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TOPIC: war

FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War

What's Left Of Gaza: Scenes Of Destruction, Pangs Of Desperation

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.

SDEROT – When we ask Sister Nabila Saleh to describe the situation in Gaza, she responds by sending ten photos: images of rubble, destruction, and desolation. They suggest that the point of no return has long been surpassed.

Sister Nabila is of Egyptian origin and spends her days in the parish of the Holy Family in Gaza City, where all of the remaining Christian community is sheltering.

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Communication is challenging; on WhatsApp, conversations are impossible, only snippets of written sentences arrive on each side. Still, they suffice in describing the hellish conditions they've been facing for the past seven weeks.

"The situation is very difficult, everything is destroyed, nothing is left," she said. "Living is a challenge, for now, no aid is reaching us, there is only one supermarket with some basic supplies."

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How Biden's Mideast Stance Weakens Israel And Emboldens Iran

The West's decision to pressure Israel over Gaza, and indulge Iran's violent and troublesome regime, follows the U.S. Democrats' line with the Middle East: just keep us out of your murderous affairs.

-OpEd-

The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is weak both structurally and for its dismal popularity level, which has made it take some contradictory, or erratic, decisions in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

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Other factors influencing its decisions include the pressures of the families of Hamas hostages, and the U.S. administration's lukewarm support for this government and entirely reactive response to the military provocations and "hit-and-run" incidents orchestrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies, which include Hamas. Israel has also failed to mobilize international opinion behind its war on regional terrorism, in what might be termed a full-blown public relations disaster.

The administration led by President Joe Biden has, by repeating the Democrats' favored, and some might say feeble, policy of appeasing Iran's revolutionary regime, duly nullified the effects of Western sanctions imposed on that regime. By delisting its proxies, the Houthis of Yemen, as terrorists, the administration has allowed them to devote their energies to firing drones and missiles across the Red Sea and even indulging in piracy. The general picture is of a moment of pitiful weakness for the West, in which Iran and other members of the Axis - of Evil or Resistance, take your pick - are daily cocking a snook at the Western powers.

You wonder: how could the United States, given its military and technological resources, fail to spot tankers smuggling out banned Iranian oil through the Persian Gulf to finance the regime's foreign entanglements, while Iran is able to track Israeli-owned ships as far aways as the Indian Ocean? The answer, rather simply, lies in the Biden administration's decision to indulge the ayatollahs and hope for the best.

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On The Donetsk Frontline, Where Kamikaze Drones Are Everyone's Weapon-Of-Choice

In Ukraine, kamikaze drones have gradually overtaken artillery as the main threat to soldiers — on both sides of the frontline. Meanwhile, a bitter winter is taking over life in the trenches.

DONETSK — In the chilly pre-dawn hours, a mud-stained pickup truck drives along a potholed road in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk. Despite the darkness and the ice, the vehicle travels with its lights off, its interior illuminated only by the reddish glow of a lit cigarette.

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Throughout the early morning last Monday, the cracking sound of artillery can be heard echoing intermittently in the distance, followed by the bright trail of a projectile soaring into the cloudy sky.

Inside the truck, four soldiers from the 28th brigade of the Ukrainian army have just left the relative comfort of a small country house to go to the frontline, towards Bakhmut. After a short journey through overgrown fields and devastated villages, the car stops at the edge of a forest.

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Wartime And Settlements: Preview Of Israel's Post-Netanyahu Era

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.

-Analysis-

PARIS — During wartime, the most divisive issues are generally avoided. Not in Israel though, where national unity does not prevent ideological divisions from breaking through into the public space.

Benny Gantz, a longtime Benjamin Netanyahu nemesis, who became a member of the War Cabinet after October 7, criticized the government's draft budget on Monday. It may sound trivial, but his target was the increased spending allocated for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Gantz felt that all resources should go towards the war effort or supporting the suffering economy — not the settlers.

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The affair did not go unnoticed internationally. Josep Borrell, the European High Representative for Foreign Policy, said that he was "appalled" by this spending on settlers in the middle of this war.

