In the face of looming famine, Biden’s promise to build a ‘temporary pier’ to allow aid into Gaza is hollow, undermined by his country’s complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestine.
MARCH 14, 2024
Heba Zagout (1984–2023), Gaza Peace, 2021.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 4 March, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini presented his startling report on the situation in Gaza (Palestine) to the UN General Assembly. In just 150 days, Lazzarini said, Israeli forces have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, nearly half of them children. Those who survive continue to face Israel’s attacks and are afflicted with the traumas of war. The four horsemen of the apocalypse described in the Bible’s Book of Revelation – Conquest, War, Famine, and Death – are now galloping from one end of Gaza to the other.
‘Hunger is everywhere’, Lazzarini said. ‘A man-made famine is looming’. A few days after Lazzarini made his blunt assessment, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that child malnutrition levels in the northern part of the strip are ‘particularly extreme’. The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Palestine Jamie McGoldrick said that ‘hunger has reached catastrophic levels’ and ‘children are dying from hunger’. By the end of the first week of March, at least twenty children had died due to starvation. Among them was ten-year-old Yazan al-Kafarna of Beit Hanoun (northern Gaza), who died in Rafah (southern Gaza) on the same day that Lazzarini spoke at the UN. The image of Yazan’s emaciated body tore into the already battered conscience of our world. Story upon ugly story pile up alongside the rubble produced by Israeli bombing. Dr Mohammed Salha of Al-Awda hospital, where Yazan died, says that many pregnant women suffering from malnutrition have birthed stillborn foetuses or have required caesarean operations to remove them – without anaesthetics.
Mohammed Sami Qariqa (1999–2023), from the exhibition ‘Gaza International Airport’, 2022.
A ceasefire is nowhere on the horizon. Nor is any real commitment to get aid into Gaza, particularly in the north where hunger has taken the greatest toll (on 28 February, UN World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told the Security Council that there is a ‘real prospect of famine [in northern Gaza] by May, with over 500,000 people at risk if the threat is allowed to materialise’). Around 155 trucks of aid are entering Gaza per day – well below the 500-truck daily capacity at the crossing – with only a few of them going to northern Gaza. Israeli soldiers have been ruthless. On 29 February, when aid trucks arrived at the Al-Nabulsi roundabout (on the southwestern edge of Gaza City, in northern Gaza) and desperate people rushed to them, Israeli troops opened fire and killed at least 118 unarmed civilians. This is now known as the Flour Massacre. Airdrops of food are not only inadequate in volume, but they have resulted in their own heartbreaks, with some parcels landing in the Mediterranean Sea and others crushing at least five people to death.
As if from nowhere, US President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address on 7 March that his country would build a ‘temporary pier’ in southern Gaza to facilitate the entry of aid through the sea. The context for this decision, which Biden omitted, is clear: Israel is not permitting the bare minimum of humanitarian aid to pass through land crossings, Israel destroyed the Gaza harbour on 10 October, and Israel pulverised the Gaza airport at Dahaniya in 2006. This decision is certainly not from nowhere. It also comes in the midst of the campaign for democrats in the US to vote ‘uncommitted’ in the ongoing primaries to make it clear that the US’s complicity in the genocide will negatively impact Biden’s re-election effort. Although one loaf of bread is better than none, these loaves of bread will come to Gaza stained in blood.
There is a hollowness to Biden’s pronouncement. Once aid arrives at this ‘temporary pier’, how will it be distributed? The main institutions in Gaza capable of any mass-scale distribution are UNRWA – now defunded by most Western countries – and the Hamas-led Palestinian government – which Western countries have set out to destroy. Since neither will be able to distribute humanitarian aid on the ground (and, as Biden said, ‘no US boots will be on the ground’), what will become of the aid?
Fathi Ghaben (1947–2024), Ray of Glory, n.d.
UNRWA has been at work since shortly after UN resolution 302 (IV) was passed in 1949, since which time it has been the main organisation to provide relief to Palestinian refugees (of which there were 750,000 when UNRWA began its operations and of which there are 5.9 million today). UNRWA’s mandate is precise: it must ensure the well-being of Palestinians but cannot operate to permanently settle them outside their homes. That is because UN resolution 194 affords Palestinians the ‘right to return’ to their homes from which they were ejected by the Israeli state. Although UNRWA’s main work has been in the field of education (two thirds of its 30,000 staff work for UNRWA schools), it is also the organisation most equipped to handle aid distribution.
