Palestinian president blames Hamas for continuing war in Gaza
Reuters
Sat, 13 July 2024 

World Economic Forum (WEF) in Riyadh

RAMALLAH (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel and the United States were responsible for an attack that killed dozens in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, but the Western-backed leader also blamed Hamas for the continuing war in Gaza.

His comments signal rising tension between Abbas's Fatah faction and the Islamist Hamas group, which accused the Palestinian president of taking Israel's side.

Israel said the attack was aimed at killing the Hamas military chief Mohammad Deif and his aide. It remained unclear whether Deif or his deputy were killed in the strike that left at least 90 Palestinians dead and 300 wounded, according to Gaza health ministry.

"The Palestinian presidency condemns the slaughter and holds the Israeli government fully responsible, also the U.S. administration that provides all kinds of support to the occupation and its crimes," said Abbas in a statement published by his office.

But Abbas, whose authority maintains a limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, assigned some blame to Hamas, whose Oct 7 attack inside Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others were abducted, kicked off the nine-month war in Gaza.

"The presidency sees that by escaping national unity, and providing free pretexts to the occupation state, the Hamas movement is a partner in bearing legal, moral and political responsibility for the continuation of the Israeli war of genocide in Gaza Strip," the statement said.

Hamas has run Gaza since its 2007 takeover of the coastal territory from Abbas loyalists.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters Abbas's statement meant the Palestinian Authority "has chosen to be in the same trench with the occupation".

"Such an attitude will not succeed in blackmailing the resistance or pressuring it," said Abu Zuhri.

Efforts by Arab mediators, led by Egypt, ‮have‬ so far failed to reconcile power struggles between the two sides.

Another Hamas leader, Basem Naim, who took part in previous reconciliation talks with Abbas's Fatah faction, said Abbas was to blame for the failure to reach a unity deal.

Naim said Abbas's comments made him and his authority "partner to the Zioinist enemy and its crimes not only in Gaza but also in all of the Palestinian land."

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Christina Fincher)

Abbas blames Hamas for Gaza war; terror group says PA siding with Israel

Rival Palestinian factions spar after dozens killed in strike targeting arch-terrorist Deif; Hamas says Fatah is a ‘partner to the Zionist enemy,’ despite Abbas condemning Israel

By REUTERS and TOI STAFF

Today, 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets with Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo in Ramallah, West Bank, November 23, 2023. (Alaa Badarneh/ Pool via AP)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas blamed Hamas on Saturday for the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, in a back-and-forth which saw the terror group condemn Abbas for siding with Israel.

The exchange signaled rising tensions between Abbas’s Fatah faction and the Islamist terrorist group, who in the past have unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile.

The spat began after an Israeli attack in Gaza on Saturday aimed at Hamas military chief Mohammad Deif and his aide, which left at least 90 Palestinians dead and 300 injured, according to unverifiable reports by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry; Israeli military sources say the strike targeted a Hamas compound, where dozens of Hamas gunmen were gathered.

While it remained unclear whether Deif was killed in the strike, the IDF on Sunday confirmed the death of his deputy, Rafa’a Salameh.

In response to the attack, PA official Munir Al-Jaghoub said in an interview with the Saudi al-Arabiya outlet, “If Hamas wanted to fight face-to-face with Israel, it would’ve done so in areas where the army is located, and not in places where there are people. Hamas is actually hiding between the residents to protect and save itself.”

Hamas spokesperson Jihad Taha called on Fatah to condemn Al-Jaghoub’s statement, according to Palestinian media.

“You must cease promoting the false narratives of Israel and align with our people in their decisive and steadfast battle against barbaric attacks,” he said.

Palestinians inspect the damage at a site hit by an Israeli operation targeting Hamas’s shadowy military commander Mohammad Deif in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Instead, Abbas put out a statement saying he “sees that by escaping national unity and providing free pretexts to the occupation state, the Hamas movement is a partner in bearing legal, moral, and political responsibility for the continuation of the Israeli war of genocide in the Gaza Strip.”

But the Palestinian Information Center reported that the PA indeed condemned Al-Jaghoub’s criticism of Hamas, who in turn apologized and asked that his statements be retracted.

The terror group has been accused of prolonging the war by refusing to surrender and release the hostages kidnapped on October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Abbas’s statement indicated that the Palestinian Authority “has chosen to be in the same trench with the occupation.”

“Such an attitude will not succeed in blackmailing the resistance or pressuring it,” Abu Zuhri said.

Another Hamas leader, Bassem Naim, was quoted by Reuters as saying Abbas’s comments made him and his authority “partner to the Zionist enemy and its crimes not only in Gaza, but also in all of the Palestinian land.”

The PA leader did, however, condemn Israel and the US for their role in the destruction caused in Gaza, saying in the statement that he “holds the Israeli government fully responsible, also the US administration that provides all kinds of support to the occupation and its crimes.”

Since the war broke out, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 38,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 326.

Hamas has run Gaza since its violent 2007 takeover of the coastal territory from Abbas loyalists.

Efforts by Arab mediators, led by Egypt, have so far failed to reconcile power struggles between the two rival factions, though in recent months both China and Russia have hosted representatives from the Palestinian groups for unity talks.

Palestinian groups condemn Mahmoud Abbas for blaming Hamas for Israel's war on Gaza

Palestinian groups including Hamas and the Popular Front have condemned Mahmoud Abbas for saying Hamas holds responsibility for Israel's war on Gaza.

The New Arab Staff
14 July, 2024


Palestine PM Mahmoud Abbas said Hamas shares legal, moral and political responsibility for Israel's ongoing war on the Gaza Strip [Getty]

Several Palestinian groups have condemned President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday for blaming Hamas for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Hours after Israeli airstrikes killed at least 90 Palestinians in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in Gaza, the Palestinian presidency issued a statement holding the Israeli government and the US administration to account for the massacre, as well as saying Hamas also holds some blame.

The PM accused the US of providing "all kinds of support to the occupation and its crimes, which are a link in the chain of daily massacres committed in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank," adding that it constitutes war crimes and genocide which violates international law.

Abbas continued by saying Hamas "is a partner in bearing legal, moral and political responsibility for the continuation of the Israeli war of genocide in Gaza Strip" by evading national unity and "pretexts to the occupying state".

He called on Hamas to prioritise national interests and remove the pretexts to stop Israel’s war.

Hamas has since denounced Abbas’ statement, with senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri telling Reuters the Palestinian Authority "has chosen to be in the same trench with the occupation" and "such an attitude will not succeed in blackmailing the resistance or pressuring it".

The group also called on the presidency to withdraw these "regrettable" statements and stressed that Israel and the US bear responsibility for the ongoing war.

Fatah leader Munir al-Jaghoub found the statement "offensive" to the people of Palestine. At the same time, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also condemned the statement.

"There is a state of broad popular and national solidarity with the resistance, which requires all national forces, including the Fatah movement and the leadership of the Authority, to adhere to the position of national consensus and stand firmly with the resistance, and to refrain from justifying the crimes of the occupation or identifying with its media propaganda," the Front’s statement reads.

The organisation is calling on all national parties to stop making such statements that increase tension and to be instead more unifying, reflecting the Palestine state rather than reinforcing the Israeli narrative.

While Abbas has led the State of Palestine for almost two decades, his reign has been controversial.

Activists have accused the PM of not taking a more active role in addressing Israel’s occupation, while the majority of diaspora Palestinians criticise him and referring to him as "a stick in the wheel of Palestinian democratic progression", according to Palestine and Israel researcher Emad Moussa.

Israel's war on Gaza has killed over 38,584 Palestinians since October and wounded at least 88,881 others in the same time frame. Around 10,000 others are believed to be still buried under the rubble.

The war on the besieged enclave has levelled entire neighbourhoods and plunged Gaza into a deep humanitarian crisis.

UN Experts Say ‘Targeted Starvation Campaign’ by Israel Has Led to Famine Across Gaza

The starvation of Palestinians in Gaza "is a form of genocidal violence," said 10 rights experts.

By Julia Conley

July 10, 2024

Source: Common Dreams




While the United Nations still has not formally declared a famine in Gaza after nine months of Israel’s near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, 10 top U.N. experts on Tuesday said they have seen enough.

“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” said the experts.

Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, was joined in the statement by other experts including Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, and Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

They said the recent deaths of three children in various parts of the enclave led the experts, who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations as a whole, to declare a famine has taken hold.

“Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on May 30, 2024 and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah,” said the experts. “Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3, 2024 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare.”

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they continued.





We are now seeing famine across the whole of Gaza. All houses destroyed, food systems destroyed and healthcare destroyed. And kids are dying. Is there any humanity left? https://t.co/jjI5ZHAvbA— UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing (@adequatehousing) July 9, 2024

At least 34 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority being children—have now died from malnutrition since October, when Israel began its bombardment of the enclave in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced there would “be no electricity, no food, no fuel” allowed in to Gaza.

