Al Jazeera – December 23, 2023
More than 200 dead in 24 hours in Gaza as Israeli raids turn ‘more intense’
Death toll in Gaza during the 11-week assault hits 20,258 while 53,688 others are wounded
At least 201 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 370 wounded by Israeli forces in the past 24 hours in Gaza as the assault on the besieged enclave nears its 12th week.
Bombing in central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp killed at least eight Palestinians, including children, on Saturday while another attack on Jabalia camp is believed to have killed dozens more.
The death toll in Gaza during the 11-week assault has hit 20,258 while 53,688 others are wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday.
Thousands more bodies are believed to be trapped under the rubble across the strip.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah, said the Israeli attacks across Gaza “have become much more intense”.
“The bombardment and the shelling of the northern parts of the territory continue as dead bodies have been found decomposed after days of fighting in the ground in these areas,” he said.
Al Jazeera TV said the decomposed bodies, some of them left unattended for 20 days in the rubble and streets, were finally buried by Gaza’s Civil Defence team on Saturday.
‘No place safe’
Almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and forced to live in flimsy tents or on the streets in the southern part of the strip, where widespread hunger has been reported.
Israel has long urged the Palestinians to leave northern areas of Gaza but its forces have also been bombarding neighbourhoods in central and southern parts of the tiny coastal enclave.
“Where should we go to? There is no place safe,” Ziad, a medic and father of six, told the Reuters news agency by phone.
“They ask people to head to [the central Gaza city of] Deir el-Balah, where they bomb day and night.”
Israel has said 144 of its soldiers have been killed since it launched its ground incursion on October 20, two weeks after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on its soil, killing 1,147 people and taking 240 captives into the enclave.
More than 100 captives are still believed to be in Gaza after a number of people were exchanged during a weeklong truce last month. The Israeli government says of those still in Gaza, 22 are dead.
Lost contact with group holding captives: Hamas
Hamas on Saturday said it had lost contact with a group it said was responsible for five of the Israeli captives due to Israeli bombardment.
There is a possibility the captives were killed during an Israeli raid, Abu Ubaida, spokesman of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said.
There was no immediate response from Israeli authorities about Hamas’s statement.
Drawing on various information sources, an Israeli government-appointed committee has been declaring some hostages dead in absentia.
Hamas has not confirmed these accounts but has warned Israel that “time is running out” for the captives.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas representative in Beirut, on Saturday, said there will be no negotiations with Israel on the exchange of captives until the onslaught on Gaza stops.
“If Israel wants to recover its prisoners alive, it must stop the war,” he said.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/23/over-200-dead-in-24-hours-in-gaza-as-israeli-attacks-become-more-intense
The Countercurrent – December 23, 2023
Gaza genocide death toll tops 20,000 amid mass starvation
by Andre Damon
The death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza reached 20,057, according to a statement Friday by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Taking into account the 7,000 missing, most buried under rubble, the true death toll has likely already exceeded 25,000.
A death toll of 20,000–25,000 out of a population of just over 2 million means that more than one out of 100 people in Gaza has been killed in the past two-and-a-half months. This is the equivalent of 3.3 million people in the United States.
The Health Ministry said over 50,000 people are wounded, of whom 5,000 are in critical condition and risk death unless they are transferred abroad for treatment.
Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said that 50,000 pregnant women and about 900,000 children are suffering from malnutrition. He said that just one-fiftieth of the required aid is traveling into Gaza.
On Thursday, the United Nations reported that a quarter of Gaza’s population, or over 500,000 people, is starving. “Hunger is ravaging Gaza, and this is expected to increase illness across the Strip, most acutely among children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and older people,” the UN wrote in its report.
The UN reported that 93 percent of the population is facing “crisis levels of hunger,” while one in four households is facing “catastrophic conditions” of starvation. It concluded, “Starvation, destitution and death are evident.”
According to the UN, “WHO staff say that every single person they spoke to in Gaza is hungry.” They added, “We move around Gaza delivering medical supplies and people rush to our trucks hoping it’s food.”
There have been over 100,000 cases of diarrhea reported, with half among children under five years old, a rate 25 times greater than what existed prior to Israel’s onslaught.
The UN noted that “while a healthy body can more easily fight off these diseases, a wasted and weakened body will struggle. Hunger weakens the body’s defences and opens the door to disease.” The report noted that “in Gaza today, on average, there is only one shower for every 4,500 people and one toilet for every 220,” and “these conditions make the spread of infectious diseases inevitable.”
In a staggering statement to the AP, Arif Husain, Chief Economist and Director of Research, Assessment and Monitoring at the United Nations World Food Programme, implied that the mass starvation in Gaza is the worst he has seen in his lifetime. “It doesn’t get any worse,” he said. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.”
