MSN – November 16, 2024
Israel drops massive bomb in Beirut strike, as Lebanon mulls cease-fire
Story by Abbie Cheeseman, Suzan Haidamous
BEIRUT — The Israeli military dropped a 2,000-pound bomb equipped with a U.S.-made guidance kit on an 11-story building in Beirut early Friday, striking near the heart of the Lebanese capital as officials there mulled the new draft of a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal.
The attack, which was witnessed by a Washington Post reporter, collapsed the building in the Tayouneh neighborhood, sending a fireball into the sky and a plume of smoke over Beirut’s largest park. It came as Israel has stepped up strikes on the city’s southern suburbs in recent days, an area Israeli officials say hosts Hezbollah militants and infrastructure.
The military did not provide details on the target. In a statement, it said the Israeli air force “conducted a series of strikes” against “weapons storage facilities, a command center, and additional Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites.”
Three weapons researchers identified the explosive, images of which were captured by an Associated Press photographer, as a 2,000-pound bomb with a U.S.-made guidance kit attached.
“The weapon used in this strike has components consistent with a 2,000-pound class bomb equipped with a U.S.-made Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit,” Richard Weir, a crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, said after reviewing the images.
Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite militant group, traded cross-border strikes for months in a conflict the Lebanese fighters linked to the war in Gaza. But in September, Israel escalated its military campaign against the group in Lebanon, widening its strikes, invading Hezbollah strongholds in the south and killing its longtime leader, Hasan Nasrallah.
Al Mayadeen – November 16, 2024
PIJ mourns leaders assassinated in Israeli aggression on Syria
Two Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders and a group of their companions were martyred in the Israeli attack on Damascus, Syria, on Thursday.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) announced the martyrdom of two of its leaders in the Israeli aggression that targeted the Syrian capital of Damascus last Thursday.
Political Bureau Chief Abdel Aziz Said al-Minawi (Abu Saeed) and Arab Relations Officer Rasmi Abu Issa (Abu Issam) were assassinated alongside a cadre of their comrades in the treacherous Israeli attack on civilian offices and apartments in Damascus last Thursday.
Their bodies were retrieved at dawn Saturday.
"While we take pride in our martyred leaders and fighters, we affirm that the enemy's treachery and crimes will only make us more determined and resolute in continuing the resistance until we thwart the enemy's goals and defeat the occupation from our land," a statement released by the movement read.
Israeli attack kills 15, injures 16
A Syrian military source confirmed that 15 people were martyred and 16 others, including women and children, were injured in an initial toll following an Israeli occupation aggression on Syria on Thursday.
The source stated that "around 3:20 p.m. today, the Israeli enemy launched an aerial attack from the direction of the occupied Golan, targeting several residential buildings in the Mazzeh neighborhood in Damascus and Qudsaya, a town in the Damascus countryside."
Al Mayadeen's correspondent in Damascus confirmed that the Israeli aggression targeted the Yafa Youth Development Center affiliated with Palestinian Youth in Qudsaya, Damascus' countryside, resulting in injuries in an initial toll.
The PIJ, in its statement, considered that "the barbaric aggression launched by the enemy army against a number of civilian institutions and residential homes comes within the framework of its ongoing crimes against the peoples of our nation," explaining that "it reflects the failure of the enemy army in confronting the Resistance forces on the ground, especially in Gaza and South Lebanon."
It further saw that "the lies spread by the enemy army claiming that it targeted the movement's military headquarters and centers are mere fabrications," stressing that such attacks will only increase the movement's "determination and resolve to pursue the path of Jihad and resistance, as we were before and during the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood."
Al Mayadeen – November 16, 2024
Day 407 of genocide in Gaza: 43,799 martyred, 103,601 wounded
As Israeli occupation forces continue their aggression against the Gaza Strip, rescue teams continue to face increasing difficulties in navigating their way to the site of the massacres without being targeted.
The death toll in Gaza continues to surge as "Israel" intensifies its assault on civilians, killing and wounding hundreds daily.
