US and Arab officials told Middle East Eye that under the agreement, Israeli forces will withdraw from south Lebanon.
Hezbollah has agreed to end its armed presence along the border and move heavy weapons north of the Litani River, the sources said.
The Lebanese army is expected to deploy in south Lebanon, with at least 5,000 troops set to patrol the border area along with an existing UN peacekeeping force.
)November 14, 2024)
The United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories has accused British Foreign Secretary David Lammy of being a „genocide denier“ and said the UK has done „nothing“ to prevent atrocities in Gaza.
In an interview with Middle East Eye in London on Wednesday, Francesca Albanese took aim at Lammy in response to comments he made in late October denying that Israel is committing genocide.
„I hadn‘t realised that Mr Lammy was a lawyer,“ she said, referring to Lammy‘s legal background.
„As a politician, you might say that for political convenience,“ she suggested, adding that would still make someone „a genocide denier“.
Israeli media, analysts and military officials – as well as Palestinians in Gaza – say that the current campaign corresponds to the so-called „Generals‘ Plan“, also known as the Eiland Plan.
(…)
„Imposing a siege, preventing all access to food, water, medicine and shelter, all with an intention to force a population to leave, is textbook ethnic cleansing and is a grave crime under international law. It is both a war crime and a crime against humanity,“ Balakrishnan Rajagopal, a law professor at MIT and UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, told MEE.
„Forcible displacement in northern Gaza under conditions of siege with an intent to eliminate their presence is genocidal, as it aims at the destruction of a people,“ he added. „Israel also bears responsibilities as a state for all of these grave breaches of international law.“
Displaced residents of northern Gaza provide testimony on horrors along their ‚torturous journey‘ to the south as Israeli soldiers beat the wounded and quadcopters shot at everyone
Israeli troops are going school to school in Jabalia and nearby areas to forcibly remove unarmed, starved and besieged Palestinian civilians from their homes as the military campaign to ethnically cleanse north Gaza nears its third week, eyewitnesses have told Middle East Eye.
Under the cover of heavy air strikes and artillery shelling, large Israeli ground forces directly and systematically attack homes and buildings used as shelters by displaced families, forcing everyone out at gunpoint.
(25 March 2024)
In 1971, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli army commander of the southern region who later became prime minister, prepared a plan to divide Gaza and North Sinai into five settlement areas that prevent geographic contiguity between Palestinians in the north, centre, and south.
Israel surrounds this area from the north with settlements and checkpoints and from the south with a settlement bloc in the northern Sinai desert.
Sharon named it the „Five Fingers Plan“, and the government headed by Golda Meir fully adopted it in 1972.
Two weeks of Israel‘s bombardment of Lebanon has resulted in destruction, civilian casualties and fear that this time will be worse than 1982
Western countries and Israel share the same values of settler-colonialism, racism, white supremacy and genocide – all of which are imperial tools to protect their interests
War in the West Bank was planned before Hamas‘s attack on 7 October last year, a senior Fatah member with close links to security circles told me.
It was postponed by the Gaza war, but also refined and honed by it.
When Israel saw just how much Palestinian blood the US and Europe were prepared to tolerate in Gaza – how much destruction, how many millions would be continually displaced, and for how long – Israel felt emboldened to visit the same hell on its real target: the occupied West Bank.
Since declaring war on Gaza, Israeli forces have killed at least 582 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to an MEE tally
Pro-Israeli lobbies have hijacked most western liberal democracies.
The whole world is now privy to the shameless pimping of western politicians previously documented in Congressman Paul Findley‘s 1985 book They Dare to Speak Out and reinforced by the 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
As an anonymous commentator wrote: “People think Gaza is occupied, but in reality, Gaza is free but the whole world is occupied.”
Middle East Eye examines three of the most pervasive myths that have sought to discredit the pro-Palestine movement on campuses
We raise our hats out of respect for them, as these protests in the universities and streets of the western world and the Global South keep the flame of hope burning in the souls of our people who long for freedom and justice.
These protests indicate profound, radical changes that separate an ageing American generation that blindly supports Israel and a new generation that promotes justice in Palestine and demands an end to the Israeli occupation and to the war on Gaza.
They represent the future of America and its bright face, the emergence of which we have long awaited.
(13.04.2024)
„This morning, at 10 o‘clock, I landed in Berlin to attend a conference on Palestine, where I had been asked, along with many others … to give my evidence of the 43 days that I had seen in the hospitals in Gaza, working in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals,“ he said.
Abu Sittah said he was escorted from the passport office to the basement of the airport, where he was questioned for three-and-a-half hours.
„At the end of three-and-a-half hours, I was told that I woud not be allowed to enter German soil and that this ban will last the whole of April,“ he said.
