45 Ways Ottawa Could Push Peace, 

Justice for Palestinians




by Yves Engler / June 10th, 2024

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals now say they oppose Israel’s onslaught on Rafah, want a ceasefire in Gaza and that they are no longer offering permits for new arms shipments to Israel. But this rhetorical shift doesn’t reflect a commitment to peace and justice for Palestinians. If the Trudeau government truly believed in international law and fair treatment of Palestinians, here’s 45 easy moves Ottawa could make to stop enabling Israel’s holocaust in Gaza:

1. Use the word “slaughter”, “crime”, “massacre”, “butchery”, “carnage”, “ecocide”, “genocide” or “holocaust” to describe Israel’s operations in Gaza.
2. Announce that Ottawa will enforce its obligations as party to the International Criminal Court by arresting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yaov Gallant if a warrant is issued.
3. Task the Department of Justice and RCMP Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Program to investigate Canadians currently fighting in the Israeli military. Considering the wanton destruction in Gaza, it’s hard to imagine that someone fighting there hasn’t committed war crimes.
4. Issue a notice to exporters declarating that arm permits for Israel are paused.
5. Follow the recent recommendation of UN experts and over 140 countries — including Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and Norway recently — recognizing Palestine.
6. Mention the 9,000 Palestinians Israel’s taken hostages since October 7.
7. Add Israel to the list of countries investigated in the ongoing Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions.
8. Stop providing millions of dollars in grants to Canada’s Jewish federations, which have formal ties to the para-statal Jewish Agency for Israel and sponsor the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
9. Direct the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to investigate registered Canadian charities that may be contravening CRA regulations by supporting illegal West Bank settlements.
10. Announce that Canada won’t buy any arms “field tested” on Palestinians.
11. Pause all direct arm sales to Israel irrespective if the permits were requested before January.
12. Denounce Israel’s killing of 140 journalists over the past eight months.
13. Restrict Canadian firms that sell components or full weapons systems to the US from subsequently being sent on to the Israeli military.
14. Pause any CSIS spying on Palestinians for Israel.
15. End government grants for bilateral industrial-military research
16. Announce that the Israeli military is no longer welcome to train in Cold Lake Alberta or elsewhere in Canada.
17. Criticize any US vetoing of UN Security Council resolutions defending Palestians.
18. Denounce Israel’s poisoning of the air and water in Gaza.
19. End the Department of National Defence’s Defence Research and Development Canada financing and collaboration with Israeli partners and initiatives.
20. Direct the CRA to investigate registered charities contravening the CRA rule against “supporting the armed forces of another country” by assisting Israel’s military.
21. Join Spain, Ireland, Mexico, Chile, Egypt, Turkey and other countries that have announced that they will participate in South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel’s genocide.
22. End the military’s Operation Proteus training and assistance initiative of the Palestinian force overseeing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
23. Pause Canadian military intelligence sharing with Israel.
24. Ask the CRA to conduct enhanced reviews of all foreign income for property or businesses owned in Israel and its occupied territories.
25. End any border security arrangement Ottawa has with Israel.
26. Announce a finance committee hearing into taxpayers subsidizing over a quarter billion dollars a year in donations to Israel. Is it right for all Canadians to pay a share of some individuals’ donations to a country with a GDP equal to Canada’s?
27. Bar Israeli military suppliers from Canadian military testing exercises.
28. Pause any Communications Security Establishment spying on Palestinians for Israel.
29. Impose sanctions on Israel’s settlement economy through Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act, particularly on individuals and entities involved in Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank.
30. Instruct the Canadian Border Services Agency to deny entry to any foreign national owning property in an illegal Israeli settlement or outpost.
31. Direct the CRA to investigate registered Canadian charities that may be contravening existing CRA regulations by supporting explicitly racist Israeli organizations.
32. Mention Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem conclusion that Israel has long committed the crime of apartheid.
33. Remove the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine from Canada’s list of terrorist entities.
34. Denounce Israel’s destruction of nearly half of Gaza’s agricultural land and tree crops.
35. Remove from the terrorist list the Canadian-based International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy, which was listed because it supported orphans and a hospital in Gaza through official (Hamas controlled) channels.
36. Launch a review of Canada’s criminalization of Palestinian political life, particularly why over 10 percent of Canada’s terrorism list is made up of organizations headquartered in a long-occupied land representing one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population.
37. Denounce Israel’s killing of 190 UN workers over the past eight months.
38. Apologize to Palestinians for Canada’s sizeable contribution to the unjust UN Partition Plan, which called for the division of Palestine into ethnically segregated states and gave most of the land to the newly arrived minority. As Global Affairs officials warned privately in 1947, the Canadian-shaped roadmap would lead to decades of conflict.
39. Cancel the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement or, at minimum, exclude products from the occupied West Bank.
40. Rescind adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is designed to undermine free speech and legitimate expressions of opposition to Israeli colonial violence.
41. Apologize for supporting the colonial Balfour Declaration and sending Canadians to help the British conquer Palestine.
42. Allow the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to accurately label wines produced in the occupied West Bank.
43. Eliminate the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, which was created to deflect criticism from Israeli apartheid and is acting as a tool to promote genocide.
44. State publicly that any inducement or recruitment for the Israeli military in Canada contravenes the Foreign Enlistment Act and must be investigated.
45. Support all UN resolutions backed by most nations that uphold Palestinian rights.

