It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Kentucky to get nation's first TNT plant since 1980s Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky receives a tour of the Scranton, Pa., Army ammunition plant on Sept. 22. TNT for ammunitions is on track to be produced in Kentucky after the U.S. Army awarded $435 million to Repkon USA to build a TNT plant there. File Photo via Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 12 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army has awarded a $435 million contract for Repkon USA to build the nation's only TNT production facility in a rural community in Graham, Ky.
Once it becomes operational, the Kentucky facility will be the first U.S.-based supplier of TNT since 1986. The military currently relies on single-source providers for the materials needed to produce them.
"This award will re-establish TNT production swiftly and at scale on U.S. soil for the first time in decades," Army officials said in a service statement.
TNT is the primary ingredient in ammunition, bombs and grenades, but the U.S. military currently gets all of its TNT from overseas sources.
The new Kentucky facility does not have a timeline to be built or become operable and is a "major step forward in rebuilding our industrial base and ensuring we have the critical capabilities to support our warfighters," Army Acquisition Chief Doug Bush said in a prepared statement.
"Reshoring TNT products gives us the ability to control and secure our chief supply chain for this vital component, especially in an era of increasing global challenges," Bush said.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. military has been trying to diversify its suppliers to produce 155mm artillery shells
The TNT plant will provide Kentucky residents with more than 50 jobs in addition to creating more construction jobs while the project is underway.
Graham is an unincorporated community located in Muhlenberg County about 135 miles southwest of Louisville.
Climate Action Tracker: Global warming projections flatline with no improvement since 2021
Climate Action Tracker said Thursday there has been a three-year standstill in global warming projections, with no improvement since 2021. based on the aggregate effect of current climate policies, the world is on a path toward 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Climate Action Tracker said Thursday there has been a three-year standstill in global warming projections, with no improvement since 2021.
Based on the aggregate effect of current climate policies, the world is on a path toward 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, the report said.
"Despite an escalating climate crisis marked by unprecedented wildfires, storms, floods, and droughts, our annual global temperature update shows global warming projections for 2100 are flatlining, with no improvement since 2021," Climate Action Tracker said in a statement.
CAT said 2024 has been marked by minimal overall progress on the global warming climate crisis.
"This three-year standstill underscores a critical disconnect between the reality of climate change and the urgency that governments are giving to the policies needed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, driving global warming at a rate of close to 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade," the group said.
CAT's annual climate report said while Donald Trump's election will impact projected temperature levels due to expected rollbacks of climate change policies, it's uncertain to what extent.
"It could add 0.04 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 to our current policy estimate of 2.7 degrees Celsius (assuming the rollback of policies is limited to the United States) to a few tenths of a degree to our optimistic scenario of 1.9 degrees Celsius (assuming the U.S. net zero target is permanently removed)," CAT's statement said. "This would be very damaging to the prospects of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius"
Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said the full impact of Trump's election won't be known until he takes office, but added there is a "clear energy momentum in the U.S. now that will be difficult to stop."
"Clearly, we won't know the full impact of the US elections until President-elect Trump takes office, but there is a clean energy momentum in the US now that will be difficult to stop," Hare said. "While the Trump administration will undoubtedly do its best to throw a wrecking ball into climate action, the clean energy momentum created by President [Joe] Biden, being actioned across the country, is likely to continue at significant scale."
The CAT global climate crisis update said while clean energy investments are now double those for fossil fuels, fossil fuel subsidies "remain at an all-time high and funding for fossil fuel-prolonging projects quadrupled between 2021 and 2022."
CAT said a peak of global warming emissions is expected by the end of the decade, but projections lack the steep decline necessary to reach the Paris Agreement climate goals.
That emissions peak is also expected to be at a much higher level than three years ago, according to the CAT report.
"We are clearly failing to bend the curve. As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent," said CAT report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga of Climate Analytics in a statement.
