Daily Sabah – December 17, 2023
Israeli strikes on Gaza homes kill 47 civilians, 5 die in West Bank
At least 47 Palestinians were killed Sunday in Israeli airstrikes targeting houses in Jabalia and the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian media reported.
"35 Palestinians were killed and dozens were injured on Sunday during an Israeli bombing of a house in the town of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip," Palestine's official news agency WAFA reported.
At least 90 others were wounded and many others are still under the rubble, local sources said.
"The Israeli warplanes also targeted a house in Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip, killing about 12 citizens and wounding dozens, the majority of whom were already displaced," the agency also reported.
In a separate attack, the Israeli artillery fired an shell into the courtyard of Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. The shell did not explode but wounded at least two men, the agency added.
The Israeli navy also bombed several areas north of Khan Younis and its western coast, it said.
West Bank tolls climb
Also on Sunday, Israeli forces killed five Palestinians at a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, as the Israeli army launched airstrikes on the camp.
The death toll from the raid on the Nur Shams camp in the West Bank city of Tulkarem climbed to five after the announcement of the deaths of two men aged 19 and 21 in hospital, the ministry said.
The Israeli operation at the camp began during the night, according to witnesses.
The director of the Thabet Thabet hospital, Amin Khader, told AFP that "five people arrived at the hospital with wounds, including one to the head."
An Israeli military spokesperson said airstrikes had targeted alleged terrorist groups who opened fire and threw explosives at Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Meanwhile, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that the Israeli forces are preventing ambulance and emergency crews from entering the Nour Shams camp to respond to the injured.
In a statement, the PRCS said: "An injured person was martyred in the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm as the occupation forces prevented PRCS ambulance crews from entering the camp to transfer the critically injured individual with a head injury despite coordination through the International Committee of the Red Cross."
"In a separate incident, the occupation forces arrested a PRCS volunteer from the ambulance while heading to transport a medical case from the camp after obtaining coordination," the aid organization added.
In a separate attack, another Palestinian youth succumbed to his wounds as a result of an Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Medical sources at Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin announced on Sunday that he died due to injuries he sustained during an Israeli attack on the eastern neighborhood of Jenin during a raid by Israeli forces of the city on Dec. 12, which lasted for three days, the agency also reported.
Violence in the West Bank has spiked since the start of Israel's war on Gaza in retaliation to the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion.
More than 290 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since, health officials say.
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/israeli-strikes-on-gaza-homes-kill-47-civilians-5-die-in-west-bank
Death toll across Palestine surges to 19,088, over 54,450 wounded
RAMALLAH, Saturday, December 16, 2023 (WAFA) – In the wake of the devastating Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Ministry of Health announced in an update this evening that the death toll has surged to at least 19,088, with over 54,450 individuals wounded.
The Ministry said in a press statement that the documented number of casualties in the Gaza Strip has reached 18,800, while the death toll in the West Bank also surged to 288. In addition, the ministry said, 51,000 Palestinians have been injured in Gaza, and nearly 3,450 others in the West Bank.
Among the casualties in Gaza, over 300 healthcare workers, 86 journalists, 35 civil defense personnel, and 135 UNRWA staff have been killed.
The Health Ministry reiterated its warnings about the dangers of the depletion of vaccine supplies in Gaza, which could lead to catastrophic health consequences, especially among displaced individuals in overcrowded shelters. The ministry documented 360,000 cases of infectious diseases in shelters, but said it believes the actual number to be higher.
With only 11 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza partially operational and able to admit new patients, healthcare services are severely affected by the Israeli aggression, according to the ministry. Notably, only one hospital in the north is operational, according to the World Health Organization.
The year 2023 is considered the bloodiest for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, with 496 victims recorded since the beginning of the year.
The Health Ministry also warned of increasing Israeli attacks on hospitals, health centers, and ambulance vehicles in the West Bank, which further obstruct access to essential healthcare services.
