Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 07-08/2024
Text and video/Elias Bejjani: May 07, 2008 Barbaric Invasion of Beirut & Mount Lebanon/ Elias Bejjani/May 07/2024
Two Israeli soldiers killed in Hezbollah Metula drone attack
Hezbollah carries out drone, artillery attacks on Israeli forces, equipment
Human Rights Watch says Israel attack on Lebanon rescuers was unlawful
Geagea vows to expel every 'illegal migrant' from Lebanon
Hariri marks May 7 by saying Beirut will remain defiant
Hezbollah Claims Drone Attacks on North Israel
New Appeal Against Law Extending the Terms of Municipal Councils
Human Rights Watch: Raid that killed seven paramedics in southern Lebanon is 'unlawful'
Lebanon warns of humanitarian crisis in Rafah amid Israeli escalation
Lebanon's Finance Minister vows 'timely submission' of 2025 budget
Egypt commends Quintet ambassadors' role, urges action on Lebanese presidential vacuum
Syrian Migrants: Lebanese Forces to Present Law Proposal to Parliament/Élie-Joe Kamel/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
Mikati Seeking Lebanese Political Cover for EU Aid
Syrian Migrants: Lebanese Forces to Present Law Proposal to Parliament/Élie-Joe Kamel/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
More Suspects Arrested in Tik Tok Child Rape Case
TikTok and Society Share the Blame/Johnny Kortbawi/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
Lebanon Reveals Olympic Ambitions on World Athletics Day/Hala Abdallah/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
Basketball: Beirut SC Stumbles at Home, La Sagesse Leads 2-1

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 07-08/2024
US completes construction of Gaza aid pier
Egypt urges all parties to exert more pressure to end Gaza conflict
Worse than Dresden 1945: Israel’s Gaza rampage leaves 75% of buildings damaged or destroyed
Israeli forces seize Rafah border crossing in Gaza, putting cease-fire talks on knife's edge
Israel’s incursion into Rafah putting 1.5m people in danger: WHO director
University of Chicago clears a pro-Palestinian demonstration as MIT confronts a new encampment
Dutch police end pro-Palestinian demonstration at Amsterdam university
UN atomic chief urges Iran to take ‘concrete’ steps for cooperation
Iran and the UN nuclear agency are still discussing how to implement a 2023 deal on inspections
Iran says talks with IAEA's Grossi have been 'positive'
US Seeks to Curb Iran’s Fundraising Capacity in Southeast Asia

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on May 07-08/2024
Iranian Proxies Wreak Havoc Beyond the Middle East ..Azerbaijan and Pakistan are two lesser known victims of Iranian proxy attacks./Eyal Hulata &Natalie Ecanow/The National Interest/May 07/2024 |
Inside the White House Scramble to Broker a Deal in Gaza/Peter Baker/The New York Times/May 07/2024
A Palestinian State Will Lead To More Massacres, Final Nail in Coffin Torpedoing Biden Legacy/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/May 7, 2024
Why Israel’s military operation in Rafah will lead to ‘inevitable catastrophe’ in Gaza/ANAN TELLO and ROBERT EDWARDS/Arab News/May 08/2024
England: The local elections’ two strong messages/Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 07, 2024
Israel is testing the West’s most fundamental values/Osama Al-Sharif/Arab News/May 07, 2024
Palestine is a state waiting to be recognized/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/May 07, 2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 07-08/2024
Text and video/Elias Bejjani: May 07, 2008 Barbaric Invasion of Beirut & Mount Lebanon
 Elias Bejjani/May 07/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/118016/118016/
May 07, 2008 was a criminal day for murderers, invaders, mercenaries and barbarians serving the Iranian mullahs’ agenda. Criminals and mercenaries with evil hearts violated the sanctity of the city of Beirut, desecrated its sanctity, and assaulted its peaceful people, humiliating, displacing, torturing, killing and destroying. The 7th of May is a black day carried out by Hezbollah’s, Amal Movement, The Syrian National Party armed militias, along with all the mercenaries affiliated with the Syrian-Iranian axis of evil.
A criminal and barbaric invasion that was hailed by Michel Aoun, the Iscariot, and opportunist who only cares about his authoritarian delusions and his bank accounts. An invasion that made him president in 2016. Aoun during his presidency destroyed the state, and handed over its institutions and its decision making process to the terrorist Hezbollah .
May 07, is a day of crime that the people of Lebanon will not forget, because the blood of the innocent and defenceless was spilled at the hands of terrorist and mafia militias in service of the expansionist, colonial and terrorist agenda of the Iranian mullahs.
The 7th of May was the day of an ignorant and barbaric invasion that has not yet ended, while all its evil consequences are continuing with all criminality, barbarism, insolence, immorality and arrogance. Definitely it will not end until all the Lebanese, Iranian, Syrian and Palestinian militias are disarmed, Iranian mini-states of Hezbollah, Palestinian camps and Syrian camps are eliminated and put under the control of the Lebanese authorities.
May 07, in conclusion, was day of criminality, terrorism and devil worshipers. Meanwhile the time has come for all criminals who invaded Beirut and Mount Lebanon to be brought to justice. And because every oppressor has an end and retribution, no matter how long it takes, we say to the criminals and murderers, aloud with the Prophet Isaiah (01/33) : “Our enemies are doomed! They have robbed and betrayed, although no one has robbed them or betrayed them. But their time to rob and betray will end, and they themselves will become victims of robbery and treachery”.
In conclusion, and in order for the invasion of Beirut and the Mount Lebanon not to be repeated, The weapons of Hezbollah and the rest of the Lebanese and Palestinian militia weapons MUST be handed over to the Lebanese army. At the same time controlling all the mini illegitimate-states and end Hezbollah’s occupation of Lebanon. Liberation requires that all free Lebanese at home and in Diaspora alike immediately and urgently call on the UN Security Council to declare Lebanon a failed and rogue state, and implement all UN resolutions related to Lebanon, the armistice agreement with Israel, 1559, 1701, and 1680, then placing Lebanon under Chapter VII. And assigning the UNIFIL forces present in the south, full responsibility of securing all the necessary security and administrative measures to restore the state and rehabilitate the Lebanese to govern themselves.
May Almighty God safeguard Lebanon & its people.

Two Israeli soldiers killed in Hezbollah Metula drone attack
Naharnet/May 07, 2024
The Israeli army said Tuesday that two soldiers were killed in a Hezbollah Monday attack on a post near Metula in northern Israel. Master Sgt. (res.) Dan Kamkagi, 31, from Kfar Oranim, and Master Sgt. (res) Nahman Natan Hertz, 31, from Elazar, who served in the 551st Brigade’s 6551st Battalion, were killed after Israel's defense forces failed, to intercept an explosive drone. Another soldier was hurt, the army said. Israeli jets struck in response the southern towns of Srebbine and Ayta al-Shaab. The Israeli army also said "fighter jets struck approximately 15 (Hezbollah) military structures and terror infrastructure" in south Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed the drone attack on troops in northern Israel, with the Israeli army saying "a UAV (drone) was identified crossing from Lebanon into the area of Metula". On Monday,an Israeli strike wounded three people in Sifri in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley in the Baalbek area and Hezbollah launched "dozens of Katyusha rockets" at an Israeli base in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights in retaliation. Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah have exchanged regular cross-border fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip. In recent weeks Hamas-ally Hezbollah has stepped up its attacks on northern Israel, and the Israeli military has struck deeper into Lebanese territory. The intensifying exchanges have stoked fears of all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which went to war in 2006. In Lebanon, at least 390 people have been killed in nearly seven months of cross-border violence, mostly militants but also more than 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On Sunday official media in Lebanon said an Israeli strike on a southern village killed four family members, with Hezbollah announcing retaliatory attacks. Israel says 11 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides. Dutch Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot on Monday called for an urgent “diplomatic solution” to end intensifying clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli military along the tense border. “The Netherlands has grave concerns about rising tensions in the border region and intensified fighting, and we regret the loss of innocent civilian lives,” Bruins Slot said following a meeting with her Lebanese counterpart, caretaker Foreign Minister Fouad Bou Habib in Beirut. “And this has implications for Lebanon and the wider region.” Israel, which sees Hezbollah as its most direct threat, has not ruled out a war in southern Lebanon. It estimates that the Iran-backed Shiite group has some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at the country. Hezbollah and Israel fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a tense stalemate. Western diplomats have scrambled to halt the hostilities. Hezbollah, and ally of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, has maintained that it would stop its attacks on northern Israel when the Hamas-Israel war ends.

Hezbollah carries out drone, artillery attacks on Israeli forces, equipment
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/May 07, 2024
BEIRUT: Hezbollah on Tuesday carried out a series of drone and artillery attacks on Israeli forces and other targets under the blanket slogan of “Supporting the Gaza Resistance.”The group said it targeted “officers and soldiers while they were in the courtyard of the Yiftah barracks” and that its strikes were successful in “killing and wounding them.”It also “targeted with other drones one of the Iron Dome platforms located south of the Ramot Naftali barracks, which was directly hit and damaged.” A third target was “spy equipment at the Al-Sammaqa site in the Kafr Shuba hills,” while a fourth was “Israeli soldiers as they were moving inside a bulwark at the Israeli Al-Rahib military site,” on which it “achieved a direct hit.” Israeli media said that “six explosive-rigged drones were launched from Lebanon, five of which exploded in the Upper Galilee, causing damage.”Officials at the Kiryat Shmona settlement asked residents there to “stay in shelters due to fears of drone infiltration.”Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said Hezbollah’s operations included “launching rockets and drones toward border areas in the Upper Galilee” and that an Israeli warplane dropped heat balloons over the area where the drones entered. Explosions were heard in Yiftah and Ramot Naftali, it said. Israeli Channel 12 said air defenses intercepted a drone launched from southern Lebanon toward Galilee, while another exploded without causing any damage. According to the Israeli Army channel: “During April, four Israelis were killed by Hezbollah fire on the northern border and 33 others were injured, including five who sustained serious injuries.”The Israeli military responded to Hezbollah’s actions by conducting raids and using artillery to shell Lebanese border towns, particularly Aita al-Shaab. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry warned against “any escalation by the Israeli occupation forces against the city of Rafah,” which it said would cause a “severe humanitarian disaster for more than 1 million Palestinians who have been displaced to this area as a result of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing for seven months.”

Human Rights Watch says Israel attack on Lebanon rescuers was unlawful
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/May 07, 2024
BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch on Tuesday said an Israeli strike in Lebanon that killed seven first responders was “an unlawful attack on civilians,” and urged Washington to suspend the sale of weapons to Israel. “An Israeli strike on an emergency and relief center” in the southern village of Habbariyeh on March 27 “killed seven emergency and relief volunteers,” constituting an “unlawful attack on civilians that failed to take all necessary precautions,” HRW said in a statement. It said the massacre was committed against “a civil society association that provides emergency services, ambulances, first-aid training, and primary care and relief services in Lebanon.”Furthermore, HRW said it “did not find any evidence of the presence of military targets at the site that was targeted with the acknowledgment of the Israeli army, which did not take possible precautions to ensure that the target was military … which makes the raid illegal.”Ramzi Kaiss, HRW’s Lebanon researcher, said: “Israeli forces used a US weapon to conduct a strike that killed seven civilian relief workers in Lebanon who were merely doing their jobs.”He said the Israeli army used US-made ammunition to carry out the raid. HRW said it “sent a letter containing the results of reviewing the photos and videos of the site before and after the raid, including a video of the remnants of the ammunition found at the site, and questions to the Israeli army and the US State Department on April 19, but did not receive any response.” The rights group said it found a metal fragment at the site of the bombing with “MPR 500” written on it, confirming that it is from a 500-pound general-purpose bomb made by Israeli company Elbit Systems, and the fragments and fins are part of a joint direct attack munition set manufactured by American company Boeing. HRW urged the US to “immediately suspend arms sales and military assistance to Israel given evidence that the Israeli military is using US weapons unlawfully.”The organization asked Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry to “take immediate action by submitting a declaration to the International Criminal Court, allowing it to investigate crimes falling within its jurisdiction committed on Lebanese territory since October 2023, and prosecute the perpetrators.”A group of activists from the Gathering of Free University Students organized a demonstration in front of the American University of Beirut campus in support of Palestine and the people of Gaza. The participants raised a large banner supporting “resistance and boycott until the disintegration of the Israeli entity and the establishment of one Palestine.”

Geagea vows to expel every 'illegal migrant' from Lebanon
Naharnet/May 07, 2024
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has stressed that his party’s stance on the issue of “illegal Syrian presence in Lebanon” is “a firm, principled and sovereign stance.”“It does not change with a billion euros or tens of billions, nor with an international request or appeal, seeing as anyone who is illegal cannot continue to exist on Lebanese soil and this matter is not subject to discussion,” Geagea added. “What can be discussed is only assistance in repatriating them, not assistance to keep them in Lebanon,” the LF leader went on to say. “We have started a host of actions on the ground with the competent municipalities, administrations and ministries, and we will continue everything that we are doing until we expel the last illegal migrant from Lebanon,” Geagea vowed. His remarks come days after EU chief Ursula von der Leyen announced 1 billion euros in aid for Lebanon during a visit to the crisis-hit country and urged it to tackle illegal migration to the bloc.The bulk of the package — 736 million euros — would go to supporting Syrian refugees “and other vulnerable groups” in Lebanon, while 200 million euros would bolster Lebanese security services in enforcing border and migration control, according to figures provided by the Cypriot government.

