza, clearly indicates that the Israeli entity will not adhere to the court's calls. While the United States and some of its allies encouraged Tel Aviv in its genocidal war through unconditional support given after October 7, this criminal policy faced a different trajectory from Washington and some Western countries, highlighted Al-Anbaa. They suspended funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) under the pretext of investigating the agency's employees' involvement in the October 7 events. This decision is expected to impact UNRWA's operations in the coming months, adding to the already difficult humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which have reached the brink of famine. On the southern front in Lebanon, the intensification of military confrontations between Hezbollah and Israel, along with the expanding scope of these confrontations, has shifted more attention to the south.
This is particularly true in light of escalating threats from both political and military leadership in Israel. Al-Anbaa security sources highlighted the "dangerous field situation in the south" amid information about Israel reinforcing its forces in northern occupied Palestine to face Hezbollah, which has begun using precision-guided missiles and drones that accurately hit its targets for the first time. This suggests that the escalation on both sides of the southern borders is reaching critical levels, resembling a prelude to a storm unless international pressure succeeds in forcing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war government to ease their "aggressive intentions" towards Lebanon and opt for negotiations on border demarcation, the implementation of Resolution 1701, and resolving disputed points in exchange for a genuine ceasefire in Gaza, the sources added.
Sources revealed that Netanyahu, who pledged to the families of Israeli captives to work for their release through all military and diplomatic means, is now convinced that expanding fronts and prolonging the war in Gaza and southern Lebanon ultimately serve his political future.
He believes that his victory in leaving the battle as a winner depends solely on limiting the military role of Hamas and Hezbollah, thereby enhancing his political position.
This indicates that the war, despite the losses Israel has suffered in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the war on Gaza, continues, as sought by Netanyahu, the sources indicated. Growing concerns about the widening scope of the war were expressed by MP Bilal Houshaymi, who told Al-Anbaa that the fear of expanding field confrontations in southern Lebanon is justified.  This is a result of Netanyahu's determination to achieve some form of victory to preserve his political future, explaining the international pressure on Lebanese officials not to allow Hezbollah to be dragged into a war with Israel, especially if it intends to attack Israel and cross the borders towards occupied Palestine.  This could lead to Israel declaring war in conjunction with Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which forced the entire world to stand by it. Houshaymi stated, "We are facing an enemy prime minister who has nothing to lose and is trying to provoke Hezbollah by all means." He considered that Hezbollah knows Netanyahu's plans, which is why it leads the confrontations with Israel with restraint "despite the high cost it incurs in the clashes with the enemy."Houshaymi reminded that Netanyahu, who waged a destructive war on Gaza for 115 days, resulted in the deaths of over 25,000 martyrs and the destruction of three-quarters of Gaza, including hospitals, schools, all official and private institutions, UNRWA offices, and entire residential neighborhoods.  The Hague court only condemned Israel without demanding a ceasefire, indicating ongoing unparalleled international support for Israel, both media and political, he said. Regarding the presidential file, Houshaymi commented on the movement of the Quintet Committee and whether there are signs of a solution, stating that the committee "will not reach a result because it began its efforts to elect a president since last February, a year ago, and nothing has changed. On the contrary, matters are becoming more complicated." He expressed his hope for the election of a president "today rather than tomorrow," questioning the fate of the responses submitted to the French envoy in response to his questions about the president's specifications.
Houshaymi considered that "if the US administration really wants to elect a president, it could be done in less than two weeks, and the experience of extending the term of Army Commander General Joseph Aoun is the best evidence of that."
He pointed out that current US efforts are currently focused on implementing Resolution 1701 in the region controlled by Hezbollah. This requires negotiations with Iran rather than Hezbollah because it is the only force that can tell Hezbollah to withdraw from this point to that. The US knows this well, and therefore, Houshaymi excludes the election of a president. In any case, the local reality remains burdened with crises, the weight of risks increasing the possibilities of war expansion. Therefore, a rational approach must be adopted internally to address local crises, not only to find solutions to people's concerns and fortify state institutions but also to prepare for war risks.

Lebanon commends South Africa's efforts in ICJ case, seeks immediate action to 'halt Gaza genocide'
LBCI/January 28, 2024
In a statement, Lebanon's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants welcomed the interim measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case brought by South Africa against Israel, aiming to prevent the commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the non-compliance with obligations outlined in the Genocide Convention. The Ministry urged the United Nations and the international community to take immediate action "to ensure the implementation of these interim measures to prevent crimes such as the killing of Palestinians and subjecting them to inhumane conditions, including deprivation of food, water, and medicine, to force them into forced migration outside the Gaza Strip." The Ministry also praised South Africa's efforts. It emphasized that it had hoped the measures would compel Israel to an immediate ceasefire as a first step towards a just and comprehensive resolution of the Palestinian issue. This resolution should align with relevant United Nations resolutions, establishing an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. It stated that such a state would be capable of establishing security, peace, and prosperity in the Middle East region.

Israeli airstrikes and shelling target southern towns as Hezbollah attacks post
Naharnet/January 28, 2024
Israeli warplane and drone strikes as well as artillery shelling on Sunday targeted several Lebanese southern towns near the frontier. At dawn, an Israeli drone bombed a supermarket between the towns of Tayr Harfa and al-Jibbain, causing major damage to the building and affecting the neighboring buildings. And as artillery shelling targeted homes in al-Dhayra, the Israeli army fired machineguns at the town of Kfarkela. Airstrikes also targeted the area between Ramia, Aita al-Shaab and al-Qawzah, an agricultural land in Houla and the outskirts of Zibqin, Majdal Zoun and Tayr Harfa, amid artillery shelling on Chihin, Umm al-Tout, Majdal Zoun and Tayr Harfa. Hezbollah later said that it targeted a gathering of Israeli troops east of the Birkat Risha post with missiles, achieving casualties. Since the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel on October 7, the Lebanese-Israeli border has witnessed a daily exchange of fire between Israel's army and Hezbollah. At least 206 people have been killed in south Lebanon, 151 of them belonging to Hezbollah. The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of residents on both sides of the border and Israel has warned that it is ready to use military force to return its settlers to their homes.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 28-29.2024
Three US troops killed in Jordan, Biden vows reprisal
REUTERS/January 28, 2024
WASHINGTON: A drone attack on a base in Jordan killed three American troops on Sunday, with President Joe Biden blaming Iran-backed militants and vowing to hold the perpetrators to account. It is the first time American military personnel have been killed by hostile fire in the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and the incident will further raise tensions in the region and fuel fears of a broader conflict directly involving Iran. Hamas said the death of the soldiers shows Washington’s backing for Israel could put it at odds with the whole Muslim world if the Gaza war continues and that it could lead to a “regional explosion.”“While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq,” Biden said in a statement. “We will carry on their commitment to fight terrorism. And have no doubt — we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing,” the president added. US Central Command put the number of wounded from the attack near the Syrian border at 25, and said the identities of those killed will be withheld pending notification of their families.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the killing of the soldiers “is a message to the American administration that unless the killing of innocent people in Gaza stops, it may be faced with the entire (Muslim) nation.” “The continuation of the American-Zionist aggression on Gaza risks a regional explosion,” Abu Zuhri said in a statement. US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria have been targeted in more than 150 attacks since mid-October, according to the Pentagon, and Washington has carried out retaliatory strikes in both countries. Many of the attacks on US personnel have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-linked armed groups that oppose US support for Israel in the Gaza conflict. The latest round of the Israel-Hamas conflict began when the Palestinian group carried out a shock attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures. Following the attack, the United States rushed military aid to Israel, which has carried out a relentless military offensive that has killed at least 26,422 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Those deaths have sparked widespread anger across the region and stoked violence involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria as well as Yemen. The Lebanon portion of the conflict has been limited to near daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel, but American forces are directly involved in Iraq and Syria, as well as Yemen.Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia have carried out more than two months of attacks on shipping, saying they were hitting Israeli-linked vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza. The United States and Britain have responded with two rounds of joint strikes against the Houthis, while American forces have also carried out unilateral air raids against the rebels, who have also declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets. The growing violence in multiple parts of the Middle East has raised fears of a broader regional conflict directly involving Iran — a worst-case scenario that Washington is desperately seeking to avoid.

3 US troops killed, many hurt in drone attack in 'Jordan'
Associated Press/January 28, 2024
Three American service members were killed and "many" were wounded in a drone strike in Jordan, President Joe Biden said in a statement Sunday. He attributed the attack to Iran-backed militia groups. They were the first U.S. fatalities in months of strikes against American forces across the Middle East by Iranian-backed militias amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, increasing the risk of escalation. U.S. officials were still working to conclusively identify the precise group responsible for the attack, but have assessed that one of several Iranian-backed groups are responsible.
Biden said the United States "will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing." There was no immediate reaction from Jordan, a kingdom bordering Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and Syria. U.S. troops long have used Jordan as a basing point, and the attack took place in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. U.S. Central Command said 25 service members were injured the attack in addition to the three killed. Some 3,000 American troops typically are stationed in Jordan. Jordanian state television quoted Muhannad Mubaidin, a government spokesman, as insisting the attack happened outside of the kingdom across the border in Syria. The conflicting information could not be immediately reconciled. Since Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip began, U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have faced drone and missile attacks on their bases. The attack on Jordan marks the first targeting American troops in Jordan during the war. Biden, who was in Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday, was briefed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. Syria is still in the midst of a civil war and long has been a launch pad for Iranian-backed forces there, including Lebanon's Hezbollah. Iraq has multiple Iranian-backed Shiite militias operating there as well. Jordan, a staunch Western ally and a crucial power in Jerusalem for its oversight of holy sites there, is suspected of launching airstrikes in Syria to disrupt drug smugglers, including one that killed nine people earlier this month.

President Biden Vows Response to Killing of US Soldiers in Jordan
AFP/January 28, 2024
President Joe Biden pledged on Sunday to respond after the killing of three US soldiers in a drone attack on a base in Jordan, attributing responsibility to Iran-backed factions. In a statement, Biden said, "Last night, three members of the US military were killed and others were injured in a drone attack on our forces stationed in northeastern Jordan," noting that the attack "was carried out by a group of extremist militants loyal to Iran operating in Syria and Iraq." He added, "There is no doubt that we will hold all responsible parties accountable in the time and manner we choose."

Biden risks deepening Middle East conflict with pressure to respond to deadly troop attack
Kevin Liptak, CNN/January 28, 2024
The deaths of three American troops in a drone attack Sunday has thrust the United States deeper into the Middle East conflict and lent fresh urgency to efforts at securing the release of hostages in Gaza in exchange for a prolonged halt in the fighting between Israel and Hamas. The confluence of intertwined events — high-stakes hostage talks in France were underway at the same time American officials were grappling with the troop deaths in Jordan — added up to one of the most charged moments since the outbreak of violence following Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks. Now, leaders in Washington and the Middle East are mulling choices that could significantly transform the situation, with thousands of lives and the future of the region in the balance. President Joe Biden, who vowed to respond to the drone attacks “at a time and in a manner of our choosing,” faces a decision on the scale of the American reprisal, which will have consequences both in the region and at home as he enters a tough reelection fight. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under intense pressure to strike an agreement that would secure the return of more than 100 remaining hostages inside Gaza, a step that will require a lengthy pause in Israel’s campaign against Hamas.
And in Tehran, leaders must determine whether a strategy of sowing instability in the region through proxy groups is bringing them closer to direct combat with the United States — a step American officials say Iran doesn’t want and which the country has gone to some lengths to avoid.
How each party proceeds in the coming days could significantly alter the trajectory of the Israel-Hamas war and the broader tensions it has sparked in the Middle East. The issues have been the subject of hours of intense Situation Room discussions and high-level talks between the leaders.
“This is a dangerous escalation. We’ve been trying to make sure this conflict doesn’t escalate. This pushes it much closer to that point,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said of the drone strikes in Jordan, which left more than 30 American service members injured in addition to the fatalities. “It’s imperative the US respond and find a way to stop these attacks, and I know the president’s working on that.”
Smith said the prospects of a widening war could not be separated from the situation in Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 26,000 people, according to the health ministry there, and triggered the rise in violence across the region. “What happens in Gaza is crucial,” said Smith. “The conflict in Gaza is empowering Iran right now. And that is bad for us, bad for Israel, bad for the Arab states, bad for the world. So finding a resolution to that is a crucial part of this challenge as well.”Speaking in the banquet hall of a Baptist church in South Carolina hours after the attacks, Biden left little question to his broad intentions: “We shall respond,” he said after asking for a moment of silence for the US troops killed. Yet what that response looks like is still being determined. There has been an imperative inside the White House to prevent the conflict from spreading — and a strong aversion to becoming directly involved in a regional war against Iran.
Already, Biden was coming under pressure to ratchet up the scale of American counterattack. Republicans on Sunday swiftly made calls for Biden to strike targets inside Iran, which the US has accused of being behind the proxy groups attacking American troops in Iraq and Syria.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urged the administration “to strike targets of significance inside Iran, not only as reprisal for the killing of our forces, but as deterrence against future aggression. The only thing the Iranian regime understands is force.”Sen. John Cornyn of Texas was blunter: “Target Tehran,” he wrote on X.For Biden, whose handling of the Gaza conflict has already generated anger on the political left as he enters his reelection campaign, the choice of how to respond will be fraught politically. American officials have said they have used backchannels to convey to Iran and its proxies that the attacks on US troops must stop. Yet those efforts appeared to do little to prevent the drone attacks, and officials inside the White House have long feared that one would eventually result in fatalities.
With that fear now realized, officials said the president was determined to respond forcefully. In a series of briefings Sunday from top members of his national security team, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Biden discussed the attacks and potential American responses.
At the same time, US officials remain hopeful they are inching closer to reaching a hostage agreement that would include a lengthy pause in the fighting in Gaza — and, they hope, an easing of tensions in the region. US officials believe a longer cessation in the fighting could provide space for more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza as well as continued discussions about the future of Israel’s campaign against Hamas. Biden dispatched CIA Director Bill Burns to Paris for talks Sunday on a plan that would include a phased release of all the remaining hostages in Gaza paired with a suspension of the war for two months, a proposal that if agreed to could have a significant impact on the future of the conflict. Afterward, the Israeli prime minister’s office described the talks as “constructive,” but said “significant gaps” remained. The parties will “continue to discuss at additional mutual meetings to be held this week,” the office’s announcement said. Qatar’s prime minister is expected to travel to Washington this week, a diplomatic source told CNN, as the discussions intensify. Qatar has acted as a key broker in talks with Hamas. Sunday’s meeting, which included Burns and his intelligence counterparts from Israel and Egypt along with the Qatari prime minister, was an important moment as the negotiations move closer to a deal. American officials said they were cautiously optimistic that the talks were moving in the right direction, and that an agreement could soon be in reach. As the deaths of the three American troops fuel fears of a widening regional war, US officials said there was now only more urgency in arriving at an agreement that could bring the tensions down. “This loss and the growing instability across the Middle East, make it even more clear why those negotiating a new pause in the fighting in Gaza and the return of the hostages must work with urgency,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat and former CIA analyst, said on X.

