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Day: October 21, 2023
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cairo —
Egypt and Jordan harshly criticized Israel over its actions in Gaza during a summit on Saturday, a sign that the two Western allies that made peace with Israel decades ago are losing patience with its 2-week-old war against Hamas.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who hosted the summit, again rejected any talk of sending Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula and warned against the “liquidation of the Palestinian cause.” Jordan’s King Abdullah II called Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza “a war crime.”
The speeches reflected growing anger in the region, even among those with close ties to Israel who have often worked as mediators, as the war sparked by a massive Hamas attack enters a third week with casualties mounting and no end in sight.
Egypt is especially concerned about a massive influx of Palestinians crossing into its territory, something that it fears would, among other things, severely undermine hopes for a Palestinian state. Vague remarks by some Israeli politicians and military officials suggesting people leave Gaza have alarmed Israel’s neighbors, as have Israeli orders for Palestinian civilians to evacuate to the south, toward Egypt.
In his opening remarks, el-Sissi said Egypt vehemently rejected “the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai.”
“I want to state it clearly and unequivocally to the world that the liquidation of the Palestinian cause without a just solution is beyond the realm of possibility, and in any case, it will never happen at the expense of Egypt, absolutely not,” he said.
Jordan’s king delivered the same message, expressing his “unequivocal rejection” of any displacement of Palestinians. Jordan hosts the largest number of displaced Palestinians from previous Mideast wars.
“This is a war crime according to international law, and a red line for all of us,” he told the summit.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority, a government exercising semi-autonomous control in the occupied West Bank, called for Israel to stop “its barbaric aggression” in Gaza. He also warned against attempts to push Palestinians out of the coastal territory.
“We will not leave, we will not leave, we will not leave, and we will remain in our land,” he told the summit.
Israel says it is determined to destroy Gaza’s Hamas rulers but has said little about its endgame.
Israel’s three-stage plan
On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan in which airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas before a period of lower intensity mop-up operations. Then, a new “security regime” would be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.
He did not say who would run Gaza after Hamas.
Meanwhile, Israel has ordered more than half of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate from north to south within the territory it has completely sealed off, effectively pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians toward the Egyptian border.
Amos Gilad, a former Israeli defense official, said Israel’s ambiguity on the matter is endangering crucial ties with Egypt.
“I think a peace treaty with Egypt is highly important, highly crucial for the national security of Israel and Egypt and the whole structure of peace in the world,” he said.
Gilad said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to speak directly with the leaders of Egypt and Jordan and say publicly that Palestinians will not be entering their countries.
Two senior Egyptian officials said relations with Israel have reached a boiling point.
They said Egypt has conveyed its frustration over Israeli comments about displacement to the United States, which brokered Camp David Accords in the 1970s. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Egypt worries that a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Sinai, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the peace treaty.
Arab countries also fear a repeat of the mass exodus of Palestinians from what is now Israel before and during the 1948 war surrounding its creation, when about 700,000 people fled or were driven out, an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Those refugees and their descendants, who now number nearly 6 million, were never allowed to return.
‘It is a war crime’
At Saturday’s gathering, the anger extended beyond the fears of mass displacement.
Both leaders condemned Israel’s air campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 4,300 Palestinians, including many civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza. Israel says it is only striking Hamas targets and is abiding by international law.
The war was sparked by a wide-ranging Hamas incursion into southern Israel on October 7 in which more than 1,400 of Israelis were killed, the vast majority of them civilians.
Abdullah, who is among the closest Western allies in the region, accused Israel of “collective punishment of a besieged and helpless people.”
“It is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. It is a war crime,” he said.
He went on to accuse the international community of ignoring Palestinian suffering, saying it had sent a “loud and clear message” to the Arab world that “Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones.”
On October 7, the world as we know it changed. In the early hours of the morning, hundreds of armed Hamas operatives broke into Israel, launching a surprise attack on the IDF headquarters in the South of Israel in order to neutralize resistance for several hours. They set out to perform premeditated and meticulously planned crimes against humanity, sent by Iran.
The terrorists proceeded to massacre innocent and unarmed civilians, inhabitants of the Israeli villages bordering the Gaza Strip. Mothers were raped in front of the gaping eyes of their children. Babies and infants were tied together and shot in front of their parents. People were burnt alive. Young women were gang raped until their limbs were dismembered. Babies were beheaded.
Simultaneously, other Hamas operatives raided a peace festival in which hundreds were executed, gang raped, and burned. All these atrocities were documented by the perpetrators themselves and proudly posted on social media.
The meticulously laid plans were found, in Arabic, on the bodies of those operatives who were later killed and/or captured by the Israel Defense Forces. This was the beginning of a war that has little to do with Israel. It has everything to do with humanity.