On day 407 of the Israeli offensive on Gaza, and over the past 24 hours, occupation forces committed three massacres, leaving 35 Palestinians martyred and 111 injured.
Some were transported to overwhelmed hospitals, while many remain trapped under the rubble and in the streets, unreachable by medical and civil defense teams who face grave danger navigating the bombarded areas.
Since October 7, 2023, the total number of Palestinians martyred has risen to 43,799, with 103,601 injured.
Rescue teams face increasing difficulties in navigating their way to the site of the massacres without being targeted or endangered by the bombardment, rendering their operations near-impossible.
Civil Defense inoperative in North
In North Gaza, the Palestinian Civil Defense announced that its operations have been forcibly halted for 25 days, leaving thousands of citizens without humanitarian services or medical care.
In a statement on its Telegram channel, Gaza's Civil Defense asserted that the Israeli army attacked its teams in the northern Gaza Strip on October 24, seized their vehicles, displaced most of their personnel to central and southern Gaza, and kidnapped ten of their members.
It further sounded the alarms and called on humanitarian organizations to "respond to the urgent appeal and suffering of thousands of citizens trapped in northern Gaza due to the ongoing Israeli crimes, make serious efforts to restore the Civil Defense's operations, and repair its disabled vehicles in Beit Lahia."
Lebanese resistance icon released after 40 years of imprisonment in France
A French court has ordered the release of Lebanese resistance fighter Georges Abdallah, who was arrested some 40 years ago over the killings of US and Israeli agents in Paris.
Abdallah called the “Nelson Mandela of the Arab World” was detained in 1982 and was the longest-held prisoner in Western Europe. He has been jailed in France in a flagrant politicization of the country’s own judicial system, which has authorized his release on three occasions.
"In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leave French territory and not appear there again," the prosecutors said on Friday.
Abdallah was a former Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member and the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF).
In 1982 Abdallah’s resistance group LARF accepted responsibility for the death of Israeli and American agents in Paris.
LARF said they were legitimate acts of resistance against foreign occupation, as Israel had invaded Lebanon yet again.
Abdallah was handed over a life sentence in 1987 after being charged with the killings of US military attaché Charles Ray and the Israeli regime’s diplomat Yakov Barsimentov in Paris.
French authorities accused Abdallah of the attempted assassination of US Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg.
Abdallah’s trial was noted for its lack of proof, and his own lawyer later confessed to secretly working for the government.
There had been favorable court decisions for Abdallah over the decades, but governmental interference has not allowed them to be implemented or respected.
The US had consistently opposed his release. Eventually, his 11th bid for release succeeded.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said it would appeal against Abdallah’s release.
Abdallah refuses to repent or to recant his support for Palestine, and many believe that’s a primary reason why he hasn’t been released. His group had claimed responsibility for the killings of Ray and Barsimentov saying they were in response to Washington and Tel Aviv’s involvement in the Lebanese civil war.
Israel was heavily affiliated with Lebanon’s civil war, which began in 1975 and officially ended in 1990.
Tel Aviv and Washington backed right-wing Christian militants in Lebanon’s civil war who were fighting the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Lebanese factions at the time. The war began in 1975 and officially ended in 1990.
A French court has ordered the release of Lebanese resistance fighter Georges Abdallah, who was arrested some 40 years ago over the killings of US and Israeli agents in Paris.
Abdallah called the “Nelson Mandela of the Arab World” was detained in 1982 and was the longest-held prisoner in Western Europe. He has been jailed in France in a flagrant politicization of the country’s own judicial system, which has authorized his release on three occasions.
"In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leave French territory and not appear there again," the prosecutors said on Friday.
Abdallah was a former Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member and the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF).
In 1982 Abdallah’s resistance group LARF accepted responsibility for the death of Israeli and American agents in Paris.
LARF said they were legitimate acts of resistance against foreign occupation, as Israel had invaded Lebanon yet again.