Hariri marks May 7 by saying Beirut will remain defiant
Naharnet/May 07/2024 
Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri on Tuesday marked the anniversary of the May 7, 2008 clashes with a post on the X platform. “Beirut and its resilient and patient people will remain defiant in the face of every tyrant,” Hariri said. The 2008 clashes erupted after gunmen belonging to Hezbollah and its allies swept through Beirut’s neighborhoods after the government of Fouad Saniora decided to dismantle the group's military communications network and sack airport security chief Brig. Gen. Wafiq Shqeir.

Hezbollah Claims Drone Attacks on North Israel
AFP/This Is Beirut/May 07/2024
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it attacked northern Israel on Tuesday, including with “explosive-laden drones,” a day after an assault claimed by the Iran-backed movement killed two soldiers there.At the same time, other drones “targeted one of the Iron Dome (air defense system) platforms south of the Ramot Naftali barracks,” the Hezb added. The Israeli army said, in this context, that “two aerial targets were identified crossing from Lebanon into northern Israel, one of which was intercepted.” “Light damage was caused and no injuries were reported,” it said in a statement, adding that “fighter jets struck Hezbollah military structures in several areas in southern Lebanon.” The pro-Iranian group claimed on Tuesday a total of eight attacks on Israeli military positions along the border, including barracks and spy equipment.For its part, Israel carried out raids against Aita al-Shaab, Blida, Maroun al-Ras and Khiam. The Israeli army also bombed Alma al-Shaab, the outskirts of Shebaa and Kfarchouba, Chihine, Jebbayn, Tayr Harfa, Kfar Hammam and Jabal Blat. Interceptor missiles exploded over Hula and Mays al-Jabal. Israel’s army said earlier Tuesday that two soldiers had been killed the day before in the north of the country. Israel also declared that its air force had bombed “around 15 military structures and terrorist infrastructures” in southern Lebanon. On Monday, Hezbollah claimed a drone attack on troops near northern Israel’s Metula, with the Israeli military saying “a UAV (drone) was identified crossing from Lebanon” into the area.

New Appeal Against Law Extending the Terms of Municipal Councils
This Is Beirut/May 07/2024
MPs from the Kataeb party, the Renewal Bloc and the Coalition for Change have lodged appeals against the law extending the terms of office of municipal councils, following in the Lebanese Forces’ footsteps. In their submission to the Constitutional Council, the MPs emphasized “the flagrant violation of the Constitution’s introduction, as well as Article 7, particularly the constitutional principles related to democracy, the right to vote, elections, and the principle of the separation of powers.”They also found it “inconceivable to invoke the pretext of exceptional circumstances to extend the term of office of municipal councils, as the conflict zones are limited to certain regions of the country,” referring to the military conflict between Hezbollah and Israel on the southern border.The parliamentarians also expressed concern about “the danger of postponing municipal elections for the third consecutive year since 2022.”They highlighted “the risk of the extension being dragged to 2027, especially as the next parliamentary elections are, in principle, scheduled for 2026.”The law, passed by MPs on April 25, extends the terms of office of municipal councils and mukhtars until May 31, 2025. On May 2, the Lebanese Forces appealed to the Constitutional Council to overturn the law.

Human Rights Watch: Raid that killed seven paramedics in southern Lebanon is 'unlawful'
AFP/May 07/2024
The organization "Human Rights Watch" stated on Tuesday that the Israeli raid on an ambulance center in southern Lebanon, which resulted in the deaths of seven paramedics, constitutes an "unlawful attack on civilians," calling on Washington to suspend arms sales to Israel. The non-governmental organization said in a statement, "The Israeli airstrike on an ambulance center in southern Lebanon on March 27, 2024, is an unlawful attack on civilians and did not take all necessary precautions." It added, "If the airstrike was deliberate or carried out recklessly, it must be investigated as a presumed war crime." Human Rights Watch considered the Israeli army's acknowledgment of targeting the center as "indicative, at a minimum, of the Israeli army's failure to take all possible precautions to ensure that the target was military and to avoid civilian casualties," making "the airstrike unlawful."The organization quoted the head of the Emergency and Relief Unit, relatives of the victims, and their colleagues as saying that the seven victims, the oldest of whom was not more than 25 years old, were all volunteers at the center since late 2023, explaining that twin brothers (18 years old) were among the victims. It added, "Relatives of the victims, the Lebanese Red Cross, and civil defense all agreed that the seven men were civilians and not affiliated with any armed group." However, it simultaneously pointed out that social media posts may indicate that at least two of the victims may have been "supporters" of the Islamic Group. The organization reviewed images and videos of remnants of the ammunition used in the airstrike, which included remnants of Israeli bombs and fragments and fins from the "Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) manufactured by the American company Boeing."A Lebanese researcher at the organization, Ramzi Kaiss, said, "The Israeli army used US-made ammunition to carry out an airstrike that killed seven civilian paramedics in Lebanon who were performing their duties," considering that "Israel provided empty assurances to the United States of its commitment to the laws of war." The organization urged Washington to "immediately halt the flow of weapons to avoid further atrocities."

Lebanon warns of humanitarian crisis in Rafah amid Israeli escalation
LBCI/May 07/2024
Lebanon's Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned on Tuesday against "any escalation carried out by Israeli forces against the city of Rafah."According to the ministry, these current developments pose "a serious humanitarian catastrophe for over a million Palestinians who have fled to this area due to the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip," which contributes "to the implementation of Israeli forced displacement plans."In a statement, it called on "the international community and concerned [...] countries to take immediate and effective action to stop Israeli massacres, Israel's continuous violations of international humanitarian law, relevant international resolutions, and to strive to achieve negotiations for a permanent ceasefire."

Lebanon's Finance Minister vows 'timely submission' of 2025 budget
LBCI/May 07/2024
Lebanon's caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil affirmed that the ministry is committed to presenting the 2025 budget on time. He urged all institutions that benefit from financial contributions noted in the budget to submit their budget projects to the Ministry of Finance before the end of May, along with the required clarifications related to their expenses and revenues. He also pointed out that the Directorate of Public Accounting is now ready to discuss these budgets. Minister Youssef Khalil emphasized the role of public administrations and institutions in the country's current circumstances in planning and contributing to the preparation of a "realistic" budget that takes into account financing capabilities. He considered that cooperation begins before the budget implementation process by presenting "realistic budgets" to these administrations, without neglecting the participation of civil society and the private sector. He saw that there should be no additional burdens imposed on the 2025 budget that can be dispensed with or postponed, to avoid creating any financial needs exceeding the treasury's capacity to bear. He mentioned that these actions require implementing austerity measures to meet this goal, while simultaneously advancing reforms and finishing initiatives started in the 2024 budget. This aims to increase revenues to cover expenses and ensure stability in the financial and monetary systems.

Egypt commends Quintet ambassadors' role, urges action on Lebanese presidential vacuum
LBCI/May 07/2024
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry received the French Presidential envoy to Lebanon, Jean-Yves Le Drian, during his visit to Egypt. Shoukry praised the active and vital role played by the ambassadors of the Quintet Committee in Lebanon, calling for strengthening joint efforts to overcome the Lebanese presidential vacuum. He emphasized that the regional crisis underscores the importance of swiftly ending the presidential vacuum so that Lebanon can confront the growing challenges arising from it. The meeting also discussed the importance of continuing the efforts of the Quintet Committee within its framework to facilitate reaching a consensus among the various Lebanese parties on a presidential candidate to resolve the crisis as soon as possible. Furthermore, the meeting addressed regional developments and their impact on the stability of the region.
Shoukry reiterated Egypt's firm stance calling for the necessity of de-escalating the crisis in Gaza and preventing the widening of the conflict in the region. He highlighted the grave danger of the volatile situation in Gaza and the international community's failure to prevent Israel from entering Rafah. Shoukry urged major powers and influential parties to take a stronger and more impactful stance, beyond issuing statements and appeals. The Egyptian Foreign Minister also reaffirmed Egypt's strong interest in preserving the security, stability, and sovereignty of Lebanon. He expressed Egypt's appreciation for French efforts aimed at managing the situation in southern Lebanon, emphasizing Cairo's support for these efforts and Egyptian openness to coordinate with Paris regarding them. He stressed the necessity of including any proposal for implementing Security Council Resolution 1701 to preserve Lebanon's sovereignty, and security, and to halt Israeli attacks. Le Drian, on his part, expressed his utmost appreciation for Egypt's continuous efforts since the onset of the crisis in Gaza, to achieve a ceasefire. Both sides agreed to continue consultations and coordination to support Lebanon's safety, stability, and sovereignty, and to provide all forms of support to the Lebanese people to help them overcome the current crisis, choose their leadership, and empower their institutions.

Syrian Migrants: Lebanese Forces to Present Law Proposal to Parliament
Élie-Joe Kamel/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
The President of the Parliamentary Committee on Administration and Justice, Georges Adwan, announced that a draft law on organizing the presence of Syrians in Lebanon and the modalities of their repatriation will be presented to Parliament.
During a press conference he held on Tuesday at Place de l’Étoile, Adwan called for “sending back home any Syrian without documents,” emphasizing that the committee he chairs “had already submitted a recommendation to the Lebanese government on 5/12/2023 for it to implement.”
The Lebanese Forces (LF) member reiterated that “Lebanon is a host country and not a place for asylum in accordance with the 2003 agreement signed between the Lebanese state and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),” adding that to solve the current problem, it is sufficient to “implement this agreement, as well as the law on the stay of foreigners” in Lebanon. “Each party must assume its role in this regard: the Ministry of Interior, General Security, Internal Security Forces, and the relevant ministries,” Adwan argued, stressing the importance of “supporting the Lebanese army to make it capable of controlling the border between Lebanon and Syria.”When asked about the number of displaced Syrians on which the committee will base its decisions (either from the UNHCR or the Lebanese government), Adwan replied, “We will consider all figures. Any Syrian without a residence permit in accordance with the law on the stay of foreigners established in 1962, is considered an illegal resident. Therefore, they should either return home or go to a third country.”Regarding the European donation of one billion euros, the MP from Chouf revealed “it could be approved if it is a donation without conditions for the Lebanese. But if the donation serves as a ‘sedative’ for the Lebanese to tolerate the presence of Syrians among them, it will be rejected.” He added, “We will accept this donation, provided that others do not expect us to keep Syrians among us.”Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House, Nabih Berri, had summoned the deputies to a parliamentary session on May 15 to discuss the European Union’s proposed donation of one billion euros to Lebanon to assist in managing the issue of the massive Syrian presence in the country and, notably, to prevent the flow of migrants to Cyprus. Adwan’s remarks suggest that the Lebanese Forces could approve this donation if it is confirmed that it is not tied to any conditions, which is not usually the case, since part of this donation, intended to develop the army’s capabilities in border control, primarily aims to encourage Lebanon to stem the flow of migrants to Cyprus. Adwan did not want to indicate whether his party, which staunchly opposes the chaotic presence of Syrian migrants in the country, will participate in the parliamentary meeting on May 15. According to a source from the LF parliamentary bloc, it was indicated that the LF, who are boycotting parliament meetings until a president is elected, have not yet made a decision on this matter. “We want to know where this donation is going before taking a position,” the same source emphasized, explaining that “the stakeholders in this issue are four: the donors, UN agencies and other NGOs, Syrians in Lebanon, and the Lebanese state.” “It is the Lebanese state that must make the sovereign decision to stop subsidies and push for the return,” the same source said, noting that Syrians “who came to Lebanon for security reasons are staying there for economic interests.”

Mikati Seeking Lebanese Political Cover for EU Aid
This is Beirut/May 07/2024
Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri called for a parliamentary session on May 15 to discuss the one billion Euro donation made by the European Union (EU) to Lebanon. The donation aims to alleviate the burden of the significant presence of displaced Syrians in the country and, most importantly, to prevent migrant flows to Cyprus. Extending until 2027, the billion-euro assistance has stirred significant controversy within political circles, particularly among Christian groups. The Lebanese Forces (LF), the Kataeb, the Free Patriotic Movement (CPL) and opposition MPs have all criticized the “deal” struck between caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the EU, emphasizing the urgent need to facilitate the return of displaced Syrians to their homeland. Berri’s move was prompted by Mikati, who sought to garner “political cover” for the initiative, informed sources told This is Beirut. According to these sources, “MPs opposing the measure may attend the session to voice their objections and offer recommendations to the government,” including “rejecting any naturalization of Syrians and advocating for their repatriation.”However, the sources added, “The MPs are unlikely to boycott the session or call on the cabinet to reject the donation, recognizing the potential tensions such actions would create with the European Union.” Criticism from several politicians accusing Mikati of “selling off Lebanon” for one billion euros prompted him to justify his actions following his meeting on May 2 with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides. He emphasized that no conditions were tied to this aid regarding the presence of Syrians in Lebanon. Von der Leyen stressed that the government would continue its efforts to repatriate displaced individuals, especially those in illegal situations. The European Union (EU) stated that the one billion Euro aid program is aimed at supporting Lebanon across various fronts, including ensuring its “socio-economic stability,” addressing the Syrian crisis and enhancing border control by security forces.