Israeli officials said in response to Tuesday’s statement that it has increased the aid allowed into Gaza recently, but hundreds of delivery trucks remain stranded in Egypt and a floating pier built by the U.S. has not significantly improved the humanitarian crisis.

The U.N. experts said that with the first death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration, it should have been considered “irrefutable that famine has taken hold.”

“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on February 24 and March 4, respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said. “The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths… Inaction is complicity.”

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is backed by the U.N., said last month that Gaza is at high risk for famine and that nearly half a million people were facing “catastrophic” food insecurity, with an extreme lack of food.

In May, Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who had previously hesitated to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, said Israel’s “sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory” ultimately convinced him that Israeli officials are “engaged in genocide.”

In March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure its military refrain from violating the Genocide Convention by preventing humanitarian aid from reaching people in Gaza, saying that “the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further” and that “famine is setting in.”

A woman named Ghaneyma Joma told Reuters on Monday at a hospital in Khan Younis that she feared her son would soon die of starvation.

“It’s distressing to see my child… lying there dying from malnutrition because I cannot provide him with anything due to the war, the closing of crossings, and the contaminated water,” she told the outlet.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the U.S. government, the biggest international funder of Israel’s military and a persistent defender of its actions in Gaza, to ensure that a cease-fire agreement is reached and that Palestinians receive necessary humanitarian aid.

“The intentional starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza can only occur with the active complicity of the Biden administration in Israel’s campaign of genocide,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the group. “This complicity must end, and the Palestinian people must be offered a future in which they are free of occupation and can live in dignity.”

On The Record With Hamas

In a Drop Site News exclusive, Hamas officials discuss their motivations, political objectives, and the human costs of their armed uprising against Israel

By Jeremy Scahill

July 12, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Members of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. Photo: Mahmud Hams

LONG READ

The past nine months of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza have spurred an unprecedented global awakening to the plight of the Palestinian people. At no point in the 76 years since the formation of the state of Israel and the unleashing of the Nakba has there been such sustained and open anger at Israel and such widespread solidarity with the Palestinians. The massive demonstrations in cities across the globe, the severing of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, the recalling of ambassadors, rulings from world courts against Israel, and mounting demands for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state—none of this would have taken place without the impetus of Hamas’s armed insurrection on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent war of annihilation in Gaza.

This reality poses uncomfortable but ineluctable questions. From Hamas’s perspective, was Operation Al Aqsa Flood a successful operation? Hamas undoubtedly knew that Israeli retaliation would include the killing of many Palestinian civilians, even if the horrific scale of Israel’s assault was unforeseen. Was October 7, then, a collective martyrdom operation launched without the consent of 2.3 million Palestinians? And, for the many people who proclaim their support for the Palestinian cause but reflexively condemn the violence of the October 7 attacks, how can they realistically separate the two?

Drop Site conducted a series of interviews with senior Hamas officials alongside a comprehensive review of its statements and those of its leaders. I interviewed a variety of Hamas sources on background for this story and two—Basem Naim and Ghazi Hamad—agreed to speak on the record. I also spoke to a range of knowledgeable Palestinians, Israelis, and international sources in an effort to understand the tactical and political aims of the October 7 attacks. Some people will inevitably criticize the choice to interview and publish Hamas officials’ answers to these questions as propaganda. I believe it is essential that the public understand the perspectives of the individuals and groups who initiated the attack that spurred Israel’s genocidal war—an argument that is seldom permitted outside of simple soundbytes.

Hamas leaders cast their operations on October 7 as a righteous rebellion against an occupation force that has waged a military, political, and economic war of collective punishment against the people of Gaza. “They have left us no choice other than to take the decision in our hands and to fight back,” said Dr. Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau and a former government minister in Gaza. “October 7, for me, is an act of defense, maybe the last chance for Palestinians to defend themselves.”

Naim, a medical doctor, is a member of the inner circle surrounding former Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the chief political leader of Hamas, who is based in Doha, Qatar. In the aftermath of October 7, Naim has served as one of the few Hamas officials authorized to speak publicly on behalf of the movement. In an interview, Naim offered an unapologetic defense of the October 7 attacks against Israel and said that Hamas was acting out of existential necessity in the face of sustained diplomatic and military assaults not only on Palestinians in Gaza, but also the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

“The people in Gaza, they had one of two choices: Either to die because of siege and malnutrition and hunger and lacking of medicine and lacking of treatment abroad, or to die by a rocket. We have no other choice,” he said. “If we have to choose, why choose to be the good victims, the peaceful victims? If we have to die, we have to die in dignity. Standing, fighting, fighting back, and standing as dignified martyrs.”

Polls suggest that Palestinian support for Hamas remains strong. Prior to the October 7 attacks, opinion polling in Gaza and the West Bank indicated that support for Hamas was on the decline, with one poll finding that just 23 percent of respondents expressed significant support for Hamas and more than half registering negative views. “The October 7 war reversed that trend leading to a great rise in Hamas’s popularity,” Arab Barometer reported.

A more recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, whose findings were released in mid-June, found that two-thirds of the Gaza population continued to express support for the October 7 attack on Israel, with more than 80 percent asserting that it put Palestine at the center of global attention. More than half of Gaza residents polled indicated that they hoped Hamas would return to power after the war. “They lost confidence in peace with Israel. People believe that the only way is now to fight against Israel, to struggle against Israel,” said Ghazi Hamad, the former Hamas deputy foreign minister and a longstanding member of its political bureau, in an interview. “We put the Palestinian cause on the table. I think that we have a new page of history.”

“Israel has now spent nine months [fighting in Gaza]—nine months. This is [a] small area. No mountains, no valleys. It is a very small, besieged area—against Hamas’s 20,000 [fighters],” Hamad continued. “They bring all the military power, supported by the United States. But I think now they failed. They failed.”

Dr. Yara Hawari, the co-director of Al-Shabaka, an independent Palestinian think tank, said that assessing the role Hamas’s October 7 attacks played in the growing global movement to support Palestinians raises complex moral questions. “If the Israeli regime hadn’t embarked on a genocide in Gaza, would we be facing this kind of level of solidarity? I think it’s a difficult thing to answer. It’s also an uncomfortable one because I don’t think Palestinians anywhere should pay in blood for the solidarity of people around the world and certainly not in over 40,000 people killed,” she told me.

“We have surpassed the numbers of the Nakba by at least three times in terms of those killed. And an entire place has been destroyed. Gaza doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been destroyed completely. So I think that it’s certainly been a very revealing moment,” said Hawari, who is based in Ramallah. “Had October 7 not happened, would that have been revealed to people around the world or not? It’s an uncomfortable thing to think about for sure.”

Hamas has emphasized that its aim on October 7 was to shatter the status quo and compel the U.S. and other nations to address the plight of the Palestinians. On this front, informed analysts say, they succeeded. “On October 6, Palestine had disappeared from the regional agenda, from the international agenda. Israel was dealing unilaterally with the Palestinians without generating any attention or any criticism,” said Mouin Rabbani, a former UN official who worked as a special advisor on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group. “The attacks of Hamas on October 7 and their aftermath played a crucial role, but I think just as much credit, if you will, goes to Israel, if not more so,” he added. “If Israel had responded in the way that it did in [previous assaults on Gaza] in 2008, 2014, 2021, it would have been a story for a number of weeks, there would have been a lot of hand wringing, and that would have been the end of it.”

“It’s not only the actions of the colonized, but also the reaction of the colonizer that has created the current political reality, the current political moment,” Rabbani said.

U.S. and Israeli officials often respond to questions about the staggering death toll in Gaza or the mass killing of women and children over the past 9 months by casting blame solely on Hamas. They have treated the events of October 7 as if they granted Israel an open-ended license to kill on an industrial scale. “None of the suffering would have happened if Hamas hadn’t done what it did on October 7,” is a sentiment Secretary of State Antony Blinken is fond of repeating.

That is clearly untrue. But does multi-decade brutality of the Israeli occupation absolve Hamas of all responsibility for the consequences of its actions on October 7?

“These deaths should be on the conscience of the Israeli leaders who decided to kill all these people,” said Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine and widely viewed as the leading U.S. historian of Palestine. “But they also to some extent should be on the consciences of the people who organized [the October 7] operation. They should have known, and had to have known that Israel would inflict devastating revenge not just on them but mainly on the civilian population. Do you credit them for this?” Khalidi added. “The end result may be the permanent occupation, immiseration, and perhaps even expulsion of the population of Gaza, in which case I don’t think anybody would want to credit whoever organized this operation.”