Israeli Military Intensifies Operations in Khan Yunis Amidst International Pressure and Internal Debates
LBCI/January 28, 2024
The Israeli army escalated its fighting in Khan Yunis, declaring it is engaged in tough and fierce battles. However, it progresses towards eliminating what remains of Hamas fighters, preparing to move to other areas within the Gaza Strip in the third phase of its ground operation.According to security and military officials, the army exercises caution following the decision of the International Court in The Hague, as it is obliged to submit monthly reports reaffirming its commitment not to engage in any operations leading to genocide. Meanwhile, the army awaits the anticipated progress in a prisoner exchange deal being negotiated in Paris by the United States, Qatar, Egypt, and Israel, with cautious optimism about its potential achievement. At the same time, the Israeli security cabinet discusses the post-Khan Yunis battle steps amid heated debates, ranging from imposing military rule on the Strip, as suggested by Minister Bezalel Smotrich, to declaring a clear vision to prevent Israel from being embroiled in Gaza's quagmire. However, Israel's current challenge lies in the Philadelphia Axis. Despite Egypt's rejection and warnings of a political crisis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu focuses on multiple external and internal fronts. He responds to Egypt with insistence on his country's security control over Philadelphia, then turns to the families of the hostages, accusing them of deepening internal rifts by demanding not only an immediate prisoner exchange deal but also Netanyahu's resignation and early parliamentary elections. Netanyahu also directs his attention towards Washington and international entities advocating for a post-war plan, insisting on not withdrawing from Gaza without eliminating Hamas. He adds complications even to the expected negotiations for the prisoner exchange deal starting today in Paris. Facing Netanyahu's firm stance and his supporters, the army revealed that it would not be able to eliminate more than twenty percent of Gaza's tunnels after about four months of war and that the goal of reaching Yahya Sinwar and the movement's central leadership is still far from achievable.

Red Sea Crisis: Economic and Geopolitical Implications Beyond Gaza
LBCI/January 28, 2024
The crisis in the Red Sea shipping nearly rivals the war in Gaza in terms of media coverage, international attention, and concern.
12% of global maritime trade passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea via the Suez Canal.
The crisis in Bab al-Mandab is political in nature, but its economic repercussions are compelling countries worldwide to reassess their priorities and evaluate the objectives of their alliances. China, whose relationship with the United States is governed by rivalry, is the most prominent target alongside Israel for Houthi attacks. It asked its ally, Iran, which supports the Houthis, to help stop their attacks on ships in the Red Sea, considering that if its interests are harmed in any way, this will affect... Its relationship with Tehran, according to Reuters. According to Statica, the value of Chinese exports to Europe reached 626 billion euros in 2022, exports that are now affected by Houthi targeting. The decline in maritime trade in Bab al-Mandab is also reflected in the Suez Canal. According to the German DW website, the canal brought in $9.4 billion to Egypt in transit fees for the fiscal year from June 2022 to June 2023, a figure expected to decrease to $5.6 billion, a 40% decrease. The targeting of the Red Sea has not been limited to Asian and regional countries, as European ships are also in trouble. The latest developments include the announcement by the Danish shipping group Maersk, one of Europe's largest shipping companies, that it will sail around the Cape of Good Hope for its shipping route connecting India and the US East Coast. According to The Telegraph, circumventing South Africa adds 10 to 14 days to the delivery time of goods, leading to a 170% increase in shipping costs between Europe and Asia. According to several Western media outlets, including Deutsche Welle, these developments have led many European countries to reconsider their reliance on Chinese exports and compensate by establishing European factories to meet their needs. Thus, Europe is economically stifled, as shipping goods from China has become more costly, and Egypt is losing billions of dollars. As for Israel, it is trying to compensate for the subsequent damage to its imports through a land corridor to transport goods from the Arabian Sea to the Israeli interior, according to the US magazine Foreign Policy. Thus, the United States appears to be the least affected by what is happening in the Red Sea, and its exports to Europe via the Atlantic Ocean have not been affected. In 2022, US trade in goods and services with the European Union was estimated at around $1.3 trillion, according to the US Trade Representative's Office.

Masked gunmen kill one person in Istanbul church -Turkish interior minister
AP/January 28, 2024
ANKARA: Two masked assailants attacked a Roman Catholic church in Istanbul during Sunday services, killing one person, Turkish officials said.
According to a statement posted on X by Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, the armed assailants attacked the Santa Maria Draperis Church in the Sariyer district at 11:40 a.m. local time. He did not specify what kind of weapons were used or whether anyone else was wounded. Yerlikaya condemned the attack and said authorities are working on capturing the assailants. An investigation has been opened. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed condolences over the attack and said “necessary steps” were taken to hunt down killers, his office said. Erdogan, who spoke on the phone with local officials as well as priest of Italian church, said that “necessary steps are being taken to catch the perpetrators as soon as possible.”Speaking to reporters, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu offered his condolences and support for religious minorities in the city, which like Turkiye as a whole is primarily Muslim. “There are no minorities in this city or this country. We are all actual citizens,” he said. Santa Maria Draperis is run by missionary Franciscan friars from Italy sent on a mission of ecumenical dialogue. In remarks to the public in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Pope Francis noted the attack. “I express my closeness to the community of Santa Maria Draperis Church in Istanbul, which during the Mass suffered an armed attack with one dead and some wounded,” the pontiff said. Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said his ministry was following the situation along with the Italian embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul. “I express my condolence and firm condemnation for the vile attack on Santa Maria Church,″ Tajani wrote on X. He added that “I am certain that the Turkish authorities will arrest those responsible.”

Pope expresses support for church attacked in Istanbul
AP/January 28, 2024
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis expressed his support for a Catholic church in Istanbul where one person was killed in an armed attack during Mass on Sunday. “I express my closeness to the community of the Santa Maria Church in Istanbul,” the Argentine pope said at the end of his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya condemned the attack and said authorities were working on capturing the assailants. An investigation was opened. Turkish authorities have instituted a media ban on coverage of the attack. Two masked assailants attacked the Santa Maria Church in the Sariyer district at 11:40 a.m., Yerlikaya said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. He did not specify what kind of weapons were used or whether anyone else was wounded. A short video circulating on social media apparently depicts the moment of the attack, with two masked men entering the church and opening fire, with all service-goers hitting the floor. The two men then abruptly leave. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu offered his condolences and support for religious minorities in the city. “There are no minorities in this city or this country. We are all actual citizens,” he said. Speaking to the Associated Press, the victim’s nephew identified the man who died as Tuncer Cihan. He noted that the target was the church and not his uncle. “He was a mentally disabled individual who had no connection to politics or (criminal) organizations. He went there on an invitation and was a victim of fate,” Cagin Cihan said. An Italian order of Franciscan friars runs the church. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that his ministry followed the situation along with the Italian Embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul. “I express my condolence and firm condemnation for the vile attack on Santa Maria Church, Tajani tweeted. He added that “I am certain that the Turkish authorities will arrest those responsible.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was in the central Anatolian province of Eskisehir for his party’s rally ahead of March local elections, expressed condolences during a phone call with the priest of the Italian church and other local officials. He assured that “necessary steps are being taken to catch the perpetrators as soon as possible,” according to his office.

German state broadcaster urges Israel to let 2 workers leave Gaza
AP/January 28, 2024
BERLIN: German state broadcaster ARD on Friday said Israel was blocking two of its long-term Palestinian workers from leaving Gaza, where they fear for their lives, citing security concerns the broadcaster said did not make sense. The ARD said it had been pushing for two of its workers to be able to leave Gaza for more than two months, with support from the German government. Israel has so far refused, citing security concerns. The Foreign Ministry and prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment. “This does not make sense because they would not even be stepping onto Israeli soil,” said ARD senior editor Christian Nitsche.“These colleagues are no security risk, and we call therefore on the Israeli authorities, on the government, to let our colleagues leave.”
FASTFACT
At least 83 journalists and media workers have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The German Foreign Ministry said in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that it shared the ARD’s concerns about their local staff and would continue to push for them to be able to leave. One of the two ARD workers, Mohammed Abusaif, had already been evacuated eight times since the beginning of the Israeli offensive and was now living in a tent in the southern town of Rafah, the broadcaster said. He was worried both about the Israeli strikes and about reprisals from Hamas. “Ultimately he has been working for more than two years for the ARD, a German outlet — and Germany has positioned itself clearly on the side of Israel in this war,” the broadcaster wrote. At least 83 journalists and media workers have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in what it says has proven to be the deadliest conflict for reporters since the CPJ started gathering data in 1992. Witnesses said three Palestinians were killed on Saturday in an airstrike that Israel’s military said was targeting a Hamas commander in southern Gaza.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, destroyed vast swaths of Gaza and displaced nearly 85 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million people. At least 174 Palestinians were killed over the past day, the Health Ministry in Gaza said. The Israeli military said it had conducted several “targeted raids on terror targets” in the southern city of Khan Younis and that the airstrike in the city of Rafah targeted a Hamas commander. Bilal Al-Siksik said his wife, a son and a daughter were killed in the early morning strike, which came as they slept. Rafah and the surrounding areas are crammed with more than 1 million people after Israel’s military ordered civilians to seek refuge there from the fighting. Designated evacuation areas have repeatedly come under airstrikes, with Israel saying it would go after militants as needed.

80% of Hamas’ tunnel system intact, officials say
ARAB NEWS/January 28, 2024
LONDON: Israel has failed to destroy Hamas’ tunnel system, leaving 80 percent of the network still intact, US and Israeli officials have told The Wall Street Journal. When Israel launched its war on Gaza in October, one of its primary goals was to destroy the region’s tunnel network, which is estimated to be 300 miles long. The Israeli military has used a variety of tactics to penetrate the network, including sending dogs equipped with cameras to search the tunnels before action by the Israel Defense Forces, flooding them with seawater from the Mediterranean, and pounding them with airstrikes. But officials estimate that only 20 to 40 percent of the tunnels have been damaged or rendered inoperable, with the majority located in northern Gaza. Efforts to pump in seawater to corrode the network have not been as successful as initially thought, the Journal reported. The report also said that it was difficult to assess the extent of the damage to the underground labyrinth because it was not known how far the tunnels stretch. Israel’s military has argued that destroying the network would deny Hamas’ leadership and fighters a safe haven, while also hitting its command and control centers. However, hostages are believed to be in the tunnels, posing a dilemma for the Israelis. Israel has intensified its military operations in the past week in the Gazan city of Khan Younis, where the army believes Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar is hiding in the tunnel network. Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations and Palestinians in Gaza have said that the location of the ground fighting is intentional, with its goal being to push the population of 2.2 million people toward Egypt while displacing them.

US sees signs of progress on deal to release hostages, bring temporary pause to Israel-Hamas war
AP/January 28, 2024
WASHINGTON: US negotiators are making progress on a potential agreement under which Israel would pause military operations against Hamas in Gaza for two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages who were captured in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to two senior administration officials. The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said Saturday that emerging terms of the yet-to-be sealed deal would play out over two phases. In the first phase, fighting would stop to allow for the remaining women, elderly and wounded hostages to be released by Hamas. Israel and Hamas would then aim to work out details during the first 30 days of the pause for a second phase in which Israeli soldiers and civilian men would be released. The emerging deal also calls for Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
While the proposed deal would not end the war, US officials are hopeful that such an agreement could lay the groundwork for a durable resolution to the conflict. The New York Times first reported on Saturday that progress has been made toward an agreement for a pause in fighting in exchange for the remaining hostages. CIA director Bill Burns is expected to discuss the contours of the emerging agreement when he meets on Sunday in France with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel for talks centered on the hostage negotiations, according to three people familiar with the scheduled meeting who were not authorized to comment publicly. President Joe Biden on Friday spoke by phone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani. Calls with both leaders focused on the hostage situation. “Both leaders affirmed that a hostage deal is central to establishing a prolonged humanitarian pause in the fighting and ensure additional life-saving humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in need throughout Gaza,” the White House said in a statement about Biden’s call with the Qatari leader. “They underscored the urgency of the situation, and welcomed the close cooperation among their teams to advance recent discussions.”Burns heads to France for the high-level talks after White House senior adviser Brett McGurk traveled to the Mideast this week for talks on the hostage situation. If Burns sees progress in his talks in France, Biden is expected to dispatch McGurk back to the Mideast quickly to try to complete an agreement. The White House and CIA have yet to publicly confirm Burns’ meeting in France and administration officials have been guarded that a deal can quickly be brokered. “We should not expect any imminent developments,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to continue the offensive until complete victory over Hamas is achieved. Netanyahu has faced increasing pressure from the families of many hostages who are demanding a deal to win their loved ones’ release. The Oct. 7 attack killed some 1,200 people in Israel, and Hamas and other militants abducted around 250 people. Around 100 hostages were freed under a weeklong ceasefire deal in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Around 130 remain captive, but a number have since been confirmed dead. Hamas has previously said it will free more captives only in exchange for an end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.

US says its Israel policy unchanged after report on leveraging weapon sales
REUTERS/January 28, 2024
WASHINGTON: The White House said on Sunday there was no change in its Israel policy after NBC News reported the US was discussing using weapon sales to Israel as leverage to convince the Israeli government to scale back its military assault in Gaza. “Israel has a right and obligation to defend themselves against the threat of Hamas, while abiding by international humanitarian law and protecting civilian lives, and we remain committed to support Israel in its fight against Hamas. We have done so since Oct. 7, and will continue to. There has not been a change in our policy,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said. NBC News reported earlier on Sunday that at the direction of the White House, the Pentagon has been reviewing what weaponry Israel has requested that could be used as leverage. The report cited sources and said no final decisions were made. The report added that the US was considering slowing or pausing the deliveries in hopes that doing so will make the Israelis take actions such as opening humanitarian corridors to provide more aid to Palestinian civilians. Among the weaponry the US discussed using as leverage, the NBC News report added, were 155 mm artillery rounds and joint direct attack munitions or JDAMs, which are guidance kits that convert dumb bombs into precision-guided munitions. The heavy death toll from Israel’s war in Gaza has led to much international alarm. President Joe Biden has previously referred to Israeli bombing as “indiscriminate” but Washington has not called for a ceasefire, saying such a measure would benefit Hamas.