Syrian Migrants: Lebanese Forces to Present Law Proposal to Parliament
Élie-Joe Kamel/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
The President of the Parliamentary Committee on Administration and Justice, Georges Adwan, announced that a draft law on organizing the presence of Syrians in Lebanon and the modalities of their repatriation will be presented to Parliament.
During a press conference he held on Tuesday at Place de l’Étoile, Adwan called for “sending back home any Syrian without documents,” emphasizing that the committee he chairs “had already submitted a recommendation to the Lebanese government on 5/12/2023 for it to implement.”
The Lebanese Forces (LF) member reiterated that “Lebanon is a host country and not a place for asylum in accordance with the 2003 agreement signed between the Lebanese state and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),” adding that to solve the current problem, it is sufficient to “implement this agreement, as well as the law on the stay of foreigners” in Lebanon. “Each party must assume its role in this regard: the Ministry of Interior, General Security, Internal Security Forces, and the relevant ministries,” Adwan argued, stressing the importance of “supporting the Lebanese army to make it capable of controlling the border between Lebanon and Syria.”When asked about the number of displaced Syrians on which the committee will base its decisions (either from the UNHCR or the Lebanese government), Adwan replied, “We will consider all figures. Any Syrian without a residence permit in accordance with the law on the stay of foreigners established in 1962, is considered an illegal resident. Therefore, they should either return home or go to a third country.”Regarding the European donation of one billion euros, the MP from Chouf revealed “it could be approved if it is a donation without conditions for the Lebanese. But if the donation serves as a ‘sedative’ for the Lebanese to tolerate the presence of Syrians among them, it will be rejected.” He added, “We will accept this donation, provided that others do not expect us to keep Syrians among us.” Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House, Nabih Berri, had summoned the deputies to a parliamentary session on May 15 to discuss the European Union’s proposed donation of one billion euros to Lebanon to assist in managing the issue of the massive Syrian presence in the country and, notably, to prevent the flow of migrants to Cyprus.
Adwan’s remarks suggest that the Lebanese Forces could approve this donation if it is confirmed that it is not tied to any conditions, which is not usually the case, since part of this donation, intended to develop the army’s capabilities in border control, primarily aims to encourage Lebanon to stem the flow of migrants to Cyprus. Adwan did not want to indicate whether his party, which staunchly opposes the chaotic presence of Syrian migrants in the country, will participate in the parliamentary meeting on May 15. According to a source from the LF parliamentary bloc, it was indicated that the LF, who are boycotting parliament meetings until a president is elected, have not yet made a decision on this matter. “We want to know where this donation is going before taking a position,” the same source emphasized, explaining that “the stakeholders in this issue are four: the donors, UN agencies and other NGOs, Syrians in Lebanon, and the Lebanese state.” “It is the Lebanese state that must make the sovereign decision to stop subsidies and push for the return,” the same source said, noting that Syrians “who came to Lebanon for security reasons are staying there for economic interests.”

More Suspects Arrested in Tik Tok Child Rape Case
This is Beirut/May 07/2024
Three people were apprehended on Tuesday, bringing to nine the number of suspects arrested since the start of the investigation into the Tik Tok pedophile ring. A lawyer, member of Tripoli’s Bar Association, a police officer assigned to the municipality of Bourj Hammoud and responsible for facilitating traffic in front of the United Armenian College, and a cab driver who transported children to a chalet in the Kesrouan region where the children were drugged and raped have been arrested for involvement in the case of trafficking and rape of minors.
This brought to nine the number of people arrested since the beginning of the investigation carried out by the cybercrime office under the supervision of the competent judicial authorities. According to sources quoted by our sister company, Houna Loubnan, the number of arrests is set to rise further, as another lawyer suspected of involvement in the gang has been identified. “According to the same sources, investigators are trying to gather more evidence about him. The public prosecutor at the Mount Lebanon Court of Appeal, Tanios Saghbini, has asked the Bar Association to lift the immunity of the lawyer in question.”Judge Saghbini is expected to initiate proceedings against other suspects in the next few hours. The investigation is continuing to identify other people involved in the crime, the sources added. In judicial circles, it is asserted that “the investigation is complex and requires time, since the instigators and financiers of this gang are located abroad.”“Evidence is currently being gathered concerning people in Turkey, Dubai, Sweden and possibly other countries. Once this evidence has been collected, either international arrest warrants will be issued against them via Interpol to extradite them to Lebanon, or Lebanon will request judicial assistance so that they can be questioned in the countries where they are located. The results of these interrogations will then be handed over to Lebanon,” the source pointed out.In the evening, Tripoli Bar Association denied arresting one of its members, emphasizing that there was an “absence of evidence concerning reports that he was involved in the case.”In a statement, the association decried the fact that “one of its lawyers is exposed to such accusations if they are not formulated in accordance with laws in force,” asserting, “If the involvement of one of the members in this case is proven, we will take necessary measures against him.”The Tripoli Bar Association also stressed its commitment to “take any measures or decisions likely to expose the members of this gang and hold them accountable in accordance with laws in force.”Finally, the association affirmed that “laws protecting the rights of children and minors must be strengthened and firmly enforced.”More than a month ago, the case was referred to the Public Prosecutor’s Office by the parents of eight minors who had been sexually abused after being forced to take drugs. As a result of its investigations, the Office succeeded in identifying around thirty people who were part of a network using the TikTok application to “lure” their prey, children under 18. The perpetrators of these despicable acts are not only Lebanese, but also nationals of other countries, to whom the investigation should be extended once the usual formalities have been completed. Meanwhile, caretaker Minister of Justice Henri Khoury contacted the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Judge Jamal Hajjar, to ensure that the judges of the Juvenile Court are also assigned to the case.

TikTok and Society Share the Blame
Johnny Kortbawi/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
The outraged response from Lebanese society to the revelation of a human trafficking network exploiting children via TikTok is both understandable and logical. No matter the extent of the lack of morality, there’s no justification for abusing and exploiting children in this manner.
While some may justify theft due to poverty or murder as revenge, we neither endorse nor admit such conceptions. However, it is inconceivable to find anyone who would accept abusing children without any justification other than greed, a lack of principles and ethics, and perverse desire.
Now that we have made things clear, the next stage of the discussion about the exposure of this network should focus on multiple aspects, notably who should assume blame and responsibilities. The entire society has collectively directed blame towards the TikTok platform, and there’s merit to this accusation. The platform has become a stage for all sorts of ridiculousness and irrationalities, with individuals chasing fame and positioning themselves as influencers without any restrictions or logic. Describing TikTok as the dumpster of social media platforms holds a grain of truth. When we navigate through various podiums and pages filled with cheap rhetoric and abjection, the marketing of expression through insinuations and vulgar language turns these podiums into a marketplace of sordidness. However, the actual culpability that is overtly overlooked lies with society, which persistently refuses to admit its fault when it mishandles such phenomena. Lebanese society shies away from openly discussing sexual or sensitive matters, including child rape. When a family is faced with such a situation and learns of the child’s ordeal, the reaction is often to cover it up to protect the family’s reputation, overlooking the potential threats or complications the child may endure due to this wrong approach. If the first victim of the criminal network had come forward publicly and filed a complaint, disregarding societal opinions, perhaps we wouldn’t have witnessed this large number of victims. We wouldn’t have endured the myriad complications that have made dozens of children victims and an equal number of criminals.If this network hadn’t been exposed, the crimes would likely have continued to this day, with all the affected families behaving similarly — covering up the issue and denying the reality in order to protect their reputation. Beyond that, many families would go so far as to deny their victims, choosing to remain silent about the incident and acting as if life could carry on as usual, under the false assumption that the victim would eventually forget. This abuse cannot be forgotten. Victims urgently need support from professional certified psychologists to speak openly about what happened, as suppressing it only exacerbates the problem. Neglecting treatment can escalate the issue from significant to severe, potentially leading each victim to accumulate psychological trauma that may manifest in criminal behavior or untreated depression as they age. What parents really need to do is ensure their children receive psychological therapy to get through this with minimal harm, as the repercussions of neglecting it could be exhausting for both the children and their families. Adopting this approach is the only way for society to go beyond the horrendous TikTok crime. While trying to blame the platform, we must acknowledge the essential role that society plays in this issue. It is crucial for society to promptly address this matter to protect the generations that have experienced the most horrific crimes.

Lebanon Reveals Olympic Ambitions on World Athletics Day
Hala Abdallah/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
As the world celebrates World Athletics Day, Lebanon’s athletics athletes strive to etch their names into Olympic history. May 7 marks World Athletics Day, a global celebration aimed at inspiring and educating youth about the significance of athletics, including running, throwing, walking and jumping. “Athletics is the base of all sports,” underscores Pierre Jalkh, President of the Lebanese Olympic Committee, emphasizing the fundamental role of athletics in sporting culture. As anticipation builds for the Paris Olympics 2024, Lebanon prepares to showcase its talent on the global stage. Among the notable participants are trap shooter Ray Bassil and Taekwondo athlete Laetitia Aoun. In athletics, Lebanese international runner Mark Anthony Ibrahim and Aziza Sbaity, Lebanon’s fastest woman, are among the potential candidates to qualify for this year’s Olympics, set to take place from July 26 to August 11 in Paris. For Ibrahim, track and field symbolize freedom. “I used to go every day after school to train. I was kind of running away from the house and enjoying my time while training. It played a major role in my life,” he recalled. Ibrahim’s recent achievement at the “Grand Prix” in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he won gold in the 400-meter hurdles with a record-breaking time of 49.35 seconds, amplifies his prospects for Olympic qualification. “Now I’m trying as much as I can to qualify for the Olympics, if not by standards which means I need to run for 48.70 seconds or less. I have the chance to qualify as per world ranking which is the average points of five races and championship performance,” Ibrahim said in an interview with This is Beirut. Every race contributes to his ranking, necessitating participation in highly competitive events to earn maximum points. With a current world ranking of 41st, he is on the cusp of breaking into the coveted top 40. Should Ibrahim meet the entry standards, Lebanon stands poised to potentially secure another Olympic berth through a “wild card,” as per Olympic regulations. This provision grants countries the opportunity to nominate athletes whose performances marginally fall short of qualification standards, thereby ensuring equitable representation on the global stage. “The federation will choose the athlete that will get the wild card based on their performance,” Jalkh noted. Across the world, athletes are diligently training and participating in competitions to secure a spot in the Olympics. World Athletics Day extends beyond elite competitions, embodying a celebration of the future generation. Today also marks Kids’ Athletics Day, an annual celebration aimed at encouraging physical activity and engagement among children and young individuals, promoting athleticism and resilience for generations to come.

Basketball: Beirut SC Stumbles at Home, La Sagesse Leads 2-1
Roudi Abou Nader/This is Beirut/May 07/2024
La Sagesse secured a crucial victory against Beirut SC in the semi-final of the Lebanese Basketball Championship, taking a 2-1 lead in the series, one game away from qualifying for the final. The start of the match was intense, with both teams displaying impressive concentration, resulting in a first quarter ending with a score of 20-25 in favor of the green club. The second quarter saw the rise of player Cleanthony Early, who shone offensively by scoring successive baskets, allowing his team to take the lead with solid defense from other players of La Sagesse, and the quarter ended with a score of 37-55 in favor of the visitors.Despite Beirut SC’s comeback efforts at the beginning of the third quarter, their attempts failed against the domination of the green club. Beirut SC’s foreign players scored a combined 28 points (a relatively low number), whereas Early alone scored 40 points in this match. The quarter ended with a score of 55-76 in favor of Hekmeh. In the final quarter, despite Sergio Darwish’s 20 points, the team’s efforts faltered against the continued dominance of La Sagesse, who won the match with a final score of 90-107. This crucial victory places La Sagesse just one game away from qualifying for a final that has eluded them for years.Can they do it and win the series?The answer will become clear on Friday at 9:45 PM.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 07-08/2024
US completes construction of Gaza aid pier
AFP/May 08, 2024
WASHINGTON: The US military has completed construction of its Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it is currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon said Tuesday. The pier — which the US military started building last month and which will cost at least $320 million — is aimed at boosting deliveries of desperately needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza, which has been ravaged by seven months of Israeli operations against Hamas. “As of today, the construction of the two portions of the JLOTS — the floating pier and the Trident pier — are complete and awaiting final movement offshore,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists, using an acronym for Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, the official name for the pier capability. “Today there are still forecasted high winds and high sea swells, which are causing unsafe conditions for the JLOTS components to be moved. So the pier sections and military vessels involved in its construction are still positioned at the port of Ashdod,” in Israel, Singh said. US Central Command (CENTCOM) “stands by to move the pier into position in the near future,” she added. The vessels and the under-construction pier were moved to the port due to bad weather last week. Once the weather clears, the pier will be anchored to the Gaza shore by Israeli soldiers, keeping US troops off the ground. Aid will then be transported via commercial vessels to a floating platform off the Gaza coast, where it will be transferred to smaller vessels, brought to the pier, and taken to land by truck for distribution. Plans for the pier were first announced by US President Joe Biden in early March as Israel held up deliveries of assistance by ground, and US Army troops and vessels soon set out on a lengthy trip to the Mediterranean to build the pier. Some two months later, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire. The United Nations said Tuesday that Israel had denied it access to the Rafah crossing — the key entry point for aid into the besieged territory. The White House said the closing of Rafah and the other main crossing, Karem Shalom, was “unacceptable” and needed to be reversed. In addition to seeking to establish a maritime corridor for aid shipments, the United States has also been delivering assistance via the air. CENTCOM said American C-130 cargo planes dropped more than 25,000 Meal Ready To Eat military rations into Gaza on Tuesday in a joint operation that also delivered the equivalent of more than 13,000 meals of Jordanian food supplies.“To date the US has dropped 1,200 tons of humanitarian assistance,” CENTCOM said in a statement. Gaza’s bloodiest-ever war broke out following Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Egypt urges all parties to exert more pressure to end Gaza conflict
GOBRAN MOHAMED/Arab News/May 07, 2024
CAIRO: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has welcomed Monday’s developments in peace talks about finalizing a truce in Israel’s war on Gaza. El-Sisi said he was “closely following the positive developments pertinent to the ongoing negotiations to reach a comprehensive truce in the Gaza Strip.” He called on all parties to exert more efforts to reach an agreement that will end the human tragedy of the Palestinian people and finalize the exchange of hostages and prisoners. Hamas accepted an Egypt-Qatar mediated ceasefire proposal on Monday. The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive — but only barely — for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the seven-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip. An armed conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups has been taking place chiefly in and around the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7. It began when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing around 1,200 people and taking 150 hostages. Subsequent Israeli strikes against Gaza have driven around 80 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million from their homes and caused vast destruction to apartments, hospitals, mosques and schools across several cities. The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has soared to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials.Meanwhile, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said that it has warned of the dangers of a possible Israeli military operation in Gaza’s Rafah region, “since this escalatory act entails grave humanitarian dangers threatening more than 1 million Palestinians residing in this region.”It called on Israel to exercise “utmost restraint, and refrain from further escalation at this extremely sensitive timing of ceasefire negotiations, spare the lives of Palestinian civilians who have been enduring an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe since the outbreak of the war.”It said that Egypt continues talking with all parties to prevent the situation from deteriorating. Meanwhile Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry discussed the Rafah situation with his UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan in a phone call. They exchanged views regarding the possibility of Israeli forces carrying out a military operation in the besieged city. Shoukry reiterated his warning of the dangers of an Israeli military escalation in Rafah, which is considered the last relatively safe area in the Gaza Strip and refuge for more than a million Palestinians. The ministers stressed the urgency of reaching a truce agreement that allows for the swapping of hostages and detainees, and ensure a permanent ceasefire. They agreed to continue talks with various parties to prevent the conflict from spreading to the region.

