بهمن شفیق

۱۸ مهر ۱۴۰۲

10 اکتبر ۲۰۲۳

https://www.indianpunchline.com/india-middle-east-europe-economic-corridor-is-a-geopolitical-pipe-dream/

https://www.indianpunchline.com/10-reasons-why-indias-stance-on-gaza-is-unsustainable/

https://www.indianpunchline.com/the-caucasus-and-west-asia-are-joined-at-the-hips/

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/pm-modis-message-to-israel-stand-in-solidarity-at-this-difficult-hour-101696677603046.html

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/wsj-joins-neocons-to-instigate-war-on-iran.html

Biden administration scrambles to deter wider Mideast conflict -

Washington Post- Oct 8 2023

Asked whether Hamas may have acted in partnership with Iran to disrupt the effort to broker a Saudi deal, Blinken said “that could have been part of the motivation. Look, who opposes normalization? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran.”

But, he said, “we have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack.”

Abu Musaab, a leader in Ahrar al-Sham, told the pro-uprising satellite television station Orient News that the Syrian militant group received tutorial videos from Gazans showing them how to repair collapsing tunnels.

"The ground here became damp and began to fall on us…and some of our youth were trapped inside. So we spoke to those with expertise, our brothers in Gaza, may God reward their good deeds," Abu Musaab was quoted as saying.

"We consulted them regarding the problem and they advised us to bring in wood (plates), sending us video segment showing us how they do it and we replicated that," Abu Musaab added.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/israelpalestine-war-these-airlines-have-suspended-israel-flights-amid-gaza-war-full-list-101696927022277.html

https://www.politico.eu/article/european-political-community-granada-mega-gathering-of-european-leaders-ends/

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/several-americans-confirmed-killed-israel-orders-complete-siege-gaza-barbarians

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article247911596/Israel-Liveticker-Abriegelung-des-Gazastreifens-laut-UN-voelkerrechtswidrig.html

Eine von Israel als Reaktion auf den massiven Hamas-Angriff verhängte vollständige Belagerung des Gazastreifens widerspricht nach UN-Angaben internationalem Recht. Die Festlegung von Belagerungen, die das Leben von Zivilisten gefährdeten, „indem sie ihnen überlebenswichtige Güter“ vorenthielten, sei gemäß dem humanitären Völkerrecht „verboten“, erklärte UN-Menschenrechtskommissar Volker Türk am Dienstag. Das humanitäre Völkerrecht sei „eindeutig“: Die „Verpflichtung, die Zivilbevölkerung und zivile Objekte zu schonen“, gelte „auch während der Angriffe“, erklärte Türk.

https://www.mena-watch.com/antiisraelischer-eu-diplomat-provoziert-erneut/

https://josephklein.substack.com/p/hopeless-in-gaza

Hopeless in Gaza

There is no way out

//substack.com/@josephklein">JOE KLEIN

OCT 9, 2023

Bret Stephens

Israel has a clear interest not just in punishing Hamas but also in ending its rule for good. But how can it do so without either allowing it to descend into anarchy or reoccupying the territory, which Israel doesn’t want?

The answer is to turn Gaza into a zone of shared interests. Despite its anti-Israel public statements, Saudi Arabia has long distrusted Hamas because of its close military ties to Iran. Egypt sees Hamas as the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which it ruthlessly suppresses at home. The ailing Palestinian Authority views Hamas as its principal rival for power. And the United States long ago designated Hamas as a terrorist group.

Could Israel finally dislodge Hamas from power and invite Saudi Arabia, Egypt and maybe the United Arab Emirates to deploy a substantial peacekeeping force to the strip? That would serve Israel’s interests in toppling an enemy and the Arab states’ interests in diminishing a rival.

Tom Friedman

Israel’s Gaza campaign will be long and brutal. There will be atrocities. The feckless left will have their bleeding hearts on their sleeves for the Palestinians; the feckless right, including American evangelicals rooting for Armageddon, will want to see Gaza bulldozed. There may be spillover. There may not be enough Patriot missiles and artillery shells to supply both the Israelis and the Ukrainians.

There are no easy ways out, obviously. There may be no plausible ways out. I have longed believed that a two-state solution was the only way. That would mean the shuttering of some Israeli settlements on the West Bank; it would mean a redrawing of the maps to acknowledge the reality of long-established settlements like Ariel and granting the Palestinians patches of Israeli territory in return. It would mean acknowledging East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. It would mean an international authority providing security at the holy sites in the Old City. It would mean—Bret Stephens is right—the end of radical Hamas control in Gaza.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/simchat-torah-war-206897

This, perhaps, is what is truly terrifying Western policymakers: the sense that the Western-led, rules-based world order, such as it is, is coming apart. The previous constraints imposed on states are no longer as constraining. The war in Ukraine, the retaking by force of what remained of the Karabakh Armenian breakaway entity by Azerbaijan, heightening tensions over Taiwan, growing instability in the Balkans, military coups in Africa, and myriad other events are all grim portents of this trend. Which domino will fall next?

