Tuesday, March 19, 2024

‘Bloody Massacre’ – 50 Palestinians Executed, 180 Detained by Israel at Al-Shifa Hospital
50 Palestinians were killed and nearly 200 arrested by Israeli forces at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. (Photo: via WAFA)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff 

“Hundreds of Israeli occupation soldiers armed to the teeth, with police dogs, dozens of tanks, drones, and helicopters participated in the raid on the Al-Shifa Medical Complex”.

Israeli forces killed 50 Palestinians at the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City and detained at least 180 more, the Israeli army said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Battles are taking place between Israeli forces” and Palestinian fighters, the statement added.

The Gaza government media office slammed the Israeli ‘bloody massacre’, calling on the United Nations and the international community to urgently intervene.

‘Clear War Crime’

“The Israeli occupation army admitted to committing a bloody massacre by executing more than 50 Palestinian civilians and arresting about 200 others in the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its vicinity in Gaza City,” the Gaza office said in a statement.

According to the office, a number of children were also executed.

“Hundreds of Israeli occupation soldiers armed to the teeth, with police dogs, dozens of tanks, drones, and helicopters participated in the raid on the Al-Shifa Medical Complex,” the statement said.

Israeli Raid

On Monday morning, Israeli occupation forces stormed the largest hospital in the Strip, took control of the complex and detained scores of people.

Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif reported that Israeli occupation forces detained displaced men and youth after storming a number of schools in the vicinity of the Al-Shifa Complex.

Israeli troops reportedly ordered all women to head to Deir Al-Balah via Al-Rashid Street.

Israeli occupation forces also besieged two schools in the vicinity of the medical complex.

Footage circulating online shows the presence of Israeli military vehicles and bulldozers inside the Shifa Medical Complex with bulldozing operations inside the square.

The siege is now continuing for the second day in a row, and Palestinian civilians are trapped inside the building, with no access to food or water.

Gaza authorities called for “an immediate and urgent intervention by all United Nations and international organizations,” the statement said, adding, “we call on all countries of the free world to stop the genocide war and halt the aggression on the Gaza Strip, which specifically targets civilians, children, and women.”

Gaza Genocide

Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 31,819 Palestinians have been killed, and 73,934 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.

Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.

Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’

(The Palestine Chronicle)

‘Please Help Us’ – Palestine Chronicle Speaks to Two Palestinians Inside Besieged Al-Shifa Hospital
Israeli tanks surrounding the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.
 (Photo: via WAFA)


By Abdallah Aljamal – Gaza

The Palestine Chronicle spoke with two eyewitnesses, who are still trapped inside the hospital when Israeli forces raided the building.

Many Palestinians were killed and wounded as a result of the attack carried out on Monday morning by Israeli occupation forces on the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.

Daniel Hagari, the spokesman of the Israeli army, said early on Monday that Israeli occupation forces were “conducting a high-precision operation in limited areas of Shifa hospital based on (…) intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists to command attacks”.

Hours later, the Israeli army stormed the largest hospital in the Strip, took control of the complex and detained at least 80 people, including journalists.

Israeli occupation forces also besieged two schools in the vicinity of the medical complex.

The Palestine Chronicle spoke with two eyewitnesses, who are still trapped inside the hospital when Israeli forces raided the building.

For security reasons, we will use their initials instead of their full name, in order to keep their identity private.

Just before Suhoor

“Just before our suhoor meal (just before dawn – PC), we were surprised by the incursion of Israeli special forces into the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, amid heavy gunfire,” H.S., one of the Palestinians who were besieged inside the hospital, told The Palestine Chronicle.

“The quadcopter drones surrounded the compound, firing at anyone attempting to leave,” he added.

H.S., who preferred not to disclose his full name for fear of reprisal from the occupation forces, continued: “We were taken aback by the fact that Israel decided to storm Al-Shifa for the second time.”

The medical compound is currently hosting thousands of displaced Palestinians, including children, women, elderly, in addition to hundreds of patients.

“None of us could leave the place, so we all sought refuge inside the building. The place was extremely crowded, we heard children’s cries echoing, relentlessly. Fear was paralyzing, and the sounds of shelling and gunfire continued for hours.”

As the news spread regarding the storming of Al-Shifa, people in Gaza started worrying about the fate of their relatives, trapped inside the hospital.

“Our families called repeatedly to check on us, but we were in an extremely difficult situation,” H.S. explained.

“The chances of being killed, injured or arrested were very high”.

“They (the Israeli army – PC) demolished the tents of Palestinian journalists and they detained a large number of them. All those arrested were stripped of their clothes, handcuffed, blindfolded, and placed in a room inside the complex for several hours,” the eyewitness said.

“My house was bombed earlier. That’s why I decided to evacuate with my family to the Al-Shifa Complex because we thought that the Israeli army had concluded its military operations there, but this morning, we were surprised by its return”.
My Injured Daughter

M.S. is another eyewitness to the Israeli army raid at the Al-Shifa Medical Complex. On Monday morning, he went to the hospital to get some medication for his injured daughter.

He explained to us that the only reason why he could not reveal his full name is that he is the only provider in his family at the moment.

“I am the father of three martyrs, while both my daughter and I were injured by an Israeli bombing that targeted our home, in a residential area in Gaza City,” M.S. told us.

“My daughter’s foot was amputated, and she suffers from severe malnutrition due to the lack of proper medication and treatment,” he said.

“On Sunday night, I went to Al-Shifa Medical Complex to get some medications and medical supplies for my wounded daughter. However, following the intensification of the shelling around the compound, I couldn’t return home, so I was forced to stay overnight.”

M.S. told us that, like all other displaced Palestinians, he was just looking for some medicine, some food for suhoor and some water to drink before the Fajr prayer.

“But the occupation forces surprised us,” he said. “I went there to get medical supplies for my daughter, but now I am trapped with thousands of people inside the complex, surrounded by death, Israeli shelling, and destruction from all sides.”

M.S. told us that there is no food or water, and that Israeli bulldozers keep destroying everything in the vicinity of the hospital’s main building.

“We only wish for their withdrawal so that we can leave the complex. There is no safe place in Gaza. We call for urgent intervention to rescue the displaced, the wounded, and the medical staff trapped inside the complex.”

(The Palestine Chronicle)


– Abdallah Aljamal is a Gaza-based journalist. He is a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle in the Gaza Strip.

Israel turns Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital into battleground

The raid on the Al-Shifa Hospital comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his intentions to invade Rafah in Gaza's south


The New Arab Staff & Agencies
18 March, 2024

Thousands of civilians have been forced to evacuate Al-Shifa and its surrounding area by the Israeli military [Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images]


The Israeli army launched a renewed attack on Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa, with witnesses reporting air strikes on the devastated neighbourhood where it is located.