The West allowed for the creation of UNRWA not because of any particular concern for Palestinians, but because – as the US Department of State noted in 1949 – the ‘conditions of unrest and despair would provide a most fertile hotbed for the implantation of Communism’. That is why the West provided funds for UNRWA (although, since 1966, this has come with severe restrictions). In early 2024, most Western countries cut their funding to UNRWA based on an unsubstantiated accusation tying UNRWA employees to the 7 October attack. Though it has recently come to light that the Israeli army tortured UNRWA employees, such as through waterboarding and beatings, and forced them to make these confessions, most of the countries that cut their funding based on these grounds have failed to reinstate it (with the exception of Canada and Sweden, which have recently resumed their funding). Meanwhile, several Global South countries – led by Brazil – have increased their contributions.
Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who ran UNRWA from 2010 to 2014, recently said that if ‘UNRWA is not permitted to work, or is defunded, I can hardly see who can substitute [it]’. No humanitarian relief programme for Palestinians in Gaza is possible in the short run without UNRWA’s full partnership. Anything else is a public relations shadow.
Majd Arandas (1994–2023), My Grandmother, 2022.
Reading about the famine in Gaza, I remembered a poem written by Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) about the Szebnie concentration camp in Jasło (southern Poland), which held Polish Jews, Romani people, and Soviet prisoners of war from 1941 until the camp was liberated by the Red Army in September 1944. Brutal, horrible violence was inflicted by the Nazis at Szebnie, particularly against the thousands of Jews who were killed there in mass executions. Szymborska’s poem, ‘Starvation Camp Near Jasło’ (1962), does not flinch from the wretchedness surrounding her, nor from the possibility of humanity for which she yearned.
Write it down. Write it. With ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they weren’t given food,
they all died of hunger. All. How many?
It’s a large meadow. How much grass
per head? Write down: I don’t know.
History rounds off skeletons to zero.
A thousand and one is still only a thousand.
That one seems never to have existed:
a fictitious foetus, an empty cradle,
a primer opened for no one,
air that laughs, cries, and grows,
stairs for a void bounding out to the garden,
no one’s spot in the ranks.
It became flesh right here, on this meadow.
But the meadow’s silent, like a witness who’s been bought.
Sunny. Green. A forest close at hand,
with wood to chew on, drops beneath the bark to drink –
a view served round the clock,
until you go blind. Above, a bird
whose shadow flicked its nourishing wings
across their lips. Jaws dropped,
teeth clattered.
At night a sickle glistened in the sky
and reaped the dark for dreamed-of loaves.
Hands came flying from blackened icons,
each holding an empty chalice.
A man swayed
on a grill of barbed wire.
Some sang, with dirt in their mouths. That lovely song
about war hitting you straight in the heart.
Write how quiet it is.
Yes.
The paintings and photograph in this newsletter were created by Palestinian artists killed in Gaza during Israel’s genocide. They have died, but we must live to tell their stories.
Warmly,
Vijay
https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... palestine/
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Gaza Resistance’s Ambushes Inflict Heavy Losses on IOF in Khan Younis
MARCH 13, 2024
A screen grab from a video showing Palestinian Resistance fighters moments before engaging Israeli occupation soldiers amidst the battles in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Military Media of al-Quds Brigades.
The Palestinian Resistance in Gaza continues its top-tier operations against the raiding Israeli occupation forces across the Gaza Strip.
On the 158th day of the war on Gaza, various Palestinian Resistance factions continue to engage in fierce confrontations with Israeli occupation forces at multiple axes, especially east of Khan Younis and west of it in the city of Hamad, south of the Strip.
This comes amidst ongoing attempts by Israeli occupation forces to fortify their positions and advance toward further locations within the besieged Strip, as confirmed by Al Mayadeen’s correspondent.
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, announced the targeting of two Israeli infantry forces in a well-planned ambush at the L Towers complex in Hamad City.
The Brigades mentioned that its fighters engaged the two forces at point-blank range, adding that Israeli helicopters were observed evacuating the dead and wounded soldiers after the ambush.
Al-Qassam targeted an Israeli Merkava tank with a homemade al-Yassin 105 shell in the same city.
Al-Qassam fighters also detonated two anti-personnel explosive devices against two Israeli infantry forces and engaged their members, resulting in casualties, in the K and J Towers complexes in Hamad City.
