LIBYA; NATO'S OUTSOURCED WAR
UN 'dismayed' at journalist's 15-year prison term in eastern Libya

Local media say Ismail Abuzreiba was accused of contact with channels and agencies banned in Haftar-controlled territory

Authorities in eastern Libya have not specified the exact nature of the charges faced by Abuzreiba (Twitter)

By MEE and agencies Published date: 3 August 2020

The UN's mission in Libya has voiced "dismay" at the sentencing of a journalist to 15 years in prison, in the area controlled by eastern commander Khalifa Haftar.

"UNSMIL is dismayed by the sentencing of the journalist Ismail Abuzreiba to 15 years imprisonment following a trial by a military tribunal in Benghazi," it said on Twitter on Saturday.



Give war a chance: Haftar’s forces rule out UN dialogue to end Libya conflictRead More »

"The detention and trial appear to violate Libya's laws as well as its international obligations on the right to a fair trial" and freedom of expression, it added.

The European Union's ambassador to Libya, Alan Bugeja, wrote on Twitter that he was "extremely concerned" by the sentence, which he said came after the journalist had been held in detention for two years or more.

"I call on the authorities to immediately release him, ensure the respect of his fundamental rights and of freedom of expression," Bugeja said.

Authorities in eastern Libya have not specified the exact nature of the charges faced by Abuzreiba but, according to local media, he was accused of contact with channels and agencies banned in that part of the country.
Danger zone

Haftar launched an offensive on the capital Tripoli, seat of the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), in April last year.

Troops loyal to the GNA in May pushed Haftar's forces back from the southern outskirts of the capital, before repelling them in early June 2020 as far as Sirte, a northern coastal city that is a gateway between Libya's east and west.

The fighting over the last year or so has killed hundreds, including many civilians, AFP reported.

It has also heightened the dangers faced by journalists, who have increasingly been harassed and threatened, leading most to leave the country.

Libya ranks 164 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders (RSF)'s World Press Freedom Index for 2020.

BACKGROUNDER

Arab rulers and Israel's leaders: A long and secret history of cooperation

The regimes of the Arab world have always put their own interests ahead of the Palestinian people

Joseph Massad 18 February 2020


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been actively seeking closer relations and alliances with Arab rulers (Illustration by Mohamad Elaasar]

In the last month, Israeli leaders have been actively seeking closer relations and alliances with Arab countries, including the Gulf states, Morocco and Sudan.

These are states that, we are told, have finally seen the light and realised that Israel, unlike Iran, is their friend not their enemy.

This is presented as some major change of heart on the part of Arab regimes, which had apparently always shunned relations with Israel in the interest of defending the Palestinians.

This was always a fiction. Most of the 20th century's Arab leaders and ruling families maintained cordial relations with Israel and, before it, the Zionist movement.

False narrative

This false narrative of resistance has been presented by Arab regimes as well as Israelis. It's been put about by pro-Israeli Arab intellectuals, who claim that these regimes unfairly spurned Israel or even went to war with it at the behest of the Palestinians, rather than in their own national and regime interests.

This line of thinking concludes with the assertion that now, finally, is the time that Arab governments put their own interests ahead of the Palestinians, as if they had ever prioritised Palestinian interests before.

The largest number of Arab leaders and ruling families have had cordial relations with Israel and, before it, the Zionist movement, throughout the twentieth century

This was most recently expressed by the Sudanese military commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda two weeks ago. It was hardly the first such meeting between Sudanese officials and Israel.

Secret overtures had taken place as early as the 1950s, when Sudan was still ruled by the British and Egyptians and the Umma party sought to gain Israeli support for Sudanese independence.

Following independence, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Khalil and Golda Meir, Israel's fourth prime minister, held a clandestine meeting in Paris in 1957.

In the 1980s, Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiri met with the Israelis and facilitated the Israeli transport of Ethiopian Jews to Israel to become colonial settlers in the land of the Palestinians.
Jordan's King Hussein stands with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Washington in 1994 (AFP)

More recently, in January 2016 and with Omar al-Bashir still in charge, foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour sought to lift the US economic sanctions on Sudan by offering to open formal diplomatic ties with Israel. When questioned about his recent meeting with Netanyahu and the normalisation of relations, Burhan’s response was that relations with Israel are based on Sudan’s “security and national interests”, which come first.

The history of Sudan’s leaders' connections with Israel is hardly unique. Indeed, Arab cooperation with the Zionist movement goes back to the dawn of the arrival of Zionist officials in Palestine.

Cordial relations

It was on 3 January 1919, two weeks before the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference, that Emir Faisal Ibn al-Hussein, then of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz and later the king of Iraq, signed an agreement with the President of the World Zionist Organization Chaim Weizmann. Faisal consented to the creation of a Jewish colonial majority in Palestine, in exchange for becoming the king of a large and independent Arab kingdom in all of Syria.


The justification that Hussein used for his secret contacts with the Israelis was the preservation of his throne, conflated as Jordan’s “national” interest, in the face of Nasser’s pressure

While Faisal was denied his Syrian throne by the French colonial takeover, the agreement, which the Zionists used at the Paris Peace Conference to claim that their colonial-settler plans for Palestine had the agreement of Arab leaders, came to naught.

Not to be outdone by his brother, Emir Abdullah of Transjordan embarked on a lifelong relationship of cooperation with the Zionists, in the hope that they would allow him to be king of Palestine and Transjordan, within which they could realise their goals under his kingship. This cooperation led to his assassination in 1951.

His grandson, King Hussein of Jordan, authorised the first secret meetings between one of his army generals and the Israelis in 1960 in Jerusalem. By 1963, he himself was meeting with Israelis secretly at his doctor's office in London. By the mid-1970s his covert meetings with Israeli leaders would take place regularly inside Israel.

Hussein’s long friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who had personally expelled the Palestinian population of the city of Lydda in 1948, and initiated the break-their-bones policies against West Bank and Gaza Palestinians in 1987) was evident during Rabin’s funeral in 1994.

King of Morocco Mohamed VI (L) chats with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres (R) as President of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika (C) looks on, 11 March, 2005 (AFP)

The justification that Hussein used for his secret contacts with the Israelis was the preservation of his throne, conflated as Jordan’s "national" interest, in the face ofEgyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pressure and later that of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. 