Most of the above demands are not radical. They aren’t, for instance, as bold as Türkiye’s recent ban on trade with Israel, Colombia cutting off coal exports or the Maldives blocking Israeli passport holders from entering their country. In many cases it’s simply a matter of upholding Canadian and international law.Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

Complaints about Hamas using “human shields” are the worst kind of bad faith

By celebrating the carnage in Gaza to free four Israeli captives, western politicians and media are treating Palestinians as sub-human – and enabling the genocide to continue

by Jonathan Cook / June 10th, 2024

Western politicians and journalists have hurried to dismiss the murder and maiming of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday in a savage joint Israeli-US military operation to free four Israeli captives.

Not just that, they have suggested that the bloodshed was inevitable and justified given that the hostages were being held in a residential neighbourhood of Gaza.

For example, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, observed of the massacre that was actively assisted by the US: “The Palestinian people are going through sheer hell in this conflict because Hamas is operating in a way that puts them in the crossfire, that holds hostages right in the heart of crowded civilian areas.”

Apparently, Israel’s decades of belligerent military occupation of the Palestinian territories, its 17-year blockade of Gaza denying its population the essentials of life, its intermittent destruction of the enclave by “mowing the lawn”, and now its carrying out of what the International Court of Justice has called a “plausible genocide” have nothing to do with the “sheer hell” the people of Gaza are suffering.

Those trying to win our consent to mass murder and the planned starvation of the people of Gaza by arguing that Hamas is using Palestinians in Gaza as human shields are engaged in the worst kind of bad-faith argument.

Let’s put back the context they are so keen to obscure:

1. Israel has been besieging the enclave of Gaza for decades. The tiny strip of land’s population comprises mostly Palestinian refugees who were long ago ethnically cleansed from their homes in what is now Israel and confined to Gaza. Their numbers have grown hugely since, to more than 2.3 million, within tightly-delimited “borders” policed – and blockaded – by Israel. Gaza is, in a true sense of the term, a giant concentration camp.

2. Gaza doesn’t have woods, mountains, caves in which Hamas fighters can hide or in which they can conceal their captives. It is not Afghanistan or Russia.

3. Gaza is almost entirely built-up – or it was until Israel destroyed most of its buildings over the past eight months. Small areas are open agricultural land or scrubland Israel will not allow Palestinians to develop – much of that has now been destroyed too. Watching over this tiny space 24/7 are armed Israeli drones. Move outside a building and you are being surveilled. You become a potential target for an assassination by Israel.

4. Hamas has two non-suicidal options for hiding the captives it seized in Israel on October 7. Either in a building, or underground in its tunnels, which were built precisely so parts of Gaza would be out of view of a hostile Israeli military. They are the nearest Hamas has to military bases. (Let us note here another hypocrisy: Israel’s military bases are often embedded in civilian communities inside Israel. Its defence ministry’s headquarters, the Kirya, is in the middle of built-up Tel Aviv.)

5. Hiding the captives above ground is the obviously more humanitarian option, as is clear from the images of those freed at the weekend. Given many months of captivity, they are reported to be in reasonable health.

6. After Israel’s massacre of more than 270 Palestinians at the weekend in Nuseirat camp, Hamas will now take all the hostages underground. That will be far worse for them, and it will make no difference to Israel’s wanton destruction of the buildings above. The overwhelming majority of the 70% of Gaza’s housing stock destroyed by Israel did not contain Israeli captives or Hamas fighters. It was targeted nonetheless because Israel’s military rampage has never been about getting the hostages back, or even about defeating Hamas, an impossible goal. It is about eradicating Gaza.