Some 1.9 million residents of Gaza, or approximately 80 percent of the population, are displaced. There are no functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, and only nine health facilities in the whole country remained partially functional.
On Friday, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution calling for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza. Over the past two months, the United States has vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire. This time, the United States abstained, after all language calling for a ceasefire was removed from the draft, and instead called for “for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Negotiations over finding language that the US would not veto dragged the vote back from Monday to Friday.
Earlier language calling for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities” was removed to prevent the US from vetoing it. A proposal by Russia calling for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities” was vetoed by the United States, despite receiving 10 out of 14 votes in favor.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States of “forcing into the text an essential license for Israel to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza under the pretext of ‘creating conditions for a cessation of hostilities.’”
On Friday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the way Israel is conducting its operation is “creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian assistance” in Gaza. Guterres said that “four out of five of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza.”
“The failure to call for a ceasefire after five days of deliberate delays and dilutions of the resolution is incomprehensible and utterly callous,” said Sally Abi-Khalil, a spokesman for the Oxfam charity. “It is a profound dereliction of duty from an organization established to uphold the UN Charter to maintain peace and protect lives.
“It actively denies over two million Palestinians—many of whom are now starving as a risk of famine looms—respite from the relentless bombardment and siege they have endured for nearly two and a half months.”
Christopher Gunness, the former chief spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), accused the UNSC resolution of “greenlighting genocide” in a statement to Al Jazeera. Gunness said the massacre in Gaza is “an American-Israeli genocide—it’s not just an Israeli genocide.”
“Just as America provides Israel with $4 billion of military support per annum, it’s also—as we’ve seen tonight—providing Israel with diplomatic and political cover to continue with a genocide which is marked by the wholesale and industrial ignoring of international humanitarian law,” Gunness told Al Jazeera.
Gunness is correct. In a press briefing on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Blinken was asked to comment on the world seeing Israel’s onslaught on Gaza as “America’s war.” Blinken did not object to this characterization, instead declaring that the US government is “intent on seeing this through to completion.”
https://countercurrents.org/2023/12/gaza-genocide-death-toll-tops-20000-amid-mass-starvation/
The Countercurrent – December 23, 2023
Normalization With Israel Has Been Ended by Its Brutal War on Gaza
by Vijay Prashad
On December 14, 2023, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included an interesting provision: for the U.S. President to create a special envoy for the Abraham Accords, the Negev Forum, and other related platforms. This addition came at the same time as the government worried deeply about the collapse of its entire agenda in the Middle East, as well as about the threats posed to Israel from Lebanon and Yemen. Until a few months ago, high officials of the United States preened about their political maneuvers to get the Arab states to normalize relations with Israel and to dilute the influence of China in the region. All these schemes collapsed in the ruins of Israel’s aggressive bombing campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza. Now, all of the structures created by the United States—starting with the Abraham Accords—appear to have lost their solidity. Whereas the question of Palestine had begun to drift off the radar of the Arab states, that question is now forced back to the center by the actions of Hamas and the other Palestinian armed factions on October 7.
The Abraham Accords
U.S. President Donald Trump was never interested in international law or the intricacies of diplomacy. As far as Israel was concerned, Trump was clear that he wanted to settle the conflict with the Palestinians—who seemed weakened by the Israeli policy of settlements and isolation of Gaza—to the benefit of Tel Aviv. In January 2020, Trump released his “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which effectively disregarded the claims of the Palestinians and strengthened the apartheid Israeli state. The emblem of this hardened policy was that Trump was going to shift the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a provocative move that upended the Palestinian claim that the city was to be central to their state. “I have done a lot for Israel,” Trump said at a January 28 press conference that announced this plan, with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu beside him. “No Palestinians or Israelis will be uprooted from their homes,” Trump said, although his plan noted that “land swaps provided by the State of Israel could include both populated and unpopulated areas.” The contradiction did not matter. It was clear that Trump was going to back the annexation of the Occupied Palestine Territory come what may.
A few months later, Trump announced the Abraham Accords, which were a set of bilateral deals between Israel and four countries (Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates). These Accords promised to continue the process of normalization by Arab states, a process that started with Egypt in 1978 and then Jordan in 1994. In January 2023, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden took this momentum forward by establishing the Negev Forum Working Group that brought together these states (Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates) with Israel into a platform to “build bridges” in the region. In fact, this Forum was part of the overall project of driving a process for Arab states to have a public relationship with Israel. What eluded Israel and the United States was Saudi Arabia, which is a highly influential country in the region. If the Saudis joined this process, and if the Qataris came along, then the Palestinian cause would be significantly diminished.
The Indian Road
In July 2022, Biden went to Jerusalem to sit beside Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid to host a virtual meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the UAE’s President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. At this meeting, the four men announced the creation of “i2u2,” or a platform of commercial projects to be jointly developed by India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. This platform brought India directly into the plans for the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab states.