Worse than Dresden 1945: Israel’s Gaza rampage leaves 75% of buildings damaged or destroyed
ARAB NEWS/May 07/2024
JEDDAH: Israel’s seven-month bombardment of Gaza has caused more destruction than the controversial firebombing of the German city of Dresden near the end of the Second World War, analysts of satellite images said on Tuesday. Nearly 75 percent of buildings in Gaza City have been damaged or destroyed, five hospitals have been completely destroyed, fewer than one in three hospitals are even partially functioning, 408 schools out of 563 have been damaged and 53 completely destroyed, and more than 60 percent of mosques have been reduced to rubble. “The fastest rates of destruction were in the first two to three months of the bombardment,” said Corey Scher, a satellite image analyst at the City University of New York in the US. “The rate of damage being registered is unlike anything we have studied before. It is much faster and more extensive than anything we have mapped.”In comparison, four air raids on Dresden in February 1945 destroyed just under 60 percent of the city’s buildings. US and British bombers dropped more than 3,900 tonnes of high-explosive and incendiary devices that devastated more than 6.5 km2 of the city in one of the most controversial acts of the war. In Gaza on Tuesday, Israeli forces seized the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the enclave, shutting down a vital aid route. Tanks rolled through the crossing complex and the Israeli flag was raised on the Gaza side. There was heavy tank shelling on Tuesday evening in eastern Rafah. “They have gone crazy, tanks are firing shells and smoke bombs cover the skies and with smoke over Al-Salam and Jneinah neighborhoods,” said Emad Joudat, 55, a refugee from Gaza City. “I am now seriously thinking of heading north, maybe to the central Gaza area. If they move further into Rafah it will be the mother of massacres.”The seizure of the crossing came despite weeks of calls from allies and international bodies for Israel to hold off from a major offensive in the city. Israel’s military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill Hamas fighters and dismantle its infrastructure. Meanwhile there was confusion in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a ceasefire proposal that Hamas accepted on Monday night. One Israeli official said the plan was almost identical to Israel’s own truce proposal submitted at the end of April, with some minor amendments. However, Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the ceasefire plan fell “far short” of Israel’s demands. Talks on a truce continue in Cairo.

Israeli forces seize Rafah border crossing in Gaza, putting cease-fire talks on knife's edge
CAIRO (AP)/May 7, 2024
Israeli tanks seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing on Tuesday as Israel brushed off urgent warnings from close allies and moved into the southern city even as cease-fire negotiations with Hamas remained on a knife’s edge. The foray came after hours of whiplash in the Israel-Hamas war, with the militant group on Monday saying it accepted an Egyptian-Qatari mediated cease-fire proposal. Israel, however, insisted the deal did not meet its core demands. The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive — if only barely — for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the 7-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip. The Israeli incursion overnight appeared to be short of the full-fledged offensive into Rafah that Israel has planned, and it was not immediately known if it would be expanded. The looming operation has raised global alarm over the fate of around 1.3 million Palestinians crammed into the city — and threatened to widen a rift between Israel and its main backer, the United States.U.S. President Joe Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again on Monday against launching an invasion of the city after Israel ordered 100,000 Palestinians to evacuate from eastern parts of Rafah. The Israeli 401st Brigade entered the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing early Tuesday, the Israeli military said, taking “operational control” of the crucial border point. Footage released by the military showed Israeli flags flying from tanks that seized the area. Details of the video matched known features of the crossing.
Both the Rafah crossing and the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza — the two main routes for entry points for aid to the beleaguered territory — have been closed for at least the past two days. Though smaller entry points still operate, the closure is a blow to efforts to maintain the flow of food, medicine and other supplies that are keeping Gaza's population alive at a time when officials say the northern part of the enclave is already experiencing “full-blown famine.”Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian affairs office known as OCHA, said Israeli authorities have denied it access to the Rafah crossing. He warned that disruption at Rafah could break the fragile aid operation, saying all the fuel keeping the humanitarian work moving comes through the crossing. “It will plunge this crisis into unprecedented levels of need, including the very real possibility of a famine,” he said. The Israeli military "is ignoring all warnings about what this could mean for civilians and for the humanitarian operation across the Gaza Strip.”The military also carried out a flurry of strikes and bombardment across Rafah overnight, killing at least 23 Palestinians, including at least six women and five children, according to hospital records seen by The Associated Press. Mohamed Abu Amra said his wife, two brothers, sister and niece were killed when a strike flattened their home as they slept. “We did nothing. ... We don’t have Hamas,” he said. “We found fire devouring us. The house was turned upside down.”The Israeli military claimed it seized the Rafah crossing after receiving intelligence it was “being used for terrorist purposes.” The military did not provide evidence to immediately support the assertion, though it said Hamas fighters near the crossing launched a mortar attack that killed four Israeli troops and wounded others near Kerem Shalom on Sunday.
The military also said that ground troops and airstrikes targeted suspected Hamas positions in Rafah. An Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson declined to immediately comment on the Israeli seizure of the crossing.
Egypt has previously warned that any seizure of Rafah — which is supposed to be part of a demilitarized border zone — or an attack that forces Palestinians to flee over the border into Egypt would threaten the 1979 peace treaty with Israel that’s been a linchpin for regional security.
Israel's plans to attack Rafah have also raised fears of a dramatic surge in civilian deaths in a campaign of bombardments and offensives that has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. The assault has leveled large swaths of the territory and left people scrambling for food, water and medicine. The Rafah operation has also deepened the divide between Netanyahu and Biden over the conduct of the war. Netanyahu says attacking Rafah — which Israel says is Hamas' last major stronghold in the territory — is crucial to the goal of destroying Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.
In that unprecedented Hamas raid, militants killed some 1,200 people and took around 250 others as hostages back to Gaza. Israeli critics say Netanyahu is concerned about his government's survival, since hard-line partners in his coalition could bolt if he signs onto a deal before a Rafah invasion.
In their call Monday, Biden told Netanyahu that a cease-fire deal was the best way to win the return of the hostages still held by Hamas and believed to number around 100, along with the bodies of around 30 others.
As Israel announced it would push ahead with operations in Rafah, it said the cease-fire proposal that Hamas agreed to did not meet its “core demands.” But it said it would send a delegation to Egypt to continue negotiations.
An Egyptian official and a Western diplomat said the draft Hamas accepted had only minor changes in wording from a version the U.S. had earlier pushed for with Israeli approval. The changes were made in consultation with CIA chief William Burns, who embraced the draft before sending it to the Palestinian group, the diplomat and official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.
The White House said Burns was discussing the Hamas response with the Israelis and other regional officials. According to a copy released by Hamas after it acceptance, the proposal outlines a phased release of the hostages alongside the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from the entire enclave and ending with a “sustainable calm,” defined as a “permanent cessation of military and hostile operations.”In the first, 42-day stage of the cease-fire, Hamas would release 33 hostages — including women, children, older adults and the ill — in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and Israeli forces would withdraw from parts of Gaza. The parties would then negotiate the terms of the next stage, under which the remaining civilian men and soldiers would be released, while Israeli forces would withdraw from the rest of Gaza. Hamas has demanded an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal in return for the release of all hostages. Publicly, Israeli leaders reject that trade-off, vowing the war will continue until the hostages are all released — and Hamas is destroyed.

Israel’s incursion into Rafah putting 1.5m people in danger: WHO director
ARAB NEWS/May 07, 2024
LONDON: Israel’s military incursion into the Gazan city of Rafah is putting 1.5 million people, including 600,000 children, in “grave danger,” a World Health Organization official warned on Tuesday. Dr. Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said on X that lives were hanging in the balance as the health system in the Gaza Strip struggled to remain functional. The WHO and its partners were committed to providing assistance and delivering aid to all areas of the Gaza Strip, she said, but that required unimpeded access through the Rafah border crossing. She called for the urgent reopening of the crossing and said any further escalation would push an already fragile humanitarian operation “to a breaking point.”Hospitals in Rafah must be protected and provided with the supplies they need to keep providing care to the thousands of sick and injured civilians who were the victims of Israeli military operations, Balkhy said. She called on the international community to pressure Israel to stop its military operation, which is threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Rafah. “An urgent ceasefire in Gaza is needed now, for humanity’s sake,” she said. Israeli forces seized the main border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza on Tuesday, shutting down a vital aid route into the Palestinian enclave that was already on the brink of famine.

University of Chicago clears a pro-Palestinian demonstration as MIT confronts a new encampment
CHARLES REX ARBOGAST and STEVE LeBLANC/AP/May 7, 2024
Police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at the University of Chicago on Tuesday as tension ratcheted up in standoffs with demonstrators at other college campuses around the U.S. — and increasingly, in Europe. Nearly three weeks into a movement launched by a protest at Columbia University, the Rhode Island School of Design held talks with protesters occupying a building, and MIT dealt with a new encampment on a site that was cleared but immediately retaken by demonstrators. The confrontations come as campuses try a range of strategies, from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action, to resolve the protests against the Israel-Hamas war and clear the way for commencements. At the University of Chicago, protesters numbering in the several hundreds had gathered in an area known as the Quad for at least eight days. Campus administrators warned them Friday to leave the area or face removal. Police in riot gear blocked access to the Quad on Tuesday as law enforcement dismantled the encampment. At MIT, protesters were given a Monday afternoon deadline to voluntarily leave or face suspension. Many left, according to an MIT spokesperson, who said protesters breached fencing after the arrival of demonstrators from outside the university. On Monday night, dozens of protesters remained at the encampment in a calmer atmosphere, listening to speakers and chanting before taking a pizza break. Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said that the group has been at the encampment for two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing in Gaza. “Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT’s direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense,” he said.
No arrests had been made as of Monday night, according to the MIT spokesperson. At the Rhode Island School of Design, where students started occupying a building Monday, a spokesperson said that the school affirms students’ rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly and that it supports all members of its community. The RISD president and provost were on site meeting with the demonstrators, the spokesperson said. The student protests have spread to Europe, where they are gaining momentum. Police arrested about 125 activists early Tuesday as they broke up a pro-Palestinian camp at the University of Amsterdam. Students also have held protests or set up camps in Finland, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Britain. Many protesters want their schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel or otherwise contribute to the war effort. Others simply want to call attention to the deaths in Gaza and for the war to end. Demonstrations at New York City's Columbia University, where the protest movement began about three weeks ago, have roiled its campus. Officials on Monday canceled its large main ceremony but said students will be able to celebrate at a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies this week and next.
Columbia had already canceled in-person classes. More than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green or occupied an academic building were arrested in recent weeks. Similar encampments sprouted up elsewhere, leading universities to struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses. The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony. Students abandoned their camp at USC on Sunday after being surrounded by police and threatened with arrest. Other universities have held graduation ceremonies with beefed-up security. The University of Michigan's ceremony was interrupted by chanting a few times Saturday. A group of faculty and staff members at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked the administration for amnesty for student protesters who were recently arrested and suspended. Harvard University’s interim president, Alan Garber, warned students that those in an encampment in Harvard Yard could face “involuntary leave," meaning they would not be allowed on campus, could lose their student housing and might not be able to take exams. At the University of California, San Diego, police cleared an encampment and arrested more than 64 people, including 40 students. The University of California, Los Angeles, moved classes online for the week due to disruptions following the dismantling of an encampment last week that resulted in 44 reported arrests.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
Hamas on Monday announced its acceptance of an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its “core demands” and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza town of Rafah. “Cease-fires are temporary,” said Selina Al-Shihabi, a Georgetown University sophomore who was taking part in a protest at George Washington. “There can be a cease-fire, but the U.S. government will continue to arm the Israeli military. We plan to be here until the university divests or until they drag us out of here.”