The New Arab – December 16, 2023
Israel bulldozes, 'buries alive' dozens at Gaza's Kamal Adwan Hospital
Israeli forces bulldozed and buried alive dozens of displaced Palestinians at Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza, according to local journalists.
Israeli forces stormed and bulldozed parts of Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza on Saturday, burying alive and killing dozens of patients and injured displaced Palestinians, according to a videoﾠuploaded by Al-Jazeera videographer and reporter Anas al-Sharif.
The video from al-Sharif suggests that the courtyard, which contained many tents set up by refugees, was deliberately bulldozed by Israeli forces before people had a chance to escape.
In the video, an emotional al-Sharif explains that Israeli forces had currently withdrew, but that “a major despicable act occurred at Kamal Adwan”. The video then cuts to scenes of the destroyed courtyard, with earth and bricks overturned into mounds, under which are dead bodies.
“This is the crime committed by the Israeli forces in Kamal Adwan’s yards.”
He then turns the camera to what looks like a dismembered limb, saying: “This is the body of an injured refugee who was in the hospital … the Israeli bulldozers ran him over.”
“We cannot describe the situation … tens of bodies run over by Israeli bulldozers,” al-Sharif says as he pans around the yard, showing more crushed heaps of rubble and body parts.
"Dozens of displaced, sick, and wounded people were buried alive. The occupation [Israeli] bulldozers trampled the tents of the displaced people in the hospital yard and brutally crushed them,” he adds.
According to witnesses, there were dozens of people taking refuge in the yard when Israeli forces attacked. “They are now under the rubble,” the videographer says.
Though the exact number of dead is not given in the video, al-Sharif indicates that he has only been able to cover a small part of the destruction at Kamal Adwan.
In a particularly gruesome scene, the video shows a kitten eating what al-Sharif calls “the flesh of martyrs’ bodies”.
Al-Sharif says that though he does not want to show these scenes, he feels he must so the world knows about “the atrocities Israel commits against our people”.
The contents of the video cannot at this time be independently verified by The New Arab.
Kamal Adwan has been under direct siege for nine days in a row, with reports of the Israeli forces shooting at anything within its vicinity. The structure now appears to be almost completely destroyed.
One of Israel’s main tactics in its war on Gaza has been to systematically target hospitals, not just to make them dysfunctional , but also to stop Gazans from seeking refuge within them. It has claimed, without presenting any credible evidence, that Hamas uses them as “command centres”.
Yemeni drones pound Israel’s Port of Eilat in solidarity with Gaza
Yemeni Armed Forces say they have launched a large-scale drone strike against “sensitive” targets in the occupied territories in a show of support for the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“A large squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles carried out a military operation against sensitive targets in the Umm al-Rashrash area [of the Port of Eilat] in the southern sector of the occupied lands” on Saturday, Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television channel cited a statement released by the armed forces.
The statement said the drone strike came in line with the guidelines of the leader of Yemen's Ansarullah movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, and in response to calls made by the freedom-loving Yemeni nation as well as peoples from other Muslim countries.
It underscored that Yemeni army units “will continue offensives against the Zionist regime until it stops aggression against their steadfast Palestinian brethren in the Gaza Strip.”
“Yemen’ Armed Forces also call upon Arab and Muslim nations as well as the international community to assume an unqualified position on the Palestinian cause, and support the resistance front,” the statement said.
On Friday, the Yemeni army said it had targeted two Israeli-bound container ships in waters off the coast of Yemen. Two naval cruise missiles were fired at the ships, identified as MSC ALANYA and MSC PALATIUM III, after they refused to respond to calls from Yemen as well as fire warnings.
Yemen says its army will only target ships heading to Israeli ports, and all the other ships bound for other ports can freely sail in the waters near Yemen.
The Yemeni army says it will continue to target Israel-bound ships in the Arabian and the Red Sea until food and medicine are delivered to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against Israel since the regime launched barbaric hostilities on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movements carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity.