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Geopolitics
María Ángela Holguín*

Why The World Still Needs U.S. Leadership — With An Assist From China

Twenty years of costly interventions and China's economic ascent have robbed the United States of its global supremacy. It is time for the two biggest powers to work together, to help the world.

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — The United States is facing a complex moment in its history, as it loses its privileged place in the world. Since the Second World War, it has been the world's preeminent power in economic and political terms, helping rebuild Europe after the war and through its growing economy, aiding the development of a significant part of the world.

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Its model of democracy, long considered exemplary around the world, has gone through a rough patch, thanks to excessive polarization and discord. This has cost it a good deal of its leadership, unity and authority.

How much authority does it have to chide certain countries on democracy, as it does, after such outlandish incidents as the assault on Congress in January 2021? The fights we have seen over electing a new speaker of the House of Representatives or backing the administration's foreign policy are simply incredible.

In Ukraine's case, President Biden failed to win support for the aid package for which he was hoping, even if there is a general understanding that if Russia wins this war, Europe's stability would be at risk. It would mean the victory of a longstanding enemy.

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War
Elias Kassem

Return At Your Own Risk: Gazans Stranded In Egypt Use Ceasefire To Go Back Home

Having been stuck outside their besieged homeland, hundreds of Palestinians have reentered Gaza, preferring to risk it all to be close to loved ones.

RAFAH — Like most Palestinians elsewhere in the world, Marwan Abu Taha has spent the past seven weeks glued to his phone screen, anxiously following the news in Gaza and talking with family in the besieged enclave.

But unlike others, Abu Taha was also desperately trying to get back inside Gaza.

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The father of four, among several thousand Palestinians stranded in Egypt since the war broke out, was allowed to cross back into Gaza on Saturday amid the current, temporary ceasefire.

“It’s a risk,” Abu Taha said over the phone from his home in Gaza’s central town of Deir Al Balah. “But I wanted to come back to be with my children.”

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Economy
Ramsés Pech

Gaza And Ukraine, Two More Wars Of A World Still Addicted To Oil

Hydrocarbons continue to drive nations' economies and politics around the world, creating both corruption, stagnation and — sadly as we've seen again — all-out war.

-Analysis-

MEXICO CITYCrude oil is and will remain fundamental to the countries that produce it, where the sector often comes to occupy an outsized role in policymaking, squeezing out the societal needs that must be the priority of public policy.

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In The News
Worldcrunch

Worldcrunch Magazine #60 — Gaza, What's Next?

November 27 - December 3, 2023

Here's the latest edition of Worldcrunch Magazine, a selection of our best articles of the week from top international journalists, produced exclusively in English for Worldcrunch readers.

>> DISCOVER IT HERE <<

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War
Elias Kassem

Our Next Four Days In Gaza: Digging For The Dead, Hunting For Food, Hoping Ceasefire Sticks

With Qatar now confirming that the temporary truce will begin Friday morning, ordinary Gazans may be able to breathe for the first time since Oct. 7. But for most, the task ahead is a mix of heartbreak and the most practical tasks to survive. And there’s the question hanging over all: can the ceasefire become permanent?

It’s what just about everyone in Gaza has been waiting for: a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war is expected to begin Friday, bringing a respite to more than 2.3 million people who have been living under war and siege for seven straight weeks.

By the stipulations of the deal, the truce is expected to last four days, during which time Hamas will release hostages captured during their Oct. 7 assault and Israel will release Palestinian prisoners from their jails.

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While details of the negotiations continue, ordinary Palestinians know they may only have four days before the bombs start dropping and tanks start rolling again.

Some will continue sifting through the rubble, looking to find trapped family members, after searches were interrupted by new rounds of air attacks.

Other Gazans will try to find shelter in what they’ve been told are safer areas in the south of Palestinian enclave. Some will hurry back to inspect their homes, especially in the northern half of the strip where Israeli ground forces have battled Palestinian militants for weeks.

Ahmed Abu Radwan says he will try to return to his northern town of Beit Lahia, with the aim of resuming digging the rubble of his home in hopes of pulling the bodies of his 8-year-old son Omar.

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War
Bahram Farrokhi

Sympathizing With Hamas? The Left Already Made That Epic Mistake With Khomeini

Protests in big cities in the U.S. and Europe against Israel may remind some Iranians of the Western Left's deluded, and arrogant, support in 1979 for a revolution that turned Iran and the Middle East into a cesspool of terrorism.