Abdallah was handed over a life sentence in 1987 after being charged with the killings of US military attaché Charles Ray and the Israeli regime’s diplomat Yakov Barsimentov in Paris.
French authorities accused Abdallah of the attempted assassination of US Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg.
Abdallah’s trial was noted for its lack of proof, and his own lawyer later confessed to secretly working for the government.
There had been favorable court decisions for Abdallah over the decades, but governmental interference has not allowed them to be implemented or respected.
The US had consistently opposed his release. Eventually, his 11th bid for release succeeded.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said it would appeal against Abdallah’s release.
Abdallah refuses to repent or to recant his support for Palestine, and many believe that’s a primary reason why he hasn’t been released. His group had claimed responsibility for the killings of Ray and Barsimentov saying they were in response to Washington and Tel Aviv’s involvement in the Lebanese civil war.
Israel was heavily affiliated with Lebanon’s civil war, which began in 1975 and officially ended in 1990.
Tel Aviv and Washington backed right-wing Christian militants in Lebanon’s civil war who were fighting the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Lebanese factions at the time. The war began in 1975 and officially ended in 1990.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/11/15/737300/Lebanese-resistance-prisoner-released-after-40-years-in-France
Mondoweiss – November 15, 2024
Hezbollah demystified
Despite relentless Israeli attempts to misrepresent and dismantle Hezbollah, the organization has endured. A look at the group's history and goals explains its enduring power and shows how much of what’s said in Western media is not true.
BY QASSAM MUADDI
Hezbollah, Arabic for “The Party of God”, also named “The Islamic Resistance of Lebanon,” has been increasingly making headlines in recent months, as Israel continues its war on Lebanon. Earlier this week, Israel’s new war minister Yizrael Katz announced the “defeat” of Hezbollah. The group responded with unprecedented rocket barrages and more drone attacks on Haifa and Tel Aviv, showcasing its fighting capacity
.
In early October, Israel started its offensive on Lebanon with the pager explosion attacks that killed dozens of Lebanese, mostly civilians. The attacks were followed by a series of assassinations of Hezbollah’s top military leaders, culminating with the assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary general Hasan Nasrallah, and then of the strongest candidate to succeed him, Hezbollah’s executive council chief, Hashem Safiyyudin. Israel then began a massive bombing campaign on the south of Lebanon, which expanded to the Beqaa Valley and Mount Lebanon, allegedly targeting Hezbollah’s rocket arsenals.
But Hezbollah didn’t collapse. On the contrary, it has been increasing its military action on a daily basis, introducing farther-reaching and heavier rockets to the fight, and offering a stiff resistance to Israeli incursion attempts in the south.
As during the ten-year-long Syrian war, in which Hezbollah played a major role, and as in 2006, when Hezbollah fought off another Israeli offensive on Lebanon, the group has become the object of speculations, curiosity and contradictory narratives about it. So, who is Hezbollah? What does it want? How does it work? And how much of what is said about it in the West and the media is true?
Lebanese, Shia, or pro-Palestinian?
In a way, Hezbollah is the product of the crossing of political, sectarian, class, and regional conflicts in Lebanon in the 1980s. The group was born as a response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, but its roots go back to the Shia movement that started as a social protest movement. Most of the founders of Hezbollah had made their first steps as activists in the ranks of the ‘Movement of the deprived’, started by the Iranian-Lebanese cleric and social leader Mousa Sadr in the mid 1970s, when the Shia were among the most marginalized and impoverished communities in Lebanon.
As Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanon to counter Palestinian resistance fighters based in the south of the country, Mousa Sadr was among the first to call for organized Lebanese resistance, and founded the ‘Legions of Lebanese Resistance’, which acronym in Arabic reads ‘Amal’, that also means ‘Hope’. The group soon became the Shia militia engaged in the civil war, especially after Sadr’s disappearance in 1978.
After Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut in 1982, the Lebanese communist party launched the ‘Lebanese National Resistance Front’ that was joined by other leftist and nationalist parties, and became the main resistance force to Israel. It is then that several Islamic activists from Amal, other Shia groups, charities, mosques, and neighborhood associations met in Al-Muntazar Islamic religious school in the city of Baalbek, and decided that they needed an Islamic force dedicated only to resist Israeli occupation. They named it ‘Hezbollah’, in reference to verse 56 of the surat 5 of the Quran, which says that “The partisans of [or those loyal to] God will be victorious.”
The founding group had two things in common: the priority of resistance to Israel, putting aside all other political differences, and their agreement on who their religious reference should be. The ‘religious reference’ is a centuries-old Shia tradition, where every community chooses a religious scholar that meets certain qualifications, and they accept their religious judgment in major issues in which the community can’t reach agreement. The founding members of Hezbollah who met in Baalbek agreed that they accepted, as religious reference, the Iranian cleric and leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
“Iranian proxy”?
Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran has always been a contentious topic, as the group has been accused of being Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and in the region. However, the relationship between Hezbollah’s roots and Iran is older than the establishment of the current Iranian regime and more complex than it is often presented. In fact, it was Lebanese religious scholars, mystics, and preachers from Mount Amel, known today as the south of Lebanon, who introduced Shiism to Iran in the 17th century. The bond between Shiites in both countries continued, exchanging religious leaders, scholars and students, and forming family links. But in 1982, that relationship took on a new level.
As Israeli forces besieged Beirut, the recently-established Islamic republic of Iran sent members of its revolutionary guard to nearby Syria and offered the Syrian government to help fight the Israeli invasion. That Iranian force later changed its mission, after it became clear that Israel was not planning to invade Syria, and began to offer training to any Lebanese who wanted to resist the occupation. The newborn organization, Hezbollah, became the main recruiter of volunteers, and the main organizer of the newly trained fighters, and thus was able to grow its militant body in a short time. That relationship between the Lebanese group and the Iranian revolutionary guard grew, and continued to this day.
However, Hezbollah’s late leader Hasan Nasrallah explained multiple times in media interviews the distinction between the group’s relationship to the Iranian state and to its supreme leader. According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah considers Iran as a country a ”friend and ally”, while it considers the supreme leader, Khomeini and his successor Khamenei, its “religious reference” to whom it goes back only in matters that require a religious ruling to decide. This distinction remains blurry to many, as the supreme leader is also the head of the state in Iran, and because on the ideological level, he is also the “religious reference” of the Iranian state. However, other Lebanese parties have more unbalanced, dependent, and explicit relations to foreign countries. One example is the relation between Saudi Arabia and the ‘Future’ party of the assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, which competes to represent the Sunni community. Another is the far-right anti-Palestinian Lebanese Phalanges party, who monopolized the representation of Maronite Christians during the civil war, and its relations with the US, France, and even Israel itself during the 1982 invasion. A complex context which makes Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran far from strange in the Lebanese political culture.
Hezbollah in politics
In its forty-two years of existence so far, Hezbollah has evolved as a major political force in Lebanon. It remained only a resistance movement until 1995, when it ran for parliamentary elections for the first time. At the time, the Lebanese civil war had just ended, and the new generation of Lebanese youth were looking for something new to believe in and to be united around, and the battle for the occupied south provided them that, increasing Hezbollah’s popularity. The group had also begun to develop social programs to assist the families of its fallen fighters, like health care institutions and schools, which also provided help for poor Lebanese.
This popularity increased even more after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in the year 2000, which marked the first unconditional liberation of an occupied Arab territory. Hezbollah continued to score successes in elections, maintaining a growing presence in the Lebanese parliament and in many municipalities, especially in Shia areas like the south and the Beqaa, forging alliances with other Lebanese parties.
In 2008, Hezbollah struck an alliance agreement with the emergent new Christian force, the ‘Free Patriotic Movement’, led by the veteran former army general Michael Aoun, who ironically had built his heroic image in the 1980s for standing up against Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The unusual Shia-Christian alliance gave Hezbollah unprecedented leverage in Lebanese politics when Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016. The president in Lebanon’s constitution must be a Maronite Christian, and Hezbollah suddenly had a powerful ally who made it to the presidential Baabda palace, with Hezbollah’s support. This, among other things, like the military capacity of Hezbollah to start or prevent war with Israel, earned it the accusation of controlling the Lebanese state.