Israel has killed at least 18,800 people, including 6,200 women and 8,000 children, in Gaza since. Another 51,000 individuals have been wounded.
On December 4, the Yemeni army targeted two Israeli ships in the Red Sea as they were attempting to cross the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Reports revealed Israeli shipping companies had already decided to reroute their vessels in fear of attacks by Yemeni forces.
Yemeni forces have also launched missile and drone attacks on targets in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine in the wake of the regime’s deadly aggression in Gaza.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/12/16/716479/yemeni-drones-israel-port-eilat-gaza
Global Research, December 11, 2023
Israel and US Plan Complete Deportation from Gaza;
Famine Is Looming; “A Child Is Killed Every Ten Minutes”
By Marc Vandepitte
Deporting all Gazans is the joint plan of the US and Israel. According to the plan, the Palestinians will be ‘relocated’ to Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. This large-scale ethnic cleansing is cynically presented as a “moral and humanitarian” aid plan. *
Murderous
In recent war history, there has rarely been such an intensive and massive slaughter of civilians and children as in Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world. The destruction of northern Gaza in less than seven weeks approaches the devastation caused by the years of carpet bombing of German cities during World War II.
According to the World Health Organization, a child is killed every ten minutes.
More than half of Gaza City has now been destroyed, including schools and mosques. Hospitals can no longer function. Bakeries are closed and there is almost no drinking water left. Destruction and slaughter are happening on an industrial scale, with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
People were first driven out of the north, but now the south is attacked with heavy bombing and a ground offensive against the town of Khan Younis. According to a top official of the UN humanitarian aid agency, conditions there are now apocalyptic.
No child still has unlimited access to care, food or water. Famine is looming. And because sewers no longer work, there will be mass outbreaks of disease.
Gazans are now being urged to leave for Rafah, the southernmost point of Gaza, where the border post with Egypt is also located.
Officially, Israel’s goal is to eliminate Hamas. But the intensity and ruthlessness with which the Israeli army is acting reveals that this is an excuse for another goal: the complete expulsion of the population from Palestine, starting with Gaza.
According to the Jewish philosopher Mosh￩ Machover, this plan has been in existence for a long time: “We are actually waiting for a time when they can be permanently expelled to neighbouring countries. That will only be possible during a full-scale war and I fear that Israel is prepared to provoke it.” He said this in 2017.
New Deportation Plan
Israel wants to increase the level of inhumanity to such an extent that the residents of Gaza will ultimately have no choice but to leave. That seems to be the hidden plan, although that plan is getting clearer by the day.
A plan, from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry was already leaked in late October. That plan envisaged a final deportation of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai desert. That was met with a resounding refusal from Cairo.
But Israel is determined to continue this large-scale ethnic cleansing. In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, two Israeli members of the Knesset called on Western countries to accept Palestinian refugees. Gila Gamliel, intelligence minister wrote a similar op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, proposing the “voluntary resettlement” of Palestinians in Gaza to other countries around the world.
Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter does not hesitate to call the current war a ﾑNakba 2023ﾒ, referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine at the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.
“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers. (…) Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
And it is not just words. A new joint US-Israeli plan has now surfaced in which they want to deport the population of Gaza to four countries: Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. In this new plan, Egypt should no longer bear the burden alone.
The numbers per country are already known too: a million Palestinians would go to Egypt, half a million to Turkey, 250,000 to Iraq and another 250,000 to Yemen.
The four countries referred to are receiving generous aid from Washington. The plan states that this support will be linked to a willingness to receive Gazans. In other words, the four countries will be put under serious financial and perhaps diplomatic pressure to ‘harbour’ the Gazans.
The key country is Egypt, which must open its border. Joe Wilson, former Republican MP and one of the initiators of this plan, is very clear about this. According to him, “the only moral way [to solve the Gaza problem] is to ensure that Egypt opens its borders”.