Meanwhile, al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, claimed responsibility for detonating a powerful explosive device against an Israeli force of six soldiers holed up in an apartment in Hamad City.
Al-Quds Brigades’ fighters shelled Israeli military gatherings with mortar shells in the city center and targeted an Israeli military vehicle and a D9 bulldozer with RPG shells.
The Brigades’ Resistance fighters confirmed after returning from battle zones in the al-Qarara area, north of Khan Younis, that they blew up a house where a special Israeli force of seven soldiers was holed up, resulting in casualties.
They also detonated a booby-trapped tunnel targeting a group of Israeli occupation soldiers northeast of al-Qarara.
On its part, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades announced that its fighters shelled a gathering of Israeli occupation forces and their vehicles with a barrage of heavy mortar shells in Hamad City.
In the same city, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades’ fighters engaged an Israeli military vehicle with an RPG shell.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli occupation military confirmed the killing of one of its soldiers, who had been taken captive by the Palestinian Resistance on October 7.
With the latest announcement, the number of Israeli occupation troops killed since the start of the war on October 7 now stands at 590.
https://orinocotribune.com/gaza-resista ... an-younis/
Gazans Embrace Ansarallah
MARCH 12, 2024
Ansarallah members march in Sana'a, Yemen, in support of Palestine, March 7, 2024. Photo: AFP.
By Yousef Fares – Mar 8, 2024
It is not an exaggeration to say that the Ansarallah Movement and the Yemeni army have captivated the hearts of the locals in the Gaza Strip. This is especially true for those who support the choice of armed resistance, and who make up the majority here.
Here in Gaza, the elderly eagerly listen to the military bulletins delivered by the spokesperson of the Yemeni Armed Forces, Yahya Saree, through the radio, after each targeting operation of a British, American, or Israeli ship. They pray sincerely for the “the Houthis” and for their victory and success.
Al-Akhbar interviewed Hajj Abu Rami after he finished listening to a speech by Saree on Wednesday [March 6] night. “They are poor and oppressed like us… honorable and generous,” he said. “By God, I love them. They used to say that the Houthis attacked the Kaaba like Abrahah al-Ashram did*, that’s what I heard on Al Arabiya years ago. Our perception of them was wrong and distorted, but actions speak louder than words, and people’s true nature is revealed by their deeds.”
After my friendly chat with the sixty-year-old Hajj, I decided to interview Gazans on the street about their opinions on what Yemen is doing. The first person I encountered was the young man Shahab, who sits opposite a stall selling lemons. He says, “By God, they are heroes, they lit up the entire region for Gaza. May God protect and support them.”
Ismail Ahmed noticed my press jacket and initiated the conversation with me by asking about the progress of ceasefire negotiations. When I asked him about “the Houthis,” he replied, “By God, sir, all my life I thought they were Shia who hated us, I never thought to look into them, but since the war started, I realized they are our people, and that the Gulf distorted their reputation, and they are oppressed, they suffered famine before us, and their name is Ansarallah, they are the supporters of God, and the defenders of the poor.”
On social media, there is much talk about Yahya Saree’s accent, his pronunciation and rhythm of speaking, and the incredible level of defiance and dignity in his speeches. Mohannad Karajah, director of the Lawyers for Justice foundation in the occupied West Bank, commented on his Facebook page: “The supporters of Arab Palestine are only Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon.” Ahmed Nasser wrote: “You feel that one of the manifestations of this war is that we have become acquainted with our people in Yemen, a people and an army with the scent of paradise, where did these people come from? Who are you, Houthis?”
*Translators note: The Kaaba, located in Mecca, is the holiest site in Islam. Abrahah al-Ashram, who was the ruler of the Himyarite Kingdom of Yemen in the 6th century, is infamous for his military campaign and attempt to destroy the Kaaba. In 2016, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia falsely accused Ansarallah of launching rockets at Mecca. Imperialist-aligned Gulf media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya repeated this manufactured story that Saudi air defense intercepted Yemeni missiles aimed at Mecca.
(Al-Akhbar)
https://orinocotribune.com/gazans-embrace-ansarallah/
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WHY ISRAEL'S WAR AGAINST UNRWA IS SO SINISTER
William Van Wagenen
Mar 13, 2024 , 11:32 am .