Witnesses in Gaza City told AFP they saw tanks surround the hospital site.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the war have sought shelter in the complex, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

The Israeli army had also carried out a November operation in Al-Shifa, sparking an international outcry.

The government media office in Gaza condemned the operation, saying that "the storming of the Al-Shifa medical complex with tanks, drones, and weapons, and shooting inside it, is a war crime".

The health ministry in the besieged territory said it had received calls from people near the hospital site who claimed there were dozens of casualties.

"No one could transport them to the hospital due to the intensity of gunfire and artillery shelling," the ministry said.

The Israeli army has carried out multiple operations in and around medical facilities across the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.

Israel claims that Hamas is running military operations from hospitals and other medical centres, but Hamas denies this.




Breaking bread in Gaza has become a matter of life and death

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after the Palestinian group launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7 2023, killing an estimated 1,160 Israelis, most of them civilians.

Israel has since then launched a brutal and indiscriminate attack on the Gaza Strip, targeting schools, hospitals, and residential areas and killing at least 31,645 people, most of them women and children. A further 73,792 have also been injured.

Palestinian militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign captives during the October 7 attack, but dozens were released during a week-long truce in November.

Israel believes about 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 - eight soldiers and 25 civilians - who are presumed dead.

Israel said that there was "no obligation for the patients and medical staff to evacuate" during its attack on the Al-Shifa Hospital and that it would avoid targeting hospital facilities and equipment.

However, Israel has since instructed those residing in and around the hospital south to the Israeli designated "humanitarian zone".

Following its November 15 operation on Al-Shifa, the Israeli military said it had found weapons and other military equipment hidden in the site - claims Hamas has denied.

It also claimed it had found a 55-metre tunnel in the basement and shared footage that it claimed proved hostages had been held there, which Hamas also denied.

According to the UN, 155 health facilities in the Gaza Strip have been damaged since the war began.

'Where should they go?'

The health ministry said early Monday that dozens of people had been killed across the Gaza Strip overnight.

Over the weekend, 12 members of the same family were killed when their house was hit in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

Palestinian girl Leen Thabit, retrieving a white dress from under the rubble of their flattened house, cried as she told AFP her cousin was killed in the strike.

"She's dead. Only her dress is left," Thabit said.

For several weeks, the focus of Israel's attack had been on southern Gaza, where around 1.5 million people who have fled the remainder of the devastated territory have sought refuge since the start of the war.

Allies of Israel, including the United States, have warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government against launching a full-scale operation in Rafah near the Egyptian border.

Israel's no-state solution and the endurance of Palestine

Rafah is the only urban centre in Gaza where Israeli ground troops have yet to enter.

Visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters that if such an offensive resulted in "a large number of casualties" it "would make any peaceful development in the region very difficult".

Israel has insisted, however, that its war aim of eliminating Hamas cannot be achieved without an attack on Rafah.

On Sunday, Netanyahu vowed civilians crammed into the south of the strip would be able to leave before troops enter in pursuit of Hamas militants.

The office of Netanyahu had on Friday said he approved the military's plan for an attack on Rafah as well as "the evacuation of the population".

"Our goal in eliminating the remaining terrorist battalions in Rafah goes hand-in-hand with enabling the civilian population to leave Rafah," Netanyahu said at a press appearance alongside Scholz.

"It's not something that we will do while keeping the population locked in place."

As others have done, Scholz raised the question:

"Where should they go?"
'Out of harm's way'

The United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance, has said it wants a "clear and implementable plan" to ensure civilians are "out of harm's way".

Gaza is facing the threat of famine, according to the UN, and many residents of the territory have faced displacement multiple times in recent months.

There has been no indication yet of where those crammed into Rafah could go, and any suggestion of Palestinian dispersal outside the Palestinian Territories is highly contentious in the Arab world, raising fears of a second Nakba.

A Hamas proposal for a truce calls for an Israeli withdrawal from "all cities and populated areas" in Gaza and for more humanitarian aid, according to an official from the group.

International envoys were planning to meet in Qatar soon to revive stalled talks for a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Israel plans to attend the talks, and a cabinet meeting meant to decide the delegation's mandate took place on Sunday night, Netanyahu's office said.

As a result of the meetings Israel's chief of the Mossad intelligence agency is heading to Qatar to secure a six-week truce and the return of 40 Israeli captives according to Israeli officials speaking to Reuters, although it is unknown how many Palestinian's will be released as part of a deal.



The real reason Israel stormed al-Shifa Hospital yet again

Israel's latest attack on al-Shifa Hospital and the successful delivery of food aid to northern Gaza are connected. Here's how.
AID ARRIVES AT UNRWA FACILITY IN JABALIA, NORTHERN GAZA, MARCH 17, 2024. (PHOTO: ASHRAF AMRA/APA IMAGES)

In the past two days, a number of things happened that seemingly had nothing to do with each other. At 2:00 a.m. on Monday, the Israeli army stormed al-Shifa hospital, entering with tanks and heavy gunfire and killing and injuring dozens. It was the fourth invasion of al-Shifa since October, resulting in the arrest of over 80 people.

The day before, 13 aid trucks arrived in northern Gaza for the first time in four months without being turned back by the Israeli army or resulting in the massacre of starving Palestinian aid-seekers. People flocking to the UNRWA warehouse in Jabalia refugee camp to receive the aid stood in uncharacteristically orderly lines and patiently waited for the handouts of flour, rice, and other foodstuffs. Many could be seen cheering once the aid arrived, a scene captured by Al Jazeera’s coverage.

But what few people know is that this successful delivery of sorely needed food aid to northern Gaza is what led the Israeli army to launch its deadly raid on al-Shifa Hospital the next day.

The connection between these two events can only be explained by understanding who Israel was targeting in the raid — the now-martyred Faiq Mabhouh.
FAIQ MABHOUH (PHOTO: SOCIAL MEDIA)

Mabhouh was the Director of Operations of the Gaza police force, a part of the Gaza government’s civilian administration. Unlike Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, Mabhouh did not operate clandestinely at the start of the war, because he didn’t have to — he was in charge of civil law enforcement. Hamas released a statement after his death confirming that he “engaged in purely civil and humanitarian activity.”

Yet to hear Israeli military spokespersons and the Israeli media, Israel had launched a “precise operation” on al-Shifa to target a “top Hamas operative,” or a “senior Hamas commander,” who the army alleged was planning attacks on Israel.


The attack on al-Shifa was an assassination operation aimed at breaking down civil order in northern Gaza to facilitate Israel’s genocidal project.

Making such brazen claims without evidence to justify attacking hospitals and shelters has been a hallmark of the Israeli army’s conduct throughout its genocidal assault. But the true significance of the attack lies not in its desire to empty northern Gaza’s largest civilian refuge, which houses 30,000 people, but in foiling Faiq Mabhouh’s pivotal role in coordinating the delivery of humanitarian aid to starving civilians in Gaza while restoring a semblance of social order to the north.