The Palestinian-American novelist and author Susan Abulhawa has twice traveled to Gaza since the siege began last fall and has been unapologetic in her defense of Palestinian armed resistance. She rejects the notion that Hamas is responsible for Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza since October 7. “It’s kind of like telling the folks in the Warsaw uprising that you should have known that the German military was going to respond the way they did and you are going to be responsible for the deaths of other residents in the Warsaw ghetto,” Abulhawa said. “Maybe that’s true, but is it really a moral point to make? I don’t think there has ever been so much scrutiny on an indigenous people, on how they’re resisting their colonizers.”

Abulhawa, whose novels include Against the Loveless World and Mornings in Jenin, told me, “As a Palestinian, I’m grateful for it. I think what they have done is something that no amount of negotiation was ever able to achieve. Nothing else we did was able to achieve what they did on October 7. And I should say, actually, it’s not so much what they did, but it was Israel’s reaction that led to a shift in the narrative because they’re finally naked before the world.”
Men in the Tunnels

The past 76 years of Palestinian history have been a nonstop succession of Israeli atrocities and war crimes. Why did Hamas launch such a monumental action at this specific moment?

The people who can best answer the question of what Hamas was thinking on October 7 are the men in the tunnels being hunted by Israeli forces in Gaza. Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader on the ground, and Mohammed Deif, commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, are widely understood to have decided how and when the course of history would be altered.

In both Israeli and U.S. media, Sinwar is generally portrayed as a cartoonish villain hiding in his tunnel lair, dreaming up ways to murder and terrorize innocent Israelis as part of a warped, ISIS-style interpretation of Islam. He has been a U.S. State Department-designated terrorist since 2015. “The United States has to have a bogeyman, a Saddam Hussein figure, a Hitler figure,” said Khalidi. “I think Sinwar has been chosen.”

Despite the sinister portrayals, Sinwar’s writings and media interviews indicate he is a complex thinker with clearly defined political objectives who believes in armed struggle as a means to an end. He gives the impression of a well-educated political militant, not a cult leader on a mass suicide crusade. “It’s not this black image of Sinwar as a man with two horns living in the tunnels,” said Hamad, the Hamas official who worked directly with Sinwar for three years. “But in the time of war, he’s very strong. This man is very strong. If he wants to fight, he fights seriously.”

In 1988, just months after Hamas was founded, Sinwar was arrested by Israeli forces and sentenced to four life sentences on charges he had personally murdered alleged Palestinian collaborators. During his 22 years in an Israeli prison, he became fluent in Hebrew and studied the history of the Israeli state, its political culture, and its intelligence and military apparatus. He translated by hand the memoirs of several former heads of the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet. “When I entered [prison], it was 1988, the Cold War was still going on. And here [in Palestine], the Intifada. To spread the latest news, we printed fliers. I came out, and I found the internet,” Sinwar told an Italian journalist in 2018. “But to be honest, I never came out—I have only changed prisons. And despite it all, the old one was much better than this one. I had water, electricity. I had so many books. Gaza is much tougher.”

In his past media interviews, Sinwar has spoken of Hamas as a social movement with a military wing and framed its political goals as part of the historic struggle to reestablish a unified state of Palestine. “I am the Gaza leader of Hamas, of something much more complex than a militia—a national liberation movement. And my main duty is to act in the interest of my people: to defend it and its right to freedom and independence,” he said. “All of those who still view us as an armed group, and nothing more, you don’t have any idea of what Hamas really looks like…. You focus on resistance, on the means rather than the goal—which is a state based on democracy, pluralism, cooperation. A state that protects rights and freedom, where differences are faced through words, not through guns. Hamas is much more than its military operations.”

Sinwar, unlike leaders of Al Qaeda or ISIS, has regularly invoked international law and UN resolutions, exhibiting a nuanced understanding of the history of negotiations with Israel mediated by the U.S. and other nations. “Let’s be clear: having an armed resistance is our right, under international law. But we don’t only have rockets. We have been using a variety of means of resistance,” he said in the 2018 interview. “We make the headlines only with blood. And not only here. No blood, no news. But the problem is not our resistance, it is their occupation. With no occupation, we wouldn’t have rockets. We wouldn’t have stones, Molotov cocktails, nothing. We would all have a normal life.”

Throughout 2018 and 2019, Sinwar endorsed the large-scale nonviolent protests along the walls and fences of Gaza known as the Great March of Return. “We believe that if we have a way to potentially resolve the conflict without destruction, we’re O.K. with that,” Sinwar said at a rare news conference in 2018. “We would prefer to earn our rights by soft and peaceful means. But we understand that if we are not given those rights, we are entitled to earn them by resistance.”

Israel responded to the protests with the regular use of lethal force, killing 223 people and wounding more than 8,000 others. Israeli snipers later boasted about shooting dozens of protesters in the knee during the weekly Friday demonstrations. For many Palestinians these events reinforced the view that Israel’s policies cannot be changed by words.

In May 2021, following a series of Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers at Al Aqsa mosque—as well as threats of forced evictions of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem—Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of rockets at Israeli cities, killing 12 civilians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with U.S. support, ordered heavy attacks against Gaza. More than 250 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured.

After the end of Israel’s 11-day bombing campaign against Gaza, Sinwar spoke to VICE News and sought to frame the Palestinian struggle in a U.S. context, using recent cases of lethal police violence against African Americans. “The same type of racism that killed George Floyd is being used by [Israel] against the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and in the West Bank. And by the burning of our children. And against the Gaza Strip through siege, murder, and starvation.”

The Israeli attacks ended when President Joe Biden intervened and told Netanyahu to wrap it up. “Hey, man, we are out of runway here,” Biden told Netanyahu on a May 19 phone call. “It’s over.” Two days later, Israel agreed to a ceasefire.

“The battle between us and the occupation who desecrated our land, displaced our people and are still murdering and displacing Palestinians—confiscating lands and attacking sacred places—is an open ended battle,” Sinwar said. When asked about the killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas rockets, Sinwar became animated. “You can’t compare that to those who resist and defend themselves with weapons that look primitive in comparison. If we had the capabilities to launch precision missiles that targeted military targets, we wouldn’t have used the rockets that we did,” he shot back. “Does the world expect us to be well-behaved victims while we’re getting killed? For us to be slaughtered without making a noise? That’s impossible.”

Two and a half years later, Sinwar authorized the start of Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the single deadliest attack inside Israel in history.

Hamas officials told me that for strategic reasons they timed the attacks to coincide with Shemini Atzeret, the final day of the Sukkot thanksgiving holiday, but more broadly to exploit mounting divisions within Israeli society and the deepening unpopularity of Netanyahu within Israel. On a tactical level, they engaged in extensive monitoring of the Israeli military facilities along what is referred to as the “Gaza envelope” and identified vulnerabilities in surveillance systems and perimeter defenses.

Throughout the two years leading up to the October 7 attacks, Hamas officials told me, they sent Israel repeated warnings to halt the activity of illegal settlements and annexations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Hamas also protested Israel’s mounting attacks and provocations on the grounds of Al Aqsa mosque, the holiest Islamic site in Palestine, and demanded that the U.S. and other nations restrain Israel. “We talked to the mediators, especially the United Nations and the Egyptians and the Qataris: ‘Tell Israel to stop this. We will not be able to tolerate more and more,’” said Hamad, a Hebrew speaker with a long history of negotiating with Israeli officials. “They did not listen to us. They thought that Hamas is weak, Hamas is now just looking for some humanitarian aid, some facilities in the Gaza Strip. But at the same time, we were preparing.”

“We were preparing because we are under occupation,” said Hamad. “We think that the West Bank and Gaza is one unit. This is our people under oppression, under killing and massacres. We have to save them. And Israel feels that they are above the law. They can do anything. No one can stop them.”

“We have said it before October 7 that the earthquake is coming. And the repercussions of this earthquake will be beyond the borders of Palestine,” Naim said.

As Hamas delivered messages through international mediators, it simultaneously held regular secret meetings in Gaza where its leaders brainstormed potential ways to confront Israel. “We had meetings in the political bureau of Hamas in Gaza, and we discussed the situation all the time. What was put on the table was an evaluation of Israel in the West Bank and Al Aqsa mosque,” said Hamad. “Hamas decided to do something in order to make a kind of deterrence to Israel.” They also wanted to send a message to the Palestinian masses: “We are not weak [like] the Palestinian Authority.”

Hamad said the discussions focused on actions that would force the world to pay attention to the plight of Palestinians, but also to send a message to Israel. “We are going to show them that we can do something in order to harm you and to hurt you,” he said. “What is the other alternative? Either we, as Palestinians, are waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for many years for some countries, the international community, to do something in order to save the Palestinians, or we can go in the violent way to make a kind of shock, in order to get the attention of the world.”