The report focused on climate polices in the seven largest sources of global warming emissions plus the UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil.
China, the United States, India, the European Union, Indonesia, Japan and Australia are the largest sources of emissions.
FBI arrests CIA official in document leak of Israeli military plans against Iran
CIA official Asif W. Rahman was arrested by the FBI Tuesday in Cambodia on two counts of violating the Espionage Act in classified documents leaks about Israeli military plans. He will appear Thursday in a Guam court. Pictured is an Israeli F-15I Ra'am fighter jet, loaded with a mix of Python, Sidewinder, and Sparrow air-to-air missiles, ready to counter an Iranian missile attack on Israel on April 13, 2024. Photo courtesy Israel Defense Forces/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 13 (UPI) -- CIA official Asif W. Rahman was arrested by the FBI Tuesday in Cambodia on two counts of violating the Espionage Act in classified documents leaks about Israeli military plans. He will appear Thursday in a Guam court.
According to the New York Times, citing court documents and a source familiar, Rahman faces two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. Advertisement
He worked for the CIA abroad and had a top-secret clearance that gave him access to classified documents.
The highly classified leaked documents prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency included satellite imagery detail regarding Israel's plans to strike Iran.
The leaks late last month came just before Israel's military hit Iran in retaliation for an Oct. 1 Iranian missile attack on Israel. They were marked Top Secret and appeared to come from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
The documents included details on Israeli Air Force missile launches and drone launches done in preparation for the attack on Iran.
The documents revealed types of aircraft and weapons contemplated using and the movement of munitions and also tracked Israeli military exercises as the attack on Iran was being planned.
Included in the documents was information noting the possible existence of weapons that included "Golden Horizon" air-launched ballistic missile and a weapon known as ROCKS, created by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, maker of the Iron Dome missile defense system.
E. coli cases climb to 104 in deadly outbreak linked to slivered onions served at McDonald's
Nov. 14, 2024 / UPI McDonald's on Wednesday announced that it has identified a new supplier of slivered onions. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 14 (UPI) -- A deadly E. coli outbreak connected to slivered onions served in McDonald's Quarter Pounder hamburgers across the country has sickened at least 104 people, federal health officials said.
The updated figure was announced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday. The federal health authority said the cases were reported in 14 states.
Of the more than 100 people infected in the outbreak, 34 have been hospitalized, including four who developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious condition that can cause kidney failure.
One person, an older adult in Colorado, has died from the illness, the CDC said, noting the patient was not one of those who had developed HUS.
The ages of the affected individuals range from 1 to 88 years old.
"The true number of sick people in this outbreak is likely much higher than the number reported, and the outbreak may not be limited to the states with known illnesses," the CDC said, explaining that many people recover without medical care and are not tested for the bacterium.
The illnesses were reported between Sept. 12 and Oct. 14.
McDonald's last month identified slivered onions supplied to some 900 of its restaurants by Taylor Farms' Colorado Springs, Colo., facility was the source of the outbreak.
The iconic U.S. fast-food chain late last month had pulled the Quarter Pounder from menus, but later said it would stop serving it with slivered onions in the affected states.
It also indefinitely stopped sourcing onions from the Colorado facility of Taylor Farms, which also issued a recall.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday said in a statement that it is working with Taylor Farms to determine if additional "downstream customer recalls" are necessary.
"At this time, there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald's restaurants," the FDA said.
On Wednesday, McDonald's said in a statement that it has identified an alternate supplier of slivered onions for the 900 restaurants that had stopped serving the Quarter Pounder.
"Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions," it said.
British consumer group launches $3.8B 'abuse of dominance' class action against Apple over iCloud Nov. 14, 2024 / UPI A British consumer advocacy group launched a $3.8 billion anti-trust class action against Apple on behalf of its 40 million United Kingdom customers alleging the U.S. tech giant is fleecing them by locking them in to its cloud storage ecosystem which comes with "rip off" charges. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 14 (UPI) -- A British consumer advocacy group launched a $3.8 billion antitrust class action against Apple on behalf of its 40 million United Kingdom customers alleging the U.S. tech giant is fleecing them by locking them into its cloud storage ecosystem which comes with "rip off" charges.