In other words, the attack on al-Shifa was an assassination operation aimed at breaking down civil order in northern Gaza. It aimed to facilitate Israel’s genocidal project and pave the way for total control over the area without resistance.

The unfolding events of the past few days expose Israel’s intentions of engineering famine and contributing to social breakdown. It reminds us that this is not only a war against Gaza’s resistance but also against its people.
Delivering aid while avoiding another ‘flour massacre’

On March 17, images of pamphlets circulated on social media bearing the signature of the “Palestinian Security Forces” addressed to all civilians in northern Gaza. In order to “ensure the secure arrival of aid” in the north, the notice barred all people from gathering at the Kuwaiti roundabout and Salah al-Din Street, the main entry points through which humanitarian aid reaches the north. In most previous attempts, throngs of starving people gathered at those locations and rushed aid trucks as they arrived.

Israeli forces fired on the crowds many times, killing hundreds of people, most infamously during the “Flour Massacre” on March 3. On occasions where Israel did not mow down the desperate crowds, it stopped aid trucks and turned most of them back, citing spurious “dual use” claims.

Yet what is most remarkable about the circulation of this notice is that the starving people of northern Gaza complied. The aid convoy arrived in Jabalia refugee camp at a UNRWA facility shortly after midnight on March 17, unmolested and to much popular fanfare.




The convoy was accompanied by an escort of masked gunmen whose identities were unknown. Much speculation as to who they were abounded, with Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul commenting that the aid convoy was coordinated by Gaza’s clans. Later on that same day, as the aid was being distributed, Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif said that the convoy was organized by “local committees and monitoring committees comprised of clans, notables, and elders, who oversaw the arrival of the aid.”

Yet that same broadcast showed images of those processing the handouts, who used laptops to register aid recipients with their ID cards and entered them into a registry. These were the tell-tale signs of the bureaucracy of Gaza’s civil government.
AL JAZEERA BROADCAST OF DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD AID.
 (PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM AL JAZEERA YOUTUBE CHANNEL)

Al Jazeera’s footage also depicted long, orderly lines of people receiving aid, in sharp contrast with the chaotic and bloody scenes that had predominated in previous incidents at the Kuwait roundabout and Salah al-Din Street. The scene was clear in its implication: attempts were being made to restore civil order in northern Gaza and to improve the lot of the suffering population.

Not 24 hours later, in the predawn hours of March 18, Israel invaded al-Shifa. The news emerged that the army had assassinated Faiq Mabhouh, and that an Israeli soldier had been killed after Mabhouh reportedly refused to surrender. Suddenly all news sources were saying the same thing: Mabhouh had been behind the effort to coordinate the arrival of the aid.

Mabhouh’s role

The information available on Mabhouh’s duties remains scant, often blending fact with speculation regarding his activities and the reason for his assassination. Most media sources agree that Mabhouh organized the delivery of the aid convoy, which he did in coordination with Gaza clans, UNRWA, and international organizations.

Crucially, that coordination entailed meeting with officials from those groups. One of the widespread pieces of speculation holds that it was at those meetings that Mabhouh’s location was exposed and supposedly leaked to Israel’s intelligence, likely through one of those international organizations. Haaretz speculates that this intelligence leak “may explain Israel’s urgency to launch an immediate operation at the hospital.”

Being the head of a civilian police force, Mabhouh operated publicly earlier on in the war, but as Israel continued to target members of the local police, the need for secrecy became more apparent. According to Axios, the Biden administration asked Israel back in February to “stop targeting members of the Hamas-run civilian police force who escort aid trucks in Gaza, warning that a ‘total breakdown of law and order’ is significantly exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.”

Israel never stopped targeting them and indeed went above and beyond in massacring hundreds of civilians seeking food. This context explains why the police force apparently switched to operating clandestinely and why the gunmen accompanying the convoy were masked. It also explains why the public narrative around the distribution of the aid was that it was organized by the clans.

But mention of the clans is not incidental here. One of the most important aspects of Israel’s supposed “day after” scenario for Gaza is that day-to-day activities would be managed by local families and tribes. Gaza’s traditional clans used to hold greater sway in the coastal enclave prior to Hamas’s ascendancy to power in 2007, some of them acting as lawless gangs that engaged in criminal activity. Hamas severely curtailed their role during its period of rule over the Strip, but during the latest genocidal war, many of these families took advantage of the chaos to commandeer aid convoys and hoard food aid or sell it on the black market.

Israel has not only welcomed the development but actively encouraged the state of lawlessness. Its continued targeting of Gaza police escorts only reinforced the phenomenon. At around the same time, Israeli officials began to float the idea of postwar tribal rule in Gaza.

PALESTINIANS GATHER IN FRONT OF UN AGENCY FOR PALESTINIAN REFUGEES (UNRWA) BUILDING TO RECEIVE FLOUR IN JABALIA, GAZA CITY, MARCH 17, 2024. 
(PHOTO: ASHRAF AMRA/APA IMAGES)

This relates to the second part of the speculation surrounding Mabhouh’s assassination — that he was involved in cracking down on clans that seized food aid, likely to be the same clans who would be contenders in Israel’s vision of postwar rule in Gaza.

One unsubstantiated rumor was widely circulated on social media in Arabic and picked up by the Israeli media: Hamas had supposedly executed the unnamed head of the influential Doghmosh clan in Gaza for allegedly stealing humanitarian aid and being suspected of collaborating with Israel. The Doghmosh clan put out a statement strongly denying the claim, asserting that the clan chief had been martyred during an Israeli airstrike on November 16, 2023. An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera revealed that the name of the family’s head (the mukhtar) was on the list of the dead from that airstrike.

Regardless of the veracity of the speculation, what has become clear is that Israel’s genocidal war has taken on a new dimension — it is encouraging societal collapse in Gaza. Its engineering of famine and the enablement of lawlessness is simply a continuation of its military campaign through other means. And when members of the civilian government attempt to ameliorate the famine or try to work to restore social order, Israel launches a war against them, too.

Thanks to Jehad Abusalim for contributing crucial insights to this report.
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Israel's no-state solution and the endurance of Palestine

Analysis: Palestinian sovereignty has always been out of the question for Israel, as have equal rights under one binational state.



Amal Ahmad
12 March, 2024

To understand Hamas’s attack on 7 October and Israel’s subsequent onslaught on the Palestinian population of Gaza, it is necessary to accurately evaluate the underlying historical strategic interests of the Israeli state.

In this sense, the ongoing crisis reflects both opposition to, as well as the unsustainability of, Israel’s longstanding strategy of a ‘no-state solution’ for the Palestinian people.
Salient narratives

To understand this strategy, it is informative to first turn to salient arguments about why past peace treaties, most notably the Oslo Accords, have failed to achieve a resolution.