Zionist alliances
Aside from the Hashemite princes and kings, the Maronite Church of Lebanon, as well as right-wing fascist Maronite leaders like the Phalangists, allied themselves with Zionists from the mid-1940s. This alliance continues to the present, in the interest of setting up a sectarian Christian republic in Lebanon, modelled after the Jewish settler-colony.

Why have Arab rulers accepted the Trump deal?Read More »

By the early 1950s it would be Tunisian nationalists of the Neo Destour party who met with Israeli representatives at the United Nations to help them obtain independence from the French, eliding Israel’s colonial-settler nature. Tunisia's authoritarian leader Habib Bourguiba would maintain these friendly relations with Israel until the end of his rule in 1987.

In the 1960s, Israel would support Saudi Arabia’s efforts in maintaining the rule of the imamate in Yemen against the republicans – the Israelis airlifted weapons and money to the Yemeni monarchists, which were well-received.

The warmest relations in North Africa would be between Israel and the late King Hassan II of Morocco.

While Israeli leaders met with Moroccan officials in the late 1950s, warm relations had to wait till King Hassan assumed the throne. From 1960 onwards the Israelis, through secret agreements with Morocco, airlifted Moroccan Jews to become colonial settlers in the land of the Palestinians.

The Moroccan connection

By 1963, Moroccan minister Mohamed Oufkir had concluded an arrangement with the Israelis to train Moroccan intelligence agents. Israel also helped Morocco track its opposition leaders, including Mehdi Ben Barka, who was captured and killed by Moroccan intelligence in 1965. Indeed, Yitzhak Rabin was invited by King Hassan to visit Morocco secretly in 1976.

By 1986, there were no more reasons for secrecy, and Shimon Peres visited Morocco with much public fanfare. In 1994, Morocco and Israel officially exchanged liaison offices.

In 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu met secretly at the UN with Morocco’s foreign minister for talks. In the last few weeks, the Israelis offered the Moroccans their help in securing US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Morocco’s formal normalisation of relations with Israel and endorsement of Donald Trump's so-called "deal of the century".

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (R) shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) during a meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh on 11 May, 2009 (AFP)

As for the great love affair between the Egyptian political and commercial classes with Israel, it has been a public affair since the late 1970s.

Since 1991, we have seen Israeli leaders, officials and athletes visit most Gulf countries openly, including Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and secretly Saudi Arabia, never mind the opening of liaison or trade offices in these countries.
Public enemy number one

Arab relations with Israel, whether hostile or friendly, were never governed by the interests of the Palestinian people, but rather by their own regime interests, which they often misidentify as “national” interests.

Israel-Sudan: Is Abdel Fattah al-Burhan evolving into a Sudanese Sisi?Read More »

Only the latter part of the history of their love for Israel has coincided since 1991 with the Madrid Peace Conference and the Oslo Accords, which transformed the Palestinian national leadership and the PLO into an agency of the Israeli military occupation; this is testament to Israel’s ceaseless efforts to co-opt Arab political, business, and intellectual elites.

It is also testament of how co-optable these elites are and have always been.

While Israel has been mostly successful in its task as far as the political and business elites are concerned, it has failed miserably to co-opt the Arab intellectual class, except for those amongst them on the payroll of Gulf regimes and Western-funded NGOs. Even less has it gained any popularity among the Arab masses, for whom national interests and the colonisation of Palestinian lands, unlike for the Arab regimes, are not separable at all, and for whom Israel remains the major enemy of all Arabs.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Joseph Massad

Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, Desiring Arabs, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated to a dozen languages.

BACKGROUNDER 

Israel's annexation plan is the Nakba revisitedIn its current formulation, Israel knows only one direction: to deepen its domination over a people whose land it has stolen and continues to steal
David Hearst
15 May 2020

Israeli soldiers walk as Palestinian demonstrators gather on a hilltop during a protest against Israeli settlements in the town of Beita in the Israeli occupied West Bank on 2 March (Reuters)


Anniversaries commemorate past events. And you could be forgiven for thinking that an event which happened 72 years ago is indeed in the past.

This is true of most anniversaries, except when it comes to the Nakba, the "disaster, catastrophe or cataclysm" that marks the partition of Mandatory Palestine in 1948 and the creation of Israel.

The Nakba is not a past event. The dispossession of lands, homes and the creation of refugees have continued almost without pause since. It is not something that happened to your great grandparents.

It happens or could happen to you any time in your life.
A recurring disaster

To Palestinians, the Nakba is a recurring disaster. At least 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in 1948. A further 280,000 to 325,000 fled their homes in territories captured by Israel in 1967.

Since then, Israel has devised subtler means of trying to force the Palestinians from their homes. One such tool was residency revocations. Between the start of Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and the end of 2016, Israel revoked the status of at least 14,595 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem.

A further 140,000 residents of East Jerusalem have been "silently transferred" from the city, when the construction of the separation wall started in 2002, blocking access to the rest of the city. Almost 300,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem hold permanent residence issued by the Israeli interior ministry.


Two areas were cut off from the city although they lie within its municipal boundaries: Kafr ‘Aqab to the north and Shu’fat Refugee Camp to the northeast.

The residents of neighbourhoods in these areas pay municipal and other taxes, but neither the Jerusalem municipality nor government agencies enter this territory or consider it their responsibility.

Consequently, these parts of East Jerusalem have become a no man's land: the city fails to provide basic municipal services such as waste removal, road maintenance and education, and there is a shortage of classrooms and daycare facilities.

The water and sewage systems fail to meet the population's needs, yet the authorities do nothing to repair them. To get to the rest of the city, residents have to run the daily gauntlet of the checkpoints.

Another tool of expropriation is the application of the Absentee Property Law, which, when passed in 1950, was intended as the basis for the transfer of Palestinian property to the State of Israel.

Its use was generally avoided in East Jerusalem until the construction of the wall. Six years later, it was used to expropriate "absentee land" from the Palestinian residents of Beit Sahour for the construction of 1,000 housing units in Har Homa, in South Jerusalem. But generally its purpose is to provide a mechanism for "creeping expropriation".
A Nakba in real time

The centrepiece of Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu's election campaign and the central legislative purpose of the current Israeli unity government would constitute another chapter of dispossession for Palestinians in 2020. Those are the plans to annex one third - or at worst two thirds - of the West Bank.

The Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem is seen behind the Israeli separation wall on 29 January (Reuters)

Three scenarios are currently under consideration: the maximalist plan to annex the Jordan Valley and all of what the Oslo Accords referred to as Area C. This is about 61 percent of the territory of the West Bank which is administered directly by Israel and is home to 300,000 Palestinians.


Most Palestinians see annexation as the climax of the Zionist project to establish a Jewish majority state

The second scenario is to annex the Jordan Valley alone. According to Israeli and Palestinian surveys conducted in 2017 and 2018, there were 8,100 settlers and 53,000 Palestinians living on this land. Israel split this land into two entities: the Jordan Valley and the Megillot-Dead Sea regional council.

The third scenario is to annex the settlements around Jerusalem, the so-called E1 area, which includes Gush Etsion and Maale Adumin. In both cases Palestinians who live in the villages around these settlements are threatened with expulsion or transfer. There are 2,600 Palestinians who live in the village of Walaja and parts of Beit Jala who would be affected by the annexation of Gush Etsion, as well as 2,000-3,000 Bedouins living in 11 communities around Maale Adumin, such as Khan al-Ahmar.

What would happen to Palestinians who live on land that Israel has annexed?

In theory they could be offered residency, as was the case when East Jerusalem was annexed. In practice, residency will only be offered to a very select few. Israel will not want to solve one problem by creating another.

Most of the Palestinian population of the areas annexed would be transferred to the nearest big city, as happened with the Bedouins in the Negev and East Jerusalemites who find themselves in areas cut off from the rest of the city.
The generals' warning

These plans have generated expressions of horror amongst Israel's security establishment, which has grown used to being listened to, but which now wields less influence over policymaking than it once did.

This is not because the former generals hold any moral objection to expropriation of Palestinian land or because they think Palestinians have a legal right to it. No, their objections are based on how annexation could imperil Israel's security.


The former generals' objections are based on how annexation could imperil Israel’s security

A fascinating resume of their thinking is provided by an open-source document published anonymously by the Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) in Herzliya. They state that annexation would destabilise the eastern border of Israel, which is "characterised by great stability, a quiet and a very low level of terror," and that it would cause a "deep jolt" to Israel's relationship with Jordan.

"To the Hashemite regime, annexation is synonymous with the idea of the alternative Palestinian homeland, namely, the destruction of the Hashemite kingdom in favor of a Palestinian state.

"For Jordan, such a move is a material breach of the peace agreement between the two countries. Under these circumstances, Jordan could violate the peace agreement. Alongside this, there may be a strategic threat to its internal stability, due to possible unrest among the Palestinians in combination with the severe economic hardship Jordan is facing," the IPS document says.

Done deal: How the peace process sold out the Palestinians+ Show



That would only be the start of Jordan's problems with annexation. Even a minimalist option of annexing E1 - the area around Jerusalem - would sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, endangering Jordan's custodianship of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.

Annexation would also lead to the "gradual disintegration" of the Palestinian Authority, the IPS claims.

Again, there is no love lost here. What concerns the Israeli analysts is the burden that would be placed on the army. "The effectiveness of security cooperation with Israel will deteriorate and weaken, and who will replace it? IDF! Forcing many forces to deal with riots and order violations and the maintenance of the Palestinian system."



The security establishment goes on to say that annexation could trigger another intifada, strengthening the idea of a one-state solution "which is already acquiring a growing grip in the Palestinian arena".

The Saudi factor

In the wider Arab world, the paper notes that Israel would forfeit many of the allies it believes it has made in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman and intensify the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign internationally.

Mohammed bin Salman's regime has been trying to soften Saudi hostility to Israel in the media and particularly television drama

Saudi Arabia's role in dousing the flames of Arab reaction to Netanyahu's annexation plan was specifically mentioned in Israeli security circles recently. The Saudi support for any form of annexation was deemed crucial.

True to form, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's regime has been trying to soften Saudi hostility to Israel in the media and particularly television drama. A drama called Exit 7 produced by Saudi Arabia's MBC TV recently contained a scene of two actors arguing about normalisation with Israel.

"Saudi Arabia did not gain anything when it supported Palestinians, and must now establish relations with Israel... The real enemy is the one who curses you, denies your sacrifices and support, and curses you day and night more than the Israelis," one character says.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Collage/AFP)

The scene produced a backlash on social media and eventually a fulsome statement of support for the Palestinian cause by the Emirati foreign minister.



هذا القمع إللّي حاصل في دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي لكل رأي ضد التطبيع مع العدو الصهيوني لن تحصد منه إلاّ المُر . حتى مجرد المناقشه ولو ( أونلاين ) لا يستطيع التنظيم الصحراوي في الخليج تحمّله . والله إن هذا أخطر من كورونا .— د. عبدالله النفيسي (@DrAlnefisi) May 11, 2020

Translation: This oppression taking place in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] muzzling any opinion against normalisation with the Zionist enemy can only reap a bitter harvest. They cannot tolerate debate (even if it is online), by God, this is more dangerous than coronavirus.

The attempt demonstrated the limits of Saudi state mind control, which will be weakened still further by the drop in the price of oil and the advent of austerity across the Arab world.

The future Saudi king will no longer be able to buy his way out of trouble.

The Committee

It is worth repeating again that the motive for enumerating the destabilising effects of annexation is not some inherent disquiet at the loss of property or rights. The security establishment's central concern stems from the possibility that Israel's existing borders could be imperilled by overreach.


This is the first time I can remember that a US ambassador and a major US financier make more zealous settlers than a Likud prime minister himself

For similar reasons, a number of Israeli journalists have forecast that annexation will never happen.

They could be right. Pragmatism could win the day. Or they could be underestimating the part that nationalist religious fundamentalism plays in the calculations of Netanyahu, David Friedman, the US ambassador, and the US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the three engineers of the current policy.

While the US role as "an honest broker" in the conflict has long been exposed as a sham, this is the first time I can remember that a US ambassador and a major US financier make more zealous settlers than a Likud prime minister himself.

Friedman is chairman of the joint US-Israel committee on settlement annexation, which will determine the borders of post-annexation Israel. This committee is meaningless in international terms, as it has no representation of any other party to the conflict, let alone the Palestinians whose leaders have boycotted the process.