The not-for-profit Which? said in a news release Wednesday it was seeking compensation for consumers from Apple for abusing the dominant position of its so-called "iCloud" data storage solution built into every one of its mobile-connected devices.
"We believe that Apple breached competition law and it has cost U.K. consumers millions of pounds, so we are taking legal action against Apple to recover the overpayments made on iCloud services obtained on or after Oct. 1, 2015," said Which? chief executive Anabel Hoult.
"By bringing this claim, Which? is showing big corporations like Apple that they cannot rip off U.K. consumers without facing repercussions. Taking this legal action means we can help consumers to get the redress that they are owed, deter similar behavior in the future and create a better, more competitive market."
Which? said its "opt-out" claim would argue that Apple violated British competition law by steering customers towards its proprietary iCloud service and by not clearly informing them of alternatives, or how to use them on its iOS devices.
"Which? believes that Apple iPhone and iPad iOS users have had little choice but to use Apple's own iCloud service, and therefore Apple can charge users more than if it had to compete with rival cloud storage services," it said.
The group added that the monthly charges for the service embedded into every Apple device, which range from $1.25 for 50GB of space to $69.46 for 12TB, are unfair because users aren't offered alternatives.
"iPhone users are tied to iCloud because they cannot store or back up all of their phone's data with a third-party provider, as Apple doesn't allow certain data to be stored other than on iCloud," said Which?
"The convenience of being 'locked-in' to this service over time could come at a significant cost -- in terms of price, quality and choice. With Apple being such a dominant player in the phone and tablet market, this behavior also creates a barrier for any new cloud service providers."
Which? said the ever-increasing volume of data generated by mobile and tablet users meant it was imperative that consumers were able to access competitive cloud storage alternatives on their devices.
Eligible Apple customers, who would be automatically "opted in" unless they ask to be excluded, include any U.K. resident who "obtained iCloud services" on any device running iOS -- iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or any other Apple-supplied iOS-powered mobile device -- since the Consumer Rights Act became law in fall 2015.
A specialist judicial body called the Competition Appeal Tribunal will have to give the green light for the case to proceed, however, Which? said it would drop its claim at any time if Apple "did the right thing" and refunded customers and opened up iCloud to allow users a real choice.
Apple said the allegations were untrue and that it would fight the suit.
"We reject any suggestion that our iCloud practices are anti-competitive and will vigorously defend against any legal claim otherwise," the company said in a statement.
"Our users are not required to use iCloud, and many rely on a wide range of third-party alternatives for data storage. In addition, we work hard to make data transfer as easy as possible -- whether it's to iCloud or another service.
Apple also pointed out that prices of the other cloud storage providers used by many of its customers were broadly comparable to iCloud and that almost half of Apple customers did not subscribe to the paid-for option because they did not require additional storage, or did not want the additional cost.
The Which? action comes alongside a similar $1.9 billion "abuse of dominance" claim dating back to 2021 alleging 19.6 million Brits were overcharged for app purchases with a one-day pre-trial review due to be held in London on Friday after the CAT ruled last week that the case against Apple Inc. and Apple Distribution International could proceed.
The trial itself is scheduled to open Jan. 13 and last for seven weeks.
Brought by King's College academic Rachael Kent under the 1998 Competition Act prohibiting abuse of a dominant position, the proposed collective proceedings combine standalone claims against Apple Inc. and Apple Distribution International for loss and damage caused by alleged breaches of statutory duty by infringing the Functioning of the European Union Treaty.
The CAT also has cases pending against Facebook, Google, Steam and major British cell phone service providers.