Es ist Freitag gegen Abend, der 12. April 2024. In der Hand hält der Arzt ein Mikrophon von Middle East Eye (MEE), einem in England ansässigen Internetportal, das in englischer und französischer Sprache Nachrichten über den Nahen und Mittleren Osten veröffentlicht. Ruhig und überlegt berichtet der Arzt, was ihm am Berliner Flughafen widerfahren ist, eindringlich blicken seine Augen durch die großen, dunkel gerahmten Brillengläser.
Staunch allies calling themselves friends of Israel are beginning to realise they are also friends of the murderers of western aid workers, friends of genocide and friends of fascism
When we arrived at Yahya‘s house, I called out to him. He poked his head out a window, letting me know he would be down shortly. As we waited, we jumped to take cover behind Yahya‘s house to avoid the shelling nearby.
In a split second, the wall behind me crumbled, and dust billowed in the air. Before I could even react, I was buried under the rubble.
There was only darkness. Everything happened so quickly that I couldn‘t understand what had just happened.
I could feel the debris crushing my back. Each attempt to move felt like trying to lift a mountain, and every passing moment felt like an eternity.
Suffocating on dust and smoke, I realised the bombing scenes I had seen on TV were now my reality….
Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians as they were waiting to receive aid in Gaza City, according to several local news outlets.
Video shared on social media showed crowds fleeing the scene with the sound of live fire heard in the background.
The famine in northern Gaza, caused by Israel‘s strangling siege, has reached extreme levels, Palestinian residents there have told Middle East Eye. There have been several reports of people dying from malnutrition, including infants.
Life for over half a million people there now revolves around a single task every day: finding something to eat. In this following account, a resident of Gaza City, who did not wish to be named, recounts to MEE‘s Lubna Masarwa the struggle to survive in a war-torn city.
After weeks of dodging Israeli bombs in the Shuja‘iyya neighbourhood of northern Gaza, Youssef Hamdan al-Mubayyed took refuge with his family in Yarmouk stadium in Gaza City with hundreds of other Palestinians.
Mubayyed thought it would be the safest place for him to be in Gaza, as the stadium was exclusively used by those displaced by Israel’s military offensive since 7 October.
Instead it became somewhere he would be tortured, humiliated and threatened with death alongside dozens of other Palestinians.
Middle East Eye has spoken to Mubayyed and others who gave similar accounts, a sports stadium turned into a makeshift “interrogation and torture camp”.
A place that became the scene of numerous atrocities, including murder….
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague began hearing submissions on Monday on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
Separate to the more well-publicised genocide case brought by South Africa on Israel‘s attack on the Gaza Strip, the UN‘s highest court will hear from 52 countries and three international organisations on the legal consequences of Israel’s decades-long occupation. The hearings will contribute to an advisory opinion, an ICJ instrument that has no binding force but carries significant legal and moral authority.
The number of states participating in the oral proceedings is the highest in any case since the ICJ‘s establishment in 1945.
We can be sure of one thing. History is going to be a much harsher judge of those political leaders who justified and tolerated the ethnic cleansing now going on in Gaza.
Biden and Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire and their refusal to back the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel should take steps to comply with the Genocide Convention, will produce an indelible stain on their careers.
Neither man sees the danger they are in over Gaza. But then neither did Bush or Blair when they invaded Iraq.
It is election day in Pakistan. But in the world’s fifth largest democracy, people are not able to vote for the most popular leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who cannot contest elections after having been disbarred. Khan will spend today – and potentially 14 more years – in jail. So how did the situation get so bad and what lies ahead?
Khan and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), are leading in opinion surveys, but their electoral symbol has been banned, and observers are predicting that the vote will be a fait accompli for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N).
This Palestinian paradox – military defeat and political victory – is not unusual in the history of liberation struggles. The Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968 was a military failure, but it is widely agreed that it was a political turning point which left the US unable to rally support for the war as it had done before.
In South Africa’s long struggle against apartheid, at least two defeats, the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the Soweto uprising of 1976, so exposed the white nationalist regime that it never rebuilt the pre-existing levels of support that it had enjoyed.
None of these cases were final victories. Those took longer to achieve, and much more blood was spilt before liberation.
The Vietnamese lost three million souls compared to 55,000 US casualties before the war ended.
We have seen France and Jordan dropping in several tons of medical aid for the hospitals unable to cope with the endless conveyor belt of maimed and dying civilians.
If the world’s cries for a level of humanitarian aid to reach the people via land borders are still ignored, then the world has a responsibility to get even more support to the people by any means necessary. If they will not let us help by land or sea, then we must try by air.
Friday’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) drives something bigger and more powerful than a D9 bulldozer through the western position supporting Israel’s blitzkrieg on Gaza, which has continued for nearly four months.