Palestinian citizens of Israel marking the "Nakba" or "Catastrophe" (Reuters)

Two separate sources from the joint committee have told Middle East Eye that it is leaning towards a once and for all expansion of Israel in the West Bank, and not an incremental one. One source said that it will go for the whole of Area C - in other words the maximalist option.

Again they could be wrong. Both say the annexation that is chosen will tailor itself to the contours of Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century," which reduces the current 22 percent of historic Palestine down to a group of bantustans scattered around Greater Israel.
The climax

The Nakba, 72 years old today, continues to live and breathe venom. The Nakba is not just about original refugees but their descendants - today some five million of them qualify for the services of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA).

Trump's decision to stop funding UNWRA, and Israel's insistence that only the original survivors of 1948 should be recognised, has sparked an international campaign in which Palestinians sign a declaration refusing to relinquish their right of return.

Palestinians have only one option left: Stay and fightRead More »

"My right of return to my homeland is an inalienable, individual and collective right guaranteed by international law. Palestinian refugees will never yield to the 'alternative homeland' projects. Any initiative that strikes at the intrinsic foundations of the right of return and negates it is illegitimate and null, and does not represent me in any possible manner," the declaration says.

Significantly it was launched in Jordan, another sign that feelings are running high there.

The Israeli security assessment that a two-state solution is dead in the minds of the majority of Palestinians is surely correct. Most Palestinians see annexation as the climax of the Zionist project to establish a Jewish majority state, and confirmation of their belief that the only way this conflict will end is in its dissolution.

But by the same token, the annexation plans under discussion should be proof to the international community, if one were needed, that far from being a country living in fear, and under permanent attack from irrational and violent rejectionists, Israel is a state which cannot share the land with Palestinians, let alone tolerate Palestinian self-determination in an independent state.

In its current formulation, Israel knows only one direction: to deepen its domination over a people whose land it has stolen and continues to steal.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

David Hearst is the editor in chief of Middle East Eye. He left The Guardian as its chief foreign leader writer. In a career spanning 29 years, he covered the Brighton bomb, the miner's strike, the loyalist backlash in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Northern Ireland, the first conflicts in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in Slovenia and Croatia, the end of the Soviet Union, Chechnya, and the bushfire wars that accompanied it. He charted Boris Yeltsin's moral and physical decline and the conditions which created the rise of Putin. After Ireland, he was appointed Europe correspondent for Guardian Europe, then joined the Moscow bureau in 1992, before becoming bureau chief in 1994. He left Russia in 1997 to join the foreign desk, became European editor and then associate foreign editor. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he worked as education correspondent.

BACKGROUNDER
In Palestine, a growing sense of alienation pervades society

Samah Jabr
13 March 2019
The international consensus is moving towards new laws criminalising non-violent opposition to Zionism as ‘anti-semitism’

A Palestinian protester wears a mask painted in the colours of the national flag in Gaza on 22 February (AFP)

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The current world offers countless examples of alienation, but this phenomenon is perhaps especially commonplace in Palestine.

I recently observed a prestigious professional meeting, in which a well-regarded woman dared to defend her opinion with technical data and logic against the meeting’s "boss" and the massive wall of silence his presence evoked - the boss being not a technical person himself, but someone with political power.

Trying to discredit her remarks, the boss said: "This is Abu Antar talking!" He was referring to a male character within the Arab media. Abu Antar is a popular, muscular and defiant gangster. The comment by the boss can be understood as meaning it is not "womanly" to be defiant and protest.

The woman responded: "Only someone unsure of his own masculinity would need to utter such a comment."
The need to belong

Those present - including a number of women appointed merely to appease the project donor’s gender policy, and who fill the role of Amen-sayers to whatever the boss happens to utter - promptly sighed in collective disapproval at the woman’s shrewd reply.

In my discipline of psychiatry, the need to belong is placed high on Maslow’s hierarchy. Group identity is viewed by psychologist Erik Erikson as a crucial psychosocial developmental stage, without which people feel alienated.

Alienation has been assumed to be the root cause of mass shootings in the US, a motivator for people to follow the Islamic State, and a driver of risky migration practices.


Recent events have accelerated and generalised Palestinians’ sense of alienation from the traditionally supportive Arab-Muslim community

The phenomenon of alienation represents an intersection of the personal and the collective, the psychological and the sociological. It includes feelings of powerlessness, meaninglessness and self-estrangement.

Alienation can be generated by design: in Palestine, pervasive political helplessness and economic misery alienates many from one another. "I rarely see my children," noted a labourer at an Israeli border checkpoint. "By the time I return home, they are already in bed getting their rest for school the next morning."

Palestinians are alienated from their land and from international consciousness. Forgotten is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which identified Zionism as a form of racism. Instead, the international consensus is moving towards new laws criminalising non-violent opposition to Zionism as “anti-semitism”.
Reframing enemies and friends

Recent events have accelerated and generalised Palestinians’ sense of alienation from the traditionally supportive Arab-Muslim community.

The latest Warsaw conference on Middle East "peace", attended by Arab leaders and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, reframed enemies and friends, resulting in the Gulf states crowning Israel as a leader in their fight against Iran and ignoring the occupation of Palestine.

US policy in the Middle East is based on efforts to normalise relations between Israel and the Arab world, fuelled by the rise of Arab leaders who are shamelessly willing to sacrifice the Palestinian cause, while the Arab people are exhausted in revolutionary struggles against their leaders.

All of these developments are changing norms and further isolating Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets Sultan Qaboos in Oman (Handout)

Rapid growth in the relationship between Israel and Arab governments, especially in the Gulf, has been manifested through official visits by senior Israeli officials to Arab countries, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Oman last November. There has also been an expansion of informal meetings and a flurry of economic activity between Arab and Israeli companies.

All of this is accompanied by the artificial support of electronic flies on social media, aiming to create a false public opinion in support of normalisation in Arab society - an accelerated process of spiritual and symbolic degradation.

In reality, this transformation is limited to the leaders and political elites in the Arab world. Ordinary citizens and public opinion steadfastly oppose normalisation with Israel.

Grassroots movements on the Arab street, and their aspirations to be freed from regime control, reveal the degree to which public opinion has been falsified.
Backing oppressive regimes

Israel is the enemy of the Arab people wherever they may be, backing their oppressive regimes, monitoring their activists and aiding the process of human rights violations. For example, an Israeli company specialising in cyber-espionage reportedly negotiated a multimillion-dollar deal with Saudi Arabia for technology that could be used to hack dissidents’ mobile phones.