However, Hezbollah has never been the only party with such an influence in Lebanese politics, and the overall position of the Lebanese state is unmovable on several issues, against the position of Hezbollah. For instance, Lebanon never accepted Hezbollah’s proposals to seek Iranian assistance to modernize and strengthen the Lebanese army, or to buy fuel from Iran to solve the fuel crisis in the country in 2021. Most importantly, Hezbollah only accessed state offices that can be reached through elections, in the parliament or municipalities, but it was never given any key administrative position in the government agencies, or in the judicial system. This is due, according to Hezbollah and its allies, to external pressure on Lebanon, mostly from western countries, who consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
More than a militant group
A designation of “terrorism” that has put Hezbollah in the crosshairs of successive US administrations, who have systematically given unconditional support to every Israeli war aimed at destroying Hezbollah, even if it caused destruction to the rest of Lebanon. In the latest ongoing attempt, Israel has tried its best by targeting the head of Hezbollah’s pyramid, Nasrallah, and several key leaders surrounding him. However, the Lebanese party’s capacity to sustain the blows and continue the fight, without wavering, has demonstrated that contrary to popular belief about Arab and Middle Eastern organizations, Hezbollah is not an ideological cult led by one or a few charismatic men. In fact, Nasrallah himself said multiple times that Hezbollah did not have a leader, but a “leadership system”, run by institutions, with a continuous process of forming new leaders, ready to step in whenever there is a vacancy.
But the most important aspect of Hezbollah, and the most overlooked too, is that it is far more than a militant group with a cause and guns. Hezbollah represents the tradition and the decades-long struggle of a key component of Lebanese society. It is also the strongest representative, today, of the political choice of resistance to the US and Israel in Lebanon, which is much older and much more diverse than Hezbollah itself. It is also a social force with a strong presence in all fields of Lebanese public life, from politics, to education, to charity, to art and culture. And in times of war, it represents the feelings of large parts of the Lebanese society, that extend beyond the limits of religious communities or political sectarianism.
Mondoweiss – November 15, 2024
Arab and Muslim states prepare for Trump 2.0
Recent events in the Middle East show regional leaders shifting positions and alliances as they prepare to stave off a regional war under the unpredictable incoming Trump administration.
BY MITCHELL PLITNICK
Donald Trump’s electoral victory means that other states, particularly in the Middle East, have to prepare for a range of possibilities. At a summit in Riyadh earlier this week, the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) came together to discuss Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its violent incursion into Lebanon, and the threat of regional war in preparation for dealing with the incoming American administration.
The meeting and recent events have showed the Saudis, Qataris, and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world are trying to consolidate their positions, to maximize their options and flexibility, as they prepare to try to stave off a regional war under conditions that are wholly unpredictable and unstable with Donald Trump.
Positive steps out of Riyadh
Over the past few months, Saudi Arabia has been gradually stepping up its rhetoric around Israeli actions. This process took another step forward at the Riyadh summit when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (known as MBS) referred to Israelﾒs actions in Gaza as ﾓgenocide.ﾔ Given how carefully Saudi Arabia has stepped around such a clear identification of what Israel is doing, this was an important and long overdue step.
The summit managed to put out a statement that condemned Israel’s genocide as well as its violations of other states’ sovereignty—crucially, including Iran—and called for the implementation of “relevant” UN resolutions and International Court of Justice (ICJ) decisions.
The endorsement of ICJ resolutions is important, as it strengthens global support for the Court and helps to demonstrate that, while the United States and Israel may see the ICJ as a tool they can use or ignore as they please, the Muslim world supports a court that applies the law equally. That implication may someday come back to bite dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and many of the other states involved in this summit, but for now, it is an important statement.