7. If Israel was really serious about bringing the captives home, it would be negotiating their release, not inducing a famine through an aid blockade that is starving everyone in Gaza: Hamas, Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages alike. The real human shields are the Israeli captives, pawns being sacrificed by Israel as it pursues its bigger war aims.

8. The truth is that Israel is waging a genocidal war on the Palestinian population to drive them out of Gaza. It needs to manufacture pretexts to avoid reaching a ceasefire deal that would bring the hostages home and bring the bloodshed to an end. The “rescue” of the Israeli captives by killing huge numbers of Palestinians provides ideal conditions for making negotiations impossible. That was the real success.

9. The jubilation – of Israelis, and western politicians and media – at the carnage of Palestinians in place of a ceasefire to end the bloodshed is the real problem. By continuing to treat Palestinians as sub-human, all are enabling the genocide to continue.
Twitter

Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.

The Day After the Destruction of Gaza Ends: Rehabilitating Gaza

Naiveté continues: There is no day after

by Dan Lieberman / June 10th, 2024

Nobody has stopped the 75 years of massacres of Palestinians or countered the acceleration of the massacres after Israel took advantage of a temporary high ground given by the October 7 attack. With the Palestinians awaiting the future from the present massacre in a deliberately destroyed Gaza, the New York Times solicited political pundits’ opinions of the future of Gaza. The pundits offered a variety of scenarios.

• Israel should allow Palestinians to create a legitimate political leadership — which can take charge in the West Bank and Gaza — and empower Palestinians who pursue their freedom in ethical ways.
• Israeli forces must withdraw all the way to the border of Gaza. As that campaign now continues, Israel, the United States and other allies in parallel must agree on the deployment of an international force drawn from NATO countries, with their deployment agreed on by Israel and the United States and operating under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council.
• The most promising course of action, and one that has not been widely discussed, is a temporary international trusteeship under a U.N. Security Council mandate.
• We envision a political framework of two states in a confederated association. The core concepts can be outlined as follows: two sovereign states, each with its own government but with joint mechanisms and institutions for critical shared concerns.
• The future of Gaza — like that of the West Bank — is for Palestinians to decide. That is the essence of self-determination. The international community must not continue to place Israel first, as has been done for decades. It cannot try to seek convenient leaders as partners or try to enter yet another long-term arrangement.

All of the proposals contain wish fulfillment and thoughts that find acceptance in much of the peace-loving world. Each contains doubts of being accepted.

(1)    There is no transition from a war in Gaza to a rehabilitation of Gaza. There never was a war in Gaza. Israel used the October 7 attack as an excuse to accelerate its ongoing destruction of the Palestinian community.

(2)    The killing machine that destroyed housing, government, agriculture, medical facilities, educational institutions, cultural institutions, food distribution, transportation, entire families, and left trauma in a majority of the population has been rightfully termed genocide. Will those carrying out genocide for 75 years suddenly halt the aggression and wish everyone well? Won’t the genocide continue?

(3)    The proposals are designed to separate the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not provide sufficient living space and resources for the Palestinians and do not prevent additional Israeli encroachment on Palestinian land.

(4)    Israel has never listened to suggestions from others and always done what it wants, no matter the crime and no matter the reactions from the United Nations, United States, and any government. Why generate proposals for a “post-war” Gaza? For whom?

(5)    The Israeli government may seem in disarray with conflicting “good guy” and “bad guy” approaches. Don’t be fooled; the Israeli government and its Jewish citizens agree on incorporating all of the West Bank and Gaza into the stolen land and cleansing the entire area of Palestinians, which includes genocide. They differ in how to accomplish their purposes and that discussion goes on behind the scenes. The contradictory public disclosures are only window dressing to give hope to the helpless.

(6) The same type of fraudulent “made for public” disputes between Israeli and US governments appear in the media. The US pretends to be able to keep Israel in check and Israel pretends to listen. If Israel agrees with a US suggestion, it is because Israel has a plan and they want to make it seem that the US offered it; making their “ally” look good.

An article started with, “What can we do for the Palestinians after the genocide is over?” Not wanting to embarrass a website, its name will not be disclosed. Do people expect Israel to stop its genocide of the Palestinians? This innocence recalls the innocents of those who believed in the 2-state solution and some still do. From the day a Zionist set foot on Ottoman Palestine and, as outlined in their proposal at the 1919 Paris peace conference, the Zionists claimed all of Palestine and other territory.