20,000 march in Spanish capital against Gaza ‘genocide’
AFP/January 28, 2024
MADRID: Around 20,000 people marched in Madrid Saturday in support of Palestinians, a day after the UN’s top court said Israel must prevent genocidal acts in its war with Hamas. Many of the marchers carried banners and placards denouncing the “genocide” in Gaza, which has been under relentless bombardment and siege since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. Some carried Palestinian flags and shouted slogans denouncing Israel. Others had banners thanking South Africa for having brought the case against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
South Africa accused Israel of breaching the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, set up after World War II and the Holocaust. In its ruling on Friday, the ICJ said Israel must prevent genocide in its war with Hamas and allow aid into Gaza, but stopped short of calling for an end to the fighting. The ruling was denounced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “outrageous” and while many countries welcomed the ruling, others, such as Britain expressed reservations. Spain, one of the most critical voices in Europe of Israel’s offensive against Hamas, was one of those to welcome Friday’s ruling. Relations between the two countries have soured over Madrid’s position on the issue. Israel recalled its top diplomat in Madrid in November after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed doubts about the legality of Israel’s war in Gaza. She returned in January. “They have been without water, without food, without anything, for almost 110 days,” one Madrid demonstrator, 54-year-old Lobna Elnakhala, said of the situation in Gaza. “Children are dying and living in a very difficult situation.”Some banners called for sanctions to be levied against Israel. The Madrid authorities put the turn-out at 20,000. Israel’s military campaign began soon after Hamas’s October 7 attack that resulted in about 1,140 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures. Militants also seized about 250 hostages and Israel says around 132 of them remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 28 dead captives. Israel has vowed to crush Hamas, and Hamas-ruled Gaza’s health ministry says the Israeli military offensive has killed at least 26,257 people, most of them women and children.

Royal Navy ‘scandal’ sees UK ships unable to strike Houthis in Yemen
ARAB NEWS/January 28, 2024
London: UK Royal Navy vessels are unable to attack Houthi positions in Yemen because they lack the necessary missiles, it has been revealed, in what one former defense chief called a “scandal.” Britain has joined America in conducting operations against the Houthis in a bid to halt attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, but the US Navy has had to carry out the majority of strikes on the Yemeni mainland, the Daily Telegraph reported. A UK defense source told the newspaper that HMS Diamond, the Royal Navy destroyer stationed in the Red Sea, lacks “the capability to fire to land targets,” meaning the UK’s sole source of offensive capability comes from Royal Air Force jets stationed at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, around 1,500 miles away. HMS Diamond, the source said, has instead been involved in downing “Houthi drones targeting shipping in the Red Sea,” with the only functioning weapons systems on UK destroyers being fixed artillery guns. US Navy destroyers, meanwhile, have the capacity to fire Tomahawk guided missiles, with a range of 1,500 miles. A former senior defense chief told the Daily Telegraph: “It’s clearly a scandal and completely unsatisfactory. This is what happens when the Royal Navy is forced to make crucial decisions which can affect capability. “The UK is now having to fly RAF jets thousands of miles to do the job of what a surface-to-surface missile can do.” Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, head of the UK Armed Forces, warned the government of the need to “speed up our acquisition processes” for “land attack missile systems” on British vessels five years ago when he was head of the Royal Navy. Since then, a temporary system of Norwegian-made Naval Strike missiles has been installed on just one UK vessel, and has yet to be tested. A new cruise missile system for British warships is due to be introduced in 2028.Conservative MP Mark Francois, a former armed forces minister, told the Daily Telegraph: “The lack of a land attack missile from the Royal Navy’s surface fleet was specifically highlighted in a defence committee report some two years ago. “It is encouraging that this missile is now on order but also disappointing that it is still not yet in operational service.”Earlier this year, US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro warned that Royal Navy investment is “significantly important” given “the near-term threats to the UK and US.” The former chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Tobias Ellwood, urged Defense Secretary Grant Shapps to review the situation. “We can’t continue to do this with a surface fleet that’s too small and cannot fire on land at range,” Ellwood said. On Saturday, Shapps said: “It is our duty to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and we remain as committed to that cause as ever.”A spokesman for the UK Ministry of Defence said in a statement: “As with all coalition operations, commanders select the best equipment for the job. HMS Diamond is an air defence destroyer, which has been directly involved in successfully destroying Houthi drones targeting shipping in the Red Sea. “Equally, the Royal Air Force has the capability to strike land targets with high precision, which is why Typhoon aircraft strikes have reduced the Houthis ability to conduct these attacks.”

Iran Guards seize foreign vessel carrying ‘smuggled’ fuel
AFP/January 28, 2024
TEHRAN: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized Sunday a foreign oil tanker carrying around two million liters of “smuggled fuel” near the country’s southern coast, local media reported. “A foreign vessel with the flag of a country from Oceania was identified with two million liters of smuggled diesel,” reported Tasnim news agency. The ship “was seized in accordance with a court order,” the agency said, quoting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Haidar Honaryan. Fourteen crew members were also arrested, he noted, saying they were nationals of “two Asian countries,” without specifying which. Iran, a major oil producer, has among the cheapest petrol prices in the world, which encourages fuel trafficking.Iranian forces regularly target tankers illegally transporting fuel in the Gulf. In September, Iran seized two oil tankers flying the flags of Panama and Tanzania and arrested their crews for allegedly carrying smuggled fuel in the Gulf. The US military has recently intensified its presence in the Gulf, accusing Iran of seizing vessels, or attempting to, in the strategic shipping lane. On July 6, the US military said the Guards had seized a commercial ship in the Gulf, one day after having accused Iranian forces of carrying out two similar attempts off the coast of Oman. Tehran said the intercepted ship had been transporting more than one million liters of “smuggled fuel.”

Yemeni leader urges military action to stop Houthis’ Red Sea attacks
SAEED AL-BATATI/Arab News/January 28, 2024
AL-MUKALLA: Rashad Al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, has urged the international community to provide military assistance to his government in order to free the country’s Red Sea coast from the Houthis, warning that US and UK “defensive” strikes will not end threats to the international shipping lane. “Defensive operations are not the solution. The solution is to eliminate the Houthi military capabilities and also partner with the legitimate government to control these areas,” Al-Alimi said during a press conference in Riyadh on Saturday.
Al-Alimi added that his government’s military actions would weaken the Houthis and force them to embrace peace attempts to end the conflict. He said that the Houthis reject UN-brokered peace proposals and have targeted ships in the Red Sea because they feel they are powerful. “We seek support for the legitimate government, not for conflict, and we do not call for war, but rather to push the Houthis to enter discussions,” Al-Alimi said. The Houthis have conducted dozens of drone and missile attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandab, and the Gulf of Aden as part of their ban on all ships going toward Israel. The Houthis claim that their acts are in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to press Israel to end its campaign in Gaza. Separately, dozens of Yemeni human rights activists, attorneys, and journalists appealed to the Iran-backed Houthis, as well as local and international rights organizations, on Sunday to save a well-known judge who is facing death due to “appalling circumstances” in a notorious Houthi prison facility in Sanaa. In a joint online petition, more than 50 Yemenis, including famous activists, said that Judge Abdul Wahab Qatran informed his family in a short call with his son that he was “dead” and that the Houthis held him in solitary confinement. “This is an appeal to all forces of conscience and humanity inside and outside Yemen for serious and influential solidarity with Judge Abdul Wahab Qatran, who says, ‘I am dead,’ from his solitary cell in the Political Security Prison in Sana’a, according to a 20-second phone call with his son,” the activists said in their appeal.
Earlier this month, armed Houthis raided Qatran’s home in Sanaa, momentarily detaining and abusing his family before kidnapping him, hours after he condemned the Houthis for assaulting a local journalist who sought his salary and the reopening of his closed radio station. Qatran has long been renowned for fiercely criticizing the Houthis for neglecting to pay thousands of public workers and for failing to restore basic facilities in regions under their control. In Sanaa, hundreds of Hada tribesmen from the province of Dhamar staged a rare demonstration on Saturday, demanding that the Houthis release the leader of the Teachers Club Union, Abu Zaid Al-Kumaim. The tribesmen gathered in Sanaa’s Al-Sabeen to persuade the Houthis to free Al-Kumaim, a member of their tribe. Mohammed Al-Kumaim, a Yemeni military expert and a member of the tribe, told Arab News that his tribe gathered in Sanaa after the Houthis broke a promise to free Abu Zaid Al-Kumaim months ago, and that the Houthis agreed to release him again on Saturday. In October, the Houthis kidnapped the Union leader in Sanaa after urging hundreds of teachers to go on strike to urge the Houthis to pay their wages. In contrast to their violent repression of peaceful rallies by ordinary Yemenis, the Houthis seldom crush protests by strong tribesmen to prevent revolt, experts say.

US, Israel, Egypt, Qatar officials in Gaza talks in Paris: sourcesIsrael’s ensuing military
AFP/January 28, 2024
PARIS: The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency as well as top Egyptian, Qatari and Israeli officials were in Paris on Sunday working toward a ceasefire in Gaza, officials close to the participants said. French authorities were also in touch with these four countries with the aim of negotiating a halt to hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the besieged territory, the sources said. Israel said late Sunday that the discussions in Paris, attended by the heads of its Mossad intelligence agency and Shin Bet security agency, had been “constructive.”
But “there are still significant gaps which the parties will continue to discuss this week in additional mutual meetings,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. A security source on Friday told AFP that CIA chief William Burns would meet his counterparts from Israel and Egypt, as well as Qatar’s prime minister “in the coming days.”The source confirmed a report in The Washington Post last week that US President Joe Biden was sending Burns to try to negotiate the release of remaining Hamas-held Israeli hostages in exchange for a ceasefire. The New York Times said on Saturday that US-led negotiators were getting closer to an agreement under which Israel would suspend its war in Gaza for about two months in return for the release of more than 100 hostages. Quoting unidentified US officials, it said negotiators had developed a draft agreement that would be discussed in Paris on Sunday.
US President Joe Biden on Friday spoke with Qatar’s emir to discuss efforts to free the hostages, the White House said, however warning “imminent developments” were unlikely. Qatar is playing a key role in the latest talks after brokering a hostage release deal in November. Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures. Militants also seized about 250 hostages and Israel says around 132 of them remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 28 dead captives. Israel’s ensuing military offensive has killed at least 26,422 people, most of them civilians, in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel pressures Qatar over Gaza hostages ahead of spy chiefs’ meeting
AFP/January 28, 2024
SANAA, Yemen: US forces struck an anti-ship missile in Houthi-held Yemen that they said was ready to fire Saturday, hours after the Iran-backed rebels caused a fire on a British tanker in the Gulf of Aden with a similar munition.
US and British forces have launched joint strikes aimed at reducing the Houthis’ ability to target vessels transiting the key Red Sea trade route — attacks the rebels say are in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is at war with Hamas.
Washington has also carried out a series of unilateral air raids, but the Houthis have vowed to continue their attacks. The US military’s Central Command, CENTCOM, said it had carried out another strike early Saturday on a Houthi “anti-ship missile aimed into the Red Sea and which was prepared to launch.
“Forces subsequently struck and destroyed the missile in self-defense,” it said on social media platform X. The Houthis’ Al-Masirah television said the United States and Britain had launched two air strikes on the port of Ras Issa in Yemen’s Hodeida province, which hosts the country’s main oil export terminal.
There was no immediate confirmation from Washington or London, and the Houthis did not provide details on the attack or the extent of the damage.
The previous evening, the Houthis’ military spokesman Yahya Saree said missiles fired by the rebels had hit the Marlin Luanda, an oil tanker operated by a British firm on behalf of trading giant Trafigura Group. “The strike was direct, and resulted (in) the burning of the vessel,” Saree said. CENTCOM later confirmed the hit, saying it had started a “major fire.”Other vessels had come to the ship’s assistance, including the USS Carney, the French Navy Frigate FS Alsace and Indian Navy Frigate INS Visakhapatnam. “Thanks to this rapid response by the US, Indian and French navies, the fire is now extinguished,” it said in an update Saturday.
“There were no casualties in the attack, the ship remains seaworthy and has returned to its previous course,” it added, confirming an earlier statement from Trafigura. In its statement, the company said that “no further vessels operating on behalf of Trafigura are currently transiting the Gulf of Aden.”The Indian Navy said the Marlin Luanda has 22 Indians and one Bangladeshi onboard. It said a fire-fighting team of 10 Indian naval personnel battled the blaze for six hours along with the ship’s crew before bringing it under control. On Friday the Houthis also fired an anti-ship ballistic missile from Yemen toward the Carney in the Gulf of Aden, CENTCOM said. “The missile was successfully shot down by USS Carney. There were no injuries or damage reported,” it added. The Houthis began targeting Red Sea shipping in November, saying they were hitting Israeli-linked vessels to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. They have since declared US and British interests to be legitimate targets as well. British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps on Saturday said his government remains “as committed as ever” to protecting freedom of navigation following the latest “intolerable and illegal” attack by Houthi rebels. “It is our duty to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and we remain as committed to that cause as ever,” he said. The United States is leading a coalition to protect Red Sea shipping — an effort the Pentagon has likened to a highway patrol for the waterway. Washington is also seeking to put diplomatic and financial pressure on the Houthis, redesignating them a “terrorist” organization last week after previously dropping that label soon after President Joe Biden took office. The attacks by the rebels — who are part of an anti-Israel, anti-West alliance of Iranian proxies and allies — have disrupted trade in the Red Sea, which carries around 12 percent of international maritime traffic. Several shipping firms are avoiding the waterway, instead taking the longer and more expensive route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. This new pressure follows difficult years for the industry during the Covid-19 pandemic, when freight rates reached unprecedented levels due to disruptions to supply chains. Separately on Saturday, the Houthis released an 18-minute video showing fighters in military fatigues conducting military drills against hypothetical US and Israeli targets. The video, published by one of the rebels’ military propaganda arms, showed fighters using rocket-propelled grenades to strike buildings, Humvees, and tanks adorned with US and Israeli flags.

