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The Endless War

Geopolitics

Nine More Dead In The West Bank — And Israel Still Thinks The Palestinian Question Doesn't Exist

... and it runs much deeper than Benjamin Netanyahu's new government.

-Analysis-

PARIS — The nine Palestinians killed during an Israeli military operation Thursday in the West Bank town of Jenin brings to 26 the number of deaths since the start of the year. This is a clear deterioration of conditions in the Palestinian territories after the year 2022 had already marked the highest number of victims since 2004 with 150 deaths.

This would appear to mark the return of a routine of low-intensity violence if the political context were not so explosive, where we see a new Israeli government in which key positions have been given to representatives of a virulent extreme right, hostile to any agreement with Palestinians, and keen to intensify any crackdowns.

The army sought to make it clear that the number of deaths in Jenin was not due to a change in military doctrine, but to the severity of the clash with members of the extremist Islamic Jihad group.

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Why Ben-Gvir's Explosive Visit Is Really Aimed At Netanyahu

Less than a week after being sworn in for the sixth time as Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was defied by a highly charged visit his far-right coalition ally, Itamar Ben-Gvir, made to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, that has enflamed the entire Muslim world. Netanyahu has a choice to make.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Pick an arsonist to head the fire department and you’re sure to have blazes to fight. That's exactly what is happening in Israel right now, since far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir was installed as Minister of National Security.

It didn't take more than a week for the new minister, who had been convicted in the past for incitement to racial hatred, to do what his Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wish he hadn't: to make a visit to Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque compound (a.k.a. Esplanade of the Mosques, or Temple Mount), the third holy site of Islam, and one of the most sensitive spots on the planet.

Ben-Gvir has a clear objective: He wants to challenge the status quo, which exists since 1967, that bans Jews from praying on the esplanade, on which stood their Holy Temple, some 2,000 years ago.

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The Many Reasons Erdogan Plays The Palestinian Card

Even as other Muslim leaders were treading more carefully on the Palestinian question, Turkey's leader knows no better way to express his global ambitions than a frontal assault on Israel.

-Analysis-

ISTANBUL — Throughout last week, thousands of people demonstrated against Israel in Turkey. In a country where protests are often brutally shut down, the police did not attempt to break up the demonstrations. Because Erdogan supports Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist and Islamist movement that de facto governs Gaza. There are religious reasons for this that also fit right into his geopolitical strategy.

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Bad Actors, Same Script: Israeli-Palestinian Tragedy Plays On

The current spiral in the Middle East is a stinging reminder for the world, and particularly the United States under Joe Biden, that the violence will always return.

-Analysis-

Violence, rockets, sirens, airstrikes. Shared fear. Israeli shelters, gutted buildings in Gaza. Deaths on both sides. Concerned communiqués from abroad calling for deescalation. The usual script of the Israeli-Palestinian drama advances in proper order. Each actor returns to his role, with no certainty of tomorrow or long-term plan, with no other acceptable recourse than lethal force, while waiting for a future return to a precarious, necessarily precarious, calm.

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Israel
Mohamed Seif El Nasr

BDS And Me: Time To Spread Boycott Of Israel Far And Wide

-Essay-

CAIRO — As someone who fully supports the Palestinian cause, it is challenging to write an article about boycotting Israel for fear of being dragged into the particulars of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In a world that is very much manipulated by biased media, it is hard to resist the urge to first rebut Israel's nonsensical arguments and list its daily brutalities, beginning with its right to exist as a state. Zionism is, after all, a colonial movement, as per the affirmation of the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, himself.

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LA STAMPA
Fabiana Magrì

Israel’s Vital New Defense Weapon: An Underground Blood Bank

Slated to open in 2020, Israel's National Blood Services Center is a high-tech insurance policy to ward against existential threats such as chemical attacks.

RAMLA — Half an hour's drive from Tel Aviv, bulldozers and excavators are hard at work on a new high-tech facility that will become a centerpiece of Israel"s national defense strategy. Located in the central city of Ramla, the Israeli National Blood Services Center will store blood for the country's growing population and serve as an underground bunker in case of a hostile attack.

In her office at the Tel Aviv headquarters of Magen David Adom (MDA), the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, the renowned hematologist Eilat Shinar monitors the progress on a live satellite feed of the construction site. "We need to dig 15 meters into the ground, but the digging is almost done," she says. "The new facility will be at the vanguard of blood banks around the world."

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Sources
Shireen al-Akkah

Hard Living In Gaza: Squeezed Between Israel And Internal Discord

Basic health care services are hard to come by.