The Zionists show they will never stop adding more Palestinian lands to the already conquered and stolen lands and they test the atmosphere with murmurs of the word “annexation.” All of the two-state proposals have had confusions and contradictions that make acceptance by both sides to be impossible. What was the point of suggesting the trading of stolen land in Israel for allowing settlers to remain on stolen land in the West Bank? If Israel had available land for settlers, why send them to the West Bank and then give up land in Israel so the settlers could remain in the West Bank? Why didn’t they remain in Israel and settle there?

The principle reason the two-state solution never had legs is because no Israeli Prime Minister wanted to go down in history as being the leader who prevented the Zionists from achieving their agenda. Knowing that and realizing the two-state solution is dead, why are there proposals for federated states, one-state, and a confederation, all of which have less probability of being accepted by Israel than the separated two states, which had zero probability.

The reality is that the genocide persists and how to stop it is the primary issue. One scenario has Israel claiming rehabilitation of their damaged lands as first priority, for which they will assert the Gazans have responsibility, and preceding with installation of additional security, so that the remains of the massive Hamas army never again enters a few kilometers into Israel. Gazans will be herded into a smaller enclave, which will be completely surrounded by Israeli troops — probably no access to sea, no access to Egypt, and completely separated from touching Israel. Israeli military and administrative families will build communities on Gazan lands.

Israel will control all entrances and exits to and from Gaza. Agriculture and fishing will be limited, with food importation and distribution operated by Israel authorities. Rebuilding of all demolished civic, educational, religious, medical, and cultural will be delayed and slow in forming. Look for Gazans to be living in tents for a long time. Israel’s ultra-orthodox extremists are still intent on making their Israel “Arab free,” and Gaza may provide a solution for housing some of the Arab populations from Jaffa, Beersheba, Haifa, Acre, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.

Reports indicate Israel has already started incorporation of Gaza into a greater Israel.

Israeli troops are fortifying a strategic corridor that carves Gaza in two, building bases, taking over civilian structures and razing homes, according to satellite imagery and other visual evidence — an effort that military analysts and Israeli experts say is part of a large-scale project to reshape the Strip and entrench the Israeli military presence there.

This exposition on the situation in Gaza reflects an interpretation of the Zionist mind. However, the facts don’t add up to accomplishing a genocide that reduces Palestinian population to nil; demographic analysis shows that type of genocide is implausible. Unless mass extermination methods are used, diminishing a population proceeds by applying simple arithmetic ─ maintain the death and departure rate about 3-4 percent higher than the birth rate. If this is done, within twenty years, Gaza’s population will be halved. In forty years, Gaza will have less than three hundred thousand Palestinian inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of Israelis, who may not be all Jews. “If this is done” does not translate into, “This can be done.”

Statistics indicate that the Palestinians in Gaza are the most resilient, admirable, and hardy people in the world. Despite decades of oppression, induced traumas, and physical and psychological wounds, their death rate is among the lowest and their birth rate is among the highest in the universe. They know how to handle adversity and take care of themselves and one another. The statistics tell the story.

*The World Factbook
**World Bank
***The World Factbook
****Highest birth rate in the world
****Lowest mortality rate in the world

A surprising statistic; the Palestinians may have the highest growth rate in the world. Can Israel’s oppressive tactics reduce the Palestinian birth rate and increase the mortality rate sufficiently to cause a demographic genocide? By withholding necessary medical assistance the Palestinian birth rate might be reduced to 15/1000 population and the infant mortality rate increased to 24/1000 live births.

Lithuania, at 15.17/1000 population, has the highest mortality rate on the planet. Why does Lithuania have the highest death rate?

Lithuania has the highest death rate in the world mainly because of the high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and cancer. These diseases are linked to high smoking rates, unhealthy diet, and lack of physical activity. Other factors that contribute to the high death rate are alcoholism, depression, and suicide, which are influenced by the climatic, economic, and social conditions in the country.

The Palestinians don’t have the same conditions that caused an accelerated death rate in Lithuania, especially a lack of physical activity. They spend the entire day in back breaking work and moving around just to survive. Even if their birth rate is reduced to 1.5 percent and a higher infant mortality rate reduces the living births to 1.46 percent, and the mortality rate is multiplied by six, which will give them the highest death rate in the world, the Palestinian growth rate will be only a slightly negative 0.37 percent annually. At that rate, it will take 195 years to halve the present Palestinian populations in Gaza and the West Bank. They will be around for a long time.