The ruling establishes that what is going on in Gaza is not a war aimed at disabling an enemy militant group, but an operation aimed at disabling a people, and a nation. There can be no more momentous legal judgement in the history of the conflict, certainly in the current century.
This judgement reestablishes the morality, impartiality and standing of international law, and will show the impunity that Israel has been granted by its major arms suppliers and backers for what it is: a license to kill.
All Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have issued many statements condemning Israel‘s assault on Gaza, but they did not take any further action. Saudi Arabia and the Arab League waited for more than a month of onslaught in Gaza to hold a summit in Riyadh to discuss the issue.
The summit decided to break the siege and blockade, but Arab countries never turned this resolution into action. Instead, Egypt obeyed Israeli commands and refused to give access to move injured civilians for treatment outside of Gaza unless Israel approved their names.
But something else is happening that is just as important: Palestine is being officially defended by the Global South. South Africa has taken the lead by launching the case for genocide at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Palestine, at the same time, is reemerging as a global cause, just as was the case in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. The composition of South Africa’s team of lawyers says it all: multi-ethnic, male, female, Irish, British, South African. There was no Palestinian officially with them in the group. And yet, a day after the hearing ended, there were massive demonstrations in 45 countries – but not in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even Algeria.
magine if Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Turkey – fully backed, armed and diplomatically protected by Russia and China – had the will and the wherewithal to bomb Tel Aviv for three months, day and night, murder tens of thousands of Israelis, maim countless more and make millions homeless, and turn the city into a heap of uninhabitable rubble, like Gaza today.
Just imagine it for a few seconds: Iran and its allies deliberately targeting populated parts of Tel Aviv, hospitals, synagogues, schools, universities, libraries – or indeed any populated place – to ensure maximum civilian casualties. They would tell the world they were just looking for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
Ask yourself what the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia and Germany in particular would do within 24 hours of the onslaught of this fictional scenario.
Although the Palestinian people believe in the justice of their cause and are fully aware of the injustices and crimes committed against them, they still harbour legitimate fears, given their bitter experiences with the international community and the United Nations Security Council. Many of us have doubts about the seriousness of the international community – especially the US – when it comes to ending, or even mitigating, Israel’s crimes against us.
Although the final judgment of the ICJ will likely take years, we hope the court will make a quick decision on a ceasefire. But this hope dulls when we realise that implementing the ruling depends on the Security Council, where the US can veto any resolution against Israel. This has allowed Israel to long behave with impunity and in disregard of the Geneva Conventions.
I first went to check on the mother, who was still buried under the rubble. I called her name and crawled beneath the concrete walls, but there was only silence.
We dug further only to find that she had passed away with her arms wrapped around the tiny bodies of her children.
Some days after returning to our neighbourhood, we noticed that a pack of stray dogs had come and taken shelter in one of the bombed-out houses next to us. Throughout the night, we heard them barking and howling loudly, as though they were fighting over something….
So far, two people from the administration have tendered their resignations – Josh Paul, who oversaw arms transfers at State, and Tariq Habash, who worked on education policy at the White House.
The morale of staff in the White House is so low that the chief of staff planned a party in the hopes of cheering up the employees, according to a report from Axios.
However, it‘s not clear if the senior staff members of the administration understand why morale is so low. After the report of the party for White House staff, another report stated that hundreds of federal employees across 22 government agencies are planning a walk-out to protest against Biden‘s handling of the war.
„A group of dogs are roaming in our neighbourhood and we have to find a solution to push them away,“ the reporter said.
„Every day we see them looking through the rubble and extracting body parts.
„Yesterday I saw two of them fight over the dead boy‘s leg. I had to step in and take it away from them before burying it. It‘s heartbreaking.“
For three days, Moemen Raed al-Khaldi lay wounded and motionless between the corpses of his killed family members, pretending to be dead to protect himself from being shot by Israeli soldiers.
On 21 December, Israeli soldiers broke into the house where the Khaldi family had taken refuge in northern Gaza and, in mere minutes, they shot everyone present.
The soldiers left the house thinking they had killed them all, only Moemen remained alive, bleeding for days before the neighbours found him and took him to hospital.
Beyond material progress and architectural marvels that rival ancient wonders, a truly progressive state is marked by its commitment to accountability and justice – a domain where some established democracies have faltered.
After enduring a harrowing 85 days of bombardment resulting in nearly 22,000 killed, including more than 8,000 children and 6,000 women, 1.9 million displaced and the collapse of the health infrastructure, South Africa, a signatory of the Genocide Convention has finally called upon the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to examine the crisis.
This long-awaited step reflects a crucial recognition of the international community‘s role in conflict resolution and human rights protection.