Brokered by the US, the agreement of 1993 promised a sovereign Palestinian state within five years, with Israel withdrawing from the occupied territories in exchange for Palestinians meeting Israeli security demands - also known as the ‘land-for-peace’ paradigm.

As the accords could only succeed via self-enforcement, the key premise was that Israel and the Palestinians were strategically interested in withdrawal and in meeting security conditions, respectively.

"Israel as an occupying power has consistently pursued not two states, operationalised through withdrawal and land-for-peace, but no state (for Palestinians)"

For Israel, the assumption was that improved security relations with the Palestinian population made withdrawal more valuable than indefinite occupation and settlement.

The failure of negotiations to generate land-for-peace signifies that at least one of the party’s strategic interests is not aligned with this setup, and a pervasive narrative in the West has been that it is Palestinian interests which are incompatible with land-for-peace.

The logic is that conflict persists because of Palestinian violence and that Israel would otherwise be interested in withdrawal.

Israel's no-state solution

This narrative fails to explain why Palestinians would resort to violence when a state would otherwise be on offer, when they were already struggling to secure sovereignty five years into the accords despite limited militant action during that period.

It also fails to explain why Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where militancy is largely suppressed, have seen only deteriorations in prospects for sovereignty and rapid Israeli settler expansion, not withdrawal.

To seriously evaluate Israel’s strategic priorities, pointing to non-binding treaties around withdrawal is insufficient. By contrast, Israel’s historical efforts to construct expensive and difficult-to-remove illegal settlements are a credible indicator of where the interests of the Zionist national project lie.

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Analysis
Qassam Muaddi

The Jewish settlement project that culminated in Israel’s establishment in 1948 continued in the Palestinian territories it occupied in 1967. Israel immediately began demolishing Palestinian homes and rebuilding them for Jewish settlement, and the “Allon Plan” was put forth to create separate and non-contiguous enclaves for Palestinians while annexing the remaining lands. By 1978, the government had spent 2.3% of its GDP on settlement construction and was incentivising Jewish settler inflow through financial assistance.

Throughout this period, Israeli leaders from an array of factions united in viewing settler expansion, not withdrawal, as a national strategic priority. Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister in the 1970s and later again during the Oslo Accords, declared that settlements increase Israel’s security and that it is imperative to “renew” and “expand” them.

Ariel Sharon, also later prime minister, put forth massively expansionary plans for belts of settlements, efforts meant explicitly to create “facts on the ground” to prevent future withdrawal and a Palestinian state.

When Israel signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, it refused to commit to a clear settlement withdrawal plan, and Rabin remained frank internally that Israel “wants a Palestinian entity which is less than a state,” that it “will not return to the lines of 1967”, and that it will build further settlements.

From 1993 to 1996, Israel had - instead of retrenching even one settlement - expanded the number of settlers from 250,000 to 305,000.


Disagreements between Israeli policymakers have centred around the desirability and form of limited Palestinian self-administration over segregated enclaves. 

Since then and under the cover of a dragging peace process, Israel has continued nonstop settlement expansion, with 850,000 Jewish Israelis today settling 40% of the occupied territory. In Gaza, the evacuation of 8,000 settlers in 2005 was not part of a general retrenchment in the expansionist project nor of any end to the occupation, as it was accompanied by an ongoing military blockade which tightened Israeli control over the borders, airspace, and water of Gaza.

By continuously settling Jewish Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territories and thereby ruling out a geographic entity that can become a Palestinian state, while also ruling out that these segregated Palestinians under its control receive equal citizenship rights, Israel has long pursued a no-state solution toward the occupied population.

Palestinian sovereignty, which can only emerge from settlement evacuation and relinquishment of Israeli control over borders, has always been out of the question, as have equal rights under one binational state.

Disagreements between Israeli policymakers have instead centred around the desirability and form of limited Palestinian self-administration over these segregated enclaves.


"From an Israeli perspective - up until 7 October - Israel had been able to pursue expansionism while keeping a tight grip on security matters within its borders"
Top strategic priority and 'peace-for-peace'

As Israel’s erection of settlements - and with it the no-state solution for Palestinians - has been continuous and not conditional on Palestinian actions, it cannot be understood as a tactical “reaction”. Rather, it must be viewed in light of its strategic value to the Zionist project.

The Achilles heel of the peace process was assuming that Israel views Palestinian statehood as necessary to its security, so that the benefits of withdrawal would outweigh Israel’s interest in expansionism.

In fact, from an Israeli perspective - up until 7 October - Israel had been able to pursue expansionism while keeping a tight grip on security matters within its borders. This has happened partly through security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority but largely through massive retaliatory attacks on population centres from where militants emerge.

The notion that asymmetric warfare on civilian populations acts as deterrence – codified in the “Dahiya doctrine” of the IDF - implied that Israel does not have to cede any occupied lands or rights to the Palestinian population to be secure.

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In-depth
Sahar Amer

For Israel, not only did the no-state solution not endanger physical security to the extent which would make withdrawal imperative, but it may have also contributed to a more insidious type of demographic security.

A Palestinian state would reduce the number of non-Jewish people in areas directly controlled by Israel but would not necessarily help uphold the system of preferential rights for Jews versus non-Jews in Israel, which is integral to the Zionist project.

Palestinians in Israel and diaspora refugees are unlikely to accept transfers to a state in the occupied territories; they may even be emboldened to demand equal rights of citizenship and to return to their homelands if such a state were to emerge.

In this case, preferential rights for Jews in Israel cannot be guaranteed and may even be undermined through concessions of rights to pockets of Palestinians, and the Palestinian “problem” for Israel would have no solution except permanent containment.

Israeli leaders from an array of factions have viewed settler expansion, not withdrawal, as a national strategic priority. [Getty]


In sum, Israel as an occupying power has consistently pursued not two states, operationalised through withdrawal and land-for-peace, but no state (for Palestinians), operationalised through settlement expansion and “peace-for-peace”.

In the latter - despite its innocuous name - Palestinians are offered neither withdrawal nor equal rights in exchange for Israel’s peace, but rather a “peace” in which they are spared from massive Israeli bombing (and, now, starvation) campaigns.

This threat of hugely asymmetric attacks on civilian populations is used to guarantee Israel’s security as it maintains its occupation and system of preferential rights, and as it enacts the “lower intensity” everyday violence of occupation and segregation on the Palestinians.

"The Achilles heel of the peace process was assuming that Israel views Palestinian statehood as necessary to its security, so that the benefits of withdrawal would outweigh Israel's interest in expansionism"

An untenable strategy

In this context, the 7 October attack can be understood as a violent strategy to challenge Israel’s no-state strategy and peace-for-peace doctrine to perhaps the greatest extent since 1948, with the backdrop that prior negotiations - based on land-for-peace - had proven ill-suited for such a challenge.