The United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency in the Middle East (UNRWA) faces the most serious existential crisis in its 74-year history as funding cuts by several Western countries add to ongoing atrocities. perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
This agency is unique in being the only one dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific areas, and the only aid organization that operates a full-fledged education system. UNRWA is also the only organization with a mandate to work in Gaza and distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starving in the besieged enclave.
To compound these problems, the occupation wants to see it dismantled.
UNRWA MUST BE DESTROYED
In January, Israel alleged that Palestinian UNRWA staff members participated in the resistance's Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge on October 7, prompting the United States and 18 other nations to quickly suspend funding to the organization.
The suspensions were met with shock because UNRWA plays a key role in providing food and medicine to starving Gazans struggling to survive the Israeli siege and bombing of the coastal enclave.
However, Israel's accusations are not based on any evidence. On the contrary, they are part of a secret plan prepared in advance by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to destroy the agency. UNRWA is believed to “work against Israel's interests” by perpetuating the dream of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the idea of armed struggle against the occupation.
The Foreign Ministry plan, leaked to Israel's Channel 12 on December 28, established a three-phase process to eliminate the agency in Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext:
First, prepare a case alleging the agency's cooperation with Hamas; secondly, reduce its field of activity and find replacement service providers; and, third, transfer the agency's responsibilities to another entity.
Channel 12 noted that Israel wants to move slowly given that the US government considers UNRWA crucial to humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The Foreign Ministry seeks to gradually build the case for expelling the organization as part of “the day after” discussions, should Hamas be dismantled.
THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
According to a New York Times report , the “sequence of events” that led the United States to suspend funding to UNRWA began on January 18, when Amir Weissbrod, deputy director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, met with Philippe Lazzarini, the agency's director, in Tel Aviv.
Weissbrod showed Lazzarini an Israeli intelligence dossier in which it was stated that 12 employees of the organization had participated in the actions of October 7.
After the meeting in Israel, Lazzarini made no effort to confirm the validity of the accusations. Instead, he flew to New York to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and immediately began laying off employees, a U.N. official said.
The Guardian reported that Lazzarini was later asked at a press conference whether he had investigated the existence of evidence regarding the accusations brought to him by Weissbrod. “No,” responded Lazzarini, “the investigation is underway now,” who also said that he made the “exceptional and quick decision” because of “the explosive nature of the allegations,” more than any other evidence.
He also said he didn't even read the file because it was in Hebrew. Instead, Weissbrod “would read it and translate it for me,” she said.
HOW DID THE UNITED STATES KNOW?
The same New York Times report notes that UNRWA reported the allegations to US officials on January 24. Just two days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the suspension of funding to the organization.
Surprisingly, the State Department made the announcement amid reports that Gaza was on the brink of famine, and despite acknowledging that “UNRWA plays a critical role in providing life-saving assistance to Palestinians, including essential food, medicine and shelter.”
Like Lazzarini, Blinken made the decision without asking Israel for evidence but based solely on the alleged seriousness of the accusations. Blinken justified his decision to suspend aid to starving Palestinians by saying that “we have not had the ability to investigate them ourselves. But they are very, very credible.”
In a seemingly coordinated effort, other countries—including Germany, Britain, and Australia—quickly followed suit. Even Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged suspending aid without first receiving any evidence from Israel, or even asking Lazzarini to share any evidence she might have.
The funding crisis worsened to such an extent that Juliette Touma, the organization's communications director, declared that after “decades of working together,” in “just over 24 hours, nine of our donors suspended UNRWA funding.”
ANOTHER DUBIOUS FILE
As criticism of the aid suspensions intensified, Israeli Foreign Ministry officials handed over a file to several international media outlets.
However, after viewing the document, both the Financial Times and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom reported that it provided “no evidence” for the claims. Former UNRWA chief Chris Gunness compared it to the “dubious dossier” used by Tony Blair to lead Britain into the Iraq war. “There is no real evidence. There are accusations,” he concluded.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat attempted to justify his refusal to provide actual evidence by claiming that “the very nature of the accusations makes it impossible for Israel to share all the evidence it has against UNRWA.”
“Do you think we can give you intelligence knowing that some of your employees work for Hamas? Are they serious?,” he asked.
But Israeli propagandist and spokesman Eylon Levy refused to say whether Israel had provided evidence even to the US and UK governments. “I have no personal knowledge of the material that has been exchanged between our intelligence agencies,” he told Channel 4 when asked to provide evidence for the claims.
LINKS TO HAMAS?