US sees signs of progress on deal to release hostages, bring temporary pause to Israel-Hamas war
AP/January 28, 2024
WASHINGTON: US negotiators are making progress on a potential agreement under which Israel would pause military operations against Hamas in Gaza for two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages who were captured in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to two senior administration officials. The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said Saturday that emerging terms of the yet-to-be sealed deal would play out over two phases. In the first phase, fighting would stop to allow for the remaining women, elderly and wounded hostages to be released by Hamas. Israel and Hamas would then aim to work out details during the first 30 days of the pause for a second phase in which Israeli soldiers and civilian men would be released. The emerging deal also calls for Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
While the proposed deal would not end the war, US officials are hopeful that such an agreement could lay the groundwork for a durable resolution to the conflict. The New York Times first reported on Saturday that progress has been made toward an agreement for a pause in fighting in exchange for the remaining hostages. CIA director Bill Burns is expected to discuss the contours of the emerging agreement when he meets on Sunday in France with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel for talks centered on the hostage negotiations, according to three people familiar with the scheduled meeting who were not authorized to comment publicly. President Joe Biden on Friday spoke by phone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani. Calls with both leaders focused on the hostage situation. “Both leaders affirmed that a hostage deal is central to establishing a prolonged humanitarian pause in the fighting and ensure additional life-saving humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in need throughout Gaza,” the White House said in a statement about Biden’s call with the Qatari leader. “They underscored the urgency of the situation, and welcomed the close cooperation among their teams to advance recent discussions.” Burns heads to France for the high-level talks after White House senior adviser Brett McGurk traveled to the Mideast this week for talks on the hostage situation. If Burns sees progress in his talks in France, Biden is expected to dispatch McGurk back to the Mideast quickly to try to complete an agreement. The White House and CIA have yet to publicly confirm Burns’ meeting in France and administration officials have been guarded that a deal can quickly be brokered. “We should not expect any imminent developments,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to continue the offensive until complete victory over Hamas is achieved.
Netanyahu has faced increasing pressure from the families of many hostages who are demanding a deal to win their loved ones’ release. The Oct. 7 attack killed some 1,200 people in Israel, and Hamas and other militants abducted around 250 people. Around 100 hostages were freed under a weeklong ceasefire deal in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Around 130 remain captive, but a number have since been confirmed dead. Hamas has previously said it will free more captives only in exchange for an end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.

Don’t punish UNRWA for alleged actions of 12 workers: Jordan FMDon’t punish UNRWA for alleged actions of 12 workers: Jordan FM
ARAB NEWS/January 28, 2024
LONDON: The international community should continue to support UNRWA in its efforts to provide vital aid to Palestinians in Gaza regardless of the allegations made against some of its workers, Jordan’s Foreign Minister said. According to the Jordan News Agency, Ayman Safadi said in a telephone call to Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, that the organization should not be subjected to collective punishment because of the claims made against 12 of its 13,000 staff members in Gaza. Several nations, including Australia, Finland, Germany, Italy and the UK on Saturday followed the lead of the US in suspending funding to the agency in response to allegations made by Israel that several UNRWA workers were involved in the Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. Safadi and Lazzarini urged all of the countries that have suspended their support to reverse their decisions. The financial aid they provide is vital to the agency’s efforts to help the 1.9 million Palestinians who have been displaced since the start of the war in Gaza. Lazzarini said UNRWA had asked the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, the organization’s highest investigative authority, to conduct an investigation into the claims made against its workers, whose employment contracts have been terminated. Safadi said people in Gaza were facing famine because Israel had refused to allow humanitarian aid into the enclave, in clear violation of international humanitarian law and the ruling by the International Court of Justice.
Both officials said the shortfall in funding would have an immediate impact on the agency’s ability to provide essential humanitarian services, which in turn would exacerbate the suffering faced by Gazans. Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said the decision to pause funding “overtly defies” the ICJ’s order to provide effective aid in Gaza and could be a violation of the international genocide convention.

Saudi, Egyptian foreign ministers call for ceasefire in Gaza
GOBRAN MOHAMED/Arab News/January 28, 202414:31
CAIRO: Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to allow for the entry of humanitarian aid and to pave the way for a political solution to the crisis based on a two-state solution. Speaking at a press conference alongside Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri in Cairo, the prince said: “Today, we discussed the mechanisms of cooperation and the situation in Palestine.” The two men had earlier chaired the Egyptian-Saudi Follow-up and Political Consultation Committee meeting, which included a review of their nations’ efforts at economic integration and removing obstacles to investment. Egypt’s foreign spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zaid said on X: “Intensive consultations are on the agenda of the delegations of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to develop mechanisms for cooperation at all political, economic, security and cultural levels and coordination regarding international and regional issues, especially the situation in Gaza.”Prince Faisal said that recent events in the region had shown the importance of stabilizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt. “We will continue to work with Egypt to resolve the current crisis in Gaza and international action must be implemented to resolve the crisis,” he said. He also urged Israel to abide by international law and said Saudi Arabia rejected the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, which was a violation of such legislation. Shoukry renewed Egypt’s call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to allow for the safe entry of humanitarian aid. He said the meeting covered several topics, including the recent developments in the Red Sea, and urged all parties to respect international trade laws and freedom of navigation. Shoukry said also he was surprised and “deeply concerned” by the decision of several countries to suspend their funding for UNRWA, the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, as it would lead only to more suffering. “Is this action linked to the policy of collective punishment used against civilians in Gaza? These are questions we can continue to ask,” he said.

Iran wraps up trial of Swedish EU diplomat
AFP/January 28, 2024
TEHRAN: The trial of a Swedish EU diplomat wrapped up in Tehran on Sunday, with Iranian prosecutors seeking the maximum penalty for the man accused of spying for Israel. The prosecutor said that 33-year-old Johan Floderus — who works for the EU diplomatic service — was charged with “very extensive intelligence cooperation with the Israeli regime,” according to the judiciary’s Mizan Online website. “Given the important nature and adverse effects of the accused’s actions, I demand the maximum penalty,” Mizan reported the prosecutor as saying. Floderus was charged with “corruption on earth,” which is one of Iran’s most serious offenses and carries a maximum penalty of death. The Swedish national was arrested on April 17, 2022, at Tehran airport on his return to Iran from a trip with friends and has been on trial since December 2023. No date has yet been set for the verdict. Mizan published photos of Floderus in a prisoner’s uniform accompanied by his two lawyers in a near-empty Tehran courtroom. It said the court sessions have ended, but his lawyers have a week to submit their defense. Sweden and the EU have repeatedly called for Floderus’s immediate release, arguing that there was “absolutely no reason” for him to be held in Evin Prison, where some government opponents are also being held. On Jan. 17, Sweden summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires to demand the release of citizens “arbitrarily detained” in Iran.

Fear, uncertainty and grief year after Turkiye’s quake
AFP/January 28, 2024
ISTANBUL: Over 65 nightmarish seconds of the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 6, 2023, the ground swallowed swaths of entire cities across Turkiye’s southeast, resulting in more than 50,000 deaths. The initial 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook the ground as far away as Egypt. Bridges collapsed, roads and airport tarmacs cracked, and millions of lives across 11 Turkish provinces were upturned by the time the rest of the country woke up, stunned. A year later, hundreds of thousands remain displaced, many of them living in container cities, while the rest of the quake-prone country wait in fear for the next big shake. “I had 3,700 registered voters. Only 1,300 are left,” said Ali Karatosun, a mukhtar (village chief) in Kahramanmaras province, not far from the epicenter of Turkiye’s worst disaster of modern times. More than 850,000 buildings crumbled in the initial quake and the thousands of aftershocks that followed, including a 7.5-magnitude one that afternoon. In the Syrian border province of Hatay, where the ancient city of Antioch — now called Antakya — formed the cradle of Muslim and Christian civilizations, just 250,000 of the original 1.7 million inhabitants remain. “Our Hatay is gone. Completely gone,” said Mevlude Aydin, 41, who lost her daughter, husband and a dozen relatives. The disaster put enormous political pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faced reelection later that year. Responding to criticism that rescuers were too slow to react, leaving many initial survivors trapped under rubble in the freezing cold, the veteran leader promised to build 650,000 housing units within a year. Eleven months later, the construction of 307,000 housing units has been launched, of which 46,000 have been delivered, according to Environment and Urbanization Ministry data.
In the meantime, families that chose to stay in the disaster zone and were unable to find accommodation have been housed in metal container homes the size of small studios. The containers have access to free running water and power, offering safety and warmth. But families have few surviving possessions and their immediate prospects are unclear. The Hatay region lost the same number of buildings in seconds as it usually takes a decade to build, an Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkiye report found. In Adiyaman province, at the opposite end of the quake zone, 40 percent of the buildings collapsed. “The earthquake will create a financing need of approximately $150 billion over a five-year period,” the foundation said in a comprehensive report.
“The cost of reconstruction and rehabilitation will have a significant and long-term negative impact on the Turkish economy.”The affected region was already under intense economic strain, being home to half of the 3.7 million refugees who fled civil war in neighboring Syria. “No money. No jobs. We are far from returning to normal,” said Kadir Yenicel, a 70-year-old in Kahramanmaras, echoing the worries of many across the disaster zone. “People don’t know what to do.”The instant collapse of so many buildings in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone regions points to the greed of unscrupulous property developers and corruption among bureaucrats who signed off on unsafe building projects, experts say. In two of the more egregious examples, nearly all 22 buildings in one high-rise complex collapsed in Kahramanmaras, claiming 1,400 lives, and hundreds more died when their
luxurious Renaissance residence crumbled in Antakya. The handful of wilful negligence cases opened so far have avoided prosecuting officials, focusing on contracts instead. Meanwhile, Turkiye is no better prepared for another earthquake than it was one year ago, experts say.
“There is still much to be done,” said Mihat Kadioglu, a disaster management professor at Istanbul Technical University. “Measures should go beyond mere band-aid solutions, and require a real and more fundamental reform.”While it caused temporary panic, particularly in quake-prone cities such as Istanbul, the disaster “did not lead to a change in behavior among the public or officials,” Kadioglu said. And even if safety standards are better enforced, buildings could still fall if erected without proper soil studies or on dangerous terrain such as riverbeds, as was the case in Kahramanmaras, he said. Dilfuroz Sahin, who heads the town planning chamber in southeastern Diyarbakir, struck a more optimistic tone, saying officials were updating their seismic maps and conducting “stricter, more numerous inspections.”Zihni Tekin, an engineering consultant, strongly disagreed, expressing disappointment that Erdogan overcame the quake to secure re-election last May. Turkiye’s problems cannot be solved by “completely corrupt and ignorant people,” he said, referring to Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted AKP party.

Britain: A warship repelled a Houthi drone attack in the Red Sea
NNA/January 28, 2024
On Saturday, the British warship Diamond repelled a drone attack launched by the Yemeni Houthi group in the Red Sea, British officials said.
The British Ministry of Defense said in a statement today, reported by Reuters: “Diamond, using its Sea Viper missile system, destroyed a drone that targeted it without causing damage to Diamond or injuries among its crew.”
The statement added: "These abhorrent and unlawful attacks are unacceptable, and we must protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea."

Iraq and US begin formal talks to end coalition mission
Associated Press/January 28, 2024
The United States and Iraq held a first session of formal talks in Baghdad aimed at winding down the mission of a U.S.-led military coalition formed to fight the Islamic State group in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that he had sponsored "the commencement of the first round of bilateral dialogue between Iraq and the United States of America to end the mission of the Coalition in Iraq." A statement released by the coalition said that working groups made up of Iraqi and coalition military officials will assess "the threat of Daesh (IS), operational and environmental requirements and Iraqi Security Force capabilities" and a higher military commission will "work to set the conditions to transition the mission in Iraq."The beginning of talks, announced by both countries on Thursday, comes as U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have been regularly targeted by drone attacks launched by Iran-backed militias against the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The U.S. says plans to set up a committee to negotiate the terms of the mission's end were first discussed last year, and the timing isn't related to the attacks. Washington has had a continuous presence in Iraq since its 2003 invasion. Although all U.S. combat forces left in 2011, thousands of troops returned in 2014 to help the government of Iraq defeat IS. Since the extremist group lost its hold on the territory it once seized, Iraqi officials have periodically called for a withdrawal of coalition forces, particularly in the wake of a U.S. airstrike in January 2020 that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis outside the Baghdad airport.The issue has surfaced again since Israel launched its major counteroffensive in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel. Since mid-October, a group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq have launched regular attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, which the group said are in retaliation for Washington's support for Israel in the war in Gaza. Those estimated 2,500 U.S. troops and the bases they serve on have drawn more than 150 missile and drone attacks fired by the militias. Scores of U.S. personnel have been wounded, including some with traumatic brain injuries, during the attacks. The U.S. has struck militia targets in return, including some linked to the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of mainly Shiite, Iran-backed paramilitary groups that is officially under the control of the Iraqi military. But it largely operates on its own in practice. Iraqi officials have complained that the U.S. strikes are a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.U.S. officials have said that talks about setting up a committee to decide on the framework for ending the coalition's mission were already underway before Oct. 7 and the decision is unrelated to the attacks. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq nevertheless took credit for the decision in a statement, saying that it "proves that the Americans only understand the language of force." It vowed to continue its attacks.