The attack signified gruesomely that the threat and exercise of Israeli military power may no longer be sufficient to keep Israel secure if the latter is unwilling to cede a political solution, the no-state solution being unacceptable to Palestinians.

Similarly, given one of its likely objectives was to halt Israeli-Saudi normalisation, the attack was meant to signal that side-lining the demands of the Palestinians does not guarantee peace, not for Israel nor the region.

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In-depth
Jessica Buxbaum

On the Israeli side, it is precisely because 7 October challenged the foundational assumption under which the state has operated - that it can contain Palestinians in perpetuity without impacting its own security - that the attack was viewed as a strategic threat of the highest order.


Israel’s unprecedented levels of retaliation against the civilian Palestinian population come as a brutal attempt to reinforce the prevailing security doctrine. At the same time, because 7 October demonstrated that Israeli bombing campaigns on population centres (à la 2008, 2014, and 2021 on Gaza) may not be sufficient to deter opposition to Israeli strategy, Israel now also views ‘eliminating Hamas’ as necessary.


Israel's unprecedented levels of retaliation against the civilian Palestinian population come as a brutal attempt to reinforce the prevailing security doctrine. [Getty]

This is even though it seems increasingly unlikely that eliminating Hamas is achievable even with vast US military support.

If Israel refuses to acknowledge and address the political roots of 7 October - Palestinian opposition to Israel’s no-state solution - then the options amount to further Israeli war crimes involving ethnic cleansing and annihilation of Palestinian communities, while in the long-term Palestinian endurance and resistance are unlikely to cease without an end to the repression.

Israel’s allies, meanwhile, would be wise to understand that their trusted ally has failed to ensure - even after 75 years of leeway and military might - that the Palestinian “problem” can be managed without a just political resolution, and to realise that Israel’s insistence on preferential rights for the populations under its control is a recipe for continued disaster.

Amal Ahmad is a Palestinian academic economist based in the Netherlands and a member of Al-Shabaka, an independent Palestinian policy think tank





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Number of Palestinian detainees in West Bank climbs to 7,605

Published: 16 Mar 2024 - 

A picture shows the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on March 16, 2024. 
(Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)

QNA

Ramallah: At least 7,605 Palestinians were detained by Israeli occupation forces during military raids across the occupied West bank since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7, according to detainees and ex-detainees affairs commission and the Palestinian prisoner society (PPS) in a joint statement.

The Israeli forces continue their systematic detention campaigns against the Palestinian people in the West Bank, which escalated in an unprecedented way after the 7th of October, the statement read, adding that the toll includes those who were rounded up during military raids at their homes, through military checkpoints, or those who were forced to surrender themselves under pressure.

Since Friday, the occupation forces have detained at least 20 people from the West Bank, including former prisoners.

The detention campaigns were distributed among the governorates of Tulkarm, Hebron, Tubas, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, and Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, a large Israeli military force broke into the home of the prisoner Raed Al Houtari, who has been detained since 2003 and has been sentenced to 22 life imprisonments, and the home of the prisoner Saeed Dhiyab, who has been detained since 2007 and has been sentenced to 27 years in prison.

The Commission and PPS pointed out that both prisoners, Al Houtari and Dhiyab, came from Qalqilya Governorate. During the raid, the soldiers extensively vandalized and tampered the contents of their houses.
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Analysis

Can Jordan ever escape Israel's grip on water resources?

In-depth: Israel's control over key water sources has long posed a strategic threat to Jordan's security.



Mohammad Ersan
13 March, 2024

Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world, with an annual renewable water deficit of around 400 cubic meters (m3) per person.

In 2021, the Kingdom signed a water-for-energy deal with Israel which would have seen Amman build 600 megawatts of solar power capacity to export to Israel in return for 200 million cubic meters of desalinated water.

The deal was due to be ratified in October 2023, but as tensions soared between Amman and Tel Aviv amid Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, the deal was put on hold.

The agreement was itself an extension of the US-sponsored peace deal signed in 1994, which saw occupied land returned to Jordan and an equitable share of water supplied to it - up to 50 million m3 each year.

Now, according to recent Israeli media reports, Jordan has asked Israel to consider extending the water-for-energy deal – due to expire in May - for another year.

"Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world"

"Israel has not yet responded positively to the request, in light of the existing tensions…due to the war in Gaza," the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation Kan reported.

As part of the request, Israel had reportedly asked Jordan to tone down criticism of Israel and condemnation from Jordanian officials while asking for the return of ambassadors to both countries.

In November 2023, Jordan decided to recall its ambassador to Israel immediately as an expression of Amman’s condemnation of the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza.

Jordan also directed the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to send back its ambassador, who had previously left Amman, linking this request to ending the war on Gaza.

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Official Jordanian response

Jordan and Israel share the waters of the Sea of Galilee and the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers, in addition to underground wells.

According to Appendix II of the 1994 peace agreement, Article 6 of the text of the treaty says that Israel will receive 12 million cubic metres of water from the Yarmouk River in the summer period, and 13 million cubic metres in the winter period, while Jordan gets the rest of the flow, amounting to 50 million cubic metres annually.

Responding to Israeli media reports, Jordanian Minister of Government Communications and Cabinet Spokesman Muhannad Mubaideen told the US-funded Al-Hurra TV network that, “We buy a set quantity of water and pay for it”.

He added: “We asked to study the matters related to the details of the agreement, and based on it, either they sell water or they do not sell it”.

Mohammad Momani, a Jordanian member of the Senate and a former Minister of State for Media Affairs, told The New Arab that “Jordan is part of a purchase agreement with Israel, and this deal is subject to technical arrangements and should not be subject to any political dimensions outside the framework of the peace treaty”.

He added that “there should be cooperation between the two countries, and if there are political issues they should be brought to the political table. Israel must first control the statements of its ministers that are devoid of all international and moral standards”.

Ties between Jordan and Israel are at an all-time low due to Tel Aviv's war on Gaza. 

Water self-reliance

In 2021, Jordan signed an agreement with Israel to purchase an additional 50 million cubic metres of water, in addition to what was stipulated in the peace agreement signed between the two countries in 1994.

“Jordan faces a water deficit in the summer amounting to about 450 million cubic metres annually, while its need is estimated at one and a half billion cubic metres annually, of which one billion and one hundred million are available,” the spokesman for the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Omar Salama, told The New Arab.

"We are the second poorest country in the world in terms of water. Jordan is working on several sustainable projects, most notably the national carrier for desalinating the Red Sea water and transporting 300 million cubic metres of desalinated water from the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea to all regions of the Kingdom annually,” Salama added.