The Foreign Ministry continued to implement the leaked three-step plan to destroy UNRWA by making additional accusations about the organization's cooperation with Hamas.
On January 29, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on claims based on Israeli intelligence that “1,200 of the agency's approximately 12,000 employees in Gaza have ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and about half have close relatives who belong to Islamist militant groups.”
The article also provided no evidence, cited only Israeli intelligence services, and was co-written by Carrie Keller-Lynn, an American who volunteered in the Israeli army and who maintains a personal relationship with a spokesperson for it.
Even if they were true, the accusations are meaningless. Hamas is the ruling party in Gaza, so it is clear that many UNRWA employees would sympathize or have family ties with the resistance movement.
Likewise, it would not be surprising if an employee of an Israeli NGO or aid group sympathized with the military or had relatives in the current ruling party, the Likud.
As noted by Haaretz , UNRWA employees in the West Bank and other countries where the organization operates tend to be more aligned with the dominant Palestinian faction in that area.
“ WE COULDN'T VERIFY IT”
The Foreign Ministry's plan to paint the organization as linked to Hamas soon continued with bizarre new accusations that the agency had placed a huge data center directly beneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.
The Times of Israel claimed that the data processing center was “built precisely under the spot where Israel would not initially consider looking, much less targeting it in an airstrike.”
However, Israel has been bombing UNRWA schools and other UN facilities for decades, even as large numbers of civilians have been taking refuge there. No Hamas leader would imagine that this would provide him with any protection.
But as open source intelligence (Osint) analyst Michael Kobs has shown , the supposed data center that the Israeli army showed to foreign journalists was not under the organization's headquarters.
Kobs also notes that when Tageschau journalist Sophie van der Tann was led through a tunnel to see the supposed data center, she stated : “We could not verify” that it was under the UNRWA headquarters.
DELETE THE RIGHT OF RETURN
But why is Israel determined to destroy the agency?
One of the reasons is their efforts to slowly starve Gaza's 2.3 million inhabitants.
At the start of the war, on October 7, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant notoriously ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel; everything is closed". The late January campaign to suspend UNRWA funding then came at a time when “famine” was already “around the corner” in Gaza, according to UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths. . Israeli officials knew that stopping the organization's funding at that time would only bring the famine closer. An Israeli military official acknowledged to the WSJ on February 13 that “without UNRWA, there is no humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
But there is another reason why Israel wants to destroy it, which predates the current war.
Palestinian political analyst and researcher Hanin Abou Salem explained that Israel wants to dismantle UNRWA because it transmits refugee status from generation to generation, which keeps alive the right of return of Palestinian refugees and “ensures that their hopes of returning to their homeland ancestral do not perish with the death of the original refugees of 1948.”
If the organization is dismantled and replaced with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as Israel hopes, this will ensure that Palestinians can only be resettled in third countries and never return to the homes and lands from which they Israel forcibly expelled his grandparents during the Nakba.
In 2017, Israel launched a propaganda campaign against the agency and managed to convince the Trump administration to cut around $300 million in funding for the organization the following year, only for the Biden administration to restore $235 million in 2021.
DESTROY AN IDEA
But with the start of the war on October 7, Israel feels it has a second chance not only to destroy the right of return but also the “idea” of the armed struggle to achieve it.
Noga Arbell, a researcher at the right-wing Khoelet Forum, recently explained that UNRWA must be “annihilated” because it is the “source of the idea.” “It gives birth to more and more terrorists of all forms. UNRWA must be eliminated immediately, now, or Israel will miss the opportunity.” The organization allegedly “breeds terrorists” through its 706 schools, where around 543,075 Palestine refugee children receive free basic education.
In Gaza, UNRWA uses Palestinian National Authority (PNA) textbooks and supplements them with its own materials. Israel has long been bothered that these books include lessons about the life of one of the most famous symbols of the Palestinian armed resistance, an 18-year-old Lebanese-born refugee, Dalal Mughrabi.
In 1978 Mughrabi led a group of guerrillas from the Fatah party of the president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, with a view to carrying out an operation in Israel.
According to the Israeli version of events , Mughrabi “led one of the deadliest suicide attacks in the country's history,” hijacking a bus and taking its passengers hostage on the highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. During the operation, the bus exploded and “38 Israelis were killed, including 13 children.”
Israel claims that UNRWA is therefore teaching “mass murder” through the use of ANP books that encourage everyone to be like Mughrabi.