Commercial law specialist Toby Starr of Humphries Kerstetter told the BBC that the Which? suit was yet another case among a "growing tide of large class actions against Big Tech" which he said had until now "operated without sufficient constraint."
"Although most of these claims are in their infancy and take a long time to resolve, there will be more decisions coming out over the next couple of years and there will be settlements -- these will start to affect the tech giants' businesses," said Starr.
Boeing delivers layoff notices to 17,000 workers amid financial struggles
Nov. 13, 2024 Boeing started issuing layoff notices this week to 17,000 employees, or 10% of its workforce, in an effort to cut costs amid financial struggles. The aerospace giant also announced it will delay delivery of its 777X to 2026.
File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI |
Nov. 13 (UPI) -- Boeing started issuing layoff notices Wednesday to 17,000 employees to cut 10% of its workforce in an effort to shore up the aerospace giant's shaky finances.
The layoff notifications, which will be handed out through Friday, are being issued the same week 33,000 Boeing machinists in the Seattle area returned to work following their seven-week strike.
"Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together," Boeing chief executive officer Kelly Ortberg told staff in a memo last month as he announced the cuts.
"Restoring our company requires tough decisions, and we will have to make structural changes to ensure we can stay competitive and deliver for our customers over the long term," Ortberg added.
The layoffs will impact executives, managers and employees, but workers who build the aircraft are not expected to be cut. Those who receive notifications are expected to leave the company by Jan. 17.
"We must reset our workforce levels to align with our financial reality and to a more focused set of priorities," Ortberg said, adding that Boeing will "maintain our steadfast focus on safety, quality and delivering for our customers."
In addition to the layoffs, Boeing will delay its first delivery of the 777X to 2026 and conclude production of its 767 Freighters in 2027. Production of the KC-46A Tanker will continue.
The cuts at Boeing follow billions of lost revenue over the past five years and a number of crises, including two 737 Max 8 crashes over a six-month period with the first occurring in October 2018, which was the last year Boeing turned a profit. This year, a door panel blew off a 737 Max jet mid-flight, as regulators investigated Boeing's safety protocols and Max production stalled with the machinists' strike.
"We need to be clear-eyed about the work we face and realistic about the time it will take to achieve key milestones on the path to recovery," Ortberg said.
"We also need to focus our resources on performing and innovating in the areas that are core to who we are, rather than spreading ourselves across too many efforts that can often result in underperformance and underinvestmen
Advanced Micro Devices AMD to lay off roughly 1,000 workers, 4% of global workforce Advanced Micro Devices said Wednesday roughly 4% of approximately 26,000 employees worldwide will be laid off. About 1,000 AMD workers will lose their jobs.
CEO Lisa Su said AMD was able to boost the 2024 graphic processing unit sales forecast. File Photo by James Atoa/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 13 (UPI) -- Advanced Micro Devices said Wednesday roughly 4% of approximately 26,000 employees worldwide will be laid off. About 1,000 AMD workers will lose their jobs.
"As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%," an AMD spokesperson said in a statement to CRN. Advertisement
AMD added it is committed to "treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition."
The realignment seeks to capture more of the AI chip market currently dominated by Nvidia, which makes more than 80% of AI chip sales.
AMD expects $5 billion in AI chip sales for 2024, roughly a fifth of Nvidia's $25.7 billion in such sales.
According to AMD CEO Lisa Su's third-quarter earnings call, the company upgraded its graphics processing unit 2024 sales forecast after completing "some important customer milestones." Those included optimizing chips for particular AI workloads and hitting reliability targets in data centers.
The third-quarter earnings report from AMD in late October revealed AMD's fourth-quarter earnings forecast fell short of Wall Street economist expectations.
AMD is the second-largest maker of graphics processing units, after Nvidia.
Nvidia shares are up 200% for 2024 while AMD stock is down 5% on the year.