“Israel is trying to keep civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip as low as possible, but Hamas is not allowing the refugees to leave and Egypt is unwilling to open its borders,” the authors of the plan write in the opening paragraph. Meanwhile, six children are being slaughtered every hour…
For its planned population move, the plan refers to other recent conflict hotspots. “It would not be the first time other countries have accepted refugees,” the plan says. Here, the authors refer to the six million Ukrainians who fled the country to Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, among others. Nearly five million Syrians have also “moved” to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, while other Middle Eastern and European countries have taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
The plan has been submitted to key figures in the US House of Representatives and Congress and has the support of both Democrats and Republicans. The planned large-scale ethnic cleansing is cynically presented as a “moral and humanitarian” aid plan:
“The neighbouring borders have been closed for too long, but it is now clear that in order to free the Gazan population from the tyrannical oppression of Hamas and to allow them to live free of war and bloodshed, Israel must encourage the international community to find the correct, moral and humane avenues for the relocation of the Gazan population.”
Truly a fine piece of newspeak.
The plan also firmly lashes out at UNRWA, the UN refugee agency dedicated to aid and development for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. US lawmakers blame the agency of “propagating the refugee narrative” and “inhibiting the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees for over seventy years and has in fact deepened the refugee crisis”. That’s why they want the agency to be closed down.*
We may be on the eve of a mass deportation of Palestinians, a second Nakba. If Western countries want to retain any shred of credibility, they must take action immediately.
They must immediately impose economic and diplomatic sanctions against Israel and also convene the Security Council to condemn and thwart the sinister plan of the US and Israel. If not, they are complicit in this declared humanitarian disaster.*
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Sources
Senior US lawmakers review plan linking Gaza refugee resettlement to US aid to Arab countries
US lawmakers review plan linking Gaza refugee resettlement to American aid to Arab countries
US Congress is reviewing a plan to facilitate an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza
Israel and Americaﾒs plan to move the people of Gaza to Iraq, Egypt, Turkey and Yemen
ﾑWeﾒre Rolling Out Nakba 2023,ﾒ Israeli Minister Says on Northern Gaza Strip Evacuation
https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-us-plan-complete-deportation-from-gaza/5842836
Global Research, December 08, 2023
The Gaza War, “Big Money” and the Insidious Role of the World Economic Forum
By Ernst Wolff
After a temporary lull in the fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government’s war against Hamas resumed in full force on 4 December. Under the pretext of eradicating the “terrorist threat: once and for all, the Israeli army is once again showing no consideration for the Palestinian civilian population.
It is now clear to any unbiased observer that this is no longer a matter of defense, but of targeted destruction – a destruction in which thousands of innocent victims, including countless children, are willingly accepted.
Why? What and, above all, who is behind this monstrous inhumanity?
Some background events that are largely withheld from the general public by the mainstream media, but which may also be decisive for the future development of the conflict, could shed light on this.
Natural Gas Discoveries Off Gaza
As is now widely known,ﾠthere are natural gas and oil deposits worth around $500 billion about 20 nautical miles off the coast of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians would actually be entitled to the proceeds, but Israel has been withholding them for a good 20 years, contrary to international law.
At the same time, however, Israel is itself engaged in oil and gas production, namely at 9 different fields in the Mediterranean, and has thus turned from a natural gas importer into a natural gas exporter since 2017.
This alone is a blatant injustice and, above all, a mockery of the people in the Gaza Strip, where more than half of the inhabitants live in poverty and 80 percent of the population is dependent on humanitarian aid.
Why this is the case and what lies behind this inhumane agenda is revealed, at least in part, by the following background information that has come to light in recent weeks:
One of Israel’s gas fields is Tamar, which is operated by the major US corporation Chevron. Its exports via the East Mediterranean Gas Pipeline were suspended a few days after the terrorist attack on October 7.
Chevron then applied to export gas via the Arab Gas Pipeline, which connects another Israeli offshore platform, Leviathan, to both Jordan and Egypt.