However, Palestinians claim that Israeli forces killed the hostages.
YOU CAN ASSASSINATE A REVOLUTIONARY, BUT NOT THE REVOLUTION
According to a 2008 work published in The Guardian , the young woman and Palestinian guerrillas intended to attack the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and hijacked two buses transporting civilians on the coastal highway near Haifa. Along the way, they engaged in an intense 15-hour firefight with Israeli forces.
The Palestinians maintain that the bus exploded and killed the guerrillas and hostages after being shot at from the air by Israeli helicopters or elite commandos, in a possible first case of the Hannibal Directive .
Israeli forces implemented the Hannibal Directive on October 7, killing large numbers of their own civilians—and burning many of them alive—using helicopters, tanks, and drones, while blaming all of these deaths to Hamas.
Even if Israel manages to execute its plan to destroy UNRWA, while starving and bombing tens of thousands of people in Gaza, it will not be able to erase the spirit of Dalal al Mughrabi and the thousands of martyrs who, like her, have sacrificed themselves for the freedom of the Palestinians.
Within 24 hours of the unfounded accusations against the organization, the United States, the United Kingdom and 14 other countries suspended funding to the organization that the WSJ described as the “main pillar of operations to move food aid, medicine and other humanitarian supplies.” to Gaza.”
The abruptness of these cuts was especially shocking given the imminent threat of famine , as highlighted by Griffiths, who warned that Gaza was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
These drastic measures were instigated by accusations based on a dubious six-page dossier, which could be considered part of a meticulously crafted plan orchestrated by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, aimed at dismantling the humanitarian and educational infrastructure serving internally displaced Palestinians. .
This concerted effort to undermine UNRWA is nothing more than a calculated strategy to exert control over the narrative surrounding Palestinian refugees and once again reshape the demographics in the country.
https://misionverdad.com/traducciones/p ... -siniestra
Google Translator
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US Had Secret Talks with Iran About Houthi Red Sea Shipping Attacks in January
Posted on March 14, 2024 by Yves Smith
The Financial Times has a curious planted story as its lead offering: US held secret talks with Iran over Red Sea attacks. The reason this piece was almost certainly planted, as opposed to leaked, is that it names the names of the participants. But keep in mind that things are so fraught between the two countries that the discussions were indirect: Oman officials carried messages between the two teams. They were also allegedly the first communications in ten months… and two, perhaps closer to three, months after the conflict in Gaza began.
Forgive me for engaging in a close reading of this piece, since it may represent a shift in US messaging about Iran. It’s surprisingly even handed by Western media standards in its treatment of Iran, which is not to say that it also does not have some key omissions.
The article describes how it was a White House, nat State Department, team went to the Middle East in January. Iran’s envoy was its deputy foreign minister, who also handles Iran’s nuclear negotiations. The meetings focused on the US’ key desire, that Someone Do Something about Houthis shelling of Red Sea cargoes, particularly ones that the Houthis know or believe to be carrying cargoes to or from Israel, or ore owned by Israel or allied interests. Recall, which this story does not mention, that it was also in January the US took the stunningly embarrassing or presumptuous move of approaching China to see if China could pressure Iran to leash and collar the Houthis. Why China would do that even if it could, with no report of the US offering a quid pro quo. was a source of much bafflement.
Admittedly, China did go so far as to make an apple-pie-and-motherhood statement pressing the Houthis publicly to stop messing with Red Sea shipping and also “urge[d] all parties to stop fueling the tensions.” That could be read as a coded way to say that the US on behalf of Israel should stop blocking ceasefire resolutions in the UN and the US should do more to curb the Israel genocide in Gaza.
That came after a Reuters exclusive, which some experts questioned, said that China had in fact had several sessions with Tehran officials. A casual reader would think that China was making its case for Iran to get the Houthis to stop interfering with all Red Sea shipping. But the story makes clear that China was interceding on behalf of its own shipments:
“Basically, China says: ‘If our interests are harmed in any way, it will impact our business with Tehran. So tell the Houthis to show restraint’,” said one Iranian official briefed on the talks, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
It seems the US did not deem the Chinese action to be sufficient. Jake Sullivan then sought and got a meeting with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Bangkok, which was arranged on short notice. It was a 12-hour “candid” talk, so the topics went far beyond Red Sea shipping. Nevertheless, the sudden scheduling suggests that was a significant driver. The South China Morning Post later confirmed no real progress was made.