UK's Samantha Harvey wins 2024 Booker Prize for 'Orbital'
UK author Samantha Harvey, one of a record five women shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won the coveted award on Tuesday for her fifth novel, a "space pastoral" titled "Orbital", becoming the first woman to win the award since Margaret Atwood in 2019.
Spanning the course of a single day, Harvey's "Orbital" tracks astronauts from Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain and Italy as they observe and reflect on their home planet, touching on themes of mourning, desire and the climate crisis.
The Booker, which comes with a 50,000 pound ($64,000) cash prize, has launched careers and courted controversy since its creation in 1969.
Past laureates include Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro.
"I was not expecting that," Harvey said upon learning of her win, the first by a woman since Atwood was recognised in 2019 for "The Testaments" alongside Bernardine Evaristo for "Girl, Woman, Other".
In her acceptance speech, Harvey dedicated the prize to "everybody who does speak for and not against the Earth; for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life; and all the humans who speak for and call for and work for peace". 'Everyone and no one'
Just 136 pages long, "Orbital" is the second-shortest novel to win the award and the first to be set in space, according to the Booker Prize Foundation.
It is the 49-year-old Harvey's fifth novel, winning 15 years after her debut book "The Wilderness" was longlisted for the prize.
Edmund de Waal, chair of the judges, described "Orbital" as "a book about a wounded world" with "everyone and no one" as the subject.
"With her language of lyricism and acuity Harvey makes our world strange and new for us," he added.
Harvey described her work as a "space pastoral" in an interview with prize organisers after she was named to the Booker longlist.
"I wanted to write about our human occupation of low earth orbit for the last quarter of a century -- not as sci-fi but as realism," she said.
"Could I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of a nature writer? Could I write about amazement? Could I pull off a sort of space pastoral? These were the challenges I set myself."
Historic shortlist
A record five women were in the running for the prize, which was announced at a ceremony in London.
The others were Rachel Kushner for "Creation Lake", Anne Michaels for "Held", Yael van der Wouden for "The Safekeep" and Charlotte Wood for "Stone Yard Devotional".
Percival Everett rounded out the shortlist with his novel "James".
Everett and Kushner had been considered the two favourites for this year's prize.
The Booker is seen as a talent spotter of names not necessarily widely known to the general public.
It is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024.
(AFP)
French farmers to protest Mercosur deal boosting South American imports
French farmers have announced a new wave of protests next week against the European Union's planned free trade agreement with the Mercosur trading bloc, saying an increase in agricultural imports from South America will hurt their livelihoods.
Farmers ar planning protests from Monday to oppose the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, saying increased imports from South America will hurt the European Union's agriculture, the head of France's largest farm lobby FNSEA said on Wednesday.
This comes as farmers in Belgium have called for demonstrations close to the EU headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday.
"This trade agreement, which links part of the South American states to Europe, risks having dramatic consequences for agriculture," FNSEA's Arnaud Rousseau told France Inter radio.
"So we will be in all regions from Monday, for a few days, to make the voice of France heard at the time of the G20 in Brazil, and we hope that all the European countries will join us because the subject is not a country, a French subject, it is a European subject," he added. However, French farmers do not intend to block roads and highways as they had done last year when anger at competition from cheaper imports, including from EU ally Ukraine, and a regulatory burden had led to large-scale protests across the EU.
"We are not here to bother the French people, we are here to tell them that we are proud to feed them and that continuing to produce in France," he added.
The country's agriculture minister, Annie Genevard, called the planned free trade deal between South American countries and the EU "a bad agreement," on Sunday as it would allow the entry into the country of "99,000 tons of beef, 180,000 tons of sugar and similar quantities of poultry meat" and would create damaging competition for local producers.
Weather-hit harvests and outbreaks of livestock disease along with political deadlock after a snap election at the start of summer have added to the grievances among French farmers.