"This is a threat to Jordanian national security. We should not put ourselves under the blackmail of a country that steals the water of the Yarmouk River"

Projects are also ongoing to reduce water loss from the network due to leakage and theft, which would save two percent annually, while the country plans to expand water harvesting programs and dams.

“We have 16 major dams and 420 earthen desert dams. We also have programs to encourage citizens to build tanks to collect rainwater,” Salama said.

Jordan also treats the water from sewage plants to use for agricultural and industrial purposes with a capacity of 200 million cubic metres annually, he added.

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Bad management

With Tel Aviv exerting significant control over both Jordanian and Palestinian water resources, former Jordanian water minister Hazem Nasser believes that there are alternatives available to buying water from Israel.

“For years, we have been saying that the issue of water provision should be at the top of the national priorities,” he told TNA.

“Until this moment, the Jordanian citizen does not know the status of the national carrier project, which began to be discussed back in 2017. Today the tender for the water carrier has yet to be awarded due to mismanagement.”

The most important alternative source for Jordan is deep groundwater, which is feasible to develop and could provide Jordanians with drinking water for 70 years or more, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation.

The issue must be dealt with through strategic planning and projects that ensure long-term water security, Nasser added.

There have been mass protests in Jordan over Israel's war on Gaza. 

Stealing water from the Yarmouk River

Since 1964, Israel has been able, through its national carrier Mekorot, to pump the water of the Yarmouk River to the Sea of Galilee and then south through pipes about 130 kilometres long.

Jordanian environmental expert Professor Sufyan Al-Tall told TNA that he condemned the water agreements signed with Israel, which allowed it to “steal” Jordan’s water rights.

According to the academic, Israel is pumping thousands of cubic metres of water from the Yarmouk River, which is a major source for the Jordan River, through its national carrier, which is impacting the state of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea.

“This caused the Jordan River to die and has hurt the aquatic environment of the Dead Sea. When Jordan protested against settlement operations, the Israeli Minister of Water threatened to starve Jordan,” Al-Tall said.

“This is a threat to Jordanian national security. We should not put ourselves under the blackmail of a country that steals the water of the Yarmouk River.”

"Israel has repeatedly threatened Jordan with vital strategic issues, and the Kingdom should not submit to Israeli blackmail"

Protests

Last Friday, Jordanians protested in downtown Amman against Israel’s war on Gaza, a frequent occurrence since the conflict began.

Demonstrators also called on the Jordanian government to terminate all normalisation agreements with Israel, including water and gas imports, emphasising the importance of prioritising national interests over ties with Israel.

A member of the Resistance to Normalisation Coordination, Mohammad al-Absi, told The New Arab that “Israeli threats and blackmails against Jordan” are not new.

“Israel has repeatedly threatened Jordan with vital strategic issues, and the Kingdom should not submit to Israeli blackmail, especially with regard to the waters of the Yarmouk River”.

In April 2020, Jordan painstakingly purchased eight million cubic metres from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.


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Hanna Davis

Years earlier, in 2017, the same government had threatened to shelve a joint agreement for the construction of a pipeline transferring water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea following Jordan’s closure of the Israeli embassy after an Israeli guard shot dead two Jordanian nationals.

More recently, against the backdrop of the Kingdom’s position on the war on Gaza, the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett threatened Jordan after it said that the energy-for-water exchange agreement might not be ratified, writing on X, “If Jordan wants its residents to become thirsty, that is their right”.

With diplomatic relations at an all-time low amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, which has killed 30,000 Palestinians and destroyed most of the besieged territory, it remains to be seen if Jordan will ever escape Israel’s grip on its vital water supplies.

Mohammad Ersan is a freelance journalist and Editor-in-Chief of Radio Al-Balad and Ammannet.net. His work has been published in Al-Monitor and Middle East Eye.
Follow him on X: @JournalistErsan
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'Flat-out lies': US senator slams allegations against UNRWA

US Senator Chris Van Hollen called Israel's claims that the UNRWA collaborated with Hamas 'flat-out lies' - and accused Israel of trying to destroy the agency.

The New Arab Staff
18 March, 2024

Senator Chris Van Hollen said Netanyahu has been scheming to destroy UNRWA since 2017. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)


US Senator Chris Van Hollen has slammed allegations made by Israel against the UN's Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) over the past few months, calling them "flat-out lies".

“There’s no doubt that the claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu and others are making, that somehow UNRWA is a proxy for Hamas, are just flat-out lies,” Van Hollen, a Democrat, said in an interview with CBS News on Sunday.

Van Hollen accused Netanyahu of fabricating claims in order to eliminate the agency, which provides essential services to nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees around the Middle East. "Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA since at least 2017. That’s been his goal," Van Hollen stated.

On January 26, the Israeli army accused 12 UNRWA staff of participating in the Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and led to the capture of 240 hostages.


The timing of the accusations coincided with a verdict by the International Court of Justice that found a "real and imminent threat" of genocide carried out by the Israeli army in Gaza. Israel's indiscriminate military campaign against the territory has killed over 30,000 people and destroyed entire towns and residential areas.

In previous years, UNRWA had faced multiple Israeli or US-led smear campaigns to delegitimise its work in Gaza, although the agency abides by strict vetting procedures to comply with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism requirements set by its donors.

In the wake of Israel's accusations, UNRWA immediately terminated some staff's contracts and opened an investigation, but over a dozen countries (including the United States) halted funding to the agency, which employs 12,000 people in Gaza alone.

UNRWA effectively lost around $440 million of its annual funding, around one-third of which stems from Washington (valued at $344 million).



The defunding was widely condemned by UN officials and human rights organizations around the world as a form of collective punishment.

"We should investigate [these claims], we should hold all those people accountable," Van Hollen continued. "But … let’s not hold 2 million innocent Palestinian civilians who are dying of starvation (...) accountable for the bad acts of 14 people," he added, echoing concerns that Israel was weaponizing the claims to shut down one of Gaza's last remaining lifelines.

The Israeli army repeatedly failed to provide sufficient evidence to back its claims. Inconsistencies also appeared early on in Israel's narrative, with documents shared with Sky News by Israel naming 6 rather than 12 staff as allegedly involved in the attacks.

Several donor countries who initially suspended their assistance to UNRWA, like Australia and Canada resumed funding to the agency earlier this month.

However, a great deal of harm has been done.

Over the past months, UNRWA's lack of funds has prompted concerns within Gaza over its ability to manage the humanitarian crisis and sustain its other operations across the Middle East.

Amid the chaos, UNRWA chief Phillipe Lazzarini has been scrambling to fill the current gap in funding for the agency, with some Arab state donors outlining plans to step up to fill the gap.
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From Ireland to Palestine: Irish figures, activists rally for Palestine on St Patrick's Day

St Patrick's Day this year was marked by prominent displays of support for Palestine, including from author Sally Rooney.