The Palestinian leadership, which allows for security coordination with Israel, has paved the way for the normalisation between Israel and Arab regimes. This disappointment is exacerbated by the widespread polarisation, corruption and nepotism practised by Palestinian leaders and institutions.

The missing element from GCC normalisation with Israel: The Palestinians

Read More »

Yet, there are still examples of resistance to this alienation.

A photo recently emerged of Hebron’s police chief helping to change a flat tyre on an Israeli military jeep, sparking widespread rage among Palestinians and eventually leading to the chief’s suspension.

These are difficult times, indeed. The alienated are many and silent. But we shall hold on; we will not disappear.

We shall speak about the ills of alienation. Sometimes this will cause further pain, and sometimes it will expose the collaborators - but this is what it takes to walk the road of freedom, for our minds and for our homeland.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Samah Jabr

Samah Jabr is a Jerusalemite psychiatrist and psychotherapist who cares about the wellbeing of her community – beyond issues of mental illness

Gaza 2020: Worsening conditions lead more Palestinians to take their own lives

An increase in suicides in the first half of 2020 illustrates the dire psychological impact of the Israeli siege on Gaza residents

A Palestinian man mourns outside the morgue in the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in January 2016 (AFP)
By Maha Hussaini in Gaza Strip
Published date: 28 July 2020

Twenty-three years after he was released from an Israeli prison, Jamal Wadi still struggled with the aftermath of his experience. After three decades of suffering from severe psychological trauma and mental health issues, the 54-year-old Palestinian took his own life on 21 June.

What Palestinians experience goes beyond the PTSD label 

Read More »

The Gaza Strip has been witnessing a surge in suicide rates as it entered its 14th year under a crushing Israeli-led blockade.

The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights reported that at least 16 people have taken their own lives and hundreds of others attempted suicide in Gaza in the first half of 2020.

Whether influenced by economic difficulties, the traumatic impact of Israeli occupation policies or other factors, rights groups say the surge in suicide attempts is very concerning.

In 2012, the United Nations cautioned that Gaza would be "unlivable" by 2020 given the strains of the crippling siege and the devastation caused by three wars since 2007, numerous smaller military altercations and a brutally repressed protest movement.

Halfway through the year, the sad rise in suicides shows that for many, this warning has taken on another tragic meaning.

'If I don't die, they will kill me'

"Since we got married more than 20 years ago, I do not remember seeing Jamal emotionally and mentally stable except during the three months that followed our wedding," Wadi's wife, Mervat, told Middle East Eye. "He was a totally different person back then."

Soon after their wedding in the early 1990s, Wadi was detained by Israeli forces.

"I thought his imprisonment would last for a couple of days or weeks, but he was imprisoned for seven years," Mervat said.

Mervat started to notice changes in Wadi's mental health during prison visits every two weeks, but did not expect that this would lead to severe psychological trauma that would change their entire life.



'We are more tired than afraid': Finding strength amid darkness in Gaza

Read More »



"Almost every time I visited him, I would notice that he had been beaten. They used to keep him in solitary confinement for long periods of time," she recalled. "I could see that he was not the same anymore. His eyes and the way he looked around him, he was not the same person I married a few months earlier."

After he was released in 1997, Wadi’s family started a long journey of medical tests and hospital visits to treat what they thought was "only a trauma", before they were informed that he was suffering from long-term mental and psychological disorders, including schizophrenia, grand mal seizures, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Despite having found employment working for the Palestinian Authority, achieving an often elusive degree of financial stability for Gaza, Wadi struggled to adjust to life after prison.

"He always repeated that he was afraid to go back to prison, and had hallucinations that Israeli forces would break in the house and detain him at any moment," Wadi's brother, Sami, told MEE. "No matter how much we tried to reassure him, he would never believe us. He would always scream 'if I don't die, they will kill me'.

"But we did not expect such trauma would lead to suicide."

His relatives believe Wadi took his own life as he saw it as the only way to "rest reassured that he would not return to prison" again.

"We were in complete shock. We have never expected that this would actually happen," Sami said.

But, Sami pointed out, "Jamal is not the only case. I know many freed prisoners who also attempted to commit suicide".

According to prisoners' rights organisation Addameer, some 4,700 Palestinians are currently incarcerated by Israel - including 267 from the Gaza Strip.
Growing desperation

Palestinians have attributed the increase in suicide attempts to the worsening humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip.

'No other party is responsible for the occupation's silent killing of Palestinians'
- Sami, brother of Jamal Wadi

According to the European Union, the blockade and recurrent hostilities in the coastal enclave have weakened the local economy to the point where some 1.5 million people - around 80 percent of the total population of Gaza - remain aid dependent.

Since the imposition of the siege in 2007, the number of businesses in Gaza has decreased from 3,500 to 250, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Today, nearly 54 percent of families in the Gaza Strip live below the poverty line.

Measures taken to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic have further exacerbated the economic crisis in Gaza, with nearly 26,500 people losing their jobs in the first three months of 2020.

In the first quarter of 2020, the unemployment rate reached 46 percent, compared to around 42.7 percent in the last quarter of 2019, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), revealing how dire the situation was before 2020 - a year that has seen economies across the world mark major losses.

The worrying numbers are "a testament to the desperation and severe mental health impacts of the closure", said Nuriya Oswald, the international legal and advocacy director at Al Mezan, adding that those working in the once thriving fishing and agriculture sectors in Gaza are particularly vulnerable due to the threats of Israeli military violence and restrictions impacting their livelihoods.

Haitham Arafat, a 37-year-old father of four, has found himself in dire financial straits after being unable to repay his debts.



The occupation in my office: Speaking sense to power in therapeutic work

Read More »

In early July, he attempted to set himself on fire, but was saved by passersby.

"I receive a monthly salary from the Palestinian Authority, but nothing of it remains for me and my children due to my heavy debts," Arafat said. "I tried to work in many fields to secure another salary but I could not. I have a health problem with my hand that hospitals and doctors in Gaza could not diagnose. I cannot hold anything heavy."

"I got fed up of feeling helpless. My children are always hungry and I cannot do anything but watch them cry," Arafat told MEE.

Israel and its allies - including, most recently, US officials in the United Nations - have repeatedly blamed Gaza's economic, security and psychological woes on the enclave's de facto leadership, helmed by the Hamas movement.