The Alliances in the Background
This should make you prick up your ears because it clearly shows that in the event of war, there are alliances of which the public learns next to nothing, and for good reason: they are not supposed to know who is profiting from the war in the background.
So, let’s take a closer look at the parties involved:
Egypt and Israel have fought several wars against each other in the past and are certainly not considered friendly nations.
And Jordan’s Queen Rania (image left) has repeatedly expressed her solidarity with the Palestinians and her rejection of Israel’s war policy on her Instagram account in recent weeks.
However, this public portrayal is contradicted by a connection between the actors that is hardly mentioned anywhere.
Both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Egypt’s head of state General Al Sisi are listed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as contributors to its agenda.
And Queen Rania of Jordan is not only a contributor but has even been a member of the WEF board for several years.ﾠ
But that is by no means all. With a turnover of around a quarter of a trillion dollars in 2022, Chevron is not only one of the world’s largest oil companies, but is also closely linked to the WEF as one of around 120 so-called strategic partners.
And that’s not all:
Chevron’s main shareholder, alongside its own shareholder Vanguard, is none other than the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock.
And its founder and CEO Larry Finkﾠ(image Left) has also been a member of the WEF board together with Queen Rania since 2019.
And to top it all off: Israel’s most important arms suppliers are the major arms companies in the USA, behind which BlackRock and Co. are also the main shareholders in almost all cases.
Aid Packages and Licenses
However, the arms deliveries declared as aid packages are not financed by charitable organizations or billionaires sympathetic to Israel, but by the American taxpayer, i.e. mainly the American middle class, in the form of so-called aid pacts.
The most recent aid package of 13 billion dollars was only requested in October by US President Joe Biden, who is also a contributor to the WEF agenda.
But these cross-connections do not end there.
On October 31, five days before the resumption of attacks on the Gaza Strip, Israel’s government awarded 12 licenses to explore for natural gas in its waters to six companies. The largest of these is British Petroleum (BP).
BP is also a strategic partner of the WEF and signed a 1.5 billion deal with the Indian IT company Infosys in May 2023.
Not only is Infosys also a strategic partner of the WEF – its co-founder, billionaire Narayana Murthy, is not only a contributor to the WEF, but also the father-in-law of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who in turn is one of the WEF’s Young Global Leaders.
Another Deceptive Maneuver
Another detail that shows how the Palestinian people are being deceived and defrauded not only by the Israeli government, but also by their own leaders:
“In 2021-22, Egypt and Israel were involved in ﾓsecret bilateral talksﾔ regardingﾠthe extraction of natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip. (seeﾠArbuthnot and Chossudovsky, November 2023)
And in June 2023, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu promised the development of the gas field off Gaza to the Egyptian state-owned company EGAS – and, surprisingly, in agreement with the Palestinian Authority.
What sounds like a political sensation turns out on closer inspection to be another deceptive maneuver, because Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’ opponent, is also a contributor to the WEF.
It is sad but true: as so often in the past, the world public is being deceived in the case of Gaza about the fact that the decisive question in the event of war is not which of the two fighting parties will win in the end, but who is pulling the strings in the background and who is unrestrainedly and unscrupulously enriching themselves at the expense of innocent people.
Ernst Wolff was born in China in 1950 and spent his childhood in Korea. After studying in Germany and the USA, he worked as an interpreter, language teacher and screenwriter. Since the 1990s, he has been working as a journalist. He has published numerous articles as well as several non-fiction books (World Power IMF, Financial Tsunami and Wolf of Wall Street). With the highly acclaimed book World Power IMF he became an acknowledged best-selling author. He is also a renowned author in the field of political economy. Ernst Wolff runs his own info channels on YouTube, Telegram and Odysee and regularly reaches a large audience.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/gaza-war-role-world-economic-forum/5842590
|
Published since July 2008 |
Your donation
is tax deductable.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