The New Arab Staff
18 March, 2024

Gestures of solidarity with Palestine were prominent in the St Patrick's Day parade in New York City on Sunday (Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Shows of solidarity with Palestine have taken place in Ireland in the lead up to and during St Patrick's Day in Ireland, which was celebrated by Irish communities around the world on Sunday.

On the eve of the holiday, The Irish Times published a powerfully-worded essay by screenwriter and author Sally Rooney, who accused her government of doing too little for Gaza.

"What is taking place in Palestine now is one of the most profound and shocking moral catastrophes of our time," Rooney wrote in the opening paragraph of her piece, which was titled 'Killing in Gaza has been supported by Ireland’s ‘good friend’ in the White House'.

She added: "With no end in sight, the United States continues to pump money and weapons into Israel to prolong the onslaught."

The essay criticised the Irish government, led by Leo Varadkar, for maintaining good relations with the US despite its continued military support for Israel.

"Our Government can bask in the moral glow of condemning the bombers, while preserving a cosy relationship with those supplying the bombs," Rooney wrote, denouncing Varadkar's decision to visit US president Joe Biden the following day.

Rooney's article appeared amid massive shows of solidarity for Palestine across Ireland and the Irish diaspora, for St. Patrick's Day.



Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza were on full display at the St Patrick's Day parade in New York City, where participants displayed banners with Palestinian and Irish flags that read "Occupation is a crime from Ireland to Palestine."

Gaza was also front and centre at St Patrick's Day rallies in Ireland.

Social media users #posted photos and slogans "for a free Palestine" alongside pictures of Irish flags.

Videos shared on social media also showed protesters carrying Palestinian flags and banners and denouncing Israel's war in Gaza at demonstrations across the country.

Ireland is one of the most vocal supporters of Palestine in Europe, and Dublin has repeatedly condemned Israel's indiscriminate war on Gaza, which has killed over 31,000 Palestinians to date - most of them women and children.

The roots behind this widespread political support among Irish communities are historical.

Ireland was never a colonial power in the Middle East and many Irish activists have likened Israel's current occupation of Palestine to Britain's historical occupation of Ireland, which ended in 1922 following a long drawn-out independence struggle.

Rooney is a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause. In 2021, she rejected a translation offer from an Israeli publishing house in order to support the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement . She previously spoke out numerous times against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza.
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Opposition to Palestinian rights shaped U.S. anti-terror laws

"The argument here is not simply that the United States government used terrorism law to suppress Palestinians. It is that many of the key developments of terrorism law were explicitly written with Palestine in mind."

Mondoweiss 
POLICE BLOCK PROTESTORS DURING A RALLY FOR A CEASE FIRE IN GAZA OUTSIDE A UAW UNION HALL DURING A VISIT BY PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN IN WARREN, MICHIGAN, FEB. 1, 2024. (PHOTO: REBECCA COOK/REUTERS)


Since Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza began last October we’ve seen a vast crackdown on Palestine activism across college campuses and workplaces, with some organizations and lawmakers pushing for anti-terrorism laws to be implemented against critics of Israel.

This isn’t a new development for the United States. Last month, Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights published a report on the history of the U.S. anti-terrorism law that reveals how opposition to Palestinian rights helped shape them from their foundation.

“Understanding the ways that Israel and its allies have shaped anti-terrorism laws is essential to challenging their use today as a weapon to shut down both humanitarian lifelines to Gaza in furtherance of this genocide, and the movement in the U.S. that is trying to stop it,” said Palestine Legal Director Dima Khalidi in a statement on the report’s release. “This briefing paper is a first step toward interrogating this entire regime that has served to undermine fundamental constitutional rights as it has been exploited to criminalize opposition to Israel’s 75 years of oppression of Palestinians.”

Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Darryl Li, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago and principal author of the report on his findings.

Mondoweiss: This report really gets to the foundations of anti-terrorism law in the United States. This is decades before the “War on Terror.” Can you talk about that early history?

Li: This report, as you mentioned, reaches far back to the origins of the United States anti-terrorism legal regime. Part of what we’re doing is recovering some history that’s a bit lost by more recent events. I think there’s a post-9/11 effect where folks have really read terrorism law and terrorism policy through the lens of the so-called global “War on Terror” and its broad anti-Muslim agenda.

This report reminds us that the foundation of these laws was, more specifically, targeting the Palestinian liberation movement. I want to be clear: the argument here is not simply that the United States government used terrorism law to suppress Palestinians. It is that many of the key developments of terrorism law were explicitly written with Palestine in mind and specifically with crushing the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization].

We can go all the way back to the first time the word terrorism even appears in a federal statute which is a 1969 law, that is very relevant today. It attempts to restrict any U.S. aid to UNRWA [The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] if the aid is reaching people who have “acts of international terrorism” or have received training from the Palestine Liberation Army, which is the military arm of the PLO. So what we see very clearly is that there is a pattern of making the terms terrorism and Palestine essentially synonymous.


The argument here is not simply that the United States government used terrorism law to suppress Palestinians. It is that many of the key developments of terrorism law were explicitly written with Palestine in mind and specifically with crushing the PLO.

The report then goes through the major pillars of the terrorism or anti-terrorism legal regime pre-9/11. So, for example, there’s the list of state sponsors of international terrorism, which is one of the key aspects of U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East. This was passed by people in Congress, many of whom were ardent Zionists, most prominently New York Senator Jacob Javits. That policy was created essentially as a way of stigmatizing and disciplining states that were seen as too sympathetic to the Palestinian revolution.

It’s no accident that six of the eight countries that have ever been on this list have been countries that were um that were in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region. One of the major conditions for Sudan getting off the terrorism list several years ago was their establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel in 1987.

The first and only time Congress has declared a group to be a terrorist organization was in a law that explicitly targeted the PLO. The first time Congress passed a law allowing private lawsuits for international terrorism again. That was in response to the 1985 Achille Lauro incident.

The members of Congress who talked about this law on the floor of the Senate and the House were very explicit that the goal of the law was to target the PLO. Actually, a large percentage, if not the majority, of terrorism civil lawsuits are filed by joint U.S./Israeli nationals for incidents that arise in Palestine.

I should be clear here. Folks should be aware that there isn’t just one terrorism list. There are many and they all serve different kinds of functions in the bureaucracy. So, the first list of terrorist organizations that had legal consequences and led to the freezing of finances. This came in 1995, and this list was promulgated by the Clinton Administration explicitly as an effort to help crush Palestinian opposition to the Oslo process. The title of the executive order said targeting groups that are “a threat to the Middle East peace process.” It was a bunch of Palestinian factions, Hezbollah, and two armed opposition groups in Egypt because Egypt was a close ally of Israel and the U.S., a sponsor of the Oslo Process. They needed them on there for the appearance of balance. In fact, one Israeli Zionist organization was put on the list. It’s funny. There were actually two groups that were put on the list, but it was actually different names for the same group, which I think gives you a sense of how much attention they were actually paying to [Israeli terrorism.]