Naim said Hamas had concluded that Israeli policy could only be altered through violent resistance. “I have to say we are also reading history very well. We [learned] from the history in Vietnam, in Somalia, in South Africa, in Algiers,” he said. “At the end, they are not peaceful NGOs who will come and say, ‘Sorry we have bothered you for some years and now we are leaving and please forgive us.’ They are so brutal and bloody that they will not leave except with the same tools they are using.”

Hamad and other Hamas political officials said that while they participated in the strategy meetings in Gaza leading up to the attacks, most of them were not privy to the operational details or timing of the operations. “There is a special group headed by Sinwar, who took the decision for October 7. A very narrow circle,” he said. “We did not know anything about this. We were surprised with October 7.”
A Surprising Collapse

Before October 7, the prospects for a Palestinian state were becoming slimmer and slimmer. The conditions in Gaza were dire and there were no signs of improvement because of the intense Israeli blockade and lack of interest from the world. Residents of the Strip, according to polls, were increasingly apportioning blame for their misery on Hamas—one of the central aims of Israel’s collective punishment strategy. The U.S. was spearheading a series of diplomatic initiatives to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states. The Abraham Accords, launched under President Donald Trump, effectively excised the issue of Palestinian self-determination as a condition for normalization, a major victory for Israel. Israeli provocations and attacks against worshippers at Al Aqsa were becoming a regular occurrence. Israel was aggressively moving forward with its annexation of Palestinian land and armed settlers were conducting deadly paramilitary actions, often with the support or facilitation of the government, against Palestinian farms and homes in the occupied territories.

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank was widely despised for its corruption and collaboration with Israel, including through the brutal actions of its U.S.-backed security forces. The PA, often referred to as a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation, routinely arrests dissidents, union organizers, and journalists, in addition to people Israel has identified as security risks.

Hamas wanted to shatter the status quo on Gaza, position itself as the defender of the Palestinian people, and open possibilities for a new alignment of political power to replace what they saw as PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Vichy rule. At its highest level, Operation Al Aqsa Flood was to be the opening salvo in what Hamas hoped would be a decisive and historic moment in the war for the liberation of Palestine.

On a tactical level, the October 7 operations exceeded Hamas’s projections. “It was very surprising for us how speedy one of the strongest brigades in the Israel Army—the Gaza brigade is one of the strongest, most sophisticated groups of their army—to collapse within hours without any serious resistance, and that even the state as a whole, for hours and maybe days, continued to be paralyzed, were not able to respond in the proper professional way,” said Naim, the Hamas political bureau member.

“They were able to create this image of undefeated, undefeatable army, undefeatable soldiers, the long hand of Israel, which can hit everywhere or strike everywhere and come back, relax, to drink at some cafe in Tel Aviv, like what they have done in Iraq, in Syria, Lebanon, everywhere. I think it has shown that [Israel’s self-promoted reputation] was not reflecting the reality.” The attacks, he said, showed Palestinians and their allies that “Israel is defeatable and liberation of Palestine is a good possibility.”

Nine months after the attacks, Israel remains in a state of shock and disbelief over the total failure of its vaunted military and intelligence agencies to protect the most vulnerable areas of Israel.

“Hamas won the war on October 7. The fact that they were able to conquer parts of Israel and kill so many Israelis,” said Gershon Baskin, an experienced Israeli negotiator in regular touch with elements of Hamas. “They took out Israel’s electronic surveillance system with drones that you can buy on Amazon and hand grenades. They took down Israel’s internal communication systems in the kibbutzim all around the Gaza Strip. They were so much more sophisticated than Israel.”

Hamas “never imagined that there would be no Israeli army when they crossed the border into Israel,” said Baskin. “One of the Hamas leaders told me, ‘If we knew there was going to be no army there, we would have sent 10,000 people and conquered Tel Aviv.’ And they’re not mistaken. They had no army there, and when they encountered the [Nova] music festival that they didn’t know about, they went on a killing spree.”

Khalidi also believes that Hamas was not prepared for its own operational success on October 7. “I don’t think they expected the Gaza division to fall apart. I don’t think they expected to overrun a dozen or more border settlements. I don’t think they expected thousands and thousands of Gazans to come out of this prison that Israel has created and kidnap individual Israelis. I don’t think they expected the kind of killing that took place in these border settlements. I don’t think all of this was planned, frankly,” he told me. “There was absolutely no control of the battle space. There was no control of this area. The Israeli army took four days to reoccupy every single military position, every single border village. So there were two days, three days, in some cases more, during which there was complete chaos. I’m sure horrific things happened.”

Hamas has consistently denied allegations that its fighters intentionally killed civilians on October 7. In a manifesto published on January 21, titled “Our Narrative,” Hamas sought to explain Operation Al Aqsa Flood, though the document consisted mostly of general grievances. Among the tangible aims of the attacks in Israel, Hamas said, its fighters had “targeted the Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers to [put] pressure on the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails through a prisoners exchange deal.”

“Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza,” it continued. Sinwar reportedly acknowledged to his comrades after October 7 that “things went out of control” and “People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.”

Rabbani said that it is undeniable that Hamas killed civilians during the October 7 attacks and expressed serious doubts about the group’s official position that Al Aqsa Flood was focused solely on targeting the Israeli military. “Hamas has a history of this—its suicide bombings against civilian buses and restaurants and so on during the Second Intifada,” he said. Rabbani recalls reading accounts of the October 7 attacks and watching videos from that day of Israeli civilians being killed or captured. “My initial view was that these were probably people who had been suffering in Gaza their whole lives, didn’t expect to go back alive, and wanted to go out with a bang. I’m sure that’s the explanation for some of these cases,” he said.

“But I also wonder to what extent it was premeditated. I’d be very interested to learn to what extent Hamas intended to inflict a terribly traumatic blow on Israeli society, and not only the Israeli military,” he added. “There is evidence to support it. There is also evidence to contradict it. But I think it’s a question worth examining in more detail.”

The discourse surrounding the killing of Israeli civilians on October 7 has been a central element in shaping public opinion on the war. “So much of the rage in Israel is a function of this very high toll of civilian death,” said Khalidi. “War leads to civilian deaths, but this was far beyond what could or should have been acceptable under any circumstances, and that is also on the planners of this operation. I think that’s a hard thing to say, but I think it’s something that should be said.”

Israel’s social security agency has determined the official death toll from October 7 to be 1,139 people. Among those killed, 695 were categorized as Israeli civilians, along with 71 foreign civilians and 373 members of Israeli security forces. As horrifying as the civilian death toll was on October 7, the message was and remains firm from U.S. and Israeli officials: Israeli lives are worth exponentially more than those of Palestinians.

Hamas has said that its forces targeted military bases and illegal settlements, characterizing the killing of civilians in the kibbutzim as collateral damage in battles against armed settlers “registered as civilians while the fact is they were armed men fighting alongside the Israeli army.” Hamas officials suggested that many of the confirmed dead Israeli civilians were killed in crossfire, “friendly fire” incidents, or intentionally killed by the Israeli Army to prevent them from being taken alive back to Gaza. “If there was any case of targeting civilians,” Hamas alleged in its manifesto, “it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.”

Abulhawa charged that the Israeli and U.S. governments launched a coordinated propaganda campaign in the immediate aftermath of October 7 aimed at dehumanizing Palestinians and successfully crafted a false narrative of Hamas fighters as bestial monsters who killed for the sake of killing. She cited the volume of horror stories of sadistic crimes allegedly committed by Hamas fighters, including the beheading of babies, that have been promoted by Israeli and US officials, including Biden, only to later be disproven under scrutiny from journalists and independent researchers. “They said that they beheaded babies, that they eviscerated a pregnant woman, that they burned a baby in an oven, like really horrific violence that seemed just evil and gratuitous to kill Jews. That was the narrative,” she said. “It had not even a seed of truth.”

Hamas’s Naim credited the October 7 attacks and the nine months of armed insurgency against the invading Israeli forces for elevating the plight of Palestinian liberation to the center of global attention. “This popular support everywhere, especially in America and Europe, do you believe this would happen by a workshop in Washington, D.C., discussing between Palestinians and Americans how to run Rafah crossings?” he asked. “Unfortunately, this is the way. There is no other way.”

Hamad told me that no one involved with the planning of the October 7 attacks that he spoke with predicted the full scope of Israel’s response and that many Hamas leaders expected a more intense and prolonged version of previous Israeli attacks on Gaza. “This is a point that is very sensitive,” he said. “No one expected this reaction from the Israel side, because what happened now in Gaza, it is a full destruction of Gaza, killing about 40,000 people, destroying all the institutions, hospitals and everything. I know the situation is horrible in Gaza. It’s very, very hard. And we need at least ten years to reconstruct Gaza.”

“This war is totally different,” Hamad said. “Totally different.”
Prisoner Dilemma

International mediators have restarted negotiations between Hamas and Israel and there are indications that some type of incremental agreement may be on the horizon, though the permanent ceasefire that Hamas has demanded seems unlikely. “The main issue is Hamas won’t do a deal without the end of the war and Israel won’t do a deal that ends the war,” Baskin told me.

