Anadolu Agency – October 9, 2023
Russia says Israel-Hamas conflict ‘great danger for region’
Moscow is watching what is happening around Israel, in Middle East with ‘great concern,’ says Kremlin spokesman
Burc Eruygur
Russia said on Monday that the ongoing fighting between Israel and the Gaza-based resistance group Hamas poses “a great danger for the region.”
“We believe that it is necessary to bring this situation into a peaceful direction as soon as possible, because the continuation of such a round of violence, of course, is fraught with further escalation and growth of this conflict. This is a great danger for the region, so we are extremely concerned,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a press briefing in Moscow.
Moscow is watching what is going on around Israel and in the Middle East with “great concern,” Peskov said, warning that the current situation has the potential to spread.10-9-2023A
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s schedule currently does not include contacts with the leaderships in Israel and Palestine, but such contacts can be agreed upon quickly if necessary, the Kremlin spokesman added.
Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel early Saturday, firing a barrage of rockets. It said the surprise attack was in response to the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and increased settler violence.
At least 700 Israelis have been killed and over 2,300 others wounded in the fighting, according to the Israeli Health Ministry.
In retaliation, the Israeli army initiated Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 493 Palestinians and wounding over 2,750 others.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/russia-says-israel-hamas-conflict-great-danger-for-region-/3012454
Global Times editorial – October 8, 2023
To avoid a new Middle East war, Israeli-Palestinian issue can't be delayed: China
By Global Times
Many people say that this round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted quite suddenly, and on the surface, it does seem so. Hamas launched a surprise attack on the Israel's military, catching them off guard and resulting in significant casualties that have shocked the world. Israel's retaliatory actions are bound to lead to more bloodshed and escalation of violence. Even though none of us want to see this happen, it is difficult to prevent it from occurring. International peace efforts are far from strong enough in the face of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is an unavoidable fact and requires a more powerful collective effort from the international community to change it.
From a deeper perspective, this conflict is not sudden and has a certain inevitability. It once again announces to the world, through bloodshed and loss of life, that if fundamental solutions are not implemented for the Palestinian issue, and if the peace process is not promoted, bloodshed and conflict will recur. This is actually quite evident, but it has long been ignored by Western countries that bear the primary responsibility and influence in the Palestinian issue.
For many years, China has repeatedly called on the international community to prioritize the Palestinian issue on the international agenda on major multilateral occasions such as the United Nations. It has emphasized the need to advance the "two-state solution" with a stronger sense of urgency. Not long ago before the outbreak of this conflict, Permanent Mission of China to the UN was still stressing this point. Now, the necessity and urgency have been elevated to another level, given the high cost paid by Palestine, Israel, and the entire Middle East.
It's necessary to recognize that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a complex conglomerate of problems, and external interference is one of the main reasons why this problem has not been resolved and even intensifies hatred. The bias and interference by Western countries, led by the US, in the Israeli-Palestinian issue have been evident for a long time, and historical Middle East conflicts have often had US involvement behind the scenes. And after the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the quick decision of the US and some Western countries to take sides not only does not help solve the problem but also adds fuel to the fire. Considering the large number of innocent civilians killed and injured in the conflict over the past two days, the immediate priority of the international community should be to urge both sides to cease fire quickly in order to prevent further humanitarian disasters.
A report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development shows that the prolonged closure and military operations carried out by Israel during the occupation of Gaza from 2007 to 2018 have pushed Gaza's economy to the brink of collapse. Today, it has become one of the poorest and most volatile areas in the world. It can be said that this large-scale armed conflict between Palestine and Israel once again proves that the means of seeking absolute security, under the guise of peace by the US and the West, cannot achieve true peace and tranquility. It also exposes the essence of the US new Middle East strategy. We urge the US and other Western countries to stop this practice and truly participate in the Middle East peace process.
Middle East peace is by no means a road without a future. The key is to start walking the right path from now on, rather than taking the wrong path or even going back. According to media reports, this round of conflict between Palestine and Israel has already caused nearly 1,000 deaths and thousands of injuries on both sides. Moreover, the war may also spread to other countries. The latest development is that Israel and the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon have engaged in a firefight. Many people worry whether this event will eventually lead to the "Sixth Middle East War."
At this moment, the international community should take urgent action. The United Nations issued a statement on October 7, calling it a "dangerous precipice," strongly condemning the attacks on civilians, and calling for an end to violence. UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged "all diplomatic efforts to avoid a wider conflagration." The UN Security Council plans to hold a closed-door meeting on the current situation between Palestine and Israel Sunday afternoon local time in New York to discuss solutions. Fundamentally, all parties involved in the Middle East peace process, including Palestine and Israel, must work toward creating conditions for the realization of the "two-state solution."
It has been 50 years since the Fourth Arab-Israeli War (also known as the Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, October War) and 30 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords. War or peace? The Middle East is once again at a historical crossroads. The international community must take decisive and effective diplomatic actions to urge both sides to stop violence as soon as possible, exercise maximum restraint, and especially prevent the window of opportunity for peace from being closed by conflicts. China has always supported the convening of a larger-scale, more authoritative, and influential international peace conference to create conditions for the resumption of negotiations. This proposal is now more necessary and urgent.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202310/1299464.shtml
There is nothing surprising about Hamas’s operation
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was provoked by Israeli aggression and occupation. It is an act of resistance.