Beyond the words, though, Saudi Arabia is working to unify the Muslim and Arab world, and is including Iran in that process. This is a remarkable shift. Ten years ago, the Saudis were ready to pull out all the stops to prevent the Iran nuclear deal and any effort to resolve their disagreements with Iran through compromise rather than regime change in the Islamic Republic.
The day before the summit in Riyadh, Fayyad al-Ruwaili, the chief of staff of the Saudi military, visited Tehran and met with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Bagheri, in an effort to boost security cooperation between the erstwhile bitter rivals.
The timing of all of this is no coincidence. While the summit was important for the affairs of the Arab League and OIC, it also sent a message to the incoming American administration that the Arab world and the larger Muslim world were united in their opposition to the U.S.-Israeli aggression.
The parties were all able to agree on a statement backing a two-state solution as well. While that is simply grasping at a failed solution whose time has passed, it says some things. One is that the Arab League and OIC are willing to deal with Israel if it stops behaving like a serial killer and abandons apartheid. The other, more immediately important, is that they are not happy with the idea of some temporary solution in Gaza, especially one where Arab governments would act as a sub-contractor to a new Israeli occupation there. They want a real solution.
These are important messages, and they are likely not lost on the Biden team, which, whatever else they may be, is composed of professional diplomats. It is less certain that Trump’s incoming team understands these messages, as they are not just novices but dilettantes and are not accustomed to the subtleties and nuances of diplomatic messaging.
Where does Qatar stand?
Mere days before the Riyadh summit, Qatar announced that it was withdrawing from its role as mediator between Israel and Hamas. The reason cited was that “neither side” was serious about negotiating, a statement more in tune with Washington’s talking points over the past year than with Doha’s.
The decision came almost simultaneously with the revelation that the United States had told Qatar to kick the Hamas leadership out of their country after Hamas had refused to release a few hostages in exchange for a few days of so-called “ceasefire.” The two are clearly related.
Although it seems to have fallen down the memory hole for most, in late 2011, the U.S. administration of Barack Obama requested that Qatar host Hamasﾒ leadership, which was, at that time, relocating out of Syria in the wake of attacks by numerous parties on Palestinian refugee camps. Hamas had broken with the Syrian government over the violence and the logical relocation point for them would have been Iran.
But Obama wanted to maintain a line of communication with Hamas’ leadership, a position that Benjamin Netanyahu quietly agreed with. So the President asked Qatar to host Hamas and act as a go-between since neither the Americans nor the Israelis could be seen as communicating directly with Hamas and trying to do so, though Tehran would have been exceedingly complicated.
Qatar, which has good relationships with Muslim Brotherhood chapters across the region and which always enjoys playing a key diplomatic role in the region, agreed. They have been reliable mediators ever since.
The Biden administration’s demand that Qatar kick Hamas out was little more than petulance over the group’s decision to stick to the vow they had made earlier, that any further hostage releases would only come as part of a permanent ceasefire deal. That they would not budge from that stance angered Biden and so the demand was made of Qatar.
But Doha has been trying to thread the needle since that request came in. The Qataris quit as mediators, in part due to increasing demands that they “pressure” Hamas, when there really isn’t much they can do to press Hamas more than Hamas is already being pressed by the Israeli onslaught, Palestinian suffering, and divisions among the Palestinian people about them.
More than that, with Donald Trump entering office and a steady drumbeat over the past year of demonizing Doha in Israel and in Washington, the Qataris surely recall how, on the one hand, Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were eager to do business with them; while on the other, Trump’s ignorance and the ease with which he can be manipulated led him to trigger the Saudi-led blockade against Qatar, a troubling split in the Gulf that also has fallen down the memory hole for most of western media.
Qatar is denying that they told Hamas they must leave. It seems likely that they did relay the American demand but without a time frame. That leaves the door open for reversing their decision on mediation if Israel and Hamas decide to negotiate in what Doha considers “good faith.” That would also mean rescinding the eviction order to Hamas.