-Analysis-

LONDON — Western capitals are witnessing large demonstrations to support the Palestinians people and denounce Israeli actions in Gaza, typically with prominent left-wing politicians leading marches and the liberal media inciting opinion against the Jewish state. For those old enough to remember events in Iran in 1978 and 1979, when protests helped topple a Westernizing monarchy to replace it with a revolutionary regime, there is a sense of deja vu.

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Throughout 1978, Western capitals were also the setting of mass gatherings against Shah Mohammadreza Pahlavi, Iran's last monarch, whom the Left especially denounced as a tyrant. The protests expressed broad sympathy with his nemesis the Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

By early 1979, Khomeini had seized power, and was showing Iranians what a real dictatorship meant.

Looking back, we know the Islamic Revolution might not have succeeded — though it's difficult to say for sure — without the intellectual collusion of Western writers, public figures and politicians.

It was a different time in terms of mass media, in their scope and impact, and there was certainly no Internet. Many inside Iran would catch the news, if not rumors, listening to the BBC World Service. Yet even the limited media like radio, television and newspapers duly allowed the friends of the revolution, including its Western friends, to inject their ideas into Iranian society.

Iran's know-it-all generation of 1978 lapped it all up, swallowing the propaganda whole. It was a epic mistake that engulfed the nation and ruined the lives of its children and grandchildren, with the punishment for such hubris cascading down to the generations that would follow.

And yes, the idiocy wasn't confined to Iran. It had infected cultural and political circles in the West that would turn their backs on the 18th century Enlightenment and all the advances it had made in history, politics and religion.

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War
Pierre Haski

Bibi Blinked: How The Ceasefire Deal Could Flip Israel's Whole Gaza War Logic

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed ahead a deal negotiated via Qatar, for a four-day truce and an exchange of 50 hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners. Though the humanitarian and political pressure was mounting, Israel's all-out assault is suddenly halted, with unforeseen consequences for the future.

Updated Nov. 22, 2023 at 8:55 p.m.

-Analysis-

PARIS — It's the first piece of good news in 46 days of war. In the early hours of Wednesday, Israel agreed to a deal that included a four-day ceasefire and the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas — 30 children and 20 women — in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners, again women and children. The real question is what happens next.

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But first, this agreement, negotiated through the intermediary of Qatar, whose role is essential in this phase, must be implemented right away. This is a complex negotiation, because unlike the previous hostage-for-prisoner exchanges, it is taking place in the midst of a major war.

On the Palestinian side, although Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is present in Doha, he does not make the decision alone — he must have the agreement of the leaders of the military wing, who are hiding somewhere in Gaza. It takes 24 hours to send a message back and forth. As you can imagine, it's not as simple as a phone call.

And on the Israeli side, a consensus had to be built around the agreement. Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right allies were opposed to the deal — in line with their eradication logic — even at the cost of Israeli lives. But the opposition of these discredited parties was ignored, and that will leave its mark.

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War
Francesco Semprini

Inside Camp Jenin, Ground Zero Of The Simmering War In The West Bank

A visit to so-called "Little Gaza," where destruction reigns and children roam with rifles in their hands. But the enemy isn't just the IDF, it is also the Palestinian Authority — and become prime recruiting territory for Hamas.

CAMP JENIN — Two horses stationed at the intersection of dirt roads mark the entrance to the Jenin refugee camp. "Welcome to Little Gaza."

An open-air powder keg, watched by Israeli drones from which Palestinians seek refuge by hoisting dark tents from one building to another. Macabre kites which draw a suffocating cover over the maze of alleyways and streets. There is no open space that isn't marked by debris left from the Israeli army's increasingly frequent raids.

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Raids which happened even before October 7, the day Hamas terrorists attacked Israeli civilians.

We enter Camp Jenin the day after one of the most intense clashes between the IDF and the internal resistance on this site.The Israeli forces penetrated the refugee camp, resulting in 15 casualties. "Why us, why here?" cries a woman sitting on a battered plastic chair while trying to cradle her toddler.

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