Canada’s reversal on defense exports to Turkiye marks strategic shift within NATO
MENEKSE TOKYAY/Arab News/January 28, 2024
ANKARA: In a significant geopolitical development, Canada has decided to lift its years-long embargo on exporting air strike-targeting gear to Turkiye, as reported by Reuters. The embargo, originally prompted by concerns over the diversion of Canadian optical drone technology to Turkish ally Azerbaijan during the 2020 conflict with Armenia, is set to end following Turkiye’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO application protocol. The resumption of export permits for the Canadian-made L3Harris Wescam targeting equipment comes after a parliamentary vote and presidential approval in Turkiye, aligning with the Swedish NATO accession process. Rich Outzen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, views this move as a positive step toward NATO allies collaborating on defense initiatives. Turkish president Tayyip erdogan meets with canadian prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Vilnius, lithuania. The potential thaw is seen not only through the resumption of canadian exports but also through progress on an F-16 deal. (Reuters) “It was a different world when Canada stopped such exports. Russia had not ramped up its war in Ukraine, Turkiye had not mended fences with many pro-Western states in the Middle East, and Turkish aerospace industries had not advanced as far as they have today,” he told Arab News. The embargo covered permits for various military goods, including camera components integral to Turkish drones.
Noting that the L3 Harris/Wescam systems are useful in drones such as Turkiye’s Bayraktar TB2, many of which have been exported to Ukraine, Outzen said that there was a shared interest of Turkiye and the US/Canada when agreeing to lift this critical embargo. “The Turks can manufacture domestic optics, but perhaps not in the quantity needed and perhaps not at the same level of sophistication,” he said.
While not officially confirmed, Reuters reports that the new deal includes a commitment for Canada to receive information on the end-users of the military equipment, especially if re-exported to non-NATO members. The potential thaw in defense-industrial cooperation is seen not only through the resumption of Canadian exports but also through progress on an F-16 deal. Outzen thinks the Canadian announcement shows an unfreezing of Turkiye-North American defense industrial cooperation. “Turkiye is a growing player in the defense industry — including ammunition and ground vehicles as well as drones and related equipment — so this is an important development for the alliance,” he said. “The West has a need for more defense industrial production, given the threat of multiple wars and the reality of limitations in the Western defense industrial base. Turkiye needs the continued technological partnering. So, the door is open for mutually beneficial defense cooperation to increase.” Turkiye, keen on upgrading its military technology, linked Sweden’s NATO membership to the approval of a $23 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets, including modernizing its existing fleet. The US State Department’s recent approval of the sale aligns with US foreign policy goals to enhance Turkiye’s air capabilities and interoperability within NATO. The $23 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkiye includes 40 Lockheed Martin F-16s and equipment to modernize 79 of its existing F-16 fleet. The State Department has recently notified Congress that it has approved the sale of F-16 aircraft and related equipment to Turkiye, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed off on Sweden’s accession protocol to NATO. The lawmakers have 15 days to object following the formal notification to Congress.
The sale supports US foreign policy goals “by improving the air capabilities and interoperability” of NATO ally Turkiye, according to a statement from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Friday. Sine Ozkarasahin, an analyst in the security and defense program at EDAM, an Istanbul-based think tank, notes that external reliance on subsystems remains a challenge for Turkiye’s defense industrial base, particularly in high-end sophisticated solutions. “This reliance affects industries like the fifth-generation tactical military aircraft, submarines and main battle tanks more than drone systems,” she told Arab News.
Despite restrictions affecting projects like the Altay main battle tank, Ozkarasahin highlights how Turkish drone manufacturers found alternatives, such as the domestically developed Aselsan national camera system. “We saw how Turkiye’s Altay main battle tank project stalled because of Germany’s export restrictions,” she said.
However, according to Ozkarasahin, Turkish drone manufacturers such as Baykar were able to find a way around the restricted Canadian systems such as the L3Harris Wescam by reaching out to indigenous replacements, as well as other supply channels.
“The domestically developed Aselsan national camera system, Common Aperture Targeting System, is one example,” she said. The Canadian embargo obliged Ankara to produce the embargoed parts on its own, which reinforced domestic production capabilities, like the indigenous armed drone Bayraktar TB2 UCAV using domestically developed electro-optic reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting system CATS that was developed by Turkish defense company Aselsan. Ozkarasahin thinks that Canada’s move to lift the export controls that it adopted back in 2020 can fuel a positive momentum and a softening approach towards Turkiye within the Western bloc. “As a NATO country with a defense ecosystem compatible with the Alliance’s military doctrine and infrastructure, from a technical standpoint, trading with Western partners is always the best alternative for Ankara,” she said.
Yet, Ozkarasahin also said that Turkiye’s Western allies that had previously imposed embargoes on Ankara — such as Canada — will see that the Turkish supply pool now includes more variety, meaning more competition. In the meantime, the mass production of Turkiye’s indigenous long-range air defense system SIPER Product-1 has recently begun, and it is expected to rival the Russian S-400. Haluk Gorgun, the head of the Turkish Defense Industries Presidency, recently announced that the systems would be delivered to the Turkish Air Forces Command in mid-2024. How the sale of US fighter jets to NATO member Turkiye will impact Ankara-Moscow ties is still uncertain, as Ankara has long maintained its close ties and military technology trade with Moscow as an instrument to bolster its security needs.
In the past, Ankara’s deal with Moscow for the purchase of a multibillion-dollar Russian S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile system triggered several US sanctions on the NATO ally over the concerns that it would pose a risk to the NATO alliance as well as the US-led F-35 joint strike fighter program. Washington also removed Turkiye from the F-35 joint strike fighter program. “In the given technical context, Russia and Turkiye don’t and can’t have a meaningful defense relationship. The S-400 incident was an anomaly. Haluk Gorgun’s statements stating that the entry of assets like the Long-Range Regional Air and Missile Defense System Project (SIPER) into the Turkish arsenal made the S-400 unnecessary show that there is no real appetite in Ankara to build such ties with Moscow in the coming months,” Ozkarasahin said.
The purchase of new F-16s signifies a pivotal moment for Turkiye’s aging air force arsenal, following its exclusion from the F-35 program in 2019 over the Russian missile defense system acquisition.

Iran says it has launched 3 satellites into space as tensions grip wider Mideast
AP/January 28, 2024
JERUSALEM: Iran said Sunday it successfully launched three satellites into space, the latest for a program that the West says improves Tehran’s ballistic missiles. The state-run IRNA news agency said the launch also saw the successful use of Iran’s Simorgh rocket, which has had multiple failures in the past. The United States has previously said Iran’s satellite launches defy a UN Security Council resolution and called on Tehran to undertake no activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. UN sanctions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program expired last October. The US intelligence community’s 2023 worldwide threat assessment said the development of satellite launch vehicles “shortens the timeline” for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.

North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off east coast
REUTERS/January 28, 2024
SEOUL: North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off its east coast on Sunday, its second such launch in less than a week, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. The missiles were launched at around 8 a.m. (2300 GMT on Saturday) and were being analyzed by South Korean and US intelligence authorities, the JCS said, without specifying how many missiles were fired. “While strengthening surveillance and vigilance, our military is cooperating closely with the United States and monitoring additional signs and activities from North Korea,” it said in a statement.
The latest launches came days after North Korea fired what it called a new strategic cruise missile called “Pulhwasal-3-31,” suggesting it is nuclear capable. North Korea is stepping up confrontation with the United States and its allies, but officials in Washington and Seoul say they have spotted no signs Pyongyang intends to take imminent military action. Kim Jong Un’s government is likely to continue or even increase provocative steps, officials and analysts say, after it made strides in ballistic missile development, bolstered cooperation with Russia and scrapped its decades-long goal of peacefully reuniting with South Korea.
Earlier on Sunday, North Korea’s state media KCNA denounced a series of military drills conducted in recent weeks by US and South Korean troops, warning of “merciless” consequences. “The reality that nuclear war exercises against our republic have been going on like crazy since the beginning of the New Year demands that we be fully prepared for a deadly war,” the dispatch said. North Korea carried out its first test of a cruise missile with possible nuclear strike capabilities in September 2021.

Egypt at a Crossroads: Economic Challenges and Geopolitical Pressures
LBCI/January 28, 2024
This is the summary of observers and experts who follow the situation in this country, whose crisis surfaced after the confrontation in the Red Sea erupted, significantly affecting navigation in the Suez Canal, the backbone of the Egyptian economy. Essentially, Egypt suffers from a trade deficit and increasing external debts that have exceeded $165 billion, marking the worst economic challenge in its history. At its core is the shortage of hard currency in local markets, where its price against the pound jumped to record levels of 67 pounds per dollar, compared to 39 before the war. Like Lebanon, Egypt imports its necessities, especially food, in dollars, which it has to secure from local markets. One of the primary sources of dollar inflow in these markets is Egyptians abroad, whose remittances dwindled after authorities imposed measures on transfers to and from the country and controls on the use of ATM cards outside Egypt to prevent the outflow of hard currency. With this reality, Egypt has lost its attractiveness as an investment destination. Added to this, tourism revenues have declined, affected by the Gaza war, especially in areas along the Red Sea, due to Houthi attacks on it, as well as the falling of drones targeting Israel, but ending up in southern Sinai, making Egypt's borders and its territorial waters in the Red Sea an extension of the insecure situation there. In light of this reality, Egypt finds itself facing significant challenges, relying on the response of countries and lending institutions to resolve its debt crisis, countered by increasing pressure on it to accept a trade-off it has so far refused: debt cancellation or reduction in exchange for receiving Palestinians from Gaza.

South Korea says North Korea has fired several cruise missiles into the sea
Updated 28 January 2024
SAMANTHA BELTRAN/Arab News/January 28, 2024
MANILA: Filipino stand-up artists performed at a sold-out show over the weekend in solidarity with Palestine, as they seek to raise funds for Palestinian refugees living in the country. Of the 137 Filipinos who were living in Gaza when Israel began its bombardment of the enclave in October, over 116 were flown to the Philippines, some alongside their Palestinian spouses. They were left to their own devices several days after their arrival, with over a dozen families of evacuees struggling to find a place to live just last month after government support ceased. Their temporary housing was eventually organized by a civil society task force. Their struggles were at the heart of the fundraiser on Saturday evening, which saw performances from nine of Manila’s comedic talents, who took turns delivering snappy 10-to-15-minute routines over a two-hour show to dozens of people at the Meshwe Lebanese Restaurant in Quezon City, Metro Manila. The show quickly got traction online after it was announced by Meshwe’s owner Nathaniel Mounayer, who said it was sold out within a week. “I’m overwhelmed by the positive reactions. Even with people just resharing (the posts online), it went viral. The sharing was really authentic, so we didn’t even have to pay for any advertisement,” Mounayer, who is also a comedian and performed a bit on Saturday, told Arab News. “It is important that we stand by what is just and be on the right side of history. A worldwide movement and awakening for the liberation of Palestine is taking place. People around the world outside of the Middle East are learning about the 75-year struggle of the Palestinians. It is important that we uphold the value that all lives are sacred and that all people have the right to live free from oppression and occupation.”
The money raised from the show will be used to purchase a month’s worth of household essentials for the Palestinian refugees in Manila, including Arab kitchen staples like olive oil, zaatar and tahini, Mounayer said.
More than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip are facing dire shortages of food, water and supplies, as Israel has allowed only limited amounts of aid into the besieged enclave. Since October, more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 64,000 others are injured as relentless Israeli attacks continue to also target crucial health facilities. For the stand-up artists who took part in the Manila show, the fundraiser was their way of showing support for Palestine. Joshua Dias, a Filipino-Indian stand-up comic based in Dubai, took part as a guest performer in the event after initially learning about the fundraiser online. “It’s a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and I said that I would love to come and support the show,” Dias told Arab News. “We see what is happening over there (in Gaza) and how it’s turned into (a) genocide.”
Comedians tend to get together to raise funds for an important cause, said Aldo Cuervo, one of the stand-up artists at the show.
“We care about what’s happening,” he told Arab News. “I (hope) that these shows inspire people to speak up more, and make Filipinos realize that we can offer great solidarity.”

Rare snowless winter threatens livelihoods of thousands in Kashmir’s ski town
SANJAY KUMAR/Arab News/January 28, 2024
New Delhi: A prolonged dry spell is sweeping across Indian-controlled Kashmir this winter, taking away familiar scenes of deep powder snow from the resort town of Gulmarg and threatening the livelihoods of thousands of people dependent on tourism and farming in the region.
At around 2,600 meters, Gulmarg is one of the world’s highest ski resorts, normally attracting snowboarders and skiers from around the world as they take advantage of the thick January powder that annually blankets the Himalayas. But this year, the miles of slopes in the ski town are mostly brown and bare as snow barely fell, even during the harshest phase of winter that should have started in late December. “This has never been the case before,” Showkat Ahmad Rather, who heads the Ski Association of Gulmarg, told Arab News on Sunday. “We used to earn around $1,800 per month in this season, but there’s no income this time … More than 550 families are dependent on skiing income and they’re impacted because there’s no snow. It’s a really sad situation this time.” The lack of snow has not only impacted the skiing industry but also the larger tourism industry in Gulmarg.
“Because of no snow this year, all those people who depend on tourism — be it people associated with skiing, be it guides or the hotel industry — everyone has been impacted badly,” Tariq Ahmad, president of the Gulmarg Guides Association, told Arab News.
“Bookings are getting canceled back to back. Many domestic and foreign tourists used to come every day, but the bookings are getting canceled every day.”
The cancelations have brought down the daily number of tourists to 2,000 from the usual 7,000, according to Ahmed. In Kashmir, which is claimed in full and ruled in part by India and Pakistan, tourism employs thousands of people and contributes about 7 percent to the region’s gross domestic product.
Over 16 million people visited the valley until the end of September 2023, according to government data. Like much of South Asia, Kashmir has been experiencing extreme weather patterns, including record summer heat waves that led to rapid melting of glaciers, which are a major source of water for over 12 million people living in the region. Indian meteorologists said the unusual weather is a global phenomenon linked to El Nino and La Nina, two opposing climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that break normal conditions and affect weather worldwide.
“It’s a global phenomenon in the Pacific. What’s happening is climate variability. Thirty years ago such events occurred and again this has happened, so this isn’t climate change,” Mohammed Hussain Mir from the Indian Meteorological Department told Arab News.
In Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital city about 50 km away from Gulmarg, the average temperature was recently recorded at around 12 degrees Celsius, which Mir said was about 5 degrees above normal.
Kashmir reported a 79 percent precipitation deficit through December, official data showed. Though the valley saw some light snowfall on Friday, it only occurred in some hilly areas and provided “no relief,” said environmental activist Mushtaq Pahalgami, adding that the dry winter was caused by climate change and “mindless construction” in the region. “What we’re witnessing in Kashmir today is the impact of climate change. The kind of construction activities that are taking place around the Himalayan region isn’t healthy, so much pollution is around now and there’s no scientific way to address the problem here,” Pahalgami told Arab News. The weather shifts in Kashmir are also likely to impact the region’s water resources and agriculture, said Akshit Sangomla from the Delhi-based Center for Science.
“Apple is a big horticulture crop in Kashmir that’s going to suffer. Rice cultivation might suffer, which provides most of the livelihood in Kashmir (and) is going to be hampered by this trend,” he added.