By Somdeep Sen
The Israeli authorities seem to have been caught off-guard by Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Saturday. Besides launching rocket fire, the Palestinian faction also sent its fighters from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, where they attacked military targets, briefly took control of some Israeli settlements and took dozens of civilians and soldiers hostage.
Some have called Hamas’s attack a “colossal failure” of the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus. Others, mostly diplomats and political leaders from the West and beyond, have labelled it an “unprovoked” “terrorist” act while insisting that Israel has the “right to defend itself”.
But nothing about this operation is surprising or unprovoked. Neither is it just the result of gaps in Israeli security measures. It is a response that is to be expected from the Palestinian people, who have faced Israeli settler colonial rule and occupation for decades.
International law prohibits states from “any military occupation, however temporary”. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 37/43 also reaffirms that people struggling for independence and liberation from colonial rule have the right to do so using “all available means, including armed struggle”. In other words, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is part of the armed Palestinian struggle provoked by the Israeli occupation and colonialism.
It is also not surprising that the Palestinian armed factions rely on asymmetric tactics and stealth. That is because they are up against one of the most sophisticated and well-funded armed forces in the world.
That the operation was launched from Gaza is also not surprising. The late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said once called Gaza the “essential core” of the Palestinian struggle. It is an impoverished, congested place inhabited largely by Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes during the Nakba of 1948. It previously gave birth to the first Intifada and has been hosting the bulk of the Palestinian armed resistance over the past few decades.
Gaza has also been under debilitating siege for 16 years, which has taken a heavy toll on its people but has failed to destroy their will to resist. The blockade was imposed after Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006, but its Palestinian rival, Fatah, along with Israel and its backers conspired to prevent it from taking power.
After several months of fighting, Hamas was able to take full control of Gaza in June 2007, for which Israel and its partners decided to collectively punish the Palestinians living there.
For more than 16 years, the residents of Gaza have had no freedom of movement. They can leave through the Israeli-controlled checkpoints if they have an Israeli work permit or in rare cases if they have been given special permissions by Israel to receive medical treatment in the occupied West Bank for life-threatening conditions. To leave for any other part of the world, they must have a valid visa, which is difficult to obtain by stateless people, and then navigate the Egyptian authorities’ arbitrary decisions to close the Rafah border crossing and deny entry to Palestinians.
The blockade has brought the economy of Gaza nearly to a standstill. Today close to half the population is unemployed. Among the young, the unemployment rate is more than 60 percent. The food supply is also limited by the siege. From 2007 to 2010, Israeli authorities kept a calorie count of Palestinians’ nutritional needs to narrowly avoid malnutrition while restricting access to food for the people in Gaza.
Today, according to the World Food Programme, a significant portion of the population is food insecure. In 2022, 1.84 million people across Palestine – one-third of the population – did not have enough food to eat. Among these people, 1.1 million were considered “severely food insecure”, 90 percent of whom lived in Gaza.
The strip also suffers from an energy crisis. The Israeli ban on the entry of fuel into Gaza means that electricity production is severely limited. In 2023, Gaza has had only 13 hours of electricity a day. In 2017 and 2018, this was down to seven hours a day.
This has in turned caused severe problems with water provision and sanitation. The constant blackouts have prevented water treatment plants from functioning properly. As a result, untreated sewage simply flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
Gaza’s aquifers, the main source of its water, are also nearly depleted and contaminated by sea- and wastewater. A significant portion of all reported diseases in Gaza is caused by poor access to safe water.
The blockade has also taken a toll on the strip’s medical facilities. Hospitals lack basic supplies, equipment and infrastructure and are unable to handle severe cases or provide proper care for the chronically ill.
Then there are the routine Israeli military campaigns. Israel justifies its onslaughts on the enclave by claiming they are in pursuit of Palestinian fighters. Yet it systematically targets civilians and non-military civilian infrastructure like residential buildings, hospitals, schools, water treatment plants, etc, making life in Gaza all the more unbearable.
The psychological impact of all of this cannot be understated, especially among the young, who feel a heightened sense of hopelessness and mental distress. As a Palestinian youth in Gaza told me during an interview in 2013: “Every day here is a struggle to stop yourself from losing your mind. You will notice that the youth in Gaza often go to university and then on the side they do internships, volunteer or set up organizations. All this is done to remain occupied mentally and delay the inevitable point when you lose it.”
But all these years of tragedy and suffering have not killed the Palestinian spirit of resistance.
The formal justification for the operation Hamas gave was the desecration by Israelis of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, and increased settler violence against the Palestinians. But considering how well-planned it looks, it is likely that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood has been in the works from before the recent events in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In fact, what appears to be the largest military response by Palestinians in decades was an inevitable development, an act of resistance and a reaction to the suffering of the people of Gaza under a brutal blockade and occupation. It is part of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, and it solidifies Gaza’s place at the heart of it.
Somdeep Sen is Associate Professor of International Development Studies at Roskilde University in Denmark. He is the author of Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial (Cornell University Press, 2020).
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/8/there-is-nothing-surprising-about-hamass-operation
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