So one has to wonder why this story is running now. Perhaps the US feels the need as to why it has been unable to curb the Houthis, and the Biden Administration wants to show it really really tried, even sort of sitting down with those nasty Iranians. That could also account for the shift in the positioning of the Iranians. Western press coverage virtually without exception bangs on about Iran as if it is orchestrating the action of all of the members of the so-called Resistance: Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah, which is not affiliated with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
There are some noteworthy subtexts to the story. One is that it comes through that the US either was taking an imperious tone towards Iran or else felt the need to present itself as being tough to satisfy rabid Congresscritters. For instance, this bit comes off as lecturing:
US officials see an indirect channel with Iran as “a method for raising the full range of threats emanating from Iran”, a person familiar with the matter said. That included conveying “what they need to do in order to prevent a wider conflict, as they claim to want”.
It also presupposes that Iran can control its allies,. The article does recount the Iranian officials trying to disabuse the US of that idea:
Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war, Iran-backed Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant movement, has traded daily cross-border fire with Israel; the Houthis have attacked dozens of ships, including merchant shipping and US naval vessels; and Iranian-aligned Iraqi militias have launched scores of missiles and drones against American forces in Iraq and Syria.
US officials have repeatedly accused Tehran of supplying the Houthis with drones, missiles and intelligence to conduct their attacks on shipping.
Iran acknowledges its political support for the Houthis, who control northern Yemen and have justified their attacks as support for the Palestinians. However, Tehran insists the rebels act independently.
“Iran has repeatedly said it only has a form of spiritual influence [over the rebels]. They can’t dictate to the Houthis, but they can negotiate and talk,” an Iranian official said.
A striking omission is that the US backed the Saudi coalition that waged a seven-year war against Yemen. One would think that would make the Houthis, more properly called Ansar-Allah, not exactly receptive to US entreaties even if Iran were to push a bit.
The Financial Times also describes what appears to have been a bit of a game over the 85 retaliatory strikes the US made after three US servicemembers died in what were alleged to be Quds (as in Iran) strikes. The press depicted the soldiers as having been in Jordan. but Jordan never complained as one would expect. Many experts, such as Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter, said they were pretty clearly in Syria, where the US has no business being, except, as Donald Trump put it, to steal Syria’s oil.
The Financial Times article concedes the base operations, which included what I infer was a forward base, were on the “Jordanian-Syrian border.”
Recall the US attacks were launched five days later, which is on the leisurely side. That seems to have been designed to allow Iran to move some personnel out of the way:
After US President Joe Biden vowed to hold accountable those behind the attack, Iran withdrew senior commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards from Syria. Days later, on February 2, American forces carried out a wave of attacks against Iranian-affiliated forces in Syria and Iraq.
The pink paper also depicts Iran as having been well behaved since then:
No attacks have been launched against American bases in Iraq and Syria since February 4, with US officials saying there have been indications that Tehran has worked to rein in the Iraqi militias.
The Iranian official said that when Brigadier-General Esmail Ghaani, commander of the Qods force, the wing of the guards responsible for overseas operations, visited Baghdad last month he told the Iraqi militias to “manage their behaviour in a way that will not allow America to engage Iran”.
While Iran’s ultimate goal is to drive American forces out of Iraq and Syria, Tehran has made clear it wants to avoid a direct conflict with the US or Israel, and to avoid a full-blown regional war.
The story next discusses how the Houthis are still firing on Red Sea ships. And it continues with the schizophrenic position that the Houthis don’t take orders from Tehran but the Persian state nevertheless must rein them in:
US officials acknowledge that military action alone will not be enough to deter the Houthis, and believe that ultimately Tehran will need to pressure the group to curb its activities.
Although the Houthis are less ideologically close to Tehran than other militant groups, the relationship has deepened as the movement has become an increasingly important member of the “axis of resistance” backed by Iran.
Finally, this article (and the Western press generally) has not yet reported on the Houthis testing a hypersonic missile:
Mind you, this has yet to be confirmed, but if so, it will rattle nerves in the neighborhood. And Iran will be blamed for helping.