But many Palestinians, including Wadi's family, strongly reject these accusations.

"The occupation is to blame; no other party is responsible for the occupation's silent killing of Palestinians," Sami said. "My brother and hundreds others who committed or attempted to commit suicide once loved life. But life under occupation has been suffocating to the extent people are starting to prefer death."
Unlivable conditions

Arafat, who was the only member of his family to survive the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 as an infant, says he feels left alone to face an "unbearable situation".


Resources exist in Gaza to help people struggling with mental health issues and suicidal thoughts - including the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme

Although there is indeed a rise in the number of suicide attempts, Dr Youssef Awadallah, a psychologist based in the Gaza Strip, told MEE that he was refraining from classifying it as a broad trend in Gaza.

"In 2019, 22 suicides were registered in all of the Strip, where some two million residents live," he explained. "We cannot call this a phenomenon, but it is true that the dire economic and social conditions in the Strip are main factors that contribute to exacerbating the problem."

Awadallah noted that, contrary to some perceptions, suicide attempts often stem from long periods of personal struggle.

"The idea of suicide does not just suddenly pop into someone's head and then they commit suicide; it is a result of days and months of deep thinking, when the suicidal (person) becomes convinced that ending their life is indeed a way of relief," he explained.

Resources exist in Gaza to help people struggling with mental health issues and suicidal thoughts - including the helpline of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme.

While the causes of suicidal thinking are complex and varied, residents of Gaza repeatedly point to the context in which they live as contributing to people’s struggle with mental health.

"If only there was no occupation. Who would think of suicide in Gaza then?" Arafat asked. "We are capable of being independent and leading successful lives, but sleeping and waking up to the same suffocating situation is draining."

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

Unexploded missile found in Gaza school following Israeli attack
Elementary school run by the UN was immediately evacuated as a bomb disposal team tackled the projectile

The Israeli missile hit the school’s second floor causing partial damage (AFP)
By Maha Hussaini in  Gaza City
Published date: 13 August 2020

An unexploded Israeli missile was found in an elementary school in al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, on Thursday morning following an aerial and artillery attack that targeted several places in the besieged enclave.

The school, run by the UN refugee agency and located in a crowded area, was immediately evacuated and students were sent home.

A police explosive engineering unit is attempting to dismantle and remove remnants of the missile, according to Iyad al-Bozom, a spokesman for the Palestinian interior ministry in Gaza.



Israel cuts fuel to Gaza 'in light of' incendiary balloons Read More »

“My children woke up terrified to the sound of loud explosions at around 2am," Gaza resident Um-Muhammed Talat told Middle East Eye.

"My husband comforted them and put them back to sleep. The explosion rocked the house but we did not expect that their school was targeted.

“In the morning, I woke them up and prepared them for school. Shortly after they left the house, my second-grader daughter, Mais, came back.

"I asked her why she had returned and she said ‘they [Israeli forces] targeted our school'.”

The Israeli drone missile hit al-Shati school’s second floor, causing partial damage.

“I did not believe her until I read the news. She saw photos of her school and was scared. She told me she did not want to go to school anymore,” said Talat.

“I told my children the missile fell by mistake to comfort them, but honestly, I feel that there is no place safe here, even schools are targeted.”
Crossing closed

For the second day in a row, Israeli forces have targeted several military sites and agricultural lands across the Gaza Strip, in response to what the Israeli army said were explosive balloon attacks launched from the enclave into Israel.

“In response, we just struck Hamas targets in Gaza, including a military compound, underground infrastructure and observation posts,” the military said in a tweet.



Israel closes crucial Gaza border crossing Read More »

On Wednesday, Israel imposed further restrictions on the blockaded coastal Strip, reducing the fishing zone in Gaza from 15 nautical miles to eight, and halting the transfer of fuel into the enclave, according to a statement issued by the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), an Israeli military administrative body.

Earlier this week, Israel closed one of the main crossings into the Gaza, citing the launch of incendiary balloons from there.

"Kerem Shalom Crossing will be closed for the passage of all goods, with the exception of the entry of essential humanitarian equipment and fuel," Israel's defence ministry said in a statement.

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AOC tears into Trump over 'white supremacist' birther theory about Kamala Harris
Sanjana Varghese in news


Getty Images


AOC and other House Democrats condemned Trump this week after he refused to disavow a racist conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris.

Democratic candidate Joe Biden recently announced that Kamala Harris would be his Vice President if he was elected. Harris was born to immigrant parents in California and had a career in politics and as a state prosecutor before she ran for president in this election cycle’s race,

A recent op-ed in Newsweek – which one of the advisors to Trump’s campaign shared – suggested that Harris might not meet the requirements to be a vice president. This is despite the fact that Harris is eligible to hold the office, and has even previously run for the role of the president, where the same question came up and was disproved.

Trump was asked about the op-ed earlier this week. Trump said in a press conference that the person who had written the piece was a “very highly qualified, talented lawyer” and that he “just heard about it” and “will take a look”.

House Democrats spoke out against Trump’s comments, pointing out that they were offensive and highly typical of him.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that calling into question the citizenship of people of colour was one way that white supremacy is manifested.

She also pointed out that the GOP has done this with many other elected officials, often women of colour, such as Representative Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis and Ayana Pressley of Massachaussetts, among others.

It’s unsurprising that Trump would pursue this line of thinking. There may even be a sense of deja vu after this week – Trump was the originator of another racist “birther” theory around President Obama, who was born in Hawaii. During Obama’s presidency, Trump consistently went on Fox News to ask for his birth certificate – but even after Obama produced it publicly, it did not stop.

Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said, “Donald Trump was the national leader of the grotesque, racist birther movement with respect to President Obama and has sought to fuel racism and tear our nation apart on every single day of his presidency.”

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/us-election-donald-trump-suggests.html
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/08/trump-promotes-false-conspiracy.html

Madagascar president's herbal tonic fails to halt Covid-19 spike

By Raïssa Ioussouf Antananarivo BBC AFRICA
14 August 2020

AFP

The president is upbeat about his strategy to beat coronavirus

Hospitals in Madagascar have been struggling to cope with a surge of Covid-19 cases, while the president has been promoting an unproven product he says can cure the disease despite the World Health Organization (WHO) warning against using untested remedies.