Israel has insisted that Hamas disarm and that the group be barred from participating in the post-war governance of Gaza. Hamas has maintained it will remain a political force with the right to armed defense against Israeli occupation. “America should understand, and this is very important, Hamas will be part of the Palestinian scene,” said Hamad. “Hamas will not be expelled. Hamas created October 7 and created this history.”

According to a member of Hamas’s negotiating team, the Palestinian representatives have observed U.S. mediators growing increasingly frustrated with the Israeli side. “Everything that [Israel] needs, they call the babysitter. The United States is fed up now from the Israeli behavior,” said the Hamas official, who asked to remain anonymous. “They are scared that this war will be wider in different regions, so they want to control Netanyahu and his madness. They are trying to [put] more pressure on Israel to accept this ceasefire. They are trying, but I think until now they did not use all the cards in order to push Israel. I think it’s like their spoiled boy.” The Hamas negotiator told me he has the impression that “the United States is trying to deal gently and softly with Israel, trying to apply pressure, but not squeeze them in the corner. Because of this, now there is a big conflict and dispute between Israel and the United States.”

Of all the objectives of the October 7 attacks, the one that Hamas was most confident would yield concrete results was freeing Palestinians from Israeli jails. According to Israeli figures, more than 240 people, including Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as foreigners, were taken back to Gaza during the Hamas-led attacks.

Sinwar has consistently prioritized the liberation of Palestinian prisoners. It was how he gained his own freedom in 2011, in an exchange that saw Sinwar and more than 1,000 other Palestinians freed from Israeli jails in return for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. “It isn’t a political issue, for me it is a moral issue,” he said in 2018. “I will try more than my best to free those who are still inside.”

Naim said Israel has historically shown a willingness to pay a high price for the return of its soldiers, including freeing Palestinians it characterizes as terrorists. “Some of them are now [in prison] for more than 45, 44 years,” he said. “They have also exercised a lot of pressure on the leadership to do something.”

But, three weeks into the war, when Sinwar officially proposed a sweeping deal to release “all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for all prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance,” Israel rejected it.

Baskin has served as a shadow peace negotiator with a variety of Palestinian factions. He played a central role in negotiating the Shalit deal and has continued to work behind the scenes on hostage issues since October 7. Hamas, he said, knew the only chance to free the “impossibles”—high-value Palestinian prisoners including those who had been convicted of killing Israelis—would be to take large numbers of military personnel hostage. “For the soldiers, they wanted to free all the Palestinian prisoners in Israel, those serving life sentences,” Baskin said. “At that time, there were 559 Palestinians serving life sentences. That was their main target, getting all of them.”

Eventually, under both domestic and international pressure, Netanyahu agreed to a limited exchange deal. During a brief truce last November, Hamas released 105 civilian hostages to Israel in return for 240 Palestinians—mostly women and children—held captive by Israel. “[Hamas] made a quick deal with the Israelis,” said Baskin. “It was three prisoners for every hostage. I think that was an amazingly low price.”

Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas official who worked with Sinwar, was emphatic that Hamas did not intend to take Israeli civilians hostage. “What we planned was just for military purposes, just to destroy this part of the Israeli army who controls the situation in Gaza and to take some hostages from the military—soldiers—in order to make a kind of exchange,” he said. “I don’t deny that there were some mistakes done by some people, but I am talking about the decision of Hamas, the policy of Hamas.”

Baskin told me it was immediately clear that Hamas did not prepare for holding so many civilians and was caught off guard when other Palestinian groups and individuals who flooded into Israel that day took large numbers of hostages, including senior citizens and children. “They ended up simply taking people back into Gaza without thinking about the logistics, about what price they wanted for them,” Baskin said. “From day four of the war, I was talking to Hamas already about a deal for the women, the children, the elderly, and the wounded, which I thought was the low hanging fruit, because Hamas would not have been set up to deal with them. They wanted to get rid of them.”

Israel has used the civilian hostages as the primary justification for their continued siege. Hamad confirmed that negotiations began almost immediately after the October 7 attacks. He told me that “from the first week, we talked to some people, some mediators, that we want to return the civilians, but Israel refused.”

Hamad added that Hamas informed international mediators last November that it was working to track down more civilian hostages taken by other groups or individuals so it could return them to Israel. “We asked them, ‘Please give us time now to look for people,’” Hamad said. “But Israel did not listen to us and they continued to kill people.”

A major point of contention in the current negotiations, Hamas negotiators told me, is Israel’s continued refusal to free Palestinians it characterizes as terrorists with “Jewish blood on their hands.” Hamas has insisted that if Israel wants its soldiers returned, it must free Palestinian resistance fighters, including those convicted of murdering Israelis. In the negotiations, Israel has insisted it maintain veto power over Hamas’s list of Palestinian prisoners it wants freed in any deal.

Hamas negotiators told me that the fact that their forces have managed to sustain a nine-month armed insurgency against Israel in Gaza despite being outgunned and subjected to large-scale attacks with powerful weapons provided by the U.S. has sent a message to the negotiators that Hamas has its own red lines. “Nine months have passed and our resistance has not been exhausted, nor has it relented, nor has it subsided,” said the spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, known by his nom de guerre Abu Obeida, in a July 7 audio message. “We are still fighting in Gaza without support or external supply of weapons and equipment, and our people are still persevering without food, water, or medicine, and under a criminal, unjust genocide war.”

Last weekend, Netanyahu released a list of what he called “non-negotiables” in any agreement with Hamas. Among these was preventing the smuggling of weapons from Egypt, the return of a maximum number of living Israeli captives held in Gaza, and barring Hamas fighters from returning to northern Gaza. The most contentious aspect of Netanyahu’s list is his insistence that Israel reserve the right to resume its full-scale war in Gaza, a notion that Hamas has consistently rejected.

Hamad believes the mediators, including those from the U.S., are aware that Netanyahu views the continuation of the war as linked to his own political survival. While a preliminary agreement may be reached for another exchange of captives, Netanyahu has reiterated his vow to destroy Hamas militarily.

“He wants to prove that he is [continuing the war] in order to achieve his big goals or what’s called the ‘total victory’ in Gaza. But I think he could not convince even the Israeli community, the Israeli parties and his partners in the coalition,” Hamad said. “Every day that he is losing soldiers and tanks, what’s the big achievement of Netanyahu? To kill civilians. So I think that the negotiation is stuck on this point, that there is no seriousness, strong will from the Israeli side to have an agreement with Hamas.”

“If you look to the text on both sides, it is easy to bridge the gaps,” Hamad added. “Israel is working very hard in order not to achieve an agreement, because I think that this agreement will dismantle the coalition in Israel. I think this will be the end of the political career for Netanyahu.”
An Unsustainable Status Quo

The October 7 attacks are often portrayed by U.S. leaders as having occurred in a historical vacuum—an alternative reality where Hamas, unprovoked, obliterated the peace. But for the people of Gaza, there has been no true peace. For 76 years, only a morsel of freedom has ever existed and for most of the past two decades it was restricted to the imaginations of a people confined to an open air prison surrounded by the occupation’s military bases and dotted by gated communities housing Israelis enjoying life in a bucolic setting.

In the years preceding the October 7 attacks, under presidents Trump and Biden, Hamas watched as Israel became more emboldened as prospects for Palestinian liberation receded to the footnotes of Washington-led initiatives aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Netanyahu’s position was: “We must not give the Palestinians a veto over new peace treaties with Arab states.”

Just two weeks before the October 7 attacks, the Israeli leader delivered a speech at the UN general assembly in New York, brandishing a map of what he promised could be the “New Middle East.” It depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza and the West Bank, as Palestinian lands, were erased.

During that speech, Netanyahu portrayed the full normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia as the linchpin of his vision for this “new” reality, one which would open the door to a “visionary corridor that will stretch across the Arabian Peninsula and Israel. It will connect India to Europe with maritime links, rail links, energy pipelines, fiber-optic cables.”

Hamas monitored these developments carefully and saw the U.S. moves toward circumventing a Palestinian resolution in its normalization campaign as an existential threat. “If Saudi Arabia signed, it means the whole region, when it comes to the Palestinian question, will collapse. It is not a plan. It is not a peace process. It is an integration of Israel in the newly created Middle East. They have started to talk about Middle East NATO,” Naim said. “It is a coup against the heritage, the history, the values of this region and against the future, all this together.”

According to Abulhawa, “The status quo was unsustainable and untenable, especially when Arab leaders began normalizing and the writing was on the wall for our total disappearance and total destruction.”