However, the article also confirms that both the Biden Administration and Iran do not want the conflict in Gaza to escalate. However, the US still acts if that can be achieved by trying to manage Israel’s opponents, as opposed to putting the kibosh on Israel’s genocidal campaign.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/03 ... nuary.html
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Gaza Airdrops: Propaganda and Possibilities
By Paul Larudee - March 13, 2024 0
[Source: telegraph.co.uk]
The airdrops in Gaza began as a Jordanian project to resupply its small field hospital, established in 2009 in Tel al-Hawa in northern Gaza in early November, 2023. Toward the end of November, Jordan established a second field hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, also supplied by airdrops. At least 21 airdrops have been made to these two facilities; several have been made in cooperation with France, the UK and the UAE.
The Jordanian airdrops demonstrate that they need not be ineffectual. While they are costly, often wasteful (due to inaccuracies in the drop location and other factors) and thus far quite limited in scope, they are not necessarily mere “theater” as sometimes argued.
But theater is part of the appeal for Israel, Jordan itself, countries that have partnered with Jordan and, more recently, the U.S. Israel can appear to be less heartless than its genocidal practices would otherwise suggest, and similar PR applies to the other participants that are collaborating with the genocide. Jordan, whose population is more than half of Palestinian origin, including their queen, and which undoubtedly actually cares but recognizes its limitations, probably sold the idea to Israel on that basis. Of course, Israel also agrees to the airdrops because they exercise control over them.
With the entry of the U.S. into the airdrop arena, propaganda is becoming an even more dominant function of the project. Some 38,000 MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) provide less than one day’s food supply for less than 2% of Gaza’s population, and none of it is medicine, potable water, fuel or shelter needs, but the airdrop dominated the U.S. media.
But propaganda does not have to be the primary function. Massive airdrops can help to close the immense gap between what is needed and what Israel is permitting by truck, which is the most efficient means of delivery. Unfortunately, there is no way to defy the Israeli bottleneck by truck. Any attempt to do so will be blocked.
Jordan’s air force personnel air-dropping medical aid to the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza. [Source: telegraph.co.uk]
Not so with airdrops. In 2008, the Free Gaza Movement broke through Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza with two boats. I was one of the organizers. One of the keys to the project’s success was that the boats and their passengers and cargos were thoroughly inspected by Cypriot authorities before sailing. In fact, Israeli spokesperson Arye Mekel confirmed to Israeli media that Israel felt no need to block the boats for this reason. But we organizers did not request nor receive Israeli permission. We defied the blockade, but we made sure to prove our peaceful intentions to all parties.
A similar plan can be used for unlimited airdrops even if, unlike the Jordanian airdrops, they are not under the control of the Israeli military. The protocol can be as follows:
The participants should be countries that are not hostile to Israel, even if they are critical of its actions. Norway, Brazil, Spain, Japan, Ireland, Portugal, Greece and others come to mind.
The participants will coordinate with authorities and relief organizations operating in Gaza, and possibly with other international aid organizations such as United Nations agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and their affiliates.
All participating organizations will provide the occupying authority with as much as possible of its logistics and manifests, and cooperate in terms of communication and possibly other ways. Perhaps Israeli observers can even be welcomed on the flights. Israel’s suggestions and requests can also be considered, but not to the extent of compromising the mission objectives. Transparency will be an important element in assuring safety, credibility and protection. Israeli acceptance and cooperation are welcome, but the mission will go forward even if that is withheld. No nation can be permitted a veto on aid to suffering civilians.
All flights will depart from the participating country and overfly only countries authorizing such overflights. They will enter Gaza airspace only through international airspace over the Mediterranean, avoiding all Israeli airspace and territory, unless otherwise negotiated.
[Source: middleeastmonitor.com]
This plan assumes that Israel will acquiesce to such missions even if they have objections.
Blocking flights is more difficult and more drastic than blocking trucks. Israel is unlikely to shoot down aircraft of non-hostile countries because the consequences would be too great. Doing so will almost certainly result in total suspension of all diplomatic and commercial relations with most of the world. Israel will lose their main supply lines with Asia.
They will be subject to a worldwide embargo and their airlines will lose their routes. Israeli passports will not be recognized anywhere except among a few collaborating countries, and even some of them will find collaboration no longer tenable, especially in the Arab world.
Is there a risk? Of course. But it is a reasonable one, because the risk of forcible action against the flights is greater to Israel than to the participants in the airdrops. In fact, it is possible that, after only partial implementation of such flights, or even prior to them, Israel might do the sensible thing and enable 500 or more trucks per day to deliver the needed aid to Gaza, and make a massive international airdrop campaign of up to 100 flights per day from dozens of countries superfluous.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... ibilities/
(@inmate_s) March 18, 2024