Qatar’s dance between the various forces is something they are adept at, and in this case, it dovetails very well with the Saudi efforts at marshaling Islamic unity to try to avert a regional catastrophe. After all these decades, few give any credence to the idea that Arab and Muslim state leaders care about the suffering of the Palestinian people.
But they all realize that without a resolution in Gaza—indeed, on the larger issue of Palestine—a war between Israel and Iran that sets the region ablaze is only a matter of time. The United States has failed to veer the region from that course due to its myopic and obstinate support of Israel. That was true under Biden, and it will be more so under Trump, whose key advisers have even less understanding of the region than Biden’s, or any other administration in American history, and are even more zealously Zionist.
Without knowing exactly how Trump will approach these issues, Qatar’s resignation as mediator leaves their options open.
The last time the idea of evicting Hamas from Qatar arose, Hamas’ leadership moved to Turkiye. However, Washington found communication much more difficult at that time and asked that Hamas move back to Qatar. It is likely that Hamas would go to Turkiye again, especially given that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan just cut off all ties with Israel. However, that also means that Ankara can’t be an effective mediator.
Given that there will be even fewer adults in the room in both Washington and Tel Aviv than there have been, it is fortunate that at least the Arab and Muslim leaders, who mostly have little real concern for Palestinian lives, are at least choosing to act pragmatically. Pragmatism is going to be in short supply for the foreseeable future in Israel and the U.S.
What can be expected from the Trump administration
Trump has presented himself as the anti-war president, but he was nothing of the kind. Indeed, while he increased the United States’ military aggressiveness considerably, he was actually restrained by some members of his cabinet, and sometimes by his own enemies, from leading us into all-out war on several occasions.
But those advisers are not going to be there this time. Trump is already surrounding himself with sycophants and has also brought in some of Washington’s most hawkish figures to run his foreign policy. From Iran regime change agitator Brian Hook and militarists like Mike Waltz to neoconservative Marco Rubio to far-right Christian nationalists like Mike Huckabee and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s team is stacked with people who support the aggressive use of American military force in pursuit of policy goals.
Yet many of Trump’s supporters favor an isolationist foreign policy which they believe Trump pursued in his first term, although he didn’t. And the one thing we do know for certain about Trump is that his decisions waver from day to day depending on his mood and whims. Hence, Middle Eastern countries are trying to be prepared for whatever might come their way.
Trump has already put together a team of people so radically pro-Israel that many of them would go too far even for some of Israel’s leaders. Yet it’s also a team of people who will obey their president without question. So what is it that Trump wants?
It’s clear that Trump will largely support the ambitions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli settler movement, over the course of his term. That will mean a very permissive attitude toward more Israeli land grabs and settlement expansion, and expanding Israel’s grip on Jerusalem, although actual annexation may take some time. Of course, this will lead to violence, and Trump will doubtless allow Israel to proceed without restraint in its aggression.
But at the outset, Trump seems to very much want the current chapter behind him. This is probably based on a desire to portray the current genocide in Gaza and massive aggression in Lebanon as the result of Joe Biden’s weakness and incompetence. In this, he’s not wrong, although Biden’s blind ideological support of Israel is at least as big a factor.
But Trump clearly doesn’t want to inherit this problem. So he’s told Netanyahu to “finish the job.”
The response from Israel that seems to be taking shape is one where Netanyahu does stop the daily bombing in Lebanon, continuing it only sporadically, and finds some sort of agreement that can force Hezbollah to remain some 18 miles north of the Litani River. At that point, Israel would begin the return of its citizens to northern areas.
Netanyahu is hoping that this will be enough for Trump, because he clearly has no intention of withdrawing from Gaza. The ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and the recent statements about staying in Gaza through 2025 makes it clear that Israel intends a permanent takeover of Gaza, with the genocide there continuing apace.
Will Trump stand for that? Probably. Does he understand that there is no way to calm the regional tensions under those conditions? I believe that he does not, and this is why the Arab monarchies are acting.