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-world-begins-to-reorder-itself/

I wrote a few months ago that the world is in the process of reordering itself, something it does every few generations. It is not a process that depends on the decisions of the mighty or something that can readily be stopped. It flows out of economic and political pressures within countries. These internal pressures turn into military pressures, as the internal system tries to stabilize itself. Some countries experience these things as painful but routine events, while others destabilize or lash out. Another name for this is progress, which is far from a triumphal march to happiness but a painful struggle with reality; the pains of progress turn to charges against other people and other nations. Someone must be responsible for the disruption and disorientation of change, and the finger is always pointed at others and never oneself.

We are therefore in a new period, which has its origins in the last and consists of war, economic crisis and mutual rage. These are the realities that are truly universal, sometimes happy, too often tragic. But I am sure that the Greeks looked at this the same way. Can we avoid these cycles? I would like to think so, but we haven’t yet.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/hubris-meets-nemesis-in-israel/

Shlomo Ben-Ami

We learned from Clausewitz that war is supposed to make sense in the context of a political objective. Hamas’s current war has such objectives: securing its hegemony in the Palestinian national movement, freeing its men from Israeli prisons by trading hostages for them, and preventing Palestine’s plight from being forsaken by the ‘Arab brethren’ in their rush to normalise relations with the Jewish state. For Netanyahu’s government, however, this is a purely reactive war with no political objective beyond that of reaching a pause until the next round of hostilities.

A country that didn’t hold its leaders accountable for an outcome like what has played out in the horrific scenes around Gaza would lose its claim to being a genuine democracy. But Netanyahu’s machine of poisonous political disinformation is already at work disseminating a conspiracy theory according to which leftist army officers were responsible for the negligence that led to this dirty war. No one should be surprised that Netanyahu would resort to the infamous stab-in-the-back narrative—a conspiracy theory also peddled by the Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s. How else could the inciter-in-chief explain his criminal negligence?

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/americas-betrayal-of-israel

There will be plenty of time to pore over how a cataclysmic disaster of this magnitude could happen, and who—from Bibi down to the IDF chief of staff, head of intelligence, et al.—failed to protect the lives of Israelis. A lot of it will have to do with people who should have known better—including former prime ministers and former and current high-level security officials—abandoning the core commitment of defending Israel and instead entertaining themselves by cosplaying some game of Demokratia, complete with donning handmaid outfits and ululating about fascism. Hysterics about your political opponents being the enemies of democracy may be fun in Kalorama; in Sderot and Ofakim, and even in Tel Aviv, there’s a price to pay for abandoning the real world and indulging in fetish play.

But the bigger mistake on the part of the Israelis is that over the past few years they have gotten the power equation that governs their lives backward: Instead of understanding themselves to be citizens of a strong but beleaguered country whose first responsibility is to protect itself, they luxuriated in the fantasy that the United States was and always would be their protector—when in fact the ruling party in America has decided that Israel is a liability.

https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2021-07-27/israel-supreme-court-affirms-constitutionality-of-basic-law-israel-nation-state-of-the-jewish-people/

Israel: Supreme Court Affirms Constitutionality of Basic Law: Israel – Nation State of the Jewish People

On July 8, 2021, Israel’s Supreme Court, ...

The Knesset (Israel’s parliament) passed the Basic Law on July 19, 2018. The Basic Law recognizes that “the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.” (Basic Law § 1(c).) It enshrines principles already recognized in regular legislation that reflect the Jewish character of the state. These include the state symbols and emblem, the national anthem, Jerusalem as the state capital, Jewish immigration, holidays such as Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars, and the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day.

The Basic Law states that Hebrew is the “state language,” whereas Arabic enjoys a “special status,” and that “[n]othing in this article shall affect the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into force.” (§ 4.) The Basic Law further determines that “[t]he State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and strengthening.” (§ 7.)

https://johnhelmer.net/race-war-against-the-palestinians-turns-into-war-of-the-worlds-will-the-us-and-russian-navies-engage-off-gaza-other-questions/

https://www.azadi-b.com/?p=38067

https://www.farsnews.ir/news/13990627000001/دبیر-کل-جهاد-اسلامی-طرح-صلح-عربی-از-اعلامیه-بالفور-خطرناک%E2%80%8Cتر-است

https://www.mehrnews.com/news/5777608/چرا-جهاد-اسلامی-فلسطین-در-کانون-حملات-صهیونیست-ها-قرار-دارد

حماس این سال‌ها سیاست حداقل تنش را دنبال می‌کند و معتقد است تداوم تنش‌ها و فرصت دادن به رژیم برای بازی با آتش مانع مسیر قدرت نوارغزه و افزایش قدرت نظامی می‌شود. ضمن آنکه وضعیت کنونی اقتصادی در غزه، لغو مجوزهای کارگران غزه برای ورود به سرزمین‌های اشغالی، افزایش بیکاری و چالش جدی بیمارستان‌ها برای تأمین نیازهای مردم و بیماران و…در کنار عدم بازسازی غزه از جنگ‌های اخیر و بالاخص سیف القدس موجب شده است حماس به دنبال تنش نباشد و بسیار محتاطانه رفتار کند. حماس معتقد است کنش جهاد اسلامی دستاورد راهبردی نخواهد داشت( مانند سیف القدس) و بالعکس هزینه‌های جدی‌ای به جهاد اسلامی وارد می سازد.