India’s united opposition faces major setback
REUTERS/January 28, 2024
A key regional leader broke away from India’s opposition alliance on Sunday and was set to join hands again with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in a major blow to Modi’s challengers months before general elections.
According to local media reports, Nitish Kumar, chief minister of the northern state of Bihar, tendered his resignation to the state governor. Kumar told news agency ANI that not everything was alright with the alliance.
“Today, I have resigned as the chief minister and I have also told the governor to dissolve the government in the state. This situation came because not everything was alright,” Kumar said. Kumar’s departure weakens India’s opposition parties which had decided to set aside their differences last year to form an alliance called ‘INDIA’ to take on the BJP in general elections due by May. Kumar was instrumental in bringing together opposition parties to form the 28-party alliance, which includes the main opposition Congress party. Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said that the BJP was scared of the alliance and this “political drama had been created” to divert attention. The alliance was already facing serious turbulence last week with member Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the eastern state of West Bengal and the head of Trinamool Congress party, saying it will contest Bengal alone.
Similarly, another member, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which rules the national capital territory of Delhi and northern state of Punjab, said it will not ally with Congress in Punjab.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 28-29.2024
Frankly Speaking: Are Palestinian Christians facing extinction?
ARAB NEWS/January 28, 2024
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2449826/middle-east
DUBAI: Israel’s brutal war in Gaza is threatening to end the existence of Palestinian Christians in both the enclave and the occupied West Bank, Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem has said.
Appearing on “Frankly Speaking,” the Arab News weekly show, the Palestinian pastor did not mince words while speaking on topics ranging from the Church’s position on the conflict to whether the West has begun turning on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It is a genocide. Israel told the world what it is doing, what it wants to do, and facts speak for themselves,” he said.
“How was the killing of thousands of children self-defense? How is that related to Oct. 7? How was the displacement of close to 2 million people self-defense?”
Militants led by the Palestinian group Hamas killed around 1,300 people, mostly civilians, in an unprecedented attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7 last year. Another 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israel. The events triggered Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and reduced vast swathes of the enclave to rubble. “It became clear to us, especially as Palestinians, in the very first few weeks of the war, even days, that this is an attempt to end life in Gaza as we know it,” Isaac said. The war has had a ripple effect beyond Gaza, with the tens of thousands of Christians who live in the West Bank also suffering, Isaac added.
“Here in the West Bank, many Palestinian Christian families have already left out of fear. They look at what was happening in Gaza and they think, ‘could this happen to us one day?’” Isaac said it is “impossible to thrive as a community in the midst of conflict, oppression and occupation. “Life here was so difficult before Oct. 7; it’s even more difficult now. Many have lost their jobs because there is no tourism. Jerusalem is completely blocked now, isolated from us.”
Isaac’s community were already a minority dealing with their own challenges even prior to Oct. 7, with just around 1,000 Christians residing in Gaza.
Though Israel often touts itself as a protector of Christians in the Middle East, the bombing campaigns in Gaza have laid waste to homes and churches of Palestinian Christians there.
“There is this illusion that Israel treats Christians favorably or in a special way. And if anything, this war made sure that this is not true,” Isaac told Katie Jensen, the host of “Frankly Speaking.”
The bombing of Gaza’s Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church on Oct. 19 claimed the lives of at least 18 Palestinian civilians who were sheltering in the church. Two months later, Israeli snipers reportedly shot and killed a mother and daughter as they left the sole Catholic Church in Gaza.
“Everyone who sees what happened in Gaza realizes that everybody is a target. Churches were not safe. Christians took refuge in the churches thinking that they were safe, but evidently, they were wrong,” Isaac said.
Though the already-small Gazan Christian community has been struck a particularly severe blow with the deaths of many of its members, Isaac made it clear that he did not seek any special treatment for Palestine’s Christians. “I don’t think we want to be treated in a special way,” he said. “We want an end to the war. We want an end to the occupation. “We want to contribute in a reality in which there are equal rights to all citizens. We want to feel as equals to everyone else in this land, Muslims and Jews.”
Moving on to South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Isaac reiterated that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide and are completely unrelated to the Oct. 7 attack.
He expressed shock over “the fact that Western countries that boast all the time about human rights and international law are willing to turn such a blind eye to something like this.”He praised South Africa’s initiation of the proceedings against Israel, which began at the end of December last year. The ICJ handed down its ruling on Jan. 26, ordering Israel to “prevent genocide and desist from killing, injuring, destroying life and preventing births,” enable the provision of humanitarian services, and submit regular reports to the court. Despite ruling in South Africa’s favor on many accounts, the judgement stopped short of ordering an immediate ceasefire — and many are skeptical that the ruling will be enforceable or anything more than symbolic.
However, for Isaac, it is important that “Israel realize that there are countries (and) leaders willing to stand firm and take courageous positions. Israel has been doing what it’s been doing because no one ever held Israel accountable.”
He said: “I was pleased just with the idea that all the crimes of Israel have been displayed in front of the whole world to see. “I am very pleased that it’s a country like South Africa that led the efforts, because they have the moral credibility and authority to speak about such issues. A country that endured colonization and apartheid has the credibility to speak against colonization and apartheid, and a genocide.”
During his Christmas sermon last year, an emotional plea titled “Christ in the Rubble,” Isaac delivered a scathing condemnation of what he viewed as hypocrisy, double standards and silence practiced by both Western nations and the church.
“In the shadow of the empire they turn the colonizer into the victim and the colonized into the oppressor,” he said. In his now-viral sermon, Isaac slammed what he saw as the hypocrisy of Western states, saying: “To our European friends, I never, ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. And I mean this.”
While Palestinians have witnessed the world’s support, from the ICJ ruling to mass protests and outpourings of solidarity across the world, others were not so keen to criticize Israel for its actions. The US, UK and Germany, among others, opposed the judgment. With more and more civilians dying as a result of its bombardment and military operations in Gaza, there are signs that even Israel’s strongest allies are beginning to distance themselves. Isaac, though, sees any signs of support from major Western powers so far as empty words. “For months now, we’ve heard that America has put some red lines to Israel as to what it can do and what it cannot do. And all these red lines have been crossed,” he said.
For Isaac, “anything America says about the war comes to us as empty words. Until we see it, we will (not) believe it. And to be honest, this has been the most important element that empowered Israel and enabled Israel to commit such war crimes, because no one is holding them accountable. You can say whatever you want in press conferences, but it’s what facts on the ground are that matters to us.”
Deploring what he called Christian-majority countries’ failure to support Palestinian rights, he said: “It’s very disappointing, and disheartening, to be honest, especially when you combine that with public statements from many of these countries about their concern about the Christian presence in the Middle East.
“Yet all they do is support policies that endanger our presence. It’s so hypocritical and it’s so dismissive of our plights, our opinions, and our perspectives. They never talk to us.”“They don’t look at us Palestinians as equals, whether we are Christians or Muslims. This is the heart of the issue,” he said.
“They have other plans. They have political ambitions. They have political alliances, and that is what they care about the most (at) the expense of our presence, our reality on the ground.”In addition to calling out the silence or double standards of governments, Isaac criticized the stance of churches, many of whom as institutions remain silent even if congregants express their support.
“Church leaders are not speaking for their people. I think the people clearly realize there is severe injustice, and they’re very concerned about what is happening in Gaza. Yet church leaders are paralyzed to speak and to challenge Israel for what it’s doing.”
He was asked if religious position really matters in a largely secular world, where politics and upcoming elections clearly have the upper hand.
“I hope it does, and the question is, which religious position matters,” he said. “Let us not forget that Israel uses the Bible to justify what it’s doing.
“Many Christians support Israel for theological beliefs and certainly many, not just Jewish groups, use religion to justify exclusivity and fundamentalism and the denial of the rights of the other.”Isaac did not shy away from calling on faith leaders to take a strong stance on Gaza, saying “it’s time that the voices that believe in inclusivity, in peace, in justice and equality make their voices heard, and not in a diplomatic nice way.
“I’m tired, to be honest, of faith leaders just calling for peace and praying for peace,” he said. “We need to call things out by their name. There is a system of apartheid in our country. It is time to speak to uphold these principles.”
As a religious figure, what is Isaac’s position on the right of Jews to be able to live in peace, particularly given that Jerusalem is a shared holy site for the three Abrahamic faiths? “Everybody has the right to live in peace everywhere,” he said. “When Western Christian leaders press us on this, I say Jews should have the right and freedom to live in peace everywhere, in the United States, in Europe, even in Arab countries.
“We should be in a position where Jews don’t feel threatened anywhere.”
Elaborating on the point, he said: “It seems that the whole world is determined to make sure Jews are safe, but not in their land, in our land. And then they blame us for it as if we are antisemites, whereas antisemitism is what drove Jews from Europe to begin with, to come to our land.”Isaac said he does not “want to see Israel destroyed or Jews leave,” adding that he desired a future in which his children “will have Israeli friends. “It’s not just to end the conflict, but to live in a reality in which we are friends and neighbors with the Israelis,” he said.
While safety and equality for all is a priority, Isaac said Palestinians’ right to exist should not be negated. “The world was okay with Israel shifting more and more and more to the right, openly saying there will never be a Palestinian state, openly saying only Jews have a right to the land, and then electing openly racist leaders, continuing with the building of settlements for all these years, making sure there can never be a Palestinian state, and then blaming the Palestinians for it,” he said.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me. So, unless we as an international community, as faith leaders, unite and call for this idea of justice and equal rights, it will not happen.”

Education can be the path toward a more peaceful future
Ehtesham Shahid/Arab News/January 28, 2024
The sixth International Day of Education was observed last week. This is a day dedicated to celebrating the profound impact of education as a fundamental human right and a catalyst for sustainable development. This year’s theme, “Learning for Lasting Peace,” resonates profoundly in a world marred by violent conflicts, discrimination and hate. It compels us to confront a crucial question: How can education empower our relentless pursuit of lasting peace? Established by the UN in December 2018, the International Day of Education highlights the pivotal role of education in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals, with a particular focus on Goal 4 — quality education for all. The day has served as a platform for governments, organizations and individuals to assess educational progress, confront challenges and work to expand access to quality education globally.
In an era marked by escalating conflicts and a distressing surge in discrimination, racism, xenophobia and hate speech, the significance of this day cannot be overstated. The repercussions of such violence know no borders, impacting individuals irrespective of geography, gender, race, religion or politics, both in the physical and digital realms. Education, as a cornerstone of societal progress, must be harnessed to empower individuals and communities to build lasting peace, as it instills the knowledge, values, attitudes, skills and behaviors needed to become agents of peace. It equips individuals with the tools to understand, respect and appreciate diverse cultures and perspectives, fostering inclusivity and tolerance. Nations and communities that invest in education experience greater long-term stability and resilience to external and internal threats.
Several regional organizations are noteworthy for their commitment to these objectives. The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a renowned research university, prioritizes research and innovation, while running educational and outreach programs to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education within the country. In Riyadh, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University stands as one of the world’s largest women’s universities, empowering women through education. The Saudi Arabian Educational and Cultural Mission supports Saudi students studying abroad, including those pursuing higher education, by providing scholarships, guidance and educational resources.
Beyond Saudi Arabia, the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation in the UAE has set a strategic goal to provide 200,000 Emirati and Arab youths with high-quality education and innovative solutions to elevate their livelihoods. The foundation strives to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education through knowledge and technology partnerships, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals 4, 8 and 17.
Nations that invest in education experience greater long-term stability and resilience to external and internal threats.
Education also plays a pivotal role in conflict prevention and resolution. It empowers individuals to engage in constructive dialogue, negotiate peacefully and find common ground in spite of differences. Education enables us to address the root causes of conflicts, such as poverty, inequality and social injustice.
The International Day of Education is an annual barometer of global progress toward SDG 4. It brings together stakeholders to discuss challenges, share best practices and renew commitments to expanding access to quality education. This collaborative effort is essential in ensuring that education reaches marginalized and disadvantaged communities, leaving no one behind.
In recent years, the observance of this day has adapted to the digital age, incorporating social media campaigns, webinars and virtual events that can reach a broader audience. These initiatives amplify the message about the importance of education and facilitate global conversations on its role in achieving peace.
Numerous organizations are tirelessly working to achieve this objective on a global scale. The United World Colleges is an international educational movement uniting young people from diverse backgrounds to emphasize experiential learning, intercultural understanding and community service. Seeds of Peace, meanwhile, brings together young people from conflict-affected regions, fostering dialogue, leadership development and conflict resolution training. Initiatives like the Monaco-based Peace and Sport leverage sports to promote peace, reconciliation and social inclusion.
Student exchange programs promote cultural exchanges, fostering cross-cultural learning and international cooperation and contributing to peaceful relations between countries. Interfaith and religious education programs encourage understanding among various faith communities, promoting tolerance and collaboration while reducing religious-based conflicts. Various organizations and institutions offer conflict resolution and peace-building workshops and training for students, educators and community leaders.
The urgency for an active commitment to peace has never been more evident. Education stands at the heart of this endeavor. This year’s theme of learning for lasting peace must be transformative, giving learners the knowledge and skills to become community peace builders. Even though it is a widely shared goal, achieving it remains a complex and multifaceted challenge. It requires access to quality education and a curriculum promoting values of peace, tolerance and respect for human rights. Learning for lasting peace is a pervasive goal to build a more peaceful and just world. It is an aspiration that resonates with individuals and societies that are seeking to prevent conflicts, resolve disputes and promote the well-being of all people. The effectiveness of these initiatives often depends on their context and the stakeholders’ commitment. Successful peace education programs address the root causes of conflicts, promote dialogue and empower individuals and communities to work together for a more peaceful future.
• Ehtesham Shahid is an Indian editor and researcher based in the UAE.
X: @e2sham

