Worldcrunch
Benjamin Netanyahu has firmly rejected Hamas’ latest counter-proposal to Israel’s offer for a ceasefire. Still, a new round of negotiations has begun in Cairo — and it’s ever more clear that the first question that must be resolved is the if, how, when and who of the 140 Israeli hostages will be released. Hamas knows they are its best bargaining chip.
Supplies have already been scarce in war-wrecked Gaza. But now officials say widespread famine is “inevitable” and “imminent,” following the decision of the U.S. and other European countries to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. A report from the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
As the Israel-Hamas war continues unabated, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar are pushing to quickly reach an agreement. Will internal divisions be overcome? But even if a deal is struck, the war is far from over.
Israel has accused 12 employees the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNWRA, of participating in the Oct. 7 attack. The United States and other countries have suspended their funding, which risks worsening the ongoing tragedy for the two million Palestinians in Gaza.
Four months into the war in Gaza, Israel has yet to find top Hamas leaders. Saudi-owned, London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat recently reported on the covert system that allows the Palestinian group communicate without being detected by Israel.
After suffering its heaviest losses in a single day, the Israeli army continues its hunt for Hamas leaders and troops in Khan Younis, an overcrowded refugee camp in southern Gaza. Even heavier Palestinian civilian casualties are feared, as the war appears to be reaching a moment of truth.
Iran’s revolutionary regime is believed to have aided Russia against Ukraine and goaded Hamas into attacking Israel. Could its insidious backing for Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping finally end the West’s appeasement of a hooligan state.
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice attempts to turn longstanding international law on its head, writes Kai Ambos, a top expert on international law, for German daily Die Welt.
When the guns fall silent, Saudi Arabia and its ambitious prince want to be the historic peacemaker in the Middle East.
Omar Sharara, a journalist for the Cairo-based media Mada Masr reports on his exchanges with a Aden, a Palestinian photojournalist in Gaza, since the war began. Amid bombings and communications blackouts, Aden relays his family’s efforts to seek shelter.
As the situation escalates in the Middle East, the prospect of an all-out war may hinge on whether Iran will cross the Rubicon.
After 100 days of war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that he has no plans to listen to what any other country has to say, including his closest allies. There’s every reason to expect the situation to get worse.
The killing of Hezbollah commander Wissam al-Tawil, which came after the Lebanese group launched its biggest strike on Israel since the war began, shows that Israel is more confident than ever of its military and intelligence superiority.
Cicero declared that when weapons speak, the law goes mute. So what happens when the law speaks up even as the weapons keep firing? That’s what happening now at the International Court of Justice at the Hague.
The assassination of a top Hamas leader this week was a much needed victory for Israel’s intelligence apparatus, still reeling from the Oct. 7 attack. But even if other targets are hit, it does not amount to an actual battle plan against Hamas.
Though all-out war has not yet spread, there are a multiplying number of attacks, targeted and otherwise, taking place across borders that has all the makings of a region-wide conflagration.
Hamas is the largest and most powerful of the militant groups fighting in Gaza, but it is part of a galaxy of organizations that have spent decades in a simmering war with Israel.
By eliminating Saleh al-Arouri, an important Hamas leader, with a drone strike in Beirut, Israel has taken a risky gamble: that Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its Iranian allies will not go to war over the death on Lebanese territory of a top Hamas figure.
The French-American writer recalls a trip last Christmas to her father’s native Louisiana, and an invitation for some firing-range fun in the backyard.
Sooner or later, Hamas’ reign in Gaza will come to an end. What will happen then? An Israeli occupation? The handover of power to local stakeholders? There are clear parallels with Germany’s situation after World War II.
Palestinians believe that Barghouti is capable of uniting the Palestinians and achieving reconciliation between the Fatah and Hamas movements. He may be the only figure who is able to lead negotiations and achieve peace, but Israel will not release him because it doesn’t really want either
December 25 – December 31, 2023
The recent repression of an old man dancing at a fish market shows how on edge Iran’s regime is domestically, writes Pierre Haski. While Iran may be stepping up its game regionally, its fragile attitude domestically can be a sign of what an irrational actor the mullah regime can be.
A poll shows increased Palestinian support for Hamas since the October 7 attacks, making the Israeli government’s objective of taking military action alone unrealistic. Continuing to bombard Gaza with no end in sight is not only cruel, but counterproductive.
December 18 – December 24, 2023
For decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been left unresolved. Hamas’s recent attack has forced politicians to confront facts: the conflict needs a definitive solution. Yet the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank may make the two-state solution impossible to implement.
In Egypt and elsewhere in the region and the world, families and movements are mobilizing against companies that support Israel’s war on Gaza. The power of the people lies in their control as consumers — and the list of companies and brands to boycott grows longer.
December 11 – December 17, 2023
Israel and the West have often asked: Where is the Palestinian Mandela? The divided regimes between Gaza and the West Bank continues to make it difficult to imagine the future Palestinian leader. Still, these three names are worth considering.
Turkish President Erdogan has now called on the International Criminal Court to go after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes, as the clash between the two regional powers has reached a new low.
In the Israel-Hamas war, Qatar now plays the key role in negotiations, while the United States appears increasingly disengaged. Shifts in the region and beyond require that Washington move quickly or risk ceding influence to China and others for the long term.
Ever since Hamas launched its attack on October 7, experts have feared that the conflict, alongside the one in Ukraine, could spill over into a large-scale war between the world’s major geopolitical players. Nikolai Kozhanov, associate professor at the Center for Gulf Studies at Qatar University, analyzes how likely this is and who would benefit from such a conflict.
Hamas’ unprecedented attack last month reflected an intelligence failure for Israel, which raises questions about the country’s dominance on the global market for sophisticated espionage technology and other hi-tech offerings. Meanwhile, some of the best young Israeli coders have been called up for military service.
The information coming out of the Palestinian enclave is scarce but undoubtedly grim. An Italian reporter from across the border gathers information from inside Gaza amid a fragile and inevitably temporary ceasefire.
Heated debate in Israel and abroad over the increase in the budget for settlements in the occupied West Bank is a reminder that wartime national unity will not outlast a deep ideological divide.
Having been stuck outside their besieged homeland, hundreds of Palestinians have reentered Gaza, preferring to risk it all to be close to loved ones.
The Israeli government has declared it is opposed to any ceasefire with Hamas. But one of its key objectives — and the top priority for Israelis — is to recover hostages. And only the ceasefire can achieve that…
The fate of the West Bank is inevitably linked to the conflict in Gaza; and indeed Israeli crackdowns and settler expansion and violence in the West Bank is a sign of an explicit strategy.
Israel and Hamas have reached a deal to exchange 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza for a four-day pause in fighting and the return of Palestinian prisoners. Orna Dotan, leading a team of therapists tasked with aiding these hostages and their families, takes us inside a uniquely charged personal and political situation.