GAZA CITY — As negotiations continue to prevent the collapse of reconciliation talks between internal rivals Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, the lives of those living under siege in Gaza play out in very different ways. Israel's blockade coupled with the sanctions the Palestinian Authority has imposed to extract political compliance from Hamas have left many Gazans watching politics unfold from below as they are left waiting for medical treatment, stranded with no means to resume studies, looking for ways to renew expired documents and residency permits, or working toward immigration.

A visit to the central Gaza City neighborhood of Rimal begins to paint a picture of this other reality. Financial aid applicants are taking up the better part of the most lively street in the entire strip. The poverty rate in Gaza sits at 65%, and unemployment is up to 47% from 41.7% two years ago, according to figures produced by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics cited in a July 2017 Palestinian Center for Human Rights report.

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Trump And The World
Alidad Vassigh

Trump, Jerusalem And The End Of American Diplomacy

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital is the surest sign that President Trump wants to dismantle the entire international relations system that the U.S. helped build after World War II.

-Editorial-

PARIS — Alone against everyone. U.S. President Donald Trump ignored all the warnings, stated in polite or pressing terms depending on the leader, and all pleas, even the Pope's, and duly announced Wednesday that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The reactions worldwide were of alarm and indignation, except for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who applauded on cue. It shows once more, for anyone who still doubted it, that Trump has no qualms about breaking taboos.

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eyes on the U.S.
Daniel Gordis

Donald Trump And Jerusalem: It's Complicated

Is the American in good faith? Why now? What's next? Questions pile up in the wake of a decision that reverses 70 years of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East.

JERUSALEM — Calling it a "recognition of reality" and "the right thing to do," President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and that the American Embassy will be moved from Tel Aviv to the contested city.

The announcement leaves many questions, two of which are primary. The first is whether violence will ensue. The Palestinians and Turks are making threats, and Israel's security establishment is said to be on alert. But many Israelis are dismissing the dangers of what they call "Trumpocalypse." Unlike hypothetical steps, such as assigning the Palestinians a smaller state than they demand or ending U.S. support for a two-state solution, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital changes nothing on the ground. Many Israelis and even Palestinians thus doubt that, grandstanding aside, the Palestinians would risk much in response to a statement merely acknowledges what the world has long known to be true.

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Sources

With Attacks In Sinai, Gaza Border Shuts Even Tighter

There is one land crossing out of Gaza, Rafah on Egypt's border, and it is usually shut, confounding the life and travel plans of thousands of Palestinians.

RAFAH Here in southern Gaza, the Rafah crossing is the only exit point for Palestinians from the narrow strip of land sandwiched between Israel and Egypt. The possibility of actually passing through into Egypt, in order to travel to any foreign destination, has become an almost mythical prospect. More than 25,000 Palestinians registered and waiting to leave can testify to this reality.

Alaf al-Saafini is one of them. Several times since graduating in medicine in 2015 from Gaza's Islamic University, this sharply-dressed young woman thought her lucky day had arrived. First there was a surprise grant to pursue her studies at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, which she had to forego since she could not leave Gaza. Then, last spring, she was offered work and a visa in Dubai. She packed her bags, paid the $1,700 to certify her degree and registered on the long list of people trying to cross the Rafah terminal into Egypt. Again, the veritable siege of Gaza thwarted her plans.

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Geopolitics
Tamar Vidon

A Century After Balfour, Time For A 'Johnson' Declaration?

After half a century of failed endeavors by the United States to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, maybe it's time to send that geopolitical hot potato back to the British.

It has been 100 years since Britain first declared its support for the establishment of "a national home for the Jewish people." The Nov. 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration was part of a British plan at the time to gain a mandate over Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Then, less than 10% of the territory's population was Jewish; today there is a Jewish majority in Israel and the Palestinians are still seeking a national home of their own.

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Israel
Piotr Smolar

A Heartbroken Gaza Father Has One Simple Request For Israel

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish's three daughters were killed by an Israeli air strike in 2009. For the past seven years, the Palestinian doctor just wants an apology from Israeli officials.

JERUSALEM — He has the powerful, tireless voice of a man who would not stop knocking on a door until someone eventually opens up. And yet, for the past eight years, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish has been met with the silence of indifference from the other side.

What he's asking for is both a lot and not much at all: an apology. He wants a formal apology from the Israeli government for the death of three of his daughters — Aya, Mayar and Bissan — and of his niece Noor in the bombing of his family home, in Gaza, in January 2009.

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