While Netanyahu’s vision for a new silk road through a Middle East without Palestine was certainly a concern, Rabbani doubts that Hamas believed it could derail the Abraham Accords. The desired impact, he said, was likely to send a message to the Arab public about the complicity of their rulers in crushing Palestinian aspirations as they carved out agreements with Israel. “If you look at the history of Arab-Israeli normalization agreements, Palestinian blood has never undermined them,” Rabbani said. “When Palestinians look at the region, they feel genuinely abandoned by their own leaders, by those who they consider to be their natural allies and natural champions, by the international community as a whole.”

Arab nations have “to play this sort of balancing act between not upsetting their domestic population and being just the right amount of critical of the Israeli regime,” said Hawari, the political analyst at Al-Shabaka, adding that she has “no expectations from these despotic regimes” to defend Palestinians. “I think the Saudis will push for certain conditions not because they particularly believe very strongly in Palestinian sovereignty, but because also they know that, domestically, Palestine is still a popular cause in Saudi Arabia.”

Abulhawa said that while she understands the value of the quest to fully understand the specific motivations and objectives of Hamas’s operations on October 7, it is essential to view it as a logical consequence of history. “Palestinians have, for decades, tried every possible avenue to shake off this oppression, this unrelenting, violent colonizer. So this was going to happen sooner or later. It was inevitable that something was going to come to a head, particularly in Gaza,” she said.

“If you go back to the 1940s after the Nakba, there was a decade or so when Palestinians were just pleading with international bodies, going from one place to another, trying to negotiate for justice, trying to go home, trying to figure out a way. And there was no movement. We were completely irrelevant. Nobody even acknowledged us,” Abulhawa added. “It was only until Palestinians resorted to armed resistance that the world finally admitted that, ‘Oh wait, this is an indigenous population that does exist.’ It was only after we started hijacking planes and resorting to guerrilla warfare in the spirit of leftist guerrilla movements of that era that there was any movement towards liberation.”

It was that armed resistance that created the space for the peace negotiations between the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that many Western leaders hailed as a breakthrough. The 1993 and 1995 signings of the Oslo accords, brokered by the Clinton administration, were opposed not only by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other armed resistance factions, but also by prominent intellectuals. “Let us call the agreement by its real name: an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles,” wrote Edward Said in a prescient 1993 essay for the London Review of Books. “It would therefore seem that the PLO has ended the intifada, which embodied not terrorism or violence but the Palestinian right to resist, even though Israel remains in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.”

Those agreements led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the concept of limited Palestinian self-governance embedded within the fabric of Israel’s apartheid regime that enforced the pre-October 7 status quo.

In the aftermath of Oslo, both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad engaged in periodic campaigns of armed struggle against Israel, including through suicide bombings and attacks on civilians. This culminated in the launch of the Second Intifada in September 2000 that lasted more than four years. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a network of paramilitary forces aligned with Arafat’s ruling Fatah movement, joined the armed uprising. In the two decades following the intifada, much of the armed resistance has consisted of intermittent rocket attacks launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Gaza and occasional, small-scale attacks against Israelis.

The post-intifada era of largely symbolic armed confrontation of Israel has unfolded in the midst of a political wasteland where the PA, Israel, and the broader international community led by the U.S. have presided over the decay of the dream of Palestinian self-determination. “After Oslo, we are talking about a disastrous political track,” said Naim. “After 30 years, the West Bank is annexed. Jerusalem is mostly Judaized. Al Aqsa is nearly totally controlled. Gaza is totally separated, isolated and besieged for 17 years, a suffocating siege.”

Israel has mastered the exploitation of the specter of armed Palestinian resistance to justify its own wars of conquest and annihilation. And it has done so with the backing of the U.S. and a refusal by successive administrations to apply international law to Israel or to respect UN resolutions.

“The problem that the West has with Palestinian resistance is not terrorism. It’s not the targeting of civilians. It’s not armed resistance. It’s resistance full stop,” Rabbani said. “Whether it’s massacring civilians or successfully hitting military targets or popular mobilization or boycott campaigns, there is not a single form of Palestinian resistance that the West is prepared to accept.”

The October 7 attacks and the subsequent guerrilla war in Gaza against the Israeli military has undoubtedly raised Hamas’s political standing among many Palestinians. This support, though, may not necessarily translate into political and electoral victory down the line. “Whereas they clearly are in a stronger position politically than the PA, which is seen as a subcontractor for the occupation and as clapped out, exhausted, corrupt and so on by most Palestinians, that doesn’t mean that there are not criticisms which many people are not willing to voice right now because they are standing up to the Israelis,” Khalidi said. “Their resistance, the fact that they’re still fighting the Israelis on the one hand makes a lot of Palestinians, especially the ones farther away from Gaza, heartened. On the other hand, what has happened to the people of Gaza leaves a lot of Palestinians, especially the ones in Gaza, not so happy.”

Rabbani agreed that how people in Gaza will ultimately judge Hamas’s responsibility for the apocalyptic devastation they’ve endured remains unpredictable. “I think there will also be many Palestinians who will look and say, ‘Okay, the Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble. You’ve left the people of the Gaza Strip defenseless and subject to genocide. And yes, Israel did it. Israel is responsible. But that’s on you as well.’” At the same time, Rabbani says the attacks of October 7 represent a historic chapter in the cause of Palestinian liberation and compared it to other pivotal moments in anti-colonial struggles in South Africa and Vietnam that came with significant death tolls among civilians. “There’s no denying the catastrophic consequences,” he said. “But my sense is that the changes in the longer term—of course without in any way trying to minimize the enormously unbearable damage that has been inflicted on an entire people—will, in the end, be seen as a critical turning point akin to Sharpeville, Soweto, Dien Bien Phu.”

Abulhawa said that during her trips to Gaza she talked with people about how they viewed Hamas and encountered what she described as complex, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory perspectives. “The trauma is profound. And they’ll tell you two conflicting ideas in the same breath. On the one hand, they’re angry. And sometimes some people will blame Hamas, but everybody knows who’s bombing them. Everybody.”


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Jeremy Scahill  has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now!. Scahill's work has sparked several congressional investigations and won some of journalism’s highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for “Blackwater.” Scahill is a producer and writer of the award-winning film “Dirty Wars,” which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Israel’s Leading Paper Says Its Own Army Deliberately Killed Israelis On October 7. 

But In The U.S. Media: Silence

Israel ordered the "Hannibal Directive" on October 7 by ordering the killing of captive Israeli soldiers and civilians. But the U.S. media continues to hide the truth.

By James North

July 12, 2024

Source: Mondoweiss

Israeli soldiers seen near the Gaza fence, southern Israel, January 7, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Three days ago, Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz, published the results of its thorough, comprehensive investigation into what actually happened when Hamas attacked on October 7. So far, the U.S. mainstream media has not said a word about the shocking results of that investigation. Critics sometimes use the expression “media malpractice” to describe the American mainstream’s failure to report accurately about Israel/Palestine. This time, though, what’s happening is even worse; it has to be deliberate self-censorship, designed to hide the truth from the U.S. audience.

Haaretz’s long report found that Israel’s army had employed the “Hannibal Directive” on October 7. The Directive is an Israeli policy that instructs the military to open fire on its own soldiers to prevent them from being taken captive. Of course, this site, alongside other alternative media sources, was one of the first to point out the possible role of the Hannibal Directive in Israeli deaths on October 7. But the Haaretz report was significant in the number of military sources it interviewed who confirmed that there were direct orders to implement the Directive.

Haaretz explained that the policy has “the intent of foiling kidnapping even at the expense of the lives of the kidnapped.” At first, the army started deploying “Ziks,” unmanned assault drones. Later, the army fired mortars, and then artillery shells. Haaretz also confirmed that the military did know that Israeli civilians had also been taken hostage, but, nonetheless, at 11:22 a.m. the order came down: “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.”

The Haaretz report is cautious, but it still concludes: “[The 11:22 a.m. message] was understood by everyone. . . At this point, the IDF was not aware of the extent of kidnapping along the Gaza border, but it did know that many people were involved. Thus, it was entirely clear what the message meant, and what the fate of some of the kidnapped people would be.”

In other words, some — possibly many — of the Israeli deaths that day, including civilians, were deliberately caused by Israel’s own military. How this is not news is incomprehensible. But, three days later, in the New York Times: not a word. The Washington Post: nothing. CNN: nothing. National Public Radio: nada.

Instead, if you plug “Hannibal” into the search engines at these media sites, the results only mention “Hannibal Lecter,” the fictional serial killer who was the subject of a book and popular film.

But there’s nothing new about the Israeli military’s Hannibal Directive. (The doctrine is probably named for the Carthaginian general who fought Rome in 200 B.C., who said he would swallow poison instead of surrendering. Some Israeli sources claimed that the name was randomly generated, an assertion that prompts skepticism.)