Dutch police end pro-Palestinian demonstration at Amsterdam university
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) /May 7, 2024
Dutch riot police ended a pro-Palestinian demonstration at an Amsterdam university early on Tuesday, bulldozing barricades and detaining some 125 people in sometimes violent clashes, authorities said. In messages posted overnight on social media X, police said they had to act to stop the event and dismantle tents that been set up by protesters, who threw stones and fireworks. Requests from the University of Amsterdam and the mayor for the protesters to leave the campus were ignored, the police said. All but four demonstrators were later released. The four were being kept longer on charges of public violence and insulting an officer. One officer suffered hearing damage, a police spokeswoman said, adding that it was still unclear how many other people may have been injured. The University of Amsterdam declined to comment, but protesters had said they were demanding that the school break ties with Israel."The police's input was necessary to restore order. We see the footage on social media. We understand that those images may appear as intense," police said. Outgoing Education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said universities are a place for dialogue and debate and he was sad to see that police had to intervene.
Student protests over the war and academic ties with Israel have begun to spread across Europe but have remained much smaller in scale than those seen in the United States. Last Friday, police in Paris entered France's prestigious Sciences Po university and removed student activists who had occupied its buildings. More than 100 students occupy the Ghent university, in Belgium, in both a climate and a Gaza protest that they want to prolong until Wednesday.

UN atomic chief urges Iran to take ‘concrete’ steps for cooperation
AFP/May 07, 2024
ISFAHAN: UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi, visiting Iran on Tuesday, urged the country to adopt “concrete” measures to bolster cooperation on its nuclear program and address the international community’s concerns. At a news conference in the city of Isfahan, Grossi said he had proposed in talks with Iranian officials that they “focus on the very concrete, very practical and tangible measures that can be implemented in order to accelerate” cooperation. The International Atomic Energy Agency director-general held talks with senior Iranian officials including Atomic Energy Organization’s head Mohammad Eslami. Grossi insisted on the need to “settle differences” on the nuclear issue while the Middle East was going through “difficult times,” particularly with the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “Sometimes, political conditions pose obstacles to full-fledged cooperation” between Iran and the international community, he said. To overcome these obstacles, he said, “we need to come up with concrete steps that are going to be helpful in bringing us closer to these solutions that we all need.”Grossi said a March 2023 deal with Iran was “still valid” but required more “substance.”The agreement was reached during Grossi’s last visit to Iran and outlined basic cooperation measures including on safeguards and monitoring. The IAEA chief said, however, that there had been a “slowdown” in the agreement’s implementation including the number of inspections being reduced and the accreditation of a group of IAEA experts being withdrawn by Iran. Iran suspended its compliance with caps on nuclear activities set by a landmark 2015 deal with major powers a year after the US in 2018 unilaterally withdrew from the agreement and reimposed sweeping sanctions. “We have this legal right to reduce our commitments when the other parties do not adhere to their obligations,” Eslami said during the joint news conference. Tensions between Iran and the IAEA have repeatedly flared since the deal fell apart, and EU-mediated efforts have so far failed both to bring Washington back on board and to get Tehran to again comply with the terms of the accord. The agency has in recent months criticized Iran for a lack of cooperation on issues including the expansion of its nuclear work, the barring of inspectors and deactivating the agency’s monitoring devices at its nuclear facilities.

Iran and the UN nuclear agency are still discussing how to implement a 2023 deal on inspections
JON GAMBRELL/AP/May 7, 2024
Iran and the United Nations' nuclear watchdog are still negotiating over how to implement a deal struck last year to expand inspections of the Islamic Republic's rapidly advancing atomic program, officials said Tuesday. The acknowledgment by the International Atomic Energy Agency's leader Rafael Mariano Grossi shows the challenges his inspectors face, years after the collapse of Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers and the wider tensions gripping the Mideast over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Grossi has already warned that Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to do so. He has acknowledged the agency cannot guarantee that none of Iran’s centrifuges may have been peeled away for clandestine enrichment. "What we are looking at is concrete measures that could make this operational," Grossi said. Grossi spoke to journalists at a news conference in the city of Isfahan, alongside Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. While both men said there would be no immediate new deal struck during the visit, they pointed to a March 2023 joint statement as a path forward for cooperation between the IAEA and Iran. That 2023 statement included a pledge by Iran to resolve issues around sites where inspectors have questions about possible undeclared nuclear activity, and to allow the IAEA to “implement further appropriate verification and monitoring activities.”
Grossi and Eslami offered few specifics from the ongoing discussions, though Grossi said technical teams from the two sides were talking over specifics.
“The important point is that Mr. Grossi takes the necessary actions to settle the problems that are mainly political,” Eslami said. Tensions have grown between Iran and the IAEA since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Since then, Iran has abandoned all limits the deal put on its program and enriches uranium to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%. IAEA surveillance cameras have been disrupted, while Iran has barred some of the agency’s most experienced inspectors. Iranian officials also have increasingly threatened they could pursue atomic weapons. Meanwhile, tensions between Iran and Israel have hit a new high. Tehran launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel last month, after years of a shadow war between the two countries reached a climax with Israel’s apparent attack on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed two Iranian generals and others. Isfahan itself apparently has come under Israeli fire in recent weeks, despite being surrounded by sensitive nuclear sites. Eslami in his remarks accused Israel of meddling in the relationship between the IAEA and Iran. “It is important to be careful that the hostile actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the Zionists are source of ... do not affect the interactions between Iran and the agency,” Eslami said. “What is shown in the media is based on the Zionist regime’s manipulations.”Grossi insisted that the IAEA’s relationship with Tehran is not affected by outside parties. Also Tuesday, a ship in the Gulf of Aden came under a suspected attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said. A captain abroad the vessel “reported two explosions in close proximity” to the ship, the UKTMO said, though the boat and its crew were safe.The rebels did not immediately claim the attack, but it typically takes them hours to acknowledge their assaults. The Houthis have launched dozens of attacks since November over the Israel-Hamas war. The U.S. military's Central Command separately said that it shot down a Houthi drone over the Red Sea on Monday.

Iran says talks with IAEA's Grossi have been 'positive'
Reuters/May 7, 2024
Talks between Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog have been positive and productive, Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami said on Tuesday in a joint news conference with the IAEA chief Rafael Grossi in the Iranian city of Isfahan. Grossi flew to Iran on Monday hoping to bolster oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency of Tehran's atomic activities after various setbacks, but analysts and diplomats say he has limited leverage and must be wary of empty promises. In 2023, Tehran gave sweeping assurances to the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it will assist a long-stalled investigation into uranium particles found at undeclared sites and re-install removed monitoring equipment. But little came of those assurances, IAEA reports to member states show. "We continue interactions over unresolved issues, including issues regarding two sites," Eslami said in the televised news conference. Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the around 90% of weapons grade. If that material were enriched further, it would suffice for two nuclear weapons, according to an official IAEA yardstick. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons but no other state has enriched to that level without producing them.

US Seeks to Curb Iran’s Fundraising Capacity in Southeast Asia
Philip J. Heijmans/Bloomberg/May 7, 2024
Washington is concerned about growing efforts by Iran and groups like Hamas to solicit money in Southeast Asia, a senior US Treasury official said on Tuesday during a visit intended to rally support for sanctions enforcement in the region. American officials are meeting oil industry executives, regulators and financial institutions in Singapore and Malaysia this week to prop up US efforts to tighten restrictions on Iranian crude exports and to curb Russia’s ability to keep funding its costly war in Ukraine. The official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said the US expressed concern that Russia continues to source unspecified critical components in Southeast Asia, using transfers to mask the ultimate destination. They include components being used on the battlefield. Iran has been the main focus, however, given its historic ties to countries like Malaysia and the tighter restrictions on Tehran introduced by the US in response to an on Israel last month and support for groups like Hamas. A package of measures signed into law last month promises to extend coverage to include foreign ports, vessels and refineries that knowingly process or ship Iranian crude.
The new restrictions also expanded so-called secondary sanctions to cover all transactions with sanctioned Iranian banks used to purchase petroleum and oil-derived products. Stepping up enforcement of sanctions on Iran has been challenging in part because of practices like transfers of Iranian oil from one tanker to another in waters around Malaysia, frequently to mask the origin of cargoes heading further east. Among other steps, the US team has pressed for action on money-laundering and raised the issue of risks associated with older vessels in the so-called “dark fleet.” In May last year, a 26-year-old oil tanker capable of carrying 700,000 barrels of oil exploded off the coast of Malaysia. It was empty at the time. The dark fleet ships are often of questionable seaworthiness. raising the chance of a spill, the Treasury official said, mentioning one such vessel sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control in March that is currently traversing the South China Sea. Sporadic sanctions on firms in Singapore and Malaysia last year for their roles in allegedly facilitating the sale and shipment of millions of dollars worth of petroleum and petrochemicals on behalf of a company with known connections to Iran have not dented activity. No Iranian oil has been imported by China since mid-2022, according to official Chinese customs data. In reality, China has taken an average of 1.2 million barrels a day of crude from Iran since the beginning of 2023, according to data compiled by Kpler. These flows are often passed off as cargoes originating elsewhere — including Malaysia. “Since the beginning of this year, Treasury has taken several significant actions to combat and disrupt the illicit shipment of Iranian oil to buyers in East Asia, including shipments via ship-to-ship transfers in international waters near Singapore and Malaysia,” the US Treasury department said in a statement on May 3.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on May 07-08/2024
Iranian Proxies Wreak Havoc Beyond the Middle East ..Azerbaijan and Pakistan are two lesser known victims of Iranian proxy attacks.
Eyal Hulata &Natalie Ecanow/The National Interest/May 07/2024 |
Three months after exchanging tit-for-tat airstrikes, Iran and Pakistan are patching diplomatic wounds. Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi embarked on a three-day trip to Pakistan on April 22, where he and senior Pakistani leadership committed to strengthening bilateral ties. Reconciliation may be underway, but rest assured, Iran is not done stirring trouble in Pakistan—or beyond.
For years, Iran has encircled Israel with a “ring of fire,” raising proxies on Israel’s borders that are armed and ready to strike at Tehran’s behest. Iran-backed Hezbollah dominates Lebanon, a country stuck in political gridlock without a president and on the brink of economic collapse. Iran exploited the civil war in Syria to transform the country into a forward base for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Iran-backed Houthis plunged Yemen into one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters and wreaked global havoc this year by effectively closing off vital Red Sea shipping lanes to commercial traffic. And Iran-backed forces in Iraq are undermining Baghdad’s sovereignty while reportedly looking to destabilize Jordan by arming fighters in the kingdom.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is hellbent on destroying the State of Israel. But more than that, the revolutionary regime is committed to exporting its rogue ideology across the world. To Iran’s southeast, Iran-backed forces are stoking violence in Pakistan. To the northwest, Iranian agents are breeding instability in Azerbaijan. From the Middle East to South Asia and to the Caucasus, Tehran is fomenting violence and unrest everywhere it can.
While Iran and Pakistan have shared a tense relationship and border for years, tempers flared in January when the two countries exchanged airstrikes on either side of their shared border. On January 16, Iran launched strikes against Jaish al-Adl, a separatist Sunni Baloch militant group based in the Iran-Pakistan border region. Jaish al-Adl accuses Shia Iran of repressing its ethnic Baloch minority—and Iran accuses Pakistan of turning a blind eye to Jaish al-Adl.
Pakistan subsequently suspended diplomatic ties with Iran and, two days later, struck “terrorist hideouts” in Iran, targeting the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), two separatist groups that pose a threat to Pakistan. The BLA, BLF, and Jaish al-Adl are all U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.
Diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Iran resumed at the end of January. However, Islamabad still had unfinished business. In April, Pakistan designated the Zaynabiyoun Brigade—an IRGC-led group comprised of Pakistani nationals—as a terrorist organization. Originally formed to fight on behalf of Iran-allied Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the Zaynabiyoun Brigade has become increasingly active inside Pakistan. Islamabad found that between 2019 and 2021, the brigade was “actively involved in terrorist activities” at home.
Pakistan started to crack down on the Zaynabiyoun Brigade in 2020, arresting multiple militants and opening a probe into a money laundering network connected to the group.
Iran’s efforts to spread its malign influence and dominate larger parts of the map don’t end there. Elsewhere in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan is weathering its own Iranian threat. Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have long been sour, in large part because Iran is home to a significant Azerbaijani minority. Tehran holds longstanding fears of subversion by ethnic Azerbaijanis and, for decades, has supported Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan escalated in 2020 after Azerbaijan recovered territory from Armenia in the Second Armenia-Azerbaijan War. Azerbaijan has also sought strategic partnerships with Turkey and Israel—both, for different reasons, at odds with Iran—deepening the Tehran regime’s distrust of Baku. In recent years, Azerbaijan has stepped up its campaign against domestic Iran-backed networks. Since 2022, Baku has carried out several waves of arrests, rounding up Iranian agents engaged in a variety of destabilization activities, including members of the Huseyniyyun—the IRGC-backed Islamic Resistance Movement of Azerbaijan.
In April 2023, Azerbaijani authorities arrested six individuals who Baku said were “recruited by Iranian secret services” to establish “a Sharia state in Azerbaijan through armed unrest and violent overthrow of Azerbaijan’s constitutional order.” The next month, law enforcement arrested at least nine people whom Tehran recruited to plot the “violent overthrow of the government and the assassinations of prominent personalities and senior officials,” according to Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry.
No doubt, the Iranian threat is virulent. Pragmatic states in the Middle East and the Gulf recognize this, which is why they are putting aside grievances against each other to contest Iranian aggression as a team. That effort was on full display the night of April 13, when countries like Jordan and possibly Saudi Arabia helped repel Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack against the State of Israel. Weeks ago, the Gulf Cooperation Council released a “Vision for Regional Security” that implicitly denounces Iran and invites the West to address Tehran’s destabilizing and malignant threat jointly. The United States and the broader West should heed this call. It’s time for the international community to roll back Iran’s destructive campaign before it’s too late. Iran’s nuclear ambitions must be halted, its ballistic missile program curbed, and its terror activities stopped.
**Dr. Eyal Hulata is Israel’s former National Security Advisor and head of the National Security Council. He is currently a senior international fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on the Middle East.