People call on the release of Israelis held hostage by Hamas militants in Gaza, outside the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, October 18, 2023. (credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Iran is using the hate against the Jewish state
The Iranian plan to dominate the region and spread its hegemony has begun with Israel because of their knowledge that it is easy to galvanize hatred, incitement, and fury towards Israel and the Jewish people. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hezbollah are pawns in the grand plan which calls for the involvement of Jihadists throughout the world to join the religious extremist Islamic battle against the “disbelievers” – that is everyone who is not of their kind. As I write these very words, similar hate crimes are conducted in several European capitals in the name of this so-called “holy war.”
Hamas, funded and trained by the mullah regime in Iran, was encouraged to set forth and begin its unholy crusade in the South of Israel while its members laid out, loudly and clearly, in Arabic, that the next step in their plan was to galvanize support amid Palestinians in the West Bank.
IN THAT arena, the Iranian backing of Hamas and PIJ has been long and systematic, working its way amidst the disillusioned population, vastly disappointed and disenchanted with its corrupt Palestinian secular Fatah leadership.
The Israeli government’s longtime weakening of Palestinian rule in the West Bank, while allowing Qatar to stream in funding to the Hamas in return for quiet on Israel’s Southern border, has also backfired. The current Palestinian Authority – far from being an innocent bed of roses itself – is currently trying to quench the growing fury of its own Palestinian inhabitants as they are encouraged by Hamas and Iran to take up arms and join the fight against Israel and the Jews. The Palestinian Fatah leadership in the West Bank, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, know that the Hamas will not allow them to continue their rule over the Palestinian people.
They most certainly understand what Hamas is — and what a threat it poses to them, recalling that their own officers were lynched and thrown off rooftops by Hamas and its people, when the they took over the Gaza Strip in 2005. The next step in the Iranian roadmap is the Northern front, where Hamas is also present, and Hezbollah has become the long arm of Iran. Slowly, but surely, Hezbollah had taken power over Lebanon, disintegrating the beautiful Swiss-like country into a ruined, destitute, and failed state, while arming themselves with approximately 150,000 precision artillery provided for and funded by Iran. Syria, too, has long ago been turned into an Iranian backyard in which despite the Israeli bombardment of constant shipments of weapons from Iran, significant strength and capabilities have been concentrated in it for the opportune moment to attack Israel.
A war against the Jewish people
Meanwhile, Iran is calling Iraqi Shi’ites to join in the “holy” war against Israel on the Northern front, while Hezbollah is attempting infiltration after infiltration into Israeli territory and shooting rockets at Israeli cities and towns in the North.
The idea is that a Jihad will be launched, worldwide, first against Jewish institutions and Jews, and then against all those who are not Muslim, including those who are not the “right” kind of Muslims, similarly to what ISIS did to Muslims in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Indeed, this is a clash of civilizations of completely different proportions than an Israel-Hamas war. The very understanding of the magnitude of these events is perhaps the first step towards beginning to create the international coalition and the solutions needed to quell it.
The next step is preventing the dissemination of this pure hatred and incitement, which is deeply entrenched in school books funded by European, Canadian and American tax payers’ hard-earned cash. Once these caviats are realized, then perhaps the international community can begin to create a new world order in which a much-needed coalition will be established for the purposes of ridding itself of extremist terrorist regimes such as Hamas and creating a real opportunity for growth for the region.
The writer is a former MK from the Blue and White party, a former adviser to president Shimon Peres, and past deputy ambassador in Cairo.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has commented on a recent statement by US President Joe Biden which drew parallels between Putin and Hamas.
Peskov, speaking at a briefing for journalists on Oct. 20, stated that the Kremlin does not accept such a tone in relation to the Russian president, stressing that the current international situation is ‘tense and potentially dangerous’.
“There are a lot of emotions in the speeches of various politicians, including high-ranking politicians. But it is unlikely that such rhetoric is suitable for responsible leaders of states, and it is unlikely that such rhetoric can be acceptable to us,” Peskov said.
“We do not accept such a tone in relation to the Russian Federation, in relation to our president,” he added.
Speaking further, he said that Biden’s comments suggest that the US will keep on exerting pressure to constrain Russia, adding that such efforts have been “historically ineffective and will remain so in the future.”
President Biden on Oct. 19 made an impassioned call to his nation to show global leadership by backing Israel and Ukraine, saying in a speech from the Oval Office that defeating Hamas and Russia was a vital US interest.
Biden made clear who he thinks the bad guys are, saying that Hamas and Putin “represent different threats” but that they share in common a desire to “completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.”
Russia continuing to sow instability within democratic societies and to undermine trust in election integrity.
Biden added: “We cannot and will not let terrorists like Hamas and tyrants like Putin win. I refuse to let that happen.”
He also warned: “If we don’t stop Putin’s appetite for power and control in Ukraine, he won’t limit himself just to Ukraine.”
You can read “5 Things You Need to Know from Joe Biden’s Big Oval Office Address” here.
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