Cases have quadrupled in the past month in the Indian Ocean island, with more than 13,000 infections and 162 deaths from coronavirus, which has spread to all but one of its 22 regions.

Despite the spike, President Andry Rajoelina stands by the herbal concoction called Covid-Organics, which was launched to great fanfare in April.

It is produced by the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research from the artemisia plant - the source of an ingredient used in a malaria treatment - and other Malagasy plants.

The drink has been marketed as a prevention and remedy - and for the last four months been offered to children at school

.

AFP

Schoolchildren are being urged to use the unproven tonic to boost their health

Earlier in the month the president was out again distributing the tonic, along with essentials such as rice, oil, sugar, to poor communities in the capital, Antananarivo.

He faced criticism for drawing crowds during a lockdown, but his attitude remained upbeat: "The epidemic won't last, it's only passing through and we will defeat it."

He also suggested that the number of infected people was not high in suburbs of the capital where the free distribution of the drink had started a few months ago.

The WHO says it welcomes innovations based on traditional remedies but it wants scientific evidence before backing their use.

So far no results of clinical trials have been made public - though that has not stopped stop the tonic from becoming a source of African pride for some. Free shipments have been sent to dozens of African countries.



The government has sought to counter growing scepticism about it at home and abroad.

"Just because we have condoms, does that mean we shouldn't be careful about Aids or that Aids is over? It's the same thing," says the president's communications director Rinah Rakotomanga.

"The majority of people who used the product and don't have a chronic illness recovered completely, we are proud to have this remedy against the disease. It's in our culture as Malagasy people to use decoctions like this… as long as it's working, we don't need clinical trials."

However, most people with coronavirus will start to recover quickly after a few days' rest. It is chiefly - though not exclusively - those with underlying health conditions that are most at risk of developing severe symptoms.

AFP

Soldiers distributed masks and some Covid-Organic products in April

But the health ministry has been much more cautious in its approach - advising hospitals that Covid-Organics only be administered to patients with mild symptoms who do not have other illnesses such as diabetes.

Consent from those being treated is also needed, its advice protocol says.
Hospitals under pressure

Despite the president's optimism, coronavirus deaths are reported daily.

Last month, Health Minister Ahmad Ahmad appealed for international help to get equipment as he expressed his concern about the rapidly filling hospitals - for which he was rebuked by the presidency.

GETTY IMAGES

Hospitals in Antananarivo are having to deal with the influx in severe cases

The defence ministry then issued a call to find volunteer doctors and nurses to support the staff at a treatment centre set up at the Mahamasina Stadium in Antananarivo.

It was opened at the beginning of August and dozens of patients have already been received.

One of the hospitals struggling to cope with the influx of patients is Antananarivo's University Health Centre of Andohatapenaka - it only takes serious coronavirus cases, especially those patients who are also suffering from other conditions.

According to hospital director Raveloson Nasolotsiry, there are between 50 and 56 beds constantly occupied.

As soon as patients start getting better, they are transferred to other treatment centres to make space for new arrivals.

He expects severe cases to keeping arriving as it is winter in the central highlands.

"Patients with a serious form of the disease are already vulnerable and sensitive to seasonal variations," he said.

They might also mistake their symptoms for flu and not see a doctor right away to check if they are infected with Covid-19, he warns.
Not enough protective gear

Heath workers on the frontline also feel vulnerable, including those at the country's main hospital.

AFP
I treated him [a Covid-19 patient] without proper protective gear. I only had a cloth mask that I brought from home"Sitraka Randrianasolo

Medic at Joseph Ravoahangy Andrianavalona Hospital

"We have been completely exposed," Sitraka Randrianasolo, a 27-year-old intern at the Joseph Ravoahangy Andrianavalona Hospital in the capital, where several medics have tested positive for Covid-19 in recent weeks.

"There was a patient who came to the emergency service and died 24 hours later. Turns out he had Covid-19.

"I treated him without proper protective gear. I only had a cloth mask that I brought from home. I took the test later, and thankfully I wasn't infected."

AFP

Farmers in Madagascar grow artemisia, used in some malaria treatments

He says the issue has since improved after a private company donated protective masks and gloves to the facility.

The government has been trying to send equipment to hospitals in different regions.

But for Jerisoa Ralibera, president of the paramedics' union SISFM, the government's efforts are too little, too late.

"The state is doing better now regarding protective equipment but it's not enough to stem the epidemic, health workers keep using the same protective gear meant for single use only, especially gowns and suits, and there aren't enough drugs," he said.
Lockdown lifted despite fears

According to SISFM, dozens of health staff have been infected with Covid-19.

AFP

The president says a "stabilisation phase" has been reached in the area around the capital

These fears have not been eased by the government's lifting of a five-week lockdown in the region of Analamanga, where the capital is located.

President Rajoelina said in a televised speech that it was economically unbearable for the Malagasy people to continue with the restrictions.

He said a "stabilisation phase" had been reached and in the last two days new cases have been lower in the capital.

But the Analamanga region remains the epicentre of the epidemic - and the disease is continuing to spread in other regions of the island.

The girl who picked up an AK-47 to defend her family
By Kawoon Khamoosh BBC Persian

14 August 2020

GHOR DISTRICT GOVERNMENTImage caption

UPDATED
Thailand protests: Risking it all to challenge the monarchy

LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AFP

Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul read out the reform manifesto

A growing movement among students has been calling for political reform in Thailand. In recent days, the protests have taken a surprising turn, writes an analyst in London for the BBC.

On a stage at an out-of-town campus of one of Thailand's top universities, a young woman with wavy long hair and owlish spectacles steps forward, through a dramatic cloud of dry-ice, and reads out a 10-point manifesto to a crowd of cheering students.

Her demands, for a monarchy that is accountable to the country's elected institutions, that moderates its use of public funds, stays out of politics and does not exercise control over important army units, would be unremarkable in most countries.

In Thailand, they are nothing short of revolutionary.

Thais are taught from birth that the monarchy is the keystone that holds the country together, the institution that embodies the national character.

Every recent Thai constitution - and there have been 19 in modern times, along with a dozen military coups - has stated, at the top, that "The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship" and that "No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action".

Those provisions are backed by article 112 of the criminal code, known as the lese-majeste law, which subjects anyone criticising the royal family to secret trials and long prison sentences.