What are the Zionist Jews attempting to accomplish with their deadly policies, a genocide that destroys lives, institutions, housing, government, agriculture, medical facilities, educational institutions, cultural institutions, food distribution, transportation, and entire families and never breaks the will of the Palestinians and does not reduce their numbers? Either the Israeli Jews cannot live without making the Palestinians suffer, which may be a way of translating their disturbed psyche into a mission that exalts their existence, or they have a plan, a final solution. The careless world will have to be careful. Spanish have a good expression for being careful, “ojo,” or “eye,” and pointing to an eye when saying it.

Conclusions

The statistics and mental ramblings lead to decisive conclusions.

(1)    The genocide of the Palestinians is not told in numbers.

• Article II from The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide certifies the genocide.
• This genocide does not take life; it takes lives, preventing generations of Palestinians from satisfying their lives.
• Causing physical deprivation, suffering from constant aggression, and mental anguish in others can be more disturbing than demographic genocide.

(2)    The world portrays events and players upside down. Defending Hamas is depicted as being attached to terrorism and anti-Semitism. The facts indicate otherwise.

• In finally responding to several unanswered Israeli provocations, Hamas can be blamed for the few verified atrocities committed during the October 7 attack, but these were much less than the hundreds of atrocities committed against the Palestinians and Hamas’ followers in the West Bank and Gaza. The reply to atrocities committed by US troops is usually, “During battles, atrocities often happen.” Why single out Hamas for what others are also guilty and listen to the constant harping of the October 7 attack as if it was worse and more significant than Hiroshima, September 11, and Pearl Harbor?
• Hamas is portrayed as a corrupt, violent, terrorist, and manipulative organization that cannot administer and takes advantage of an innocent Gazan population. Reality shows the opposite. Despite constant violent attacks from Israel, Hamas has been able to sustain the morale of the Gazans, motivate them, and give them hope and life. Faced with inadequate food production, no airport or seaports, a lack of natural resources, interrupted energy, a barrier to financial markets, and limited access to the outside world, Hamas has created a society with educated, cultured, healthy, energetic, and endurable people. These are people with the highest growth rate in the world ─ they have the will to live and produce. With assistance from UNRWA, Hamas has built hospitals, schools, colleges, recreational facilities, sports arenas, and culture centers. Gazans are well housed (were well housed) with entire extended families inhabiting an apartment building. The organization has been remarkable, just the opposite from what propaganda wants us to believe.
• The Israeli Jews are portrayed as compassionate and peace loving victims of terror. Reality shows a corrupt government that incites settler violence, engages in innumerable wars, terrorizes Palestinians, and deceives the world into accepting their destruction of the Palestinian people, just the opposite from what propaganda wants us to believe.
• The “no holds” barred use of the anti-Semitism label to divert the public from learning the truth of the Zionist criminal actions has been clearly exposed during the last months. Seeing the success of the fraudulent anti-Semitism in gathering US domestic and government support, for Israel and intimidating college officials, leads to wondering if anti-Semitism is only a construct and was always a weapon used by the Zionists to shield the truth of irresponsible actions?  Should we reevaluate the promoted anti-Semitic charges of the Zionist past?

For 75 years, the Israeli Jews have been oppressing Palestinians as their national sport. They wanted the land and have taken the land. They want to cleanse the land of Palestinians and have not been able to achieve that objective and there is no indication of how they can achieve it. Will Israel keep the Palestinians in captivity for eternity? Looks that way, unless the Israeli Jews, who can live well anywhere, decide to leave or decide, “Maybe we can live together with the Palestinians in a single state. Regard how obedient the Israeli Palestinian population have been.” Or, will Israel remain guided by its extremists who recite,

Are these words from human beings? They are capable of anything. “Ojo” is the word of the day.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”FacebookTwitterReddit

Email

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

Palestinians massacred in “rescue” operation lauded by US

by Maureen Clare Murphy / June 10th, 2024

Damage in Nuseirat refugee camp following an Israeli attack on 8 June 2024 (Omar Ashtawy APA images)

While Israelis celebrated the release of four captives secured by the military in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinians mourned hundreds of people killed during the daytime operation.