(Reuters)
Israel is committing ‘ethnic cleansing’ amid mass forced displacements in Gaza, HRW report says
ANALYSIS Middle East
Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including pursuing a deliberate policy of forcibly displacing people and denying them the right to return home, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday. The report also labelled the likely permanent dispossession of Gazans in areas cleared by Israel to serve as buffer zones and security corridors as “ethnic cleansing”.
Israel has carried out a violent and deliberate campaign of forced displacement against almost 2 million Palestinian civilians over the course of its bombardment and military occupation of the Gaza Strip since October 2023, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday.
The report, which maintains that these policies amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, also accused the Israeli government of carrying out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in areas where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have razed swaths of homes and other civilian infrastructure to make way for “buffer zones” and “security corridors” throughout the besieged enclave.
In the 13 months since armed Palestinian groups led by Hamas launched deadly attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel’s devastating retaliatory campaign in Gaza has driven roughly 1.9 million Palestinians from their homes, according to the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator – almost nine-tenths of the people living in the Strip. These mass population transfers began in the first days of Israel’s bombardment when the IDF ordered more than a million people living in the north to leave their homes and head to the southern half of the enclave within just 24 hours.
Siege of north Gaza: Are Israel's evacuations for Palestinians really safe?
As more and more civilians have been driven from their homes to scattered “safe zones” across the Gaza Strip, the IDF has carried out controlled demolitions of civilian infrastructure, which alongside Israel’s relentless bombing campaign of Gaza has destroyed tens of thousands of houses as well as hospitals, schools and vast stretches of agricultural land, Human Rights Watch said. This devastation, the report says, risks robbing displaced civilians of the right to return to their homes when the fighting, one day, comes to an end
The Israeli government has consistently maintained that its mass evacuation orders are intended to allow the IDF to fight Palestinian militant groups while minimising civilian casualties in the once densely populated Strip.
But Caitlin Procter, a political anthropologist and part-time professor at the Migration Policy Centre, said that repeated reports of Israeli attacks on its own designated safe zones and evacuation routes – also verified and highlighted in the Human Rights Watch report – painted a different picture.
“I think first and foremost we absolutely have to stop repeating this word ‘evacuation’,” she said. “Israeli officials have obviously continuously used this word, but actually they’ve completely misused the word over the last year in the way that they’ve forced Palestinians to displace from one place to another, upwards of ten times in some cases.”
“The word ‘evacuation’, we associate it with safety – with moving from a place of danger to a place of safety for a temporary period before then returning home. And every aspect of that is false in this case,” she said.
“Not only is there nowhere safe, but we also know from reports that these so-called safe zones have then been explicitly targeted by the Israeli military once people were forced to go there, and then not only that but these areas that people have been displaced from have been completely obliterated. So there is no possibility that they can then return home.”
In Gaza, where as many as fourth-fifths of the population are either themselves refugees or the descendants of refugees, this threat of once again being permanently driven from their homes evokes the grim days of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe. More than 75 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes following the outbreak of war between a nascent Israel and neighbouring Arab states in 1948 that marked Israel’s founding.
Yair Wallach, reader in Israeli studies at SOAS, University of London, said that the fear of once again being driven from their homes at gunpoint was very real throughout the Strip.
“Most of Gaza’s population are originally refugees from what has been Israel since 1948 – the overwhelming majority,” he said. “Some of them fled or were expelled during the war, some of them even expelled into Gaza after the war. The defining experience of the population of the Gaza Strip is one of being descendants of this mass displacement that’s barred them from returning. So when people talk about Jabaliya or other places in the Gaza Strip that are being depopulated now, these were originally refugee camps that became homes … The memory of 1948 looms large.”
The report, which only covers events in Gaza until the end of August 2024, comes a little over a month after Israeli forces issued fresh evacuation orders across the Strip’s far north, calling on more than 400,000 people to once again flee southwards as the IDF prepared to lay siege to the northern areas bordering Israel. The military has since cut off all food and aid deliveries to the zone as it battles what it describes as Hamas militants who have regrouped there, causing a UN-backed report to warn that the tens of thousands of civilians believed to be trapped there could be facing imminent famine. A 30-day deadline issued by the US urging Israel to allow more humanitarian aid to enter the Strip passed without issue this week, with the outgoing Biden administration saying it would not be halting military support to Netanyahu’s government.