Way back on October 22, this site reported :

“A growing number of reports indicate Israeli forces responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths following October 7 attack.”

Then, last March, the estimable Jonathan Ofir also posted here that an actual Israeli soldier, Captain Bar Zonshein, had admitted to “firing tank shells on vehicles carrying Israeli civilians.”

The even more comprehensive Haaretz investigation should have prompted a reaction from the mainstream U.S. reporters who are stationed in Israel. American journalists should have been cultivating their own sources since October 7, and been ready to at least match the Haaretz article. Instead, the only response so far has been a panel hosted by Piers Morgan, and a Mehdi Hasan/Bassem Youssef podcast.

I’ve followed the U.S. media coverage of Israel/Palestine closely for more than a decade now. Continuing to hide Israel’s deployment of the Hannibal Directive on October 7 is one of the most offensive examples of self-censorship that I can recall. The mainstream’s dishonesty is just one more example of why alternative websites are indispensable.

We’ve Been Fighting Each Other While Big Tech Gets Away With Murder. 

To Win Liberatory Tech Policy, We Need A Unified Strategy And A Clear Division Of Labor.

By Evan Greer

July 13, 2024

Source: Fight For The Future



The movement to hold Big Tech accountable is growing, but we’re struggling. As the clock runs out on this Congress, it looks increasingly likely that nothing will be done to rein in the abusive practices of Silicon Valley giants.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Big Tech has colonized much of what we used to call the Internet, creating a near-monopoly on channels for speech and employing a surveillance-driven business model that’s wreaking havoc on democracy, eviscerating privacy and civil rights, and endangering the lives of the most vulnerable.

But last week, against the backdrop of the Biden-Trump rematch debate, House negotiations around the two “tech bills” that were most likely to move this Congress––the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) went down in flames. It now seems almost certain that this Congress will conclude with nothing meaningful done on tech. To make matters worse, the Supreme Court just overturned the “Chevron Doctrine,” making it orders of magnitude more difficult to advance progressive tech priorities through regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB).

We’re in a bad spot. And we’re going to end up here again and again unless we address some of the fundamental structural shortcomings of the tech justice space. Our work is siloed. We are often fighting orthogonally rather than in parallel. And it’s in large part because many organizations in our small space are more accountable to project-based funders rather than we are to the communities most impacted. Our work has been largely reactive, chasing media cycles and shifting political winds rather than driving toward a coherent, collective vision.

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this silo effect is in the divisions around the “kids bills.”

Whether you’re for or against it, it’s hard to deny that KOSA has split the progressive tech policy coalition right down the middle. Human rights, civil liberties, press freedom, racial justice, and frontlines LGBTQ groups have been pitted against child protection, consumer rights, and tech accountability groups even though we all agree Big Tech should be regulated. Parents of trans kids who have suffered unimaginable harms offline have been pitted against parents of kids who suffered unimaginable harms online.

And while our small but growing tech justice movement has wasted precious time and resources fighting over legislation that appears unlikely to pass, we’ve failed to grow our tent and build a vision for tech regulation that’s accountable to a broader progressive movement––to gig workers, immigrants, Black and brown communities, disabled folks, Palestinians resisting genocide, sex workers, and all those oppressed and exploited by Big Tech.

If we are going to win against a foe like Big Tech, we need a movement that’s bigger than just “tech policy” organizations. We need to take responsibility for building an analysis of how tech interacts with injustice into broader social movements for liberation. And we need to get more honest with ourselves about our substantive disagreements and past strategic failures.

WE’RE OUTGUNNED, BUT WE CAN STILL WIN IF WE UNITE.

Any real strategy for taking on Big Tech must contend with this power imbalance: Big Tech has us outgunned in Washington, DC and in state houses across the country. They have money to burn, and can flood the zone by straight up purchasing influence and spinning up astroturf operations.

We all know our tech justice sector is under-resourced in comparison. But grassroots movements in coordination with civil society have overcome corporate lobbying in the past.

We can win against the odds, and meaningfully address the harms of Big Tech while protecting the human rights of the most marginalized. But our young movement needs a wake up call: we have to stop fighting each other, build consensus around a coherent strategy, and strike hard and fast if we are going to take down Big Tech and build something better for future generations.

The best time to get on the same page about that strategy was years ago. The second best time is now.

As a movement we need to determine where Big Tech is weak enough for us to land a real blow. Congress is only one piece of the puzzle, but for organizations focused on Federal policy it’s clear we need a strategy that addresses the root cause of harms while building power for the communities most impacted. If passing strong and impactful legislation is going to be part of that strategy, we have some serious soul searching to do.

WE’VE BEEN DIVIDED, BUT NOT CONQUERED YET.

For the last several years, the “big tent” of the movement to take on Big Tech in Congress has been divided into roughly three overlapping and sometimes opposing camps: groups fighting for “kids bills” like KOSA and COPPA 2.0, groups fighting for a comprehensive privacy bill, and groups fighting for antitrust bills like the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and the Open App Markets Act (OAMA). Others in our tent have been focused on securing funding for affordable broadband, attempting to reform government surveillance laws, and other important but disparate priorities.

If we had all worked together on a coordinated strategy starting a couple years ago, there’s a real chance we could have passed some really strong data privacy, algorithmic accountability, and anti-monopoly legislation this Congress, even in this hyper-partisan environment and facing off against an opponent like Big Tech.

Instead, so much of our power has been turned against each other over deeply controversial bills like KOSA, age gating legislation, and the EARN IT Act. Focusing on harms to children has long been a successful strategy for building bipartisan agreement in Congress, but “think of the children” appeals have also been used to advance dangerous legislation that doesn’t actually help, and is increasingly used by outright fascists intent on controlling children not helping them.

Although KOSA has a lot of momentum and emotion around it, after the House implosion last week it seems unlikely to pass. It is supported by a passionate group of parents and advocates who truly believe that it will address some of the worst harms on the Internet: harms to children. Harms that are real, deadly, and caused by the alienation and brutality of unfettered profiteering.

These parents have done incredible work telling their stories directly to lawmakers and to the media and have raised the overall profile of the issue by several orders of magnitude. And they have helped draw attention specifically to how platform design features and algorithmic recommendations cause harm. I applaud them for their work.

WE CAN DISAGREE STRONGLY AND STILL STRUGGLE TOWARD SHARED GOALS

I have been a loud and vocal critic of KOSA. I am aligned with experts who think KOSA would make kids less safe by cutting them off from access to lifesaving online resources and community. I am generally of the belief that we best protect kids by empowering them rather than by shielding them from learning about the harms of the world. But I am deeply sympathetic to the good-faith advocates who have seen it as the best path toward regulating Big Tech and addressing real-world harms.

Unfortunately, KOSA is also supported by right wing extremists like the Heritage Foundation who explicitly want to use laws like this to implement “book ban” and “don’t say gay” type policies on social media platforms, censoring content related to LGBTQ issues, reproductive health care, anti-racism, you name it. Even with the changes that have been made, KOSA could still enable a second Trump administration, for example, to bully social media platforms into suppressing content by insinuating it’s harmful to children.

Cutting kids off from information and discussion of difficult topics doesn’t make them safer. It makes them less safe. For trans kids in rural areas, teenagers seeking information about how to protect their sexual health or seek reproductive care, and so many others, access to online information and community––even on deeply imperfect Big Tech platforms––can be a literal life saver.

After large national LGBTQ organizations bowed out of KOSA debate, LGBTQ youth took the reins and secured significant changes to the bill. They are backed by a ragtag coalition of civil liberties, human rights, and frontline, often trans-led, LGBTQ organizations. LGBTQ youth have done incredible work raising their concerns with legislation like KOSA, age verification mandates, bills that kick kids off social media entirely, and bills that either explicitly or inadvertantly would censor LGBTQ content online. These self-organized young people coordinating in Discord servers and posting prolifically on TikTok and in queer fanfiction channels and subreddits and artist networks have helped drive hundreds of thousands of calls and emails to lawmakers on behalf of the community, connection, and hope that keeps them alive.

These young people recognize the harms of Big Tech and its surveillance driven business models. But they also want to defend their ability to use social media as a tool to find supportive community, speak out about the injustices they see in the world around them, and fight for the kind of future they want to see. Right now, young people across the country are using social media, encrypted messaging apps, and other imperfect but important tools to organize against the genocide in Gaza, to speak up about impending climate catastrophe, and to mourn classmates lost to gun violence.

We need policies that hurt Big Tech without taking away the tools young people are using to build a better future.

We also need policies that will hold up in court. The breaking SCOTUS decision on Netchoice case could not be clearer: tech regulations focused on speech are going to fail in court. We need to get smart about policies that accomplish the goals we share without running into the brick wall of the First Amendment.

WE HAD A CHANCE AT STRONG PRIVACY, BUT FUMBLED.