Environmental devastation of war should not be overlooked
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/January 28, 2024
The world is today experiencing several armed conflicts. War, with its harrowing consequences, extends its reach beyond human casualties and displaced communities, leaving an indelible mark on the environment. Unfortunately, the devastating impacts of armed conflicts on nature are often overlooked. That is why it is important that we explore the multifaceted and profound environmental consequences of war, shedding light on the voiceless and innocent victims that suffer long after the guns fall silent.
The environmental toll of war is vast and complex, encompassing a spectrum of destructive forces that alter landscapes, pollute air and water and disrupt ecosystems. The extensive use of weaponry, deliberate destruction of infrastructure and displacement of populations contribute to a chain reaction of ecological consequences. In fact, from soil contamination to deforestation, the collateral damage inflicted on the environment could echo for generations.
A report published on the Social Science Research Network this month revealed some alarming statistics regarding greenhouse gas emissions during the first two months of Israel’s war on Gaza. The emissions for this period surpassed the annual emissions of 20 individual countries and territories. The study, titled “A Multitemporal Snapshot of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Israel-Gaza Conflict,” estimated 281,315 tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted as a result of the war in the first 60 days after Oct. 7. According to co-author Benjamin Neimark, a senior lecturer at London’s Queen Mary University, this is equivalent to “75 coal-fired power plants operating for a year.”
It also emphasized that the carbon footprint for rebuilding Gaza is projected to result in total annual emissions higher than those of more than 130 countries, placing them on par with New Zealand in terms of environmental impact. These findings underscore the environmental consequences of armed conflicts and highlight the urgent need for ecological factors to be considered in conflict resolution and reconstruction efforts.
While the immediate impacts of war are visible in the form of bombed-out buildings and displaced populations, the reconstruction phase also contributes to environmental degradation. The rebuilding of infrastructure often involves resource-intensive processes that put a further strain on the supply of natural resources. Additionally, the disposal of the debris and waste generated during reconstruction poses challenges in terms of managing pollution and maintaining environmental sustainability.
Throughout history, wars have left indelible scars on the environment, altering landscapes and ecosystems in ways that endure for generations. One glaring example is the Vietnam War, where the widespread use of herbicides, particularly Agent Orange, had severe ecological repercussions. Defoliation campaigns resulted in the destruction of vast expanses of lush forest, causing soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and contamination of water sources. The lingering effects of Agent Orange continue to impact the health of both the environment and the local population.
From soil contamination to deforestation, the collateral damage inflicted on the environment could echo for generations.
The Syrian civil war also brought to light the multifaceted environmental toll of war. The conflict witnessed the deliberate targeting of critical infrastructure, including water treatment plants. The destruction of such facilities not only deprives civilians of access to clean water, but also leads to the contamination of water sources, posing a severe threat to public health and ecosystems. Another contemporary example is the conflict in Yemen, where the hostilities have led to the neglect and degradation of the environment.
One of the current problems is that modern weaponry has introduced new dimensions of environmental destruction. Depleted uranium ammunition, which has been employed in conflicts by the US and other militaries, poses long-term environmental and health risks. Its radioactive nature can contaminate soil and water, affecting ecosystems and endangering human health over extended periods.
Furthermore, air raids and bombings release pollutants into the atmosphere, contributing to air and soil pollution. For example, the destruction of industrial facilities can release hazardous chemicals, as seen in conflicts like the Syrian civil war, where attacks on chemical plants resulted in the release of toxic substances, further compromising air and water quality.
One of the most immediate effects armed conflicts have on the environment is the release of pollutants into the atmosphere and soil. The detonation of explosives and the burning of infrastructure contribute to air pollution, releasing harmful particles and toxins. The fallout settles on the soil, contaminating it with hazardous substances that can have long-lasting effects on both the environment and public health.
It is very important to point out that clean water is a critical concern in times of war. The deliberate targeting of water infrastructure, such as dams and treatment plants, exacerbates water scarcity issues. Meanwhile, displacement and increased demand strain available water resources, leading to conflicts over access. Moreover, the pollution of water sources due to the release of contaminants during warfare poses a severe threat to aquatic ecosystems and the health of communities that depend on these water bodies.
In a nutshell, the environment stands as an often-overlooked casualty of war, with nature being forced to bear the scars of destruction and degradation. From polluted air and water to depleted biodiversity and strained ecosystems, the environmental toll of war is a pervasive and enduring crisis. It is crucial that the international community recognizes the victims of environmental devastation.
• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist.
X: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Civilian Deaths in Gaza: Relatively Low
Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute./January 28, 2024
Critics of Israel almost never cite comparable data from other military encounters. This omission creates the false impression that the civilian death tolls in Gaza are among the highest in history, when they are in fact among the lowest.
The New York Times' conclusion that the new data suggests that it is "wrong to accuse [Israel] of wanting to maximize civilian deaths" is highly relevant to the false charges of genocide that are being considered by the International Court of Justice.
The decreasing civilian death rate among Gazans should also end the campaign to impose a ceasefire on Israel before the IDF completes its legitimate mission to destroy Hamas' military capacity. Successfully completing that mission will save civilian lives in the long run, by reducing Hamas' capacity to keep its promise of repeating the barbarism of October 7 and also by reducing its use of civilian shields.
The time has come, indeed it is long overdue, for the world to stop imposing a double standard on the nation-state of the Jewish people. Double standards are a form of bigotry, and when bigotry is addressed to the only nation-state of the Jewish people, it becomes a form of international anti-Semitism against the Jew among nations. It must stop.
Israel's military actions have produced far fewer deaths and a far lower ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths than in any comparable urban warfare. This is especially significant considering the reality that Hamas deliberately increases civilian deaths by using women and children as human shields and by hiding its military personnel and equipment among civilians. Pictured: Gazans, protected by the Israeli military, walk along a safe corridor in the northern Gaza Strip, leaving the battle zone towards the southern Gaza Strip, on November 10, 2023. Hamas terrorists had ordered Gazans not to move to safety, and shot at them as they tried to flee. (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
You wouldn't know it from the hectoring decision just rendered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel, but the death toll among civilians in Gaza — even including children and women — is among the lowest in the history of comparable warfare. Over the past several months, it has become even lower.
According to The New York Times, "The daily death toll in Gaza has more than halved in the past month," and has fallen almost two-thirds since late October. Moreover, the percentage of civilian to combatant causalities has gone down considerably as well.
In a massive understatement, The New York Times also reported that these considerable reductions in civilian deaths have been "somewhat overlooked" by the media and critics. "Somewhat"! They have been totally buried and ignored. The New York Times also opined that Israel's "harshest critics are wrong to accuse it of wanting to maximize civilian deaths."
It is no accident that this reduced civilian death toll has been "somewhat overlooked" by the media and by Israel's critics, including previously by The New York Times itself. Israel is subject to a discernible double standard when it comes to covering its military actions.
Even before the recent dramatic reduction in civilian deaths, Israel's military actions produced far fewer deaths and a far lower ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths than in any comparable urban warfare. This is especially significant considering the reality that Hamas deliberately increases civilian deaths by using women and children as human shields and by hiding its military personnel and equipment among civilians. The current ratio of civilian-to-combatant is well below two-to-one, which compares extremely favorably with ratios achieved by other Western democracies in urban warfare.
Critics of Israel almost never cite comparable data from other military encounters. This omission creates the false impression that the civilian death tolls in Gaza are among the highest in history, when they are in fact among the lowest.
Every actual death of an innocent civilian — especially among babies and very young children — is a tragedy. It is these deaths that are always highlighted by Hamas to the media, but no one knows how many such deaths are actually among this most vulnerable segment of the population, and how many of those are the result of Hamas deliberately using young children as shields.
The Hamas figures for total deaths do not purport to distinguish combatants from what they consider civilian deaths. They never give the ages of the "children" they claim have been killed, although they regard anyone under the age of 19 as a child, even if they are active combatants. Hamas has recruited fighters as young as 13 to 19. The Hamas figures also do not count the Gazans who were killed by errant rockets launched by terrorists, or Gazans who were killed by Hamas for refusing its orders not to move to safer locations.
The New York Times' conclusion that the new data suggests that it is "wrong to accuse [Israel] of wanting to maximize civilian deaths" is highly relevant to the false charges of genocide that are being considered by the International Court of Justice.
Nations engaged in genocide do not go to such great lengths trying to reduce civilian casualties, including placing its own soldiers at heightened risk by employing focused ground forces instead of relying exclusively on air and sea bombardments. The ICJ should immediately reject the genocide charges against Israel and initiate war crime charges against Hamas and Iran, both of which willfully try to increase civilian deaths.
The decreasing civilian death rate among Gazans should also end the campaign to impose a ceasefire on Israel before the IDF completes its legitimate mission to destroy Hamas' military capacity. Successfully completing that mission will save civilian lives in the long run, by reducing Hamas' capacity to keep its promise of repeating the barbarism of October 7 and also by reducing its use of civilian shields.
Israel's conduct in its defensive war, started by Hamas, has been exemplary. It satisfies all international standards, and its effort to minimize civilian deaths while accomplishing its legitimate goals has generally been successful. There is always a tradeoff between reducing enemy civilian deaths and increasing risks to one's own soldiers and civilians. Israel has struck a better balance than most, following the unprecedented Hamas barbarisms.
The time has come, indeed it is long overdue, for the world to stop imposing a double standard on the nation-state of the Jewish people. Double standards are a form of bigotry, and when bigotry is addressed to the only nation-state of the Jewish people, it becomes a form of international anti-Semitism against the Jew among nations. It must stop.
**Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute, and is also the host of "The Dershow" podcast.
© 2024 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Oct. 7 Was Worse Than a Terror Attack. It Was a Pogrom.
Deborah Danan/The Tablet/January 28/2024
‘Let me know of one Palestinian in Gaza who tried to save a Jew and maybe I’ll change my mind’
Eyal Barad was in the safe room of his home in Nir Oz for more than 12 hours on Oct. 7 while Palestinians went on a rampage of his Gaza envelope kibbutz, eventually kidnapping or murdering more than a quarter of its residents.
Every so often, Barad, 40, was forced to cover his 6-year-old daughter’s mouth with his hand to stifle her squeals. The little girl, who is autistic, thought the whole thing was a game. Most of the time, though, Barad was glued to his phone, watching the live feed of a camera he had recently installed outside his home to monitor speeding cars. Images from the feed, which I obtained, show Palestinian women and children—some appearing as young as 8 years old—taking part in the horror of that day.
Survivors’ accounts, video evidence, and the interrogation recordings of apprehended Palestinians paint a damning picture of the complicity of Gazan civilians both in the Oct. 7 attack, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and 240 people were abducted to Gaza, and its aftermath. It is one that has sparked a debate in Israel that challenges the inclination to draw distinctions between ordinary Palestinian civilians of Gaza—often referred to in Israel as bilti me’uravim (uninvolved)—and their terror leaders. For many, Oct. 7 reeked of something that Jews have been familiar with for centuries; a phenomenon where not just a vanguard, but a society at large participates in the ritual slaughter of Jews.
Around 700 Palestinians stormed Barad’s kibbutz of Nir Oz—less than a five-minute drive from Gaza—that day, CCTV footage shows. The overwhelming majority of those, estimated by Eran Smilansky, a member of the kibbutz’s security squad, to be around 550, were civilians. They were largely unarmed and not in uniform. Some of those civilians carried out wholesale acts of terror themselves, including rape and abduction—and in some cases, the eventual sale of hostages to Hamas—while others abetted the terrorists. Others still simply took advantage of the porous border to loot Israeli homes and farms, including stealing hundreds of thousands of shekels in agricultural equipment. Similar scenes played out in several of the more than 20 brutalized Israeli communities. In one video that has become emblematic of the debate around the “uninvolved,” an elderly Palestinian man with walking sticks is seen hobbling at an impressive clip along with the rest of the mob through the breached gate of Be’eri.
Differentiating between terrorists and civilians is tricky, particularly since Hamas terrorists often wear civilian clothing, a tactic evident in the ongoing war in Gaza. However, other indicators help make this distinction, such as the absence of weapons and the fact that many were filmed crossing the border barefoot or even on horseback. Even senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk readily admitted that Gaza civilians had taken part in the Oct. 7 atrocities.
One video shows a group of men in civilian clothing beating a soldier while a separate image shows another group of what appears to be civilian men celebrating atop the smoking husk of a burned-out tank. In the infamous 47-minute terror reel of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Palestinians in civilian clothing are seen beating elderly hostages with sticks. Another repeatedly screams “Allahu akbar!” as he decapitates a Thai farm worker with a garden tool.
Barad’s speed camera in Nir Oz includes images of a Palestinian girl riding a stolen bike. In another, a Palestinian woman is seen pointing out Barad’s neighbor’s home to a uniformed terrorist. An image captured later shows a resident of that home being hoisted onto a motorcycle to be taken into Gaza.
But it’s the testimonies of the survivors that provide the clearest evidence that Oct. 7 was not just a terrorist attack, but a pogrom.Batya Holin is a photographer and peace activist from Kfar Aza, which alongside Nir Oz and Be’eri, was one of the heaviest-hit communities. Holin had developed a friendship with a Gazan photographer, Mahmoud, with whom she arranged a joint exhibit last year of photos of her kibbutz and his village in the Gaza Strip. On the morning of Oct. 7, Mahmoud called and interrogated Holin, asking her how many soldiers were in her vicinity. That was when Holin realized that Mahmoud had given the photos of her village to Hamas. “Whoever says there are people there who are uninvolved, here is the proof,” she told Israel’s Channel 13 News. “They are all involved. They are all Hamas.”
Echoing Holin’s testimony, former hostage Nili Margalit said that “civilians, regular people,” abducted her to Gaza in one of the kibbutz’s golf carts. Likewise, an NBC News investigation found that Noa Argamani was likely kidnapped by a civilian mob. A video of her abduction shows her unarmed captors wearing regular clothes. Argamani may have been later handed over or sold to Hamas.
Natali Yohanan, 38, recounted hearing a Palestinian woman enter her home with two men. The woman stayed there for several hours, intermittently cooking for her male companions, watching Netflix, and ransacking her clothes. The men would occasionally try to break open the safe room door, where Yohanan, her husband, and two young children, were hiding.
“She started singing and asked them, are you hungry? Are you thirsty? She went into my fridge and heated up food,” Yohanan said. “She was very relaxed and seemed happy. She stole my credit card, my passport, and my clothes—even some of my underwear—but the clothes she didn’t want she folded and put on the bed. It was so strange.”
Then there are the Gazans who worked at the kibbutzim. Yohanan’s husband, a farmer, is one of many people in the Gaza periphery communities who hired Palestinian workers from Gaza. Like many others I spoke to, Yohanan believed that the terrorists were acting on inside knowledge obtained by those Gazan workers. Israel had gradually raised the number of work permits in the months leading up to Oct. 7 with an estimated 18,500 Gazans working in Israel before the onslaught. The thinking behind the policy was that economic incentives to the residents of the Strip would sustain the fragile peace. Hanan Dann, from Kfar Aza, told me that he was “glad that workers from Gaza were coming to Israel to have jobs and meet Israelis, to see that we’re not all devils.”
In several of the devastated communities, detailed maps were found on the bodies of dead terrorists, maps that residents say could have only been drawn up by people with intimate knowledge of the area. Gazan workers relayed an extensive range of information to Hamas that enabled the terror group to plan its attack with extraordinary meticulousness, including the identities and residences of security heads, the locations of electric boards and communications systems and how to disable them.
The workers’ betrayal left an indelible mark on the surviving kibbutzniks, leading many to reexamine previously held beliefs about their Palestinian neighbors. Nir Oz, like many of the other ravaged kibbutzim in the area, was home to scores of peace activists, many of whom volunteered for a program known as Road to Recovery, driving sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Many now believe that while there are Gazans who want to live in peace, they do not represent the majority; or, as one survivor summed it up to AFP, “there are more who don’t want us alive.”
Irit Lahav, whose parents were from Nir Oz’s founding members, described the community as a “peace lovers’” kibbutz. “It broke my heart. How can we ever get over this sense of betrayal?” Lahav, who shuttled Palestinian cancer patients several hours from the border with Gaza to their treatments in central Israel, told me. “The Palestinian public simply hates us.”
Not everyone, however, was surprised by the involvement of Gazan civilians. “I don’t differentiate between them and Hamas,” Nir Shani told me. “Let me know of one Palestinian in Gaza who tried to save a Jew and maybe I’ll change my mind.” Shani’s teenaged son Amit was taken hostage and later released as part of a prisoner exchange at the end of November. Shani is from Be’eri, also home to lifelong peace activists, including Vivian Silver, the founder of Women Wage Peace, and Yocheved and Oded Lifshitz. Silver was murdered and the Lifshitzes were taken hostage. Yocheved was later released but Oded remains in Gaza. “They are people of peace who were always supporting Palestine,” the couple’s grandson Daniel said of them. He recounted how bystanders in Gaza spat on his grandmother, who was thrown over the back of a motorcycle after being pummeled in the ribs by her captors.
In one viral video, the near-naked and bloodied body of Shani Louk, an Israeli German who was abducted from the Nova music festival but who was later declared dead, is seen being paraded through the streets of Gaza in the back of a pickup truck. Hordes of Palestinian civilians are cheering, spitting and slapping Louk’s deformed figure while chanting “Allahu akbar.” The last tranche of hostages to be released in November’s truce saw crowds of Palestinians line the streets, jeering as the Red Cross ambulances passed by. The aunt of released hostage Eitan Yahalomi said that after the arrival of her 12-year-old nephew into Gaza, “all the civilians, everyone, beat him.”
IDF Sgt. Adir Tahar was murdered and decapitated during the invasion while manning a post near the Erez border crossing. His father, David, was forced to bury his son’s body without his head. An interrogation of two Palestinians by Israel’s Shin Bet security agency revealed that the remains of the head—which had been mutilated until it barely resembled a human skull—were kept in the freezer of an ice cream store in Gaza. One of the men had tried to sell the head for $10,000. The man in question was a Palestinian civilian and not a Hamas operative, Tahar told me. The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for confirmation in time for publication.
“The reality proves that there’s no such thing as a bilti me’urav (uninvolved) in Gaza,” Tahar said. “All of Gaza is Hamas.”
In several cases, Palestinian families held hostages in their homes. Released hostage Mia Schem said she was being held by a family in Gaza. “Entire families are in the service of Hamas,” she told Channel 13. Avigail Idan, the 4-year-old Israeli American whose parents were murdered, was also held in the homes of several Palestinian families. When former hostage Russian Israeli Roni Krivoi remarkably managed to escape his captors during an Israeli air raid, he hid alone for several days before being discovered by Gaza civilians, he said, who returned him to Hamas.
“There are no innocent civilians. Not one. They don’t exist,” Schem said. “All of them there are terrorists.”
Another hostage, 17-year-old Agam Goldstein-Almog, agreed with Schem. She said that she was brought to a school and “a nice lady offered us water, a mattress, and a place to sleep” and assured her the place was safe. “I turned to my mother and said, ‘Mom, there are good people in the world. And five minutes later they fired a barrage of rockets from the school [into Israel] and everyone was shouting, ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar,’ and I told her, ‘Scratch that, they’re all the same.’”
“If we previously believed that there was a chance for peace, we’ve lost all faith in these people, especially after we were there and among the population,” Goldstein-Almog added.
There have been scores of examples of Gazan civilians in various professions who appear to be, at the very least, in the “service of Hamas.” From New York Times, Associated Press, and Reuters photojournalists breaking the Oct. 7 breach into Israel (with one spotted brandishing a grenade), to UNRWA staffers who have praised the attacks, kept hostages in their homes (a claim the U.N. agency strongly denied), and covered up the existence of tunnel shafts and weapons caches in their schools. One teacher at an UNRWA school in Khan Yunis, Jawad Abu Shamala, was a member of Hamas’ leadership in charge of its funds.
The director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, Ahmad al-Kahlout, confessed to Israeli security forces in December that his hospital doubled as a military facility for Hamas. He admitted to being recruited to the terror group and receiving military training, and added that there were other “doctors, nurses, paramedics, and clerks” who were also military operatives in Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. His last remarks in the video, released by the IDF, may suggest that he did not have a choice. Calling Hamas leaders “cowards,” al-Kahlout said, “they ruined us.” Similar claims can be found in several videos by ordinary Gazans, some of whom were silenced mid-sentence. One clip cited by The Wall Street Journal prompted Hamas to issue a warning against publishing any materials it deems “offensive to the image of the steadfastness and unity of our people in Gaza.”
Then again, a survey conducted in December by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that while about one in five Gazans polled blamed Hamas for their suffering in the war, 57% of Palestinians in Gaza (and 82% in the West Bank) continued to support Hamas’ decision to attack Israel. Moreover, support for the terror group overall (42%) has increased since Oct. 7.
While many Palestinians have occasionally expressed dissatisfaction with aspects of Hamas’ governance, such as electricity shortages or tax hikes, its actions as a “resistance” faction are viewed favorably. Take, for example, the words of a banker from Gaza City cited in the WSJ report: “I hate Hamas, the government. I never respected them. But the militants? I believe in them so much, they are sacrificing their souls for the sake of Palestine.”
Seasonal expressions of discontent are not a new phenomenon. There have been protests against the group in 2017, 2019, and as recently as last summer. Benny Avital, a member of Nir Oz’s civilian security team, told me that prior to Oct. 7, the protests in Gaza had fueled hopes that “the Gazan people will rise up against” their leaders.
Several notable Israelis have expressed similar sentiments. Singer-songwriter Idan Raichel, who in the past has described his music as a bridge for peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors, said last week that Gaza civilians should do more to “rise up against Hamas,” and the fact that they don’t means that “most of them should be treated as involved.”
Even Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who’s more dovish than the right-wing government, has pointed the finger at Palestinian civilians in Gaza. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said almost two weeks after the attacks. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
For Avital and other Israelis, there is no longer any middle ground after Oct. 7.
“For us now, there is bad and good. Before we were sure there was something in the middle. Now we understand there is nothing in the middle. There are people who want to kill you and there are us, who just want to live a quiet life.”
***Deborah Danan is a journalist and communications consultant based in Jaffa, Israel. Her work as an investigative reporter has taken her across the Middle East, from Gaza to Jerusalem to Cairo to Amman.