Palestinian officials said that more than 210 Palestinians were killed and 400 injured in central Gaza on Saturday, including in the area where the Israeli military says it rescued the four captives from two separate apartments blocks in a residential area of Nuseirat refugee camp.

The fresh horror in Nuseirat comes two days after Israel bombed a UN school in the refugee camp where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, killing at least 33.

As of 5 June, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza had recorded more than 36,500 fatalities and 83,000 injuries since 7 October.

The actual fatality count is likely much higher, with thousands of people missing under the rubble. An unknown number of Palestinians in Gaza have died in a secondary wave of mortality as Israel has destroyed water and sanitation facilities in the territory, giving rise to diseases, all while engineering a famine and destroying the healthcare system.

In Nuseirat refugee camp, “Gazan paramedics and residents said the assault killed scores of people and left mangled bodies of men, women and children strewn around a marketplace and a mosque,” Reuters reported on Saturday.

Abu Obeida, the pseudonymous spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said that some captives were killed during the operation. Israel has not reported any fatalities among the captives during the raid.

“By committing horrifying massacres the enemy was able to liberate a few of its prisoners but at the same time it killed some of them during the operation,” Abu Obeida said.

“This operation will constitute a major danger to the enemy’s prisoners and will have a negative impact on their conditions and their lives,” he added.

Perfidy

Footage from the raid indicated that Israeli forces infiltrated Nuseirat refugee camp disguised in civilian trucks:

A wounded eyewitness described walking in the street and seeing what he thought was a truck carrying humanitarian aid before armed forces emerged from the vehicle and shot him in the chest and arm:

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of hiding among civilians to justify its targeting and destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, in Gaza, while apparently using trucks disguised as humanitarian aid to carry out an operation that killed scores of civilians. Feigning civilian or non-combatant status, as Israeli forces appear to have done, and hardly for the first time, may constitute the war crime of perfidy under international humanitarian law.

The plan for the US pier on the Gaza shoreline was revealed in a surprise announcement by President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address in early March and was framed as an effort to increase humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, despite its limited capacity in comparison to the already established land crossings.

The pier took its first delivery on 17 May and only functioned at partial capacity, on and off, for a few days before a storm damaged the modular pier around a week later.

The controversial pier is part of a corridor that the Israeli military has cut through the center of the Gaza Strip, south of Gaza City, effectively splitting northern and southern Gaza and allowing Israeli forces to more easily carry out raids in the center of the Gaza Strip.

The US Department of Defense said on Friday that repairs to the pier had been completed with the assistance of the Israeli military, raising questions whether the Nuseirat operation was delayed until after the pier was rebuilt.

American role

Barak Ravid, the Axios writer who is frequently fed information by Israel’s military and intelligence apparatus, reported that Nuseirat operation “was supposed to happen a few weeks ago but was canceled for operational reasons,” citing unnamed Israeli officials.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that hundreds of soldiers were involved in the Nuseirat operation and a police officer was critically wounded during the raid; he was later reported to have died from his injuries.

Axios revealed that “the US hostage cell in Israel supported the effort to rescue the four hostages,” citing an unnamed US official.

The White House released a statement from national security advisor Jake Sullivan in which he said that Washington “is supporting all efforts to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas, including American citizens.”

“This includes through ongoing negotiations or other means,” Sullivan added.

Sullivan’s statement on the “successful operation” commends “the work of the Israeli security services that conducted this daring operation” and makes no mention of the scores of Palestinians killed.

The White House statement was only one of many from Western leaders celebrating the rescue of the four Israeli captives without any mention of the Palestinians killed in the process.

Hamas condemned what it called a “horrific massacre against innocent civilians” in Nuseirat camp and other locations in central Gaza and the reported American involvement.

In a statement published on its Telegram channel, Hamas said that it “proves once again the complicity of the US administration” the complicity of the US in war crimes in Gaza.

“Doomsday” in central Gaza

Palestinians residing in the areas of central Gaza attacked on Saturday described “doomsday” scenes like those from a horror film, with quadcopters shooting at civilians in Deir al-Balah while Israel drops bombs from the sky.

Video recorded in Nuseirat refugee camp shows Israeli-fired missiles striking a residential area.

One graphic video shows around a dozen dead and injured people lying on a street in Nuseirat refugee camp, and other videos show people arriving with severe injuries to overcrowded medical facilities.

Yet another graphic video shows a man holding a young boy with a severe head wound standing among shrouded corpses outside a hospital. When the child suddenly moves, the surprised man runs with the boy in his arms towards the hospital entrance.