Inside the White House Scramble to Broker a Deal in Gaza
Peter Baker/The New York Times/May 07/2024
WASHINGTON — Over the course of a few hours, the news from the Middle East came into the White House Situation Room fast and furious.
Israel orders 100,000 civilians out of Rafah in prelude to invasion.
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Hamas “accepts” cease-fire deal, potentially precluding invasion.
Israel conducts strikes against Rafah, possibly opening invasion.
The war-is-on-off-on-again developments Monday left White House officials scrambling to track what was happening and what it all meant. At the end of the day, they came to believe, each of the moves signaled less than originally met the eye, but reflected efforts to gain leverage at the negotiating table with a clear resolution not yet in sight.
In fact, Hamas did not “accept” a cease-fire deal so much as make a counteroffer to the proposal on the table previously blessed by the United States and Israel — a counteroffer that was not itself deemed acceptable but a sign of progress. At the same time, Israel’s strikes in Rafah evidently were not the start of the long-threatened major operation but targeted retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that killed four Israeli soldiers over the weekend — and along with the warning to civilians, a way to increase pressure on Hamas negotiators. The flurry of actions underscored how fluid the situation in the region is as President Joe Biden and his team try to broker a deal that they hope will ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians, inflamed the region and provoked unrest on U.S. college campuses. Over the past few days, the talks went from high hopes that a deal was close, to a fresh impasse that seemed to leave them on the verge of collapse, to a renewed initiative by Hamas to get them back on track. “Biden is continuing all efforts to thread multiple needles at once,” said Mara Rudman, a former deputy Middle East special envoy under President Barack Obama who is now at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. The president is still warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a “Rafah ground invasion is a terrible idea,” she said, while also “pressuring Hamas in every way possible to get hostages out and more humanitarian aid in.”
Biden called Netanyahu on Monday to fill him in on the U.S. assessment of where the cease-fire talks stand and to again press the Israeli leader to hold off any full-fledged attack on Rafah. The president also hosted lunch at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan, who like other Arab leaders, is eager to bring the war to an end. The past two weeks have been as intense and suspenseful diplomatically as any since Hamas mounted a major terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. After months of stalemated talks, Israel came back on April 26 with a proposal that U.S. officials believed changed the dynamics and offered a serious chance for agreement.
Under the first phase of the proposal, Israel would halt the war for 42 days and release hundreds of Palestinians held in its prisons while Hamas would release 33 hostages, specifically women, older men, and the sick and wounded.
The number 33 was an increase from 18 proposed by Hamas but lower than the 40 originally demanded by Israel, in large part because Israeli officials came to understand that there were not more than 33 hostages who met the criteria, according to people informed about the discussions who insisted on anonymity to describe sensitive talks. Indeed, Hamas revealed to the Israelis on Monday that the 33 would include the remains of hostages who have died as well as those still living. In addition, Israel would pull its forces out of populated areas of Gaza and permit residents to return to the northern part of the enclave once conditions were met; to that end, the cease-fire would enable a large increase in the flow of humanitarian aid. In trying to call Hamas’ bluff, the people informed on the talks said, the Israelis virtually cut and pasted some of the language from a Hamas proposal in March and put it into theirs.
During the six-week cease-fire, the two sides would then work out plans for a second phase, which would involve another 42-day halt to hostilities and the release of more hostages. In this phase, the hostages to be released would include Israeli soldiers, a category of captives that Hamas has always been more resistant to giving up. To get over that hurdle, the Israelis agreed to release a larger ratio of Palestinian prisoners for each hostage returned home.
The Israeli concessions left U.S., Egyptian and Qatari intermediaries optimistic that an agreement could be reached. But a week went by without a clear response from Hamas, in part perhaps because of the challenges of communicating with Yehia Sinwar, the Hamas military leader believed to be hiding in the tunnels of Gaza. When negotiators arrived in Cairo on Friday, the Israelis did not send a delegation, which was interpreted by some critics of Netanyahu as a snub. But Israeli and U.S. officials denied that, saying that no Israeli delegation was needed at that stage because Israel had made its proposal and was waiting for a Hamas response. Hamas’ response over the weekend frustrated the intermediaries because it rejected some of the very language that it had previously proposed and that had been adopted by the Israelis, according to the people briefed on the talks. The U.S. side declared the new Hamas position unacceptable, and suggested that if Hamas did not really want a deal, perhaps the negotiations were done. But Hamas indicated that it was not trying to torpedo the talks and would come back with a new version. That was the counteroffer that Hamas forwarded Monday. The Israelis and Americans did not find it acceptable, but believed that it left room for further negotiations. Talks are expected to resume in Cairo at a technical level, probably on Wednesday, to go through the details. This time, Israel has agreed to send a delegation to go over the Hamas counteroffer. Israeli actions in Rafah on Monday could either ratchet up the pressure on Hamas to make a deal or sabotage the talks, according to analysts. The strikes focused on targets in the border areas of Rafah, rather than the main population areas, but could foreshadow what is to come. It was not entirely clear to veterans of the region whether either side necessarily wants an agreement. Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said it was possible that Hamas thought that “precipitating a massive Israeli operation in Rafah would be worth the cost, because it would isolate Israel globally and deepen the U.S.-Israel divide.”At the same time, he said, it could be that Netanyahu is “seeking a trifecta” with the strikes on Monday: pushing Hamas to give in, showing the Israeli public that he did hit Rafah as promised and getting credit from the Biden administration for not mounting the full-scale assault that Washington fears would result in a civilian catastrophe.
“There are secrets here I just don’t know,” Alterman said. “At the same time, no side knows the others’ breaking point, and I worry that no side accurately understands the others’ assessments.” Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and former adviser to Palestinian leaders during past peace negotiations, said he remained skeptical that Netanyahu actually wanted a cease-fire deal because of his own domestic politics. “I don’t believe moves on or in Rafah, including evacuation orders, are just a negotiating tactic,” he said. “Netanyahu needs the Rafah operation to remain in power and to appease the fanatics in his coalition.” He added, “Bottom line, Netanyahu has little to gain from a cease-fire deal and a lot to lose.”That distrust on both sides, of course, makes any agreement all the more elusive. While the two sides seem reconciled on the first phase cease-fire and hostage release, there are still a number of other differences between the two competing proposals, according to the people briefed on them. But the most fundamental dispute is whether an agreement would ultimately end the war. Negotiators have tried to finesse that with a time-honored diplomatic tactic of employing language that is vague enough to be interpreted by each side as it chooses. Under the agreement, the two sides would use the temporary cease-fire to work out the return of “sustainable calm.” Hamas wants “sustainable calm” to mean a permanent cessation of hostilities, while Israel does not want to make that explicit a commitment.
U.S. officials are content to leave the definition of “sustainable calm” a little fuzzy, but are banking on the idea that once the guns stop firing for six and then potentially 12 weeks, the momentum for a more lasting peace will be inexorable. That is why they are devoting so much energy to the coming days.
c.2024 The New York Times Company