No justification for Europe to cling on to colonial-era treasures
Ranvir S. NayarArab News/January 28, 2024
Amid rising global tensions and seemingly unending conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and many parts of Africa, a bit of good news emerged last week. Germany and France have joined hands to launch a multiyear fund that will research the provenance of African heritage objects in the museums of both countries. The objective of the fund, currently pegged at €2.1 million ($2.28 million), is to prepare the ground for the return of objects if they were looted from former colonies. To start with, the two countries will research objects from Togo and Cameroon. The move, even if experimental, is a very welcome one, as it comes amid ongoing heated debate on the fate of thousands of artifacts that are lying in dozens of European museums, both public and private, after being brought back from the former colonies of various European powers.
These former colonies have long been seeking the repatriation of objects they say were taken by force or simply stolen by the European powers — an argument that cannot be easily dismissed. In 2017, in a promising declaration, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would do everything in his power to return African cultural heritage looted by colonial France. Macron made this statement at the start of his tenure as president to coincide with the launch of his policy to intensify French engagement with Africa, notably the Sahel region. As part of this policy, France handed back 26 objects taken from its former West African colony of Benin.
However, since then, and especially since Macron’s reelection two years ago, the efforts to return objects seem to have stalled. Meanwhile, Macron’s African outreach policy lies in tatters, as a number of countries in the continent have turned hostile and Franco-African ties are now at a historic low. It is this backdrop that makes the news of the fund seem especially welcome. One hopes that not only will the researchers be able to return many objects to Togo and Cameroon, but also that the results will encourage Germany and France to go even further.
In fact, the issue of the restoration of objects of heritage should be taken up at a global level. During the colonial period, almost every European power pillaged the colonies for their wealth, both in material terms for statues, objets d’art, gold, silver and precious gems and in intellectual terms, taking manuscripts, traditional knowledge and rare books. Large chunks of the collections in Western museums have their origins in the colonized world. One study found that German museums had more than 40,000 objects taken from Cameroon, a country that was colonized by Germany for just a few decades. If this is the volume of objects taken from just one country by its colonial ruler in fewer than 50 years, it is difficult to imagine how many objects might have been stolen from colonies that were ruled by the colonial powers for centuries. Be it South Asian nations like India or the countries in Latin America, it is possible that millions of objects stolen from these countries adorn the museums of Europe.
Former colonies have long been seeking the repatriation of objects they say were taken by force or simply stolen.
In today’s world, there is no plausible justification that Europe can cite to defend itself on the issue of colonial heritage objects lying in its private or public collections. These objects belong to the people and countries from which they were taken. The restoration of these objects is not only the right thing to do, especially as a sign of the colonial powers’ recognition of their past crimes, but it is also a crucial step in turning the page on that very painful period of human history, when humanity failed to display its best attributes.
Some may argue that the objects of the colonies have only survived because they were secured and properly stored in museums in the West and that, if they had been left in the colonies, they may have been destroyed, especially in the turmoil that followed the end of the colonial period in many countries. Another argument that is used to justify their presence in Western museums is that these objects are shared human heritage and that, in a globalized world, people can enjoy seeing and studying these objects anywhere, not just in the country of their origin.
Both of these arguments are fallacious and an insult to the colonized. Thousands of heritage objects were destroyed during the wars inflicted by the colonial powers on their subjects, or even in the attempts of the colonizers to steal these objects and take them back. The large number of treasures lying in the wrecks of colonial-era ships in seas around the world are an indication of the scale of the looting and destruction.
And while it is clear that poorer countries would struggle to access the same technological and human expertise for conservation as the colonial powers, the latter could try to make up for their past sins by both returning these priceless pieces of history and heritage to their rightful owners and also helping with their conservation. After all, the developing world can very easily make the case for reparations from the colonial powers for all the thefts and other crimes committed by them over the centuries.
There are precedents of the West restoring artifacts and paying reparations, such as with many of the items seized by Hitler’s Nazis before and during the Second World War. Postwar Germany went to great lengths to find the rightful owners of art and other artifacts. If it could be done in the wake of the Second World War, there is no reason it cannot be done on a much larger scale today.
• Ranvir S. Nayar is the managing editor of Media India Group and founder-director of EIFE.

The Ukraine crisis is going nowhere fast
Yasar Yakis/Arab News/January 28, 2024
When the new relationship between Russia and the West was taking shape in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin categorically said that Eastern European countries should not join NATO. Then, in 1999, Russia signed the Charter for European Security, which specifically referred to the right of each state to choose and change its security arrangements and join alliances — but this commitment remains a dead letter.
The point we have now reached in the Ukraine crisis requires an updated assessment. Russia is trying to hold its position and not make any concessions to the West because it can sustain the war for a prolonged period. When, in 1994, Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal to the Russian Federation, the security guarantees given by Moscow, Washington and London became obsolete. Most likely, the question of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal will fall into oblivion and never be mentioned again.
With its sporadic successes, Ukraine has recaptured 54 percent of the territory that Russia occupied following its February 2022 invasion. However, Russia still occupies 18 percent of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine’s offensive last year achieved few territorial gains. Hopefully, there will be no more annexations on either side. The annexation of Crimea by Russia is a different issue and has to be dealt with separately.
The US foreign policy on Ukraine has remained unchanged since the outset of the war. Washington seems to be hesitant about what to do with Ukraine. It is giving the impression that it has adopted a “wait and see” policy.
Were it not for the Gaza war, the battle between Russia and the transatlantic community would still be raging. It has relatively subsided for two reasons: the transatlantic community has had to divide its efforts between the Gaza and Ukraine wars and, secondly, there are more and more discordant views in the West about the legitimacy of Israel’s attacks. If the critical point is reached, the US will probably devote more of its efforts to the Israeli side. This will give Russia the chance to regain some of its losses in Ukraine.
Kyiv is encountering some difficulties in the continuation of the war. Several Western countries have invented excuses for not giving more money or ammunition to Ukraine. Similar difficulties have arisen in the US Congress. The Republicans are blocking $50 billion in appropriations earmarked for Ukraine and this funding has gotten stuck with another obstacle that has nothing to do with Ukraine. They want to keep the Ukraine funding as a hostage while seeking to restrict the arrival of asylum seekers from Latin America. This means that the US support for Ukraine is sidelined for reasons that are not directly related to Ukraine. Washington seems to be hesitant. It is giving the impression that it has adopted a ‘wait and see’ policy. The Gaza war and the instabilities that have erupted elsewhere in the Middle East will also distract the attention of the international community. Gaza, for one, may absorb the entire attention of the US. It will probably give priority to Israel, both in terms of diplomatic efforts and military assistance. When it comes to Israel, the funding will flow uninterrupted. After the Ukraine and Gaza wars, there is a tendency to spread the war to the Red Sea and other places in the Middle East. A world war-type hostility is less likely. Future wars will probably be fought as wars of attrition or proxy wars. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month announced that 450,000 to 500,000 additional soldiers would be needed to sustain his country’s war effort. This is not an easy target to attain because there is war fatigue on all sides.
In addition to regular war losses, there are also unaccounted losses of defense material. An official US report admits there is no unauthorized or illicit transfer of defense articles. However, a report by the US European Command conceded that it was beyond the scope of its inquiry to determine whether any arms had been misappropriated. Another complicating factor has been added to Russian-Ukrainian relations. Last week, a Russian military plane carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, together with three Russian officers and six crew members, was shot down near the border between the two countries. The Ukrainian passengers were about to be exchanged. Meanwhile, Turkiye’s acquiescence to Sweden joining NATO has become a done deal, as the Turkish parliament last week approved the move. The other side of this deal was then fulfilled on Friday, when the US State Department notified Congress of the $23 billion agreement to sell F-16 fighter aircraft to Turkiye.
The Ukraine crisis is not likely to be solved if the West does not provide massive military aid and if this aid is not sustained. On the other hand, the West will probably not let Kyiv be overrun by Russia. Therefore, the war has the potential to drag on for a long period. And, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it last week, Ukraine will continue to get money from Western taxpayers.
• Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkiye and founding member of the ruling AK Party.