Videos and photos show that another boy was killed with his last meal still in his mouth and a man was shot dead while cooking on a stove.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the few still functioning in Gaza, was overwhelmed with casualties from Nuseirat and was being run by a sole generator on Saturday while Israeli bombing further threatened its ability to provide urgently needed medical care.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that it was transporting injured people from hospitals in central Gaza to a field hospital due to the threat of Israeli bombing:

Freed captives “in good health”

The four rescued captives – Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40 – were all captured at the Supernova music festival during Hamas’ raid on 7 October last year.

During her captivity, Hamas released two videos showing signs of life from Argamani. The most recent video, published on 31 May, features Argamani’s voice imploring Israelis to put pressure on Netanyahu’s war cabinet, warning that “time is running out.”

The four former captives “were taken to hospital for medical checks and were in good health,” Reuters reported, citing the Israeli military.

This is in stark contrast to Palestinians from Gaza who have been arbitrarily detained by Israel in recent months and released with newly amputated limbs removed without anesthesia and their bodies bearing marks of torture.

Around 250 people were captured in Israel on 7 October and brought to Gaza. More than 100 were released by Hamas as part of a prisoner exchange deal in November.

Two Israeli-Argentinian men were rescued by Israeli forces in Rafah, southern Gaza, in February.

Some 75 Palestinians were killed during that operation as Israel pounded Rafah, where people displaced from other areas of Gaza had sought shelter, in order to create a diversion from the military raid.

A captured Israeli soldier was reportedly rescued by the military in late October.

With the rescue of the four captives on Saturday, a total of seven Israelis and foreign nationals held in Gaza since 7 October have been freed by the Israeli military. Far more regained their freedom through an agreement negotiated with Hamas.

Many families of the captives who remain in Gaza are urgently pressing the Israeli government to secure another exchange deal.

Of the 116 captives who are believed to remain in Gaza, Israeli authorities have declared around a third of them dead, without acknowledging that the most likely cause of death is Israeli bombing.

Analyst Tariq Kenney-Shawa said that the lives of the children killed in Nuseirat on Saturday could have been spared.

“Israel could [have agreed] to a permanent ceasefire and hostage exchange at any time” during the past eight months, Kenney-Shawa stated, “but dead Palestinians are their main objective.”

Some observers said that Saturday’s rescue operation would endanger the captives who remain in Gaza, since Netanyahu’s government has signaled that Israel will not engage in another prisoner exchange and will only secure the captives’ release by force.

“For Hamas, this approach means the captives are becoming a net loss: they have to allocate great resources to keep them but with no potential upside,” according to the Israeli writer Alon Mizrahi.

“They know by now, as [does] everybody else, that the purpose of Israel’s operation is to exterminate and ethnically cleanse the entirety of Gaza’s population” before doing the same to Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.

Biden’s “Israeli” proposal

The US State Department announced on Friday that Antony Bliken, Washington’s top diplomat, would return to the region in the coming days to push Israel and Hamas to accept a three-phase ceasefire and prisoner exchange proposal put forward by President Joe Biden last week.

The US has also circulated a draft resolution backing Biden’s proposal at the UN Security Council, where it has vetoed multiple resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Hamas has not agreed to the plan outlined by Biden, saying that it required clear guarantees that the deal would result in a complete end of the war in Gaza and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, told Reuters that while the group welcomed “Biden’s ideas,” the draft resolution circulated at the Security Council “has no mention of ending the aggression or the withdrawal.”

Reuters paraphrased Abu Zuhri as saying that “Hamas was committed to its 5 May proposal which was based on an end to the fighting and an Israeli withdrawal, a swap deal and a lifting of the blockade of the enclave” – demands consistently maintained by the group throughout the past several months.

Meanwhile, Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz postponed the anticipated announcement of his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet on Saturday.

Gantz had given Netanyahu a deadline of 8 June to deliver a “day-after” strategy for Gaza, where Netanyahu vows to press on until it achieves “total victory” – a goal criticized as “unidentified” (he may have meant to say “undefined”) by Biden during the announcement of his proposal last week.

In an interview published by Time magazine on Tuesday, Biden said there was “every reason for people” to draw the conclusion that Netanyahu was prolonging the war in Gaza for his own aims.

•  Jon Elmer contributed background reporting on the US pier.

• This article was first published in The Electronic Intifada