US won't halt any weapons to Israel over Gaza humanitarian aid situation
Residents have said they worry that the recent mass evacuation orders and Israeli troop movements in Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Lanoun in Gaza’s north are the first step towards Israel building an extended “buffer zone” free of Palestinians – a policy that Human Rights Watch said would amount to ethnic cleansing. Satellite photos already show a one-kilometre-wide “buffer zone” lying along Gaza’s eastern border with Israel that has been cleared of almost all standing structures. Procter, who conducted extensive fieldwork around forced migration in the Gaza Strip before the October 7, 2023, attacks, said that residents’ fears could very well be justified.
“In the last year, since last October, there’s been extremely explicit calls for the permanent depopulation of Gaza among senior Israeli officials – there are countless examples of this to draw on – and the international community has consistently failed to respond to this,” she said. “And we see this now with what’s happening in Jabaliya, and there’s been these reports of senior Israeli officials very clearly saying that there will be no return to northern Gaza. So these fears surrounding permanent deportation, permanent depopulation, they’re extremely well-founded and historically grounded.”
It is in these purported “buffer zones” – as well as the 4-kilometre-wide “Netzarim Corridor” that Israel has cut through the centre of the Strip and the “Philadelphi Corridor” that lies along the Egyptian border – that Human Rights Watch has warned Israeli could be carrying out a targeted campaign of ethnic cleansing. The report features satellite imagery showing the extensive demolition of buildings of all kinds around these roads, which Israel has dubbed “security corridors”.
Nadia Hardman, Human Rights Watch’s refugee and migrant rights researcher and the report’s principal author, said that while the term was not recognised under international law, she believed that it was an accurate description of what their research had unearthed.
“It’s just very clear in those areas that people have been forced out, they won’t be allowed to return. That also meets another definition which is used in international law, even if it doesn’t have an international legal definition, and it’s known as ethnic cleansing,” she said. “And it usually comes when you combine acts of forced displacement, which is the part which is moving people by violent and terror-inspiring means, and we also say that persecution should be investigated as a war crime as well in this report. When you get a combination of these together is when it is incumbent on us to also consider ethnic cleansing, which is what we did.” 'We have been displaced 50 times': Palestinians flee the northern part of Gaza
01:53
Wallach also used the term in his description of the IDF’s recent evacuation orders in Gaza’s north.
“What you have in the northern part of the Strip now is basically a very explicit operation of ethnic cleansing, where the areas just north of Gaza City which is Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya and others, people were not only told to leave, as people were told even a year ago, but also it was clear that if anyone stayed because they can’t move, or they don’t trust the Israelis not to shoot them en route and so forth, anyone that stays will be seen as a combatant and either be starved to death or killed – that was a very explicit threat,” he said.
“And you have Israeli military officials saying that no one is ever going to be allowed back there, that there’s no intention to allow people back into that area again, and the suggestion that it will be marked for Jewish settlement. So this is the most explicit attempt of permanent ethnic cleansing, and the permanent removal of the population from there.”
Dena Qaddumi, a fellow in city design and social science at the London School of Economics, said that it was hard to understand the full impact of what this policy of mass displacement had had on the Palestinians of Gaza.
“The mass destruction of Gaza aims to make the territory uninhabitable, and in doing so force Palestinians in Gaza to migrate elsewhere, if they desire to live, once overt fighting has ceased,” she said. “Forced displacement through mass destruction and the subsequent denial of the right of return seek to destroy the very peoplehood of Palestinians, which is rooted in the connection with the lands, villages, cities and indigenous communities of Palestine.”