It’s interesting. The first time that Al-Qaeda was put on a U.S. terrorism list, it was simply added to this list of groups that were against Oslo. It was the mid-90s, and there wasn’t the same kind of elaborate infrastructure of terrorism lists that we saw after 9/11.

The other key development is a law that criminalizes so-called “material support to terrorist organizations.” That’s the most commonly used charge in terrorism criminal cases. It was passed in 1996, again very much with Palestine in mind, very much pushed by Zionist groups such as the ADL [Anti-Defamation League], who exploited the outrage following the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Of course, the bombing was carried out by U.S. domestic white nationalists, but groups used it as an opportunity to railroad through their legislative agenda of targeting Palestinian diaspora organizing and Palestine solidarity organizing in the United States. So those are some of the key highlights of the major terrorism laws that were that were motivated by opposition to Palestine.

One of the things that’s unfortunate, there was this turn to these other forms of state violence that were a lot more spectacular and attention-grabbing, so things like legalizing torture, Guantanamo, the rendition policy, drone killings, and so on. A lot of the liberal pushback has emphasized the idea that “we need to go back to the rule of law.” This report really shows that the baseline so-called “normal rules,” like democratically passed laws, are irremediably tainted by a kind of anti-Palestinian animus.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen Republican politicians call for Palestinians to be deported. Trump says he’ll deport immigrants who “support Hamas” if re-elected. Can you talk about how these anti-terrorism laws have impacted the United States’s immigration policy?

The first time terrorism even enters immigration law was in 1991. One of the definitions of terrorism activity is being an officer or spokesman for the PLO. So again, another example, written very clearly in the law, where Palestinian activism is more or less equated with terrorist activity. So, as you know, after 9/11, terrorism becomes a massive, massive part of the immigration enforcement apparatus. We see indefinite detention and deportation of people on all sorts of grounds, but again, it really starts with the reference to Palestine in immigration law.

Since October we’ve seen this kind of a growing McCarthyism within the country when it comes to this issue. We’ve seen student groups suspended, people losing their jobs over their support for Palestine. As someone who has studied this history closely, what’s stood out to you in recent months?

I think the level of elite panic over the unprecedented growth in Palestine solidarity and Palestinian organizing is really evident. It’s a four-alarm fire. I think there are a lot of people in charge who are actually quite concerned about the level of mobilization that’s happening for Palestine, and they are resorting to the old toolkit.

So, for me, what’s been striking post-October 7 is the continuity. This is a very much hyped-up version of what we’ve seen in the past. The other thing that’s a bit bizarre, of course, is that we’ve already been living under decades of repressive anti-terrorism legislation, right? I think it’s actually quite difficult for some of these Zionist groups to find anyone they can plausibly throw legal accusations at because people have already been policing themselves to avoid problems with the law.

One of the messages that I think is really important for the movement to understand is that proposals that don’t get formally passed into law but still sort of circulate in the air can have really important and harmful effects.

So, in Congress, we’ve seen this incentive structure, a sort of race to the bottom of racist grandstanding against Palestinians. That’s actually existed for decades, and there’s no downside for most people in Congress to come up with increasingly wild and disturbing legislative proposals. And even if 90% of them don’t pass they still kind of shape the position of the Overton Window.

So what I tell people is, you have to pay attention to these really outlandish and extreme proposals but don’t take your eye off the ball in terms of other ideas that might seem a little more moderate in comparison.

You mentioned the role of pro-Israel groups in all this history, specifically the ADL. In recent months, we’ve seen that organization call for student groups to be investigated by the FBI for allegedly breaking terrorism laws. Are you seeing a lot of the same kinds of players and organizations at work this time around?

Yes think the big ones are the familiar characters, like the ADL.

What’s interesting is that there is an ecosystem of smaller organizations that exist who are also conducting kind of Zionist lawfare in the United States. So groups that maybe people aren’t as familiar with would include Zachor Legal Institute, which is a more right-wing organization. There’s the Brandeis Center, which is really focused on attacks on higher education. There’s the Zionist Advocacy Center, which is basically a one-man group going after humanitarian organizations.

I think we have to understand the symbiotic nature of some of these smaller, more fly-by-night operations to the more established mainstream groups like the ADL. I think they’re both playing an important role in this. The ADL obviously has this legacy credibility and platform, so when they do things like call on university presidents to investigate SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] chapters for material support for terrorism? On one hand, that’s an insane and unconstitutional demand, but on the other hand, it creates space, and it shifts the political conversation in a way that really slants things against these student activists. It also gives oxygen to these smaller groups that maybe are willing to go further than the ADL.

A group like Zachor spends its time writing to internet companies like PayPal to try to get Palestine organizers kicked off of financial intermediation platforms. They’ll accuse groups of being domestic terrorist affiliates of foreign terrorist organizations. So, foreign terrorist organization is a category in the law that we have thanks in part to the ADL. “Domestic terrorist affiliate” is not a phrase that exists in the law. It’s a phrase that groups like Zachor keep using because they want it to resonate in the public discussion.

You conjure up these phrases in these categories, you circulate them, you try to get other people to adapt them, and you try to create a new reality where that becomes a legible category that eventually might find itself into the law and formally written into legislation. Groups like Zachor have gone around accusing groups like Black Lives Matter chapters and SJP of being domestic terrorist affiliates of foreign terrorist organizations. As I said, it’s not a real legal category, but I think their philosophy is if they say it loudly and often enough, people will start reacting to it as if it is a legal category, and maybe at one point down the line it will be written into law.

So, there’s the big fish and the little fish and they’re all kind of operating together in this sort of ecosystem.

Your report ends with recommendations for decision makers. Can you tell me about some of those?

The recommendations are pitched at a pretty broad level because they’re directed at different kinds of decision makers who have different authorities.

I think one common baseline is that we really need to mainstream and normalize the idea that the ADL cannot be taken seriously as a civil rights organization. This is consistent with long-running campaigns like hashtag #DroptheADL. We need decision makers to really understand the ADL as a Zionist advocacy organization or even as a hate group first and foremost and not treat them as credible interlocutors on any issue concerning civil rights, human rights, or even antisemitism.

The other thing we want to do with the report, is to not only caution people against the possible expansion of these terrorism laws but really start building a broader argument. To rollback or potentially abolish anti-terrorism laws as well. I don’t know if we’re quite there yet because I think the movement conversation is still developing.

Then, outside the movement there’s a lot of work that needs to happen. I think looking at ways of significantly curtailing and narrowing these laws, especially the material support statute, or abolishing them altogether are things that we really need to be working towards in the medium to long term.
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