Thailand's lese-majeste law explained VESTIGIAL FEUDALISM 

More recently, critics who fled to neighbouring countries have been abducted and murdered. Thais are taught to respect, revere and love the monarchy, but also to fear the consequences of speaking about it.
A 'dark hand'?

The issues raised on that stage at Thammasat University on Monday have, in the past, been discussed openly only by those living safely in exile, far from Thailand, or whispered in the privacy of the home.

The Thammasat manifesto has caused an uproar.

LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA Thais are taught to revere the royal family

The students have been accused of "crossing the line", of going too far, even by some of those who support their other demands for reform.

Senators appointed by the former military junta, and an important political crutch for the government of junta-leader-turned-Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, have called for legal action against the student leaders, for an investigation into how they funded Monday's spectacularly-produced protest, and into which "dark hand" instigated the youngsters to come up with such outrageous demands.

The powerful army commander, General Apirat Kongsompong, suggested that the protesters were afflicted by "chung chart", "hatred of the nation", a term used in the past to rally ultra-nationalist Thais against perceived enemies, and a disease, General Apirat told soldiers, that was far worse than Covid-19.

The student leader who read out the manifesto, Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, has since stayed mostly on her campus, planning further rallies, and nervously watching the plain-clothes police who are now constantly monitoring her.
Why young people are protesting in Thailand
What we know of Thailand's King Vajiralongkorn
The satirist who vanished in broad daylight

Worryingly, some ultra-royalists are raising the spectre of October 1976, when police and right-wing vigilantes opened fire on left-wing students inside Thammasat University, killing dozens, lynching some and then battering their bodies.

That shockingly brutal attack was provoked by a rumour of a slight by the students against then-Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, the present king.

Veterans of the upheavals of 1976 do not believe it will happen again.

Former government minister Chaturon Chaiseng, who was among a number of student activists who spent years hiding with communist insurgents after the 1976 massacre, says a repeat of such violence would be very risky today.

There are so many grievances against the government at the moment, he says, which the students share with wider Thai society.

These protests are happening during an almost perfect storm of bad news for the Thai government.

Despite managing an impressive containment of the Covid-19 coronavirus, with no local infections for nearly three months, the collapse of tourism has hit the economy very hard and drawn attention to one of the world's widest gaps between rich and poor.

MLADEN ANTONOV

Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit was abducted in Cambodia, his whereabouts are unknown

The decision earlier this year to dissolve a dynamic new political party, which had attracted the support of many younger voters, gave them the sense that the military-dominated political system was denying them a voice.

That was compounded by the abduction and presumed murder of a Thai activist in Cambodia, blamed by some on elements close to the palace, and then by the dropping of all criminal charges against a member of one of Thailand's wealthiest families over the killing of a police officer in a hit-and-run incident eight years ago.

On top of that, since the Covid-19 crisis started King Vajiralongkorn has spent nearly all his time living in a hotel in Germany, prompting a Twitter hashtag #มีกษัตริย์ไว้ทําไม #whydoweneedaking?, which was reposted more than a million times.
The voices of the next generation

The protest leaders have been careful to frame their demands within the constitution.

The first person to break the taboo, a week before the Thammasat manifesto, was human rights lawyer Anon Nampa, speaking at a Harry Potter-themed protest and looking not unlike the fictional young wizard.

He stressed that he wanted to reform, not overthrow, the constitutional monarchy.

He focused in particular on the huge assets of the Crown Property Bureau, which, under the late King Bhumibol, had been notionally held in trust for the benefit of the Thai people, but have now been declared the personal property of the king, making him by far the wealthiest person in Thailand.

Anon also questioned King Vajiralongkorn's decision to take personal command of all military units based in Bangkok, something he believes cannot be compatible with a democratic, constitutional monarchy.

"It had to be done," he said of his call for accountability.

"That's why I chose to speak candidly, to honour my own integrity, the integrity of the audience, and out of respect for the monarchy. Because if we don't speak frankly about it, then we will never understand it."

Anon Nampa and another activist, Panupong Jaadnok, have since been arrested on charges of breaking Thailand's sweeping sedition law, an alternative to the lese majeste law which, the King has let it be known, he no longer wants to be so widely used.

LAUREN DECICCA  Anon Nampa, a Thai Human rights lawyer,

 was the first to urge reform of the monarchy

But far from silencing talk about the monarchy, their demands have now been taken up by a student movement which has been agitating for change for many months, and which is active in campuses across the country, and includes high-school students as well.

We spoke to two young political science students who have become involved in the movement, both thoughtful and articulate, with hopes of good careers after university.

Yet their comments about the monarchy, although expressed with moderation and reason, would have been unthinkable even a year ago.

"This generation knows for a fact that the monarchy is involved in politics and that affects the lives of the Thai people," said one.

"So it is fair and democratic for us to talk about anyone involved in politics, whether it is the military or the monarchy."

"We have to try to start talking about it, making it a new norm in society to talk about the monarchy," said the other.

"I think the silent majority want to talk about it, because if you don't touch something, if you don't reform it, it will go rotten and collapse."

There are young people on the other side, though how many is hard to gauge right now. The potential for clashes, contrived or spontaneous, is real.

LAUREN DECICCA

Protesters have long invoked the three-finger salute from the film the Hunger Games

At a small pro-monarchy demonstration in Bangkok's historic royal quarter this month a student told the BBC that "the three pillars of this country, nation, religion and monarchy, must be revered, not brought down to be played with like this. That's not the right way under a constitutional monarchy."

"We're not coming out to fight with them. We have come out to show the power of the other side. Thailand has a long history. It cannot be brought down by those who want to defame the monarchy," they said.

This is uncharted territory for Thailand, and no-one knows what will happen next.

The government, comprised mostly of conservative, military and royalist figures, seems uncertain how it should respond.

An over-harsh reaction risks angering a public already frustrated over other issues. Yet it cannot be seen to be failing to defend the monarchy.

"The genie is out of the bottle," says Professor Thongchai Winichakul, a historian at the University of Wisconsin and another survivor of the 1976 massacre.

"Society won't stop, change won't stop. The only thing we can do is to take care that the change takes place with as little bloodshed as possible. Thais have been gossiping about the monarchy in private for years, then teaching their children to praise it lavishly in public, to be hypocrites. All these young protesters have done is bring that gossip out into the open."

The lese majeste and other laws and the threat they pose to BBC staff limits some of our reporting that relates directly to members of the Thai royal family.