A Palestinian State Will Lead To More Massacres, Final Nail in Coffin Torpedoing Biden Legacy
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/May 7, 2024
If the Saudis were really interested in normalizing their relations with Israel, they could have done so long ago. Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is delaying the move, in part, reportedly, out of fear of facing a backlash from his own people. He may, however, also have serious reservations that he would prefer not to talk about in public. Like most Arabs, the Saudis could not care less about a Palestinian state and might secretly prefer not to have one at all. They are no doubt aware that the Palestinians themselves are the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a state of their own. During the past eight decades, they have acted as a serial wrecking ball to every peaceful place they set foot. The last thing most Arab states want is a Hamas-controlled Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain justifiably regard Hamas and other Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to their national security, most likely the main reason they all have refused to take in Gazan refugees. Blinken's claim that a Palestinian state would "isolate" Iran and its proxies is pure nonsense. The opposite is the case. Iran, its proxies and Qatar would doubtless be extremely happy if the Biden administration would allow them to establish a terrorist state on Israel's doorstep. This state would be used by Iran and its terrorists as a launching pad for more October 7-style massacres of Israelis to further their goal of destroying first Israel, then the Arab states.
It is Israel -- not Iran -- that will find itself "isolated" and surrounded by Iran-backed Islamist terrorist groups...
A Middle East that includes a Palestinian state controlled by Iran and Islamist terrorists will be a less secure region, especially after Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
Biden, by reconfirming that terrorism "works," would embolden all the other terrorists. Just keep on terrorizing everyone, and, when your demands are met, keep on increasing and hardening them.
More significantly, by appeasing Iran, Qatar and potential voters in Michigan by creating a Palestinian state, the Biden administration will in fact be inviting Iran to initiate still more attacks – not only on Israel but also on US forces in the Middle East.... If Iran finally coerces the US to withdraw from the region as it is reportedly thinking of doing, the regime will finally be able to take over its neighbors' oil fields and holy sites without worrying about the US interfering.
Meanwhile, as the Biden administration, busy trying to win re-election in November, seems to have no idea how to end all the conflicts it ignited, directly or indirectly, in Gaza, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. The US has been backing both sides of all of them. Iran, presumably taking advantage of these distractions, and perhaps as a consolation prize for losing so much of Hamas -– has been moving to take over Sudan. It is a country rich in oil, gold, rare earth minerals and terrorism -- and felicitously positioned to help Iran launch unlimited combat drones – the planet's new "cheap, instant air force" -- at both Israel and US forces, and enable Iran to use Sudan's port on the Red Sea to continue obstructing maritime traffic.
After all, if terrorism "works," why stop?
Like most Arabs, the Saudis could not care less about a Palestinian state and might secretly prefer not to have one at all. They are no doubt aware that the Palestinians themselves are the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a state of their own. Pictured: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on April 29, 2024. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly spoken of the need for a "pathway" for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. According to Blinken, a Palestinian state would have two positive effects: First, it would pave the way for a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and second, it would "isolate" Iran and its terrorist proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
This is the same Blinken who has put pressure on Israel to refrain from a military operation to destroy the remaining four Hamas battalions in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. If the battalions are not destroyed, it means that Hamas will remain in power and that Israel will, by default, lose the war. Hamas would be able to rebuild its military and, as it has vowed, will repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated.
In addition, a Hamas victory would catapult the terror group's power and popularity among Palestinians, as well as Hezbollah, the Houthis and other terrorist groups. A Hamas victory would accurately be seen globally as proof that terrorism not only works but is rewarded. A Hamas victory would also definitively seal the chances of Iran and Qatar continuing to control the Palestinian state that Blinken is so keen to establish – as is seemingly the Biden administration's intent.
Opinion polls conducted by Palestinian organizations have repeatedly shown that a majority of Palestinians vastly prefer Hamas to the Palestinian Authority's ruling Fatah faction of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Shortly after Hamas's October 7 atrocities, 57% of respondents in the Gaza Strip and 82% in the West Bank said the terrorist group was "correct" to launch the attack.
"The work that Saudi Arabia, the United States have been doing together in terms of our own agreements, I think, is potentially very close to completion," Blinken said during a recent visit to the Saudi capital of Riyadh. "But then in order to move forward with normalization, two things will be required -- calm in Gaza and a credible pathway to a Palestinian state."
Saudi Arabia and the US are reportedly working on the details of an agreement to boost bilateral trade and defense ties – but a deal will not happen unless the kingdom and Israel establish diplomatic ties, US officials say.
The US argument is that a defense pact would solidify the seven-decade security alliance between Saudi Arabia and the US, tying the two countries ever closer together as US adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China seek to expand their influence in the Middle East.
Speaking to reporters earlier this year after a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Blinken tried to claim that the region faces two paths. The first is "to integrate Israel, with security guarantees and commitments from the countries of the region and also the United State and [the second is] to create a Palestinian state — at least a path that leads to that state."
Blinken added that, in his view, strengthening Israel's security and creating a Palestinian state would be the best way to thwart attacks by Iran's regional proxies such as Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis and various militias that have carried out attacks on US and foreign interests in Syria and Iraq.
By establishing a link between Israeli-Saudi normalization and the establishment of a Palestinian state, Blinken would also give the Palestinians a veto right on any peace deal between Israel and an Arab country.
Many Arab countries, of course, have already demonstrated that they are capable of making peace with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.
If the Saudis were really interested in normalizing their relations with Israel, they could have done so long ago. Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is delaying the move, in part, reportedly, out of fear of facing a backlash from his own people. He may, however, also have serious reservations that he would prefer not to talk about in public.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan never made their normalization agreements with Israel conditional on the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Saudis pay a lot of lip service to a Palestinian state but have done little, if anything, in the last eight decades to help the Palestinians achieve a state. Long before the 2020 Abraham Accords, Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with Israel without insisting on the establishment of a Palestinian state. Decades later, those peace treaties are still in force, although no Palestinian state was ever established.
Like most Arabs, the Saudis could not care less about a Palestinian state and might secretly prefer not to have one at all. They are no doubt aware that the Palestinians themselves are the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a state of their own. During the past eight decades, they have acted as a serial wrecking ball to every peaceful place they set foot. When Jordan graciously hosted them, in 1951, a Palestinian associated with Hitler's great ally, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, assassinated King Abdullah I. In 1970, in a bloodletting called "Black September," Palestinians tried to overthrow the government of King Hussein, after which the Palestinians were forced to flee to Lebanon.
Since 2005, when the Israelis unconditionally transferred every millimeter of Gaza to the Palestinians so they could build a "Singapore on the Mediterranean," Palestinian leaders squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and failed to create adequate state institutions and a free and vibrant democracy. Moreover, the power struggle between the two main parties, Fatah and Hamas, has led to the creation of two separate entities for the Palestinians - one in the West Bank, ruled by the Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, and a second in the Gaza Strip, ruled by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, supported by Qatar and Iran. The last thing most Arab states want is a Hamas-controlled Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain justifiably regard Hamas and other Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to their national security, most likely the main reason they all have refused to take in Gazan refugees.
Blinken's claim that a Palestinian state would "isolate" Iran and its proxies is pure nonsense. The opposite is the case. Iran, its proxies and Qatar would doubtless be extremely happy if the Biden administration would allow them to establish a terrorist state on Israel's doorstep. This state would be used by Iran and its terrorists as a launching pad for more October 7-style massacres of Israelis to further their goal of destroying first Israel, then the Arab states.
It is Israel -- not Iran -- that will find itself "isolated" and surrounded by Iran-backed Islamist terrorist groups thirsting for Jewish blood.
Blinken's claim that establishing a Palestinian state would bring security and stability to the Middle East is, to put it as nicely as possible, counterfactual. Palestinians had an independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip since 2005. In 2007, Hamas overthrew the ruling Palestinian Authority in Gaza and took full control there. At the time Palestinian Authority security officers were dragged into the streets and lynched, while another was thrown to his death from the roof of a high building.
The Hamas-controlled Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip poses a threat not only to the Palestinian Authority, but also to Israel and Egypt. For years prior to the October 7 atrocities, Hamas fired tens of thousands of rockets and mortar shells from the Gaza Strip at Israeli cities and towns. The Egyptians, for their part, accused Hamas of working closely with Islamist terrorist groups in the Sinai who were responsible for killing Egyptian soldiers and civilians.
One can only imagine what would happen if Iran and its proxies could extend their control to east Jerusalem and the West Bank. They would undoubtedly turn these areas into bases for jihad (holy war) against Israel, as they have done in the Gaza Strip. A Middle East that includes a Palestinian state controlled by Iran and Islamist terrorists will be a less secure region, especially after Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
The new Palestinian state will not only be used to attack Israel, but also to undermine security and stability in neighboring countries, especially Jordan and Egypt. The Iranian regime and its puppets have never been satisfied with the peace treaties that these two Arab countries signed with Israel.
Just in case Blinken does not know it, Iran, through its proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, has already succeeded in infiltrating the West Bank. In recent years, the Israeli authorities have thwarted some of the countless attempts by Iran to smuggle weapons into the West Bank via Jordan.
"[Palestinian] Islamic Jihad is using Iranian money to buy weapons and loyalty in the West Bank," said a Palestinian Authority official. "The organization is paying high salaries to its members."
In the past three years, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas have established more armed cells and recruited dozens more gunmen in the northern West Bank, specifically the areas of Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem, the official revealed.
The situation in the West Bank has become so dangerous that Abbas's Fatah faction recently accused Iran of trying to spread chaos in its territory and declared that it would oppose outside operations that have nothing to do with the Palestinian cause.
Fatah said it would not allow "our holy cause and the blood of our people to be exploited" and warned that it would oppose any outside interference aimed at harming the security forces or national institutions.
Jamal Nazzal, a member of Fatah's "Revolutionary Council," said that Iran's fingerprints on the Palestinian reality were devastating, indicating that Tehran had decided to fight Israel to the last drop of Arab blood.
In an interview with the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV channel, he added that Iran has agents, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Nazzal pointed out that the Palestinian situation will not tolerate Iranian interference. He also noted that there are Iranian-backed armed groups in areas of the West Bank.
By continuing to obsessively promote the delusional idea of a Palestinian state, the Biden administration is sending a message to the Palestinians that it wants to reward them for launching the deadliest, most sickening attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
In addition, by trying to prevent Israel from destroying Hamas, the Biden administration is facilitating the creation of an Iranian-controlled terrorist state that can only become a source of instability in the Middle East and pose an existential threat not simply to Israel but to the region, especially after Iran acquires nuclear weapons. By withholding ammunition and other military supplies from Israel, demanding that Israel end the war against Hamas and accept a Palestinian terror state, the Biden administration is advancing its already threadbare legacy since his surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. First, Biden, by reconfirming that terrorism "works," would embolden all the other terrorists. Just keep on terrorizing everyone, and, when your demands are met, keep on increasing and hardening them.
More significantly, by appeasing Iran, Qatar and potential voters in Michigan by creating a Palestinian state, the Biden administration will in fact be inviting Iran to initiate still more attacks – not only on Israel but also on US forces in the Middle East. Iran has already launched more than 150 attacks on US troops in the Middle East just since October 2023, and nearly 300 since Biden took office in 2021. If Iran finally coerces the US to withdraw from the region as it is reportedly thinking of doing, the regime will finally be able to take over its neighbors' oil fields and holy sites without worrying about the US interfering.
Meanwhile, as the Biden administration, busy trying to win re-election in November, seems to have no idea how to end all the conflicts it ignited, directly or indirectly, in Gaza, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. The US has been backing both sides of all of them. Iran, presumably taking advantage of these distractions, and perhaps as a consolation prize for losing so much of Hamas -– has been moving to take over Sudan. It is a country rich in oil, gold, rare earth minerals and terrorism -- and felicitously positioned to help Iran launch unlimited combat drones – the planet's new "cheap, instant air force" -- at both Israel and US forces, and enable Iran to use Sudan's port on the Red Sea to continue obstructing maritime traffic.
After all, if terrorism "works," why stop?
*Bassam Tawil is an Arab Muslim based in the Middle East.
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Why Israel’s military operation in Rafah will lead to ‘inevitable catastrophe’ in Gaza
ANAN TELLO and ROBERT EDWARDS/Arab News/May 08/2024
LONDON: Palestinians in Gaza’s southern governorate of Rafah face a desperate situation as the Israeli military proceeds with its long-planned assault on the area, capturing the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt and ordering displaced families to move yet again. The Israeli army announced on Tuesday morning that its 401st Brigade had taken “operational control” of the Rafah border crossing after advancing into the eastern part during the night as part of its mission to dislodge Hamas. Earlier on Monday, Israel ordered some 100,000 Palestinians in eastern Rafah to “evacuate immediately” to Al-Mawasi, a coastal town near Khan Younis that humanitarian organizations said was “completely uninhabitable.”
Mercy Corps said Palestinians in eastern Rafah were confronted with two impossible choices: Face death under bombardment or attempt a perilous journey to an unlivable area with no access to essential aid.
Bushra Khalidi, advocacy director for Oxfam in the Palestinian territories, says civilians fleeing Rafah have been left with nowhere to go.She told Arab News that people in Rafah “are worried of even leaving their homes” because they fear they will not find anywhere in the middle area or in Al-Mawasi. According to the AFP news agency, more than 74 percent of the infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed since Oct. 7 when Israel launched its bombing campaign in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Al-Mawasi, which Israel had dubbed a “humanitarian zone,” is “already overpopulated and filled with makeshift tents,” said Khalidi. “There is no infrastructure, there (are) no services, and no facilities to host this number of (internally displaced people).” Moreover, this narrow coastal strip, measuring just 1 km wide and 14 km long, already hosts an estimated 250,000 displaced Gazans, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Ahmed Bayram, media adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Middle East, stressed that “there is not a corner or a street in Gaza where people can go expecting safety.”
He told Arab News: “Al-Mawasi, which is one of the areas Israel has asked people to go to, is full to the very brim. There is no free spot left in that narrow stretch of land, which is not equipped for such high demand.”
According to Mercy Corps, Al-Mawasi is already a sea of makeshift tents, with little in the way of humanitarian relief, electricity, or water.
It also remains unclear whether Palestinians can flee to neighboring countries through the Rafah crossing now that it is under Israeli control, said Ruth James, Oxfam’s regional humanitarian coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.
She told Arab News: “Many Palestinians in Gaza currently do not have the recognized right to return to their original homes. Given this context, Egypt, or any other state, should be cautious of inadvertently abetting any potential efforts by Israel, or any other party, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population of Gaza.”Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, slammed Israel’s evacuation order as “inhumane,” warning that such an action could amount to a war crime, Reuters reported. Oxfam’s Khalidi also warned that if a Rafah-wide incursion happens, which is the worst-case scenario, it would “entail mass carnage and a complete bloodbath.”She explained that this is due to “how small” Rafah is and “because of how congested and overpopulated it is.”
Echoing her colleague’s fears, James said: “It’s hard to imagine the scale of need caused by a Rafah invasion. Simply put, this invasion can’t happen. There must be an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”She added: “The alternative is an avoidable, massive loss of civilian life.”Despite repeated public objections, even US President Joe Biden’s appeals against the Rafah offensive have gone unheeded.According to the Associated Press, Biden urgently warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Monday against invading Rafah, stressing it would only lead to more deaths and exacerbate the despair in the embattled enclave. The Israeli military said its operation in Rafah is designed to eliminate fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, according to Reuters. An aerial view of cargo trucks relocated away from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. (Maxar Technologies)
Israel’s overnight strikes across Rafah killed at least 23 people, including five children, according to local health officials.
Prior to that, Israeli warplanes pounded homes in Rafah, killing at least 27 Palestinians, including two babies, according to Gaza’s health authority.
This is despite Hamas accepting the terms of a Qatari-Egyptian ceasefire proposal on Monday. Humanitarian organizations concur that the impact of Israel’s operation in Rafah will extend beyond the eastern area, affecting more than 1.4 million people who have been sheltering in the southern governorate — and the entirety of Gaza’s remaining population. “While the initial ‘evacuation orders’ and operations announced in the east of Rafah are directly impacting 100,000 people, over 1.4 million are sheltering in Rafah, half of which are children, and are at direct risk of any escalated military operations across the area,” Salim Oweis, a spokesperson for UNICEF in Gaza, told Arab News.
Displaced Palestinians flee Rafah for safer areas in southern Gaza. (AFP)
“The extended impact will be far-reaching to include all the 2.2 million residents of Gaza.” Elaborating, Oweis added: “Rafah is the main hub of all humanitarian response, and any impact on the already struggling aid delivery and humanitarian response will hamper the efforts across Gaza.”
Rafah is the last population center in the Gaza Strip after the seven-month Israeli assault obliterated three-quarters of the besieged enclave, killing at least 34,700 Palestinians according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displacing 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million people.
Israel’s evacuation orders in eastern Rafah, coupled with unceasing airstrikes across Gaza’s south, have instilled panic among the war-weary residents, triggering an exodus of thousands of Palestinians who have nowhere to seek refuge. Describing the situation across the Gaza Strip as “a state of despair, chaos and confusion” as Israel carries out its assault on Rafah, NRC’s Bayram said that “by issuing its orders, Israel has again pushed over 1 million people into the unknown.”
FASTFACTS
• Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate to Al-Mawasi — deemed ‘completely uninhabitable.’
• Closing Rafah crossing would cut Gaza’s only viable humanitarian lifeline, warn aid chiefs.
• Fears that Rafah-wide incursion would ‘entail mass carnage and a complete bloodbath.’
He added: “Let’s not forget, while the orders cover an area with 100,000 people east of Rafah, the rest of the population in central and western areas will think they are next to be forcibly transferred, and so they will try to get out while they can.”
Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, foresees a “horrific” humanitarian situation if the Rafah hostilities do not stop.
“All movement of people and goods has been closed off, at a time where famine is already in the north and was very much on the verge in the south,” she told Arab News. “There’s been no contingency plan in place, and all foreign aid delegations have been evacuated. If this goes ahead as Israel states, it will be a massacre.”As Israel has blocked aid through the Rafah border crossing, aid groups are concerned about the impact on much-needed humanitarian assistance across the Gaza Strip. This concern is exacerbated by the suspension of aid deliveries to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing following a nearby Hamas rocket attack. Oxfam’s James cautioned that “even one day of closure (of crossing points) means that additional lives are likely to be lost to hunger and illness.”
She called on Israel to “adhere to its obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure civilian populations are provided with the most essential aid in sufficient quantities.” Khalidi pointed out that aid organizations “are already facing huge obstructions” in delivering aid across Gaza.