While KOSA has been stalled out in the Senate, the House has repeatedly made it clear it wanted to move on a privacy bill first, a bill that would protect everyone, including kids. The American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) was the compromise version of ADPPA, which was the compromise version of some other compromise version of some other compromise version of a bipartisan comprehensive privacy bill.

Look, APRA was never the strong privacy bill of our dreams. It had some solid bones: a model based on limiting how much data companies can collect about us in the first place rather than just giving us more boxes to check, strong civil rights and algorithmic discrimination language, and measures that would interrupt some of the harms exacerbated by surveillance driven artificial intelligence. It also had real problems: it paused the FTC rulemaking on commercial surveillance, for no real reason other than to appease Republicans who hate Lina Kahn. It preempted state laws around privacy and kneecapped the FCC’s ability to address privacy issues..

Now, APRA has been gutted. In the latest version of the bill, the crucial civil rights language was axed. Many in our coalition already saw the bill as only slightly better than the status quo. Now, unless the civil rights language is restored and other aspects of the bill are improved, APRA 2.0 is worse than nothing at all. Privacy advocates are now in the unenviable position of opposing the only privacy bill that has a chance of moving this congress.

We’re being strung along because we haven’t built enough power to demand what we want and get it. Even our “champions” in Congress decided to cave to the demands of industry and the far right. They are more scared of them than they are of us. That has to change.

TO BUILD THE POWER WE NEED TO WIN, WE HAVE TO STRUGGLE TOGETHER

No matter what happens during the next US election, the path forward looks more difficult, not less. Surveillance-driven, for-profit tech companies are exacerbating existing injustice and causing real harm to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They’ve amassed unprecedented wealth and have been effectively using it to purchase power and influence, defeating every attempt so far to meaningfully regulate them and rein in their abuses.

When you’re outnumbered you can’t spread out. If we are going to take on the many-headed hydra of Big Tech and win, we have one shot. We need to stop fighting each other with opposing blog posts and op-eds, sit down, and come up with a strategic, feasible, and sustainably resourced plan to fight for legislation and regulatory action that accomplishes our shared goals without dividing our coalition. What’s the bill targeting Big Tech that only Big Tech and corporate lobbyists oppose? That’s how we know we’re on the right track.

There are meaningful actions Congress and Federal agencies can take that would be supported by the vast majority of people and civil society organizations who want to take on Big Tech––and that don’t run afoul of the First Amendment. But we’re only going to succeed if we get our house in order, and coalesce around a unified set of demands for lawmakers.

Time is running out. We can’t let Big Tech divide us any more. We may have missed our window this Congress. We can’t stay in crisis mode reacting to a runaway industry’s excesses. We must build a vision for liberatory regulation of Big Tech that’s rooted in the needs of the most vulnerable and driven by the vision of organizations accountable to the people most impacted.

Funders, civil society groups, and social movement leaders need to prioritize consensus building and strategic planning. I’m not talking about more consultants and long, drawn out processes.

I’m talking about having frank conversations about the state of play in Congress, the states, and Federal agencies, being honest with each other about where we substantively disagree and where we have strategic alignment, and struggle together toward a coherent and shared vision for short term, high-impact action that addresses harm and reduces Big Tech’s power while increasing the power of our growing movement.

No single piece of legislation is going to bring down Big Tech and usher in the democratically controlled Internet we want. But if can struggle together toward a more accountable strategy, we can land a solid blow that reduces the tech industry’s power and grows our movement,

The People’s Tech Project’s national tech justice coherence process, which is making us aim at the root causes rather than the symptoms, the recent Take Back Tech conference, which is a convening space for the grassroots left of the movement most impacted by these issues, and other cohering events and gatherings are an essential piece of this. We need more, and faster. Let’s go.

Let’s fight it out. Let’s have the arguments we need to have. Let’s get clear on a strategy that unites rather than divides us. And let’s do it fast.

Degrowthers Of The World, Unite: A Proposal For Degrowth Academics, Activists, And Practitioners To Join Forces As Equals

By Félix Garnier, Vlad Bunea 

July 11, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



An open letter presented by Félix Garnier at the Pontevedra Conference on June 19th 2024, at the open mic session.

Colleagues, friends, fellow humans,

There is increasing frustration among degrowth activists that the general trend of the degrowth movement remains heavily European-centered, and overly academic. Thousands of degrowth activists struggle in the shadows of capitalism to contribute to the movement, while having to make ends meet on little income, or no income whatsoever. Recognition for effort remains strongly coupled with academic status, seniority or popularity. In a true egalitarian movement, merit and status would have no place[i], and would be recognized for what they really are: delusional creations of society.

Most degrowth literature remains deeply captured by jargon and abstract theoretical pirouettes. Academic jargon remains largely impenetrable for many trade unionists, the working class in general, and specifically many people on the barricades of life in the majority world. Perhaps a PhD theoretical researcher may not understand the work of a master electrician, and perhaps our master electrician may not enjoy the language of the symbiotic strategies of non-reformist reforms. This comparison of professions is not meant to suggest anti-intellectualism, or to elevate one profession over another. This is a call for solidarity and egalitarian recognition of effort.

There has been little progress made towards in person engagement with the working class, outside published theory and lively theoretical debates, after a decade of conferences. While we understand the necessity – and some argue, the inevitability – of degrowth, the public relations work of degrowth remains lacking, in spite of the efforts of many learned scholars and activists.

These realities inspire us to make the following five proposals addressed to all degrowth scholars, activists, and practitioners:

1.Decouple recognition from status and merit. The effort to build the degrowth movement is distributed unequally. It is also constructed on unequal histories. Some were lucky to become well-paid academics, some are toiling on assembly lines, on farms, or in cubicles. We all share equal finitude and equal uniqueness as human beings. Comradery and understanding should be based on egalitarian principles of finitude and uniqueness, and not on status or socio-geographical placement in life.

2.Create a Solidarity Fund. Contribution would be voluntary, but we strongly believe this would be a good way to support the highlighting of more diverse voices within the Degrowth community. Walking the talk has more chance of changing the world, than just talking the talk, or writing the talk. The Solidarity Fund would be managed by people selected by sortition, and rotated frequently. We mean to leave the pool of selection open for further discussion. Several pools could be considered: people who contribute with money, or registered members of the IDN, or anyone who contributes to the Global Policy Cloud with an entry (see link below), including people from the Global South. We lean towards a pool that does include non-contributors. The administrators of the fund would distribute money based on transparent decisions. All self-declared degrowthers could contribute 1% of pretax income up to $50,000 or equivalent, 3% from what exceeds $50,000 up to $100,000, or equivalent, and 100% of all income that exceeds $100 000, or equivalent. This proposal is inspired by the work of trade unions, and should receive significant support within the degrowth movement, since maximum income and maximum wealth are among top degrowth policies.

3.Make proactive efforts to engage with the working class, indigenous peoples, environmental activists, and people of the majority world. Invite participants to degrowth conferences by financing their participation in person, or remotely, through the Solidarity Fund.

4.Promote actively and support collaboration within the movement – such as the work of the International Degrowth Network and all its members – at degrowth events and in degrowth literature, as much as possible. Solidarity is about building bridges, and mutual support. It seems like too often the academic community is not willing to give more space or publicity to activists and working-class people. This needs to change. When you show up for them, they will show up for you, and for us.

5.Create or support boots-on-the-ground missions of paid activists that would engage with the working class, indigenous people, environmental activists, people of the Global South, and local communities. These professional activists will organize teach-learn-listen events with the purpose of building bottom-up frameworks of policy, vision, and strategy that would convince governments to act, the ruling class to back down, and the citizens of the world to rise up. These events may take the form of townhall meetings where speakers get to present issues, then larger discussions may begin where everyone interacts with everyone else to teach-learn-listen from each other. Activists can be the organizers of these events. They would act as a conduit. These will be events of equals. Input from these events can be collected in a policy cloud, documents, recordings, etc., and maintained in the public domain for research, political action, and strategy, for the use of any organization, network, or alliance that works to phase out capitalism.

Colleagues, friends, fellow humans, we are in this struggle together. Let us remember that it is the words of the barricades, of the poor, of the downtrodden that changes the world. The words of the Peoples Agreement of Cochabamba. The words of the Red Deal. We CAN work together. We SHOULD work together as equals. We share one humanity.

———-

A proposal for the creation of a Global Policy Cloud can be seen here: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-crowd-sourced-global-policy-cloud-for-a-world-revolution/

[i] This is a reference to determinism. For a broader conversation see Robert Sapolsky – Determined, Ingrid Robeyns – Limitarianism, Tom Malleson – Against Inequality


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Félix Garnier is an ecological economist and a PhD student in the University of Bordeaux in France. He's a cofounder of the International Degrowth Network, an editor of the Mondes en Décroissance journal and a degrowth activist.