The next year, at the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Delhi, several heads of government announced the creation of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). This corridor had the stated intention of contesting the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative as well as being an instrument to bring Saudi Arabia into the drive of normalization with Israel. The IMEC was to start in Gujarat and end in Greece, with a route that would take it through Saudi Arabia and Israel. Since both Saudi Arabia and Israel would be part of this corridor, it would mean the de facto recognition of Israel by Saudi Arabia. Israeli diplomatic officials began to travel to Saudi Arabia, suggesting that normalization was on the cards (with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman telling Fox News in September 2023 that normalization was getting “closer”).
The war on Gaza stalled the entire process. Mohammed Bin Salman held a phone call with Biden in late October, during which he said that the U.S. must call for a ceasefire, which was unlikely. As part of the call, Saudi officials said that the Crown Prince had noted the possibility of restarting the normalization dialogue after the war. But there was little enthusiasm in their voices. A few days after this call, Biden said, “I’m convinced one of the reasons Hamas attacked when they did, and I have no proof of this, just my instinct tells me, is because of the progress we were making towards regional integration for Israel.” The next day, the White House said that Biden had been misunderstood.
Ansar Allah and Hezbollah
Days after Israel began to mercilessly pummel Gaza, two new battlefronts opened. In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fighters began to fire rockets into Israel, occasioning the evacuation of 80,000 Israelis. Israel struck back, including through the use of illegal white phosphorus. In early November, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah told his followers that their fighters had new weapons with which to threaten not only Israel but also its enablers, the United States. U.S. warships sitting in the eastern Mediterranean, Nasrallah said, “do not scare us, and will not scare us.” His fighters, he said, “have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us.” The presence of Russian-made Yakhont missiles certainly gives Hezbollah the credibility to say that it can strike a U.S. warship that sits less than 300 kilometers from the Levantine coastline.
In the speech, Nasrallah congratulated Ansar Allah—also called the Houthis—for the missiles they fired toward Israel and toward ships trying to get to the Suez Canal. Those attacks by Ansar Allah have now stayed the hand of many shipping companies, who simply do not want to get into this conflict (Hong Kong’s OOCL, for instance, has decided that its ships will avoid the region and will not supply Israel). In retaliation, the U.S. has announced a maritime coalition to patrol the Red Sea. Ansar Allah responded that it would turn the waters into a “graveyard” because this coalition was not about maritime freedom but about allowing for the “immoral” resupplying of Israel.
The actions of Hezbollah and Ansar Allah have sent a message to the Arab capitals that at least some political forces are willing to offer material solidarity with the Palestinians. This will inspire the Arab populations to put more pressure on their governments. Normalization with Israel seems to be off the table. But, if this pressure mounts, countries like Egypt and Jordan might be forced to reconsider their peace treaties.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.
Yeni Safak – December 22, 2023
170 container ships rerouted, 35 docked due to Houthi attacks in Red Sea
Shipping companies rerouting vessels through Cape of Good Hope, incurring higher costs
The American shipping company Flexport Inc. announced on Thursday that nearly 170 ships have been diverted from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea and 35 ships have been halted, awaiting instructions from their operating companies.
According to a statement by the San Francisco-based company, about 170 container ships have been rerouted around Africa, with 35 other ships docked due to attacks in the Red Sea.
Concurrently, the Houthi group in Yemen persisted in its threats to target ships associated with Israel passing through the strait, located south of the Red Sea, in solidarity with the Palestinians in the bombarded Gaza Strip.
Shipping companies have been rerouting vessels through the Cape of Good Hope to avoid potential attacks, incurring higher transportation costs and extended delivery time.
On Friday, Bloomberg reported that “the cost to move goods in a 40-foot container from Asia to northern Europe jumped 16% over the past week and is up 41% in December, according to the Drewry World Container Index released Thursday. Likewise, fuel freight bills are jumping, with some oil majors and tanker companies saying they will avoid the southern Red Sea.
It further said: “The widespread rerouting from the canals ensnares ships hauling everything from toys and auto parts to gas, fuel and crude oil.”
According to the Bloomberg report: “In the short term, it will raise costs and cause weeks of delays and could lead to the prices of some goods rising. It will also snarl the logistics of land-based firms that rely on predictable maritime schedules.”
These tensions arise during one of the busiest periods of the year for exports from China, as retailers replenish stock following the holidays and ahead of the closure of Chinese factories for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday in February.
On Nov. 19, the Houthi group in Yemen declared the seizure of the Galaxy Leader, a cargo ship owned by an Israeli businessman, in the Red Sea, and subsequently brought it to the Yemeni coast.
The Houthi group has repeatedly threatened to target ships owned or operated by Israeli companies, "in solidarity with Palestine," and has urged countries to withdraw their citizens working within the crews of these ships.
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