Our Wednesday News Analysis | Why Netanyahu’s US politicking will fail

Many political analysts believe that Netanyahu is buying time in Gaza in the hope that Trump returns to the White House (AFP)

Many political analysts believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is stalling in Gaza and Lebanon, pinning his hopes on a return of Donald Trump to the White House after the US presidential election in November. However, even if Trump were to win, his influence on the war outcomes or Israel’s fate would be limited. This raises questions about the effectiveness of Netanyahu's strategy and its potential impact on the Middle East conflicts.

US foreign policy seems to be ruled by two different outlooks: one dedicated to the whole world and another only to Israel. The first is driven by the famous and oft-repeated quote by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” Israel, however, remains the exception, and the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has again demonstrated the truth of this claim.

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Editor’s Note | Only Interests — Kissenger

Take to heart what Harvard Professor Dr. Henry Kinsinger quips: "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”
The West — the EU-US/NATO PACT — is so ‘interested’ in Israel that it treats Israel as a de-facto NATO Member state,
‘de-facto’ as defined as “really, but not really.” The EU, more so than the US, depends on the oil-producing nations, Israel’s neighbors.
Israel, in cahoots with the US, helps enforce the West’s neo-colonial Eurocentric policies.

The West — the EU-US/NATO Pact — waving the banner of Holy Goodness, doesn’t give a damn about the people in the Region.
The Israelis and the indigenous Palestinians serve as cannon fodder to carry out Western interests.

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Though Washington fully shares Israel’s war objectives, it fundamentally disagrees with the concept of the long war and “total victory,” as championed by Netanyahu. The protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq taught the Americans that neither the longevity of wars nor the lofty, unrealistic expectations alter inevitable outcomes. Many US officials, military generals, and mainstream analysts have tried to warn Netanyahu, but to no avail.

Destabilizing the Middle East at this specific historical juncture is simply bad for the US. It comes at a time when Ukraine is suffering a serious weapons shortage, thus territorial losses, and when the US and its European allies are struggling under the weight of economic and political crises...

Read more: Why Netanyahu’s US politicking will fail

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THE UNBELIEVABLE STORIES ABOUT THE CHILDREN OF GAZA

Source: Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/unbelievable-stories-about-children-gaza

By Vijay Prashad
Published July 4, 2024

The violence that the children of Gaza experience has become a daily affair. But this kind of violence can never be mundane

A Palestinian child navigates through heavy damage to a UNRWA school, June 21, 2024

The story should not be real. It was the morning of December 19, 2023. Israeli tanks rumbled through the neighbourhood of Rimal in Gaza City. Seventeen-year-old Ahed Bseiso was on the top floor of a six-floor building trying to call her father in Belgium to tell him that she was still alive.

She heard a loud noise, fell, and called out for her sister Mona and her mother. Her family rushed up, carried her down, and laid her on the kitchen table where her mother had been making bread.

Ahed’s uncle Hani Bseiso, an orthopaedic doctor, looked at her leg and realised that he would have to either amputate it or she would die. He grabbed whatever supplies he could find and conducted the amputation without anaesthesia.

Ahed recited verses from the Quran to calm herself. Hani wept as he did the operation, which the family filmed and later posed on YouTube

THE story should not be real. It was the morning of January 29, 2004. The Israeli military had already bombed substantial parts of the affluent Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City, including — in October 2023 — the totality of the Gaza City campus of the Islamic University of Gaza.

Following a warning from the Israeli military, seven members of a family got into a Kia Picanto to flee southward. But the Israeli bombing had levelled a nearby high-rise, so the car had to go north before it could go south.

Not far down the road, the car came under fire from Israeli military vehicles, including Merkava tanks. According to a remarkable investigation by Britain-based research agency Forensic Architecture, 355 bullets were fired into the car.

One of those in the car, a six-year-old child named Hind Rajab, called emergency workers. “They are dead,” she says of her family members. “The tank is next to me. It’s almost night. I am scared. Come get me, please.” The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) sent an ambulance to rescue her...

Read more: The unbelievable stories about the children of Gaza

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FOR ACTIVISTS MAOZ INON AND AZIZ ABU SARAH, REVIVING A JOINT PEACE EFFORT THAT LEARNS FROM PAST OBSTACLES IS ‘THE BIGGEST ANTIDOTE TO EXTREMISM.’

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/can-this-conference-inspire-a-new-israeli-palestinian-peace-movement/

Oren Ziv writes in +972 on 29 June 2024:

Maoz Inon (left) and Aziz Abu Sarah (right), Israeli and Palestinian peace activists. (Uri Levy)

It all started in Geneva in March. Aziz and I were there with 70 other Palestinians and Israelis. We wrote a charter for a shared future and started thinking about a road map to achieve peace between the river and the sea. This is the first step: making the calls for peace and building legitimacy for the peace process and for us—the leaders of the future.

Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah are an unlikely pair. Inon, 49, is an Israeli tourism entrepreneur and the founder of Abraham Hostels. He lost both of his parents, who lived on Kibbutz Netiv HaAsara, during the Hamas-led assault on October 7.

Abu Sarah, 44, is a Palestinian peace activist, journalist, and tourism entrepreneur who founded MEJDI Tours, and a resident of East Jerusalem (and a former +972 contributor). When Aziz was 9 years old, his older brother Taiseer was arrested and held in prison for nearly a year; shortly after his release, Taiseer died of internal injuries he sustained while being tortured in prison.

The two met after Abu Sarah wrote to Inon in the days after October 7, expressing his condolences for Inon’s murdered family. Since then, they have been leading a personal and public campaign against revenge and in favor of reconciliation. They have spoken in media interviews, conferences, and home circles, held an open conversation at a TED conference, and met with diplomats and, recently, with the Pope.

Together with dozens of organizations, Inon is now leading an event titled “It’s Time — The Great Peace Conference,” which will take place on July 1 in Tel Aviv and is expected to be the largest formal left-wing gathering in recent decades. Delegations representing vast swaths of Israeli and Palestinian society will be in attendance, with artists, politicians, and intellectuals expected to speak. The event will screen a video message from Abu Sarah, who is currently abroad.

In an interview with +972 and Local Call, Inon and Abu Sarah discussed the new peace process they are promoting, the goals of the conference, and how they plan to convince their respective general publics to support their work. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity...

Read more: For activists Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, reviving a joint peace effort that learns from past obstacles is ‘the biggest antidote to extremism.’