England: The local elections’ two strong messages
Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 07, 2024
Despite the government and the party leadership’s haughty denials, last week’s wholesale defeat of the ruling Conservative Party at the local elections in England was predictable. All the opinion polls conducted over the past few months, without exception, predicted that the Conservatives would suffer heavy losses. However, analysts disagreed on whether these losses would be “catastrophic” enough to pressure Prime Minister Rishi Sunak into resigning before the general election or if they would be “tolerable” and allow the party to catch its breath and choose its fourth leader in three years without panic.
Prior to the announcement of the final results on Saturday afternoon, it seemed that the outcome would be catastrophic. The Conservatives lost control of 10 local councils and lost 474 seats. Moreover, the Conservatives failed to unseat Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had been strongly criticized by some car owners and drivers for expanding the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, leaving many Labour supporters worried he would lose.
On the flip side, the Labour Party wrested control of eight councils, raising the number of councils under its control to 51. In terms of seats, Labour gained 186, increasing its total to 1,158, but these figures do not paint a full picture of the result. They do not shed light on important details, with the most prominent being the following. Firstly, not all of the councils the Conservatives lost went to Labour. The Liberal Democrats also made strong gains. The centrist party seized control of two additional local councils, bringing its total to 12 and allowing it to surpass the Conservatives. In terms of seats, it won 522, adding 104, meaning that it also has more seats than the Conservatives. The Green Party won 74 new seats, raising its total number to 181, but it failed to win any councils. The Conservative Party, under its current right-wing leadership, has suffered a severe blow
Secondly, independent candidates from various backgrounds and regions managed to make breakthroughs and influence the results to varying degrees.
Thirdly, the anti-European Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party) has reportedly cut into right-wing support for the Conservatives, especially in rural regions and affluent suburbs. However, Reform only won two seats.
And finally, despite doing better than any other party, Labour only secured about 35 percent of the vote. This figure does not suggest that it will, as some have predicted, win a landslide victory in the upcoming general election like that of former Labour leader Tony Blair in 1997, which effectively ended the Thatcherite era. A landslide typically requires winning more than 40 percent of the vote, with the remainder distributed reasonably favorably among competing parties.
Accordingly, it can be said that the first thing these results tell us is that the Conservative Party, under its current right-wing leadership, has suffered a severe blow, making it highly unlikely that this leadership will remain in place for much longer. The Conservatives’ problem is made more difficult by its regular changes of leadership since the Brexit referendum in 2016. This instability has left the party suffering from internal bleeding, consuming leaders to the same extent that it has undermined its credibility and limited its options.
It is worth noting that, before embarking on his Brexit adventure, former Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who is now the UK’s foreign secretary, believed that he would win the referendum on leaving Europe, allowing him to “crush” the extremist, isolationist wing of the party and root out its populists. That is why he voluntarily committed to holding the referendum. However, his assumption about the outcome was unfounded. Thus, Cameron resigned (after remaining in power between 2010 and 2016) and was succeeded by a transitional “moderate,” Theresa May (2016-2019).
For Labour, the results — despite their positivity — sent a message that was no less serious or perilous
However, when the economic and political repercussions of the country’s exit from the EU began to emerge, the growing faction of defiant right-wing extremist Conservatives rushed to double down and push on. As a result, the leadership of the party and the government changed hands three times in just four years, from May to Boris Johnson (2019-2022), then Liz Truss (for a month and a half) and finally Sunak (2022-present). Today, there is no real indication that a sensible, moderate Conservative faction can push back against the extremists and seize control of the political arena.For Labour, the results of the local elections — despite their positivity — sent a message that was no less serious or perilous.
The results reminded the current leadership to avoid underestimating the voices of dissent that have been demonized by the Israeli lobby in recent months. Interestingly, this lobby was the driving force behind the election of Keir Starmer as the successor to Jeremy Corbyn, who represented the radical left of the party. The stance adopted by Starmer, who has close links to Labour Friends of Israel, on the displacement war in Gaza has shocked a broad segment of the party’s electorate, not only Arab and Muslim voters, but leftists from across the spectrum as well. However, the Labour leader and his clique stuck to their unwinnable bet of compensating for the loss of dissenting votes by adopting Conservative policies and strongly supporting Israel and the Likud right. More importantly, they underestimated the scale at which these voters would choose not to vote or to vote tactically for the Liberal Democrats or the Greens.
Indeed, that is exactly what happened in several areas of England, including neighborhoods and suburbs with significant Muslim populations, such as the Birmingham suburbs and Manchester suburbs like Oldham, where Labour lost absolute control of the council because of the activists’ opposition to the Gaza war. It is worth noting that the UK’s largest urban centers, in terms of population, are Greater London, Birmingham (in the West Midlands) and Greater Manchester (in the northwest). In conclusion, the Muslim vote first, and the Arab vote second, have had an impact on the Labour Party in major urban centers. Thus, neglecting these voters in the upcoming general election would be a real gamble.
*Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat. X: @eyad1949

Israel is testing the West’s most fundamental values
Osama Al-Sharif/Arab News/May 07, 2024
The student protests that are roiling US universities and colleges — and now spreading into Europe — over Israel’s war on Gaza are testing the Western world’s long-held principles and values. Images of police cracking down on largely peaceful gatherings have shaken the foundations of the American republic, its Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The attacks on elite universities for not clamping down on protesting students are being led by vehemently pro-Israel Republican lawmakers. They have called on President Joe Biden to send in the National Guard and suppress what they call pro-Hamas, liberal-funded antisemitic infiltrators. The fact that Jewish organizations are involved in the antiwar protests has carried little weight with the conservative mainstream media and the Zionist lobbies that have sought to demonize them. Professors as well as students have been arrested, some beaten and manhandled, amid calls by lawmakers to terminate federal funding to colleges that either refuse to call in state police or have reached an agreement with protesters to divest from companies supplying weapons to Israel.
The crisis has raised questions about the fundamental individual freedoms that are protected by law and considered sacrosanct in Western societies. It has polarized an already divided American society over Israel’s war on Gaza and the gross human rights violations committed there, in addition to the horrific human toll on the Palestinians. The Biden administration is already under fire from both sides: from the left for enabling Israel’s genocidal war and from the right for not doing enough to help Israel finish the job in Gaza. Biden is caught in the middle. His support among the Democratic youth and Arab and Muslim voters is waning and may play a vital role in him losing his reelection bid in November.
US politicians are sending the message: when it comes to Israel, there are special rules that do not apply elsewhere
The president’s Republican foes, including Donald Trump, refuse to give him a free pass. Despite his long history as a self-proclaimed Zionist and ardent supporter of Israel, he is being blamed for helping Hamas buy time, weakening the Netanyahu government, and ignoring a steep rise in antisemitism at US colleges and universities.
There is one clear message that US politicians on both sides of the aisle are sending to the rest of the world: when it comes to Israel, there are special sets of rules that do not apply elsewhere. Forget about Israel’s excessive use of US-supplied firepower against civilians, the accusations of genocide and war crimes, and the breaches of international laws and conventions. Israel gets special treatment all the time. It is not only the politicians that are involved; it is also the mainstream media, the lobbies, the CEOs of the tech giants and the military-industrial complex, the evangelicals and many of the special interest groups.
And it is not only the US institutions that the pro-Israel lawmakers are pressuring. This week, Zeteo revealed that 12 GOP senators informed the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, that any attempt by the court to hold Netanyahu and his colleagues to account for their actions in Gaza would be interpreted “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.” “Target Israel and we will target you,” the senators told Khan, adding that they would “sanction the ICC employees and associates and bar you and your families from the United States.” Somewhat ominously, the letter concludes: “You have been warned.”
Pro-Israel lawmakers have lambasted the UN, its organizations and officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, numerous times after the body criticized Israel or called for independent investigations into possible war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. In the 1990s, Congress enacted a law that mandates the withdrawal of US funding if the UN or any of its agencies recognizes the Palestinian state as a full member.
Europe is not much better. Despite massive weekly demonstrations calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the punishment of Israel, most European governments have taken hasty steps to contain such protests. In the early days of the war on Gaza, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin threatened to arrest anyone participating in antiwar marches and rallies. That threat did little to stop tens of thousands of people from taking to the heart of Paris in support of Palestine. Critics called Darmanin’s protest ban an attack on civil liberties.
The reverberations of Israel’s war on Gaza will go deep into Western societies long after that horrific war is over
In the UK, the Conservative government tried to demonize pro-Palestine marches. Pro-Israel Home Secretary Suella Braverman was sacked after drawing anger for accusing police of being too lenient with the protesters.
More recently, the German government banned British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta from entering the country to deliver testimony about his experiences in Gazan hospitals. On Saturday, he was also refused entry to France due to a German ban affecting all Schengen Area countries. Before him, former Greek finance minister and anti-Israel activist Yanis Varoufakis was also banned from entering Germany, where he was due to participate in an antiwar conference.
These and other examples have struck deep into the very fabric of Western societies. Israel’s automatic impunity in the eyes of Western governments and the ruling elite is gnawing at the foundations of fundamental individual freedoms and rights, not to mention raising legitimate questions about the undue influence that Zionist bodies have over Western politicians.
The reverberations of Israel’s war on Gaza will go deep into Western societies long after that horrific war is over. The link will linger for many years. Israel will have to face a reckoning if the international rules-based order is to survive. Failing that, a new order is already in the making. It coincides with the visible decline in US global hegemony as it battles internal tests about its commitment to its fundamental principles, which were meant to protect the interests of the American people first and foremost.
Israel has become a severe liability to the West and it is using its last reserves of support among politicians who will, at the end of the day, have to answer to voters. Vibrant democracies have a way of correcting themselves. Israel’s credit line among politicians is coming to its inevitable conclusion.
In the end, Israel will have to fight its own battles at the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and other forums. The stigma of its atrocities in Gaza will not go away. The Global South, an emerging power, observes the unfolding calamity. Gaza is no longer about Palestine, even though that cause persists, but about the fidelity of a world order that is designed for all members with no exceptions.
Israel is the last of the 19th-century colonial projects and it has outlasted its expiration date. Historical Palestine/Israel needs to coexist to prevent a recurrence of genocidal wars like the one in Gaza. International law and the tenets of what the West has been preaching all these decades are being tested, both in the West and beyond. The credibility of the West is at stake. The road ahead leads to a fork and making the wrong choice will be detrimental. Europe should know better: the line between fascism and democracy can be invisibly thin.
*Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. X: @plato010

Palestine is a state waiting to be recognized
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/May 07, 2024
Once again, as a matter of routine, the US has vetoed a Palestinian request to the UN Security Council for full UN membership and, by that, prevented the only global political body with the power to bestow such a recognition from doing so.
This was a reflection of another of Washington’s contradictions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue, as its foreign policy chiefs, including President Joe Biden, are repeatedly expressing their support for a two-state solution, the logical conclusion of which is an independent Palestinian state.
However, this has not meant recognition of Palestinian statehood prior to a peace agreement with Israel, but highlighted that there is broad international support for such a recognition and brought to the fore the question of whether recognition would accelerate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, slow it down or make no difference. In Europe, the discourse around this question is rapidly changing, much of it because of the war in Gaza, and Spain is leading a move to recognize Palestinian statehood, as last week affirmed by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum special meeting in Riyadh. It can be argued that Palestine is already a state, with or without a formal recognition by the UNSC. It has governing bodies of sorts and its pre-June 1967 borders are, generally speaking, internationally recognized. And, of the UNSC’s 15 members, 12 voted in favor of the recent resolution on recognizing Palestinian statehood. The US opposed it and two countries (the UK and Switzerland) abstained, but it is not exactly a secret that these three countries also support a two-state solution but, for their own reasons, have not yet crossed this Rubicon.
International recognition could considerably close the power gap between the two sides of the conflict
Furthermore, Palestine has already been accepted as a nonmember observer state of the UN General Assembly — in November of 2012, by a vote supported by 138 countries and opposed by only nine member states. In many countries, Palestinian diplomatic delegations are treated on equal footing with embassies. Eight of the 27 EU members have already recognized Palestine as a state, as have most African, Asian and Latin American countries. In practical terms, it can be argued that this raises the question of whether a formal UNSC recognition would be merely symbolic, as important as it might be.
However, whatever merit there is to claiming that recognition of its statehood would be merely gestural, the more persuasive argument is that it would mean a substantial departure from the current situation, which disadvantages the Palestinians because of the very asymmetric nature of the conflict. It would create a different dynamic in relations between the Palestinians and the general international approach to the nature of the negotiations.
There is a marked difference in relations, especially in the context of negotiations, between one side that is a recognized state with all the symbols of one, let alone territorial integrity, recognized borders and military and economic power, and the other, which is an entity that is mostly under occupation, with many of those it represents living in the diaspora and whose security and economy are at the mercy of the occupier. This puts the latter at a severe disadvantage, but international recognition could considerably close the power gap between the two.
As it stands, recognition — or, more accurately, the prevention of such a recognition — is a tool misused by Israel to demand concessions from the Palestinians. For Palestinians, recognition should serve as an incentive to unite and reform their system of governance and, just as importantly, transform their discourse from that of a liberation movement to one that has responsibility for the security and well-being of all its people.
Past and present Israeli administrations, including those that supported the Oslo Accords, have opposed recognizing Palestine as a state because this would deprive the former of key pressure points on the Palestinians. And, as during the Netanyahu years, this is part of their wider policy of obstructing a peace agreement based on a two-state solution.
This issue has become a distraction that has prevented the sides from progressing on other outstanding issues
For the international community to present Israel with Palestinian statehood as a fait accompli would be to send a clear signal of intent, forcing Israel to adjust accordingly or find itself isolated. It is far from guaranteed that Tel Aviv will draw the right conclusions from the horrific experiences post-Oct. 7, but one of these lessons is that preventing Palestinian statehood through meddling in Palestinian affairs only empowers those Palestinian elements who are least conducive to living peacefully side by side with Israel.
Decades of delay over recognizing Palestinian statehood have not advanced by one iota the cause of peace negotiations, let alone a peace agreement. On the contrary, this issue has become a bottleneck and a distraction that has prevented the sides from progressing on other outstanding issues.
Now, there is certainly the danger that one or both sides might reach the wrong conclusion from such a recognition. Israel, due to its ingrained distrust of the international community, would probably see it as another deliberate move to undermine its security and its survival. The Palestinians, meanwhile, might conclude that the tide has turned in their favor and against Israel, feel that there is no urgency to conclude a peace agreement and consequently harden their position. If that were the case, it would be for the international community to ensure that this thinking is nipped in the bud.
The last few months have dramatically changed the domestic and international discourse over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and highlighted the understanding that avoiding any proactive approach to resolving it comes at an intolerable price whose impact goes well beyond Israel and Palestine. But it is impossible to envisage Washington leading a radical change to this intractable conflict, especially in an election year.
So, this makes it imperative that the EU, both as individual members and as one of the more powerful and influential political bodies in international affairs and which has deep-rooted interests in the region and its stability, not to mention its historical connections, takes the lead and the initiative in recognizing Palestine as a state. This would send a clear message to Washington that America either joins Europe in recognition or remains almost isolated from its friends by not doing so.
Simply recognizing Palestine as a state will not be a complete panacea, but it will be an essential turning point toward a just and viable resolution to one of the most protracted and volatile conflicts in modern history.
*Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at international affairs think tank Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg