Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution' (OP)
Salaam
With Trump in power, Netanyahu has a free hand.
Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'
Land grab law 'allows theft, stalls peace process'
Law that retroactively legalises settler homes on private Palestinian land widely condemned as legitimising theft.
Israel's land grab law that retroactively legalises thousands of settlement homes in the occupied West Bank legitimises theft, violates international law and ends the prospect of a two-state solution, according to politicians, legal experts and human rights groups.
The so-called "Regulation Bill" instantly drew wide condemnation as it was voted in by members of the Knesset late on Monday with a 60 to 52 majority.
The law applies to about 4,000 settlement homes in the West Bank for which settlers could prove ignorance that they had built on privately owned Palestinian land and had received encouragement from the Israeli state to do so.
Three Israeli NGOs - Peace Now, Yesh Din and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel - and numerous Palestinians said they intend to petition the Supreme Court to cancel the law.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday in a statement: "This bill is in contravention of international law and will have far reaching legal consequences for Israel."
The EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement that the bloc "condemns" the law and urges against its implementation "to avoid measures that further raise tensions and endanger the prospects for a peaceful solution to the conflict".
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the law was an aggression against the Palestinian people.
"That bill is contrary to international law," Abbas said following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande in Paris. "This is an aggression against our people that we will be opposing in international organisations.
"What we want is peace ... but what Israel does is to work toward one state based on apartheid."
Hollande called on Israel to go back on the law, saying it would "pave the way for an annexation, de-facto, of the occupied territories, which would be contrary to the two-state solution".
Hours before Abbas' meeting with Hollande, Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, told the Associated Press news agency that the law puts "the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution".
Calling the move "theft", Erekat said the ruling showed "the Israeli government trying to legalise looting Palestinian land".
The Arab League also accused Israel of "stealing the land" from Palestinians.
"The law in question is only a cover for stealing the land and appropriating the property of Palestinians," said the head of the Cairo-based organisation, Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
Palestinian owners will be compensated financially or with other land, but cannot negotiate their terms.
The law is a continuation of "Israeli policies aimed at eliminating any possibility of a two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state", Aboul Gheit said.
Jordan, one of the few Arab states to have diplomatic ties with Israel, also denounced what it called "a provocative law likely to kill any hope of a two-state solution".
According to the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, the law crosses a "very thick red line" towards annexation of the occupied West Bank, and sets a "very dangerous precedent".
Speaking to the AFP news agency, he said: "This is the first time the Israeli Knesset legislates in the occupied Palestinian lands and particularly on property issues."
He also raised the possibility the law could open Israel up to potential prosecution at the International Criminal Court, a threat Israel's own top government lawyer, attorney general Avichai Mandelblit, has also warned of.
Mladenov called for strong international condemnation of the legislation but declined to criticise the US after President Donald Trump's administration refused to comment on it.
Trump is more sympathetic to Israel's settlement policies than previous US presidents; the Israeli government has approved plans to build thousands of new homes on occupied territory since the far-right leader settled into the White House.
"I think that is a very preliminary statement," Mladenov said. "Obviously they do need to consult, this is a new administration that has just come into office and they should be given the time and the space to find their policies."
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the US was likely to discuss the law with Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister visits on February 15, but did not comment further in a press briefing on Tuesday.
David Harris, head of AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organisation, said that "Israel's High Court can and should reverse this misguided legislation" ahead of Netanyahu's meeting with Trump in February.
That was also the message from Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said last week: "The chance that it will be struck down by the Supreme Court is 100 percent."
'Against all international laws'
International law considers all settlements to be illegal, but Israel distinguishes between those it sanctions and those it does not, dubbed outposts.
A Palestinian Cabinet minister also called on the international community for support.
"Nobody can legalise the theft of the Palestinian lands. Building settlements is a crime, building settlements is against all international laws," said Palestinian Tourism and Antiquities Minister Rula Maayaa. "I think it is time now for the international community to act concretely to stop the Israelis from these crimes."
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called the law "unacceptable" and urged the international community to act immediately.
"This is an escalation that would only lead to more instability and chaos," Rdeneh said.
Palestinians want the occupied West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip - territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war - for their future state.
The international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to reaching peace.
Shortly before leaving office, US President Barack Obama allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution declaring settlements illegal.
Tobias Ellwood, Britain's Middle East minister, also condemned the land grab bill, saying it "is of great concern that the bill paves the way for significant growth in settlements deep in the West Bank".
Yuval Shany, an international law professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the law violates basic rights, interferes with property rights and is discriminatory because it regulates only the transfer of land from Palestinians to Jews.
Norman Finkelstein and Chris Hedges appeared together at Princeton University on March 21 for "On the Gaza Genocide," where they discussed the events of Oct. 7, the logic of Israel's retaliation, and the response of the Democratic Party to rising opposition to the Biden administration's support for the genocide in Gaza.
Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'
Salaam
Interesting.
Saudi Arabia’s Israel strategy upended by anger over Gaza war
Riyadh caught between renewed popular support for Palestinians and US pressure to normalise relations with Israel
Hisham was enjoying the mild winter weather on a recent walk through Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter when he was suddenly stopped by the police.
“Why are you wearing this?” they asked, pointing to his T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Palestine” in six different fonts. “This is a political gesture . . . We’re pro-Palestine, but you don’t do this,” the officers warned.
“I had to calm them down by saying ‘OK, I’m leaving, no worries, I’m not going to wear it,’” said Hisham, a government employee. “I thought: ‘this is not the place for such T-shirts.’”
Like many Saudis, Hisham feels deep solidarity with the Palestinian victims of Israel’s five-month offensive in Gaza — the reason for his choice of T-shirt. But the police response underscores the alarm emanating from the Saudi leadership, which before the war was nearing a deal to normalise relations with Israel.
Now Saudi Arabia’s leaders worry about the threat posed by a prolonged conflict in Gaza to its chances of restarting that process, as well as to its ambitious plans for economic and social reform and the cohesion of the kingdom.
Saudi officials have repeatedly called for a halt to the war and led Arab nations in accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. They fear that the brutal images emerging from the shattered territory will radicalise their young population.
“Any institutional dialogue on human rights cannot be taken seriously if it ignores the tragic situation in Palestine,” foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told a meeting in February of the Human Rights Council held at the UN headquarters in Geneva. “What rights are we talking about while Gaza is under the ashes? How can the international community remain silent while the people of Gaza are displaced and suffering from the ugliest forms of human rights violations?”
Yet even as public anger ripples across the kingdom, the US is pushing the potential of Saudi Arabia normalising diplomatic relations with Israel as the main incentive to nudge the Jewish state towards a broader settlement to end its protracted conflict with the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia has long been considered the grand prize for Israel. And as the Arab world’s biggest economy and home to Islam’s two holiest sites, a decision by the kingdom to normalise relations with the Jewish state would have far-reaching effects.
In the months before Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack that triggered the war, Saudi Arabia was edging towards a deal that would have traded a new US defence treaty and a deal with Washington to transfer nuclear technology in return for a normalisation agreement.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken had been due to travel to Riyadh in October to hammer out the Palestinian element to an accord, but those plans were upended when Hamas launched its assault. “We already had an outline” of a deal from the Palestinian Authority, said a person briefed on the talks.
The Saudis have not taken normalisation off the table, but talks are unthinkable while the fighting rages, and Riyadh has made “irreversible steps” towards Palestinian statehood a precondition for any deal. They have also cautioned the US against overselling the prospect of an agreement, underlining the sensitivity of the issue for Riyadh amid the Gaza war.
Only a few years ago, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeared to have been sidelined in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-first approach that followed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ascent to power in 2016 promoted influential voices to push a rhetoric that vilified the Palestinians for not showing sufficient gratitude for aid provided to them and for allegedly squandering multiple chances to achieve peace.
As slogans such as “Palestine is NOT my cause” trended on social media, there was a growing sense that the issue was no longer key to the political identity of young people across the region.
Elham Fakhro, associate fellow with the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa programme who is working on a book about normalisation, said the Gaza offensive had dramatically shifted that dynamic.
“It’s safe to say that the Palestinian cause is back at the centre of popular consciousness and support for normalisation with Israel at an all-time low,” she said. “This will . . . complicate Saudi Arabia’s ability to sell a deal to its citizens and the broader Arab and Islamic world.”
Yet many Saudis remain anxious about expressing their true feelings about the war in the autocratic kingdom, and fear that voicing their thoughts could be seen as opposing official policy.
Several people have been arrested in Saudi Arabia for carrying Palestinian flags, including in the holy city of Mecca. Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudais, imam of the Grand Mosque, has asked God to grant victory to the Palestinians as he led prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.
But last month he told state television that the mosque was a place for worship, not for airing slogans. This left some wondering whether it was even permissible to participate in pro-Palestine protests abroad.
Reema, a Saudi mother of one, said she was “so scared” after taking part in a demonstration of solidarity in California that she made sure she did not appear in any photos.
“I kept telling my Saudi friends, don’t post anything” on social media, said Reema, who like the others who spoke to the Financial Times for this article did not want her full name to be used.
Hisham, the government employee, said he understood the sensitivity near foreign embassies that led to him being stopped by the police. But he was struck by the contrast with nearby countries he has visited since the war began.
He has seen Palestinian flags and symbols openly on display on visits to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Turkey amid the wave of support that has surged across the Arab and Muslim worlds since the invasion.
By comparison, a visitor to the Jeddah book fair in December reported seeing a basket full of Palestine-related items at the entrance that had been confiscated from attendees.
“I saw in Dubai that some art galleries are focusing on Palestine. It’s a small gesture, and yet you can see [its meaning],” Hisham said. Such an act of solidarity was “not even possible here, and I really don’t understand. It’s a small thing you can do, and people will appreciate it.”
Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'
Salaam
The genocide continues.
Blurb
Norwegian physician Dr Mads Gilbert, who has spent extensive time working in Gaza, including at al-Shifa hospital, says the siege of the facility has destroyed its legacy.
“The Israeli occupation forces this night have ended 78 years of brave medical history,” Gilbert told Al Jazeera, speaking from Tromso, Norway. The hospital was built in 1946 and was the most important flagship hospital for the healthcare for people in Gaza, he said.
“This is such a sad day, I’ve been weeping all morning.”
Meanwhile, the fate of the 107 critical patients who were moved two days ago to an old part of the medical complex remains unknown, Gilbert said. People are now searching for corpses at the site, finding “the most horrible decomposed corpses with maggots coming out of the eyes”.
“The maggots that are creeping out of the corpses in al-Shifa Hospital now are really maggots coming out of the eyes of President Biden and the EU leaders doing nothing to stop this horrible, horrible genocide,” the physician said.
Blurb
Residents have described scenes of total destruction as Israeli forces completed their military operation to remove Hamas and other militants from within and around the al-Shifa hospital - once Gaza city's main medical facility.
Israel claims it has killed and captured hundreds of gunmen hiding inside or nearby and seized weapons and intelligence documents, claims which so far have not been confirmed.
This genocide saw innumerable atrocities and massacres. But what happened in Al Shifa deserves a study, a university course, and a Wikipedia page of its own. I have never ever seen anything like it, ever. I don't think ISIS ever accomplished anything like it. This looks like the work of death squads high on drugs on a long orgy of death, armed with 21st-century weapons. It is so insane we can't even understand what it means yet, and it will take us years to grasp that particular episode in the genocide. I have no idea what Israel did to its soldiers to prepare them for this, but it just doesn't look possible that normal humans, even the most hateful, can perform this. And it went on for 3 weeks. I am at a loss for an explanation. Even in the context of the utter depravity we've witnessed, this stands out as extremely, extremely sinister. My God, we have sunk so low.
Israel begs humanity to stop it. And no one listens.
Three British nationals have been killed by an Israeli air strike as they were working to deliver food aid in Gaza.
They were among seven workers with the charity World Central Kitchen who died after attacks on their vehicles - despite having coordinated with the Israeli military over their movements.
The Foreign Secretary David Cameron has called on Israel to provide a 'full, transparent explanation of what happened'.
Israel has promised an independent investigation of what Prime Minister Netanyahu called 'a tragic incident'.
Warning: This report contains distressing images.
This is not Self-Defense
The IDF murdered seven aid workers yesterday, three of whom were British special forces veterans, in three targeted drone strikes.
Late on Monday night three cars from the World Central Kitchen pulled out of the organisation’s warehouse in Gaza to distribute aid to Palestinians. Each vehicle was clearly marked as working for the humanitarian organisation, followed an IDF-approved route and had GPS trackers and SOS beacons broadcasting their positions.
But despite taking every precaution, the seven brave volunteers inside the cars were being watched – and were soon deemed hostile targets and eliminated.
Among the doomed passengers were former Royal Marine James Henderson, 33; former SBS soldier John Chapman, 57; as well as a British military veteran named last night by the BBC as James Kirby.
the IDF unit responsible for securing the area ordered UAV operators to attack one of the vehicles shortly before midnight.
It deployed a precision R9X Hellfire missile which smashed into one of the armoured cars. Passengers were seen scrambling from the wreckage and jumping into the other two vehicles.
They informed authorities monitoring their movements that they had been hit and sped off.
After travelling just 900 metres the Hermes 450 fired once more. The second armoured car was hit, leaving just the soft-skinned 4×4 remaining. Surviving passengers loaded the wounded into the final vehicle and pulled away.
But having made it 1.5km further along the coastal road the UAV fired for a third time – blasting the remaining vehicle to bits.
And then, as part of their diplomatic strategy to win friends and influence people, they bombed an Iranian consulate in Syria.
This isn’t self-defense. These attacks are not even taking place in Israel. No wonder Netanyahu is whining about how the whole world now hates Israel. Because it’s rapidly becoming impossible for any sane or impartial individual to not despise what the Israeli government and the Israeli military are doing.
Many wicked people were once victimized themselves. But having been a victim does not justify victimizing others.
Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'
Salaam
Another update. Figured there was more to the story.
How World Central Kitchen serves Israel’s genocidal agenda
Israel’s precisely targeted attack on a convoy of vehicles, killing seven personnel from World Central Kitchen, has generated global outrage and sympathy for the nonprofit whose stated mission is to feed people in dire circumstances.
There can be no justification for Israel’s murder of these individuals and they and their families deserve the same accountability and justice owed to the tens of thousands of Palestinian victims of Israel’s ongoing genocide.
An immediate effect of the attack is that several humanitarian groups suspended operations in Gaza, a move aimed at ensuring the safety of their personnel, but which can only exacerbate the deliberate famine caused by Israel.
A reasonable assumption is that this was Israel’s goal: to make sure that no one in Gaza eats, in line with Tel Aviv’s announcement right at the beginning of its genocide that it was imposing a total siege, blocking all food, water, medicine and other means of sustenance to the 2.3 million people Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant called “human animals.”
Yet Israel’s relationship with World Central Kitchen is more complicated – and gives rise to a great deal of reasonable suspicion among Palestinians.
The key question is why Israel – despite killing its staff – has favored World Central Kitchen and its staunchly pro-Israel founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, even as Tel Aviv sabotages other aid efforts, particularly those of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees.
I discussed this with my colleagues Nora Barrows-Friedman, Jon Elmer and Asa Winstanley in the video above, excerpted from this week’s Electronic Intifada livestream.
In this article I elaborate on and document some of the observations we made.
In early March, the very same Yoav Gallant, who took the decision to starve Gaza, welcomed plans spearheaded by World Central Kitchen to start bringing aid into the territory via an Israeli-supervised maritime corridor.
“We will bring the aid through a maritime route that is coordinated with the US on the security and humanitarian side, with the assistance of the UAE [United Arab Emirates] on the civil side, and appropriate inspection in Cyprus, and we will bring goods imported by international organizations with American assistance,” Gallant explained.
World Central Kitchen’s operations in Gaza have indeed been sponsored by the UAE.
“The process is designed to bring aid directly to the residents and thus continue the collapse of Hamas’ rule in Gaza,” Gallant asserted.
Trojan horse
Tel Aviv and Washington see World Central Kitchen as a tool to achieve Israel’s long-standing goal of displacing and destroying UNRWA and installing a new Israeli-controlled regime in Gaza.
UNRWA is the only organization with the infrastructure in Gaza to meet the needs of the entire population if it were allowed to work unimpeded. But this is not what Israel and the United States want.
In recent weeks, Israeli media reported that Israel is “pushing for the establishment of an international peacekeeping force to secure the Gaza Strip and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
But this is only a cover for so-called “day after” plans aimed at reimposing permanent Israeli occupation on the Gaza Strip.
Under this plan “the force would be composed of troops from three different unnamed Arab countries” and be “managed by the United States.”
“The force would likely be armed to uphold law and order and would work with Gazans who don’t have links to Hamas, ostensibly figures linked to the Palestinian Authority,” according to The Times of Israel. The goal is to create a collaborator regime similar to the Israeli-backed Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank.
In this scenario, a US and Israeli-approved “humanitarian” organization like World Central Kitchen is the perfect trojan horse to help bring a new collaborationist leadership to Gaza.
Just days before Israel murdered its staff, World Central Kitchen tried to distance itself from such Israeli-American schemes.
“WCK is not pushing a political agenda and we are not replacing any of the other organizations in Gaza, despite reporting and claims suggesting otherwise,” the group asserted on 28 March.
But that is not what the record shows.
Destroying UNRWA
First, why does Israel want to get rid of UNRWA?
Israel has demonized the UN agency for years, despite the fact that it relieves Israel of the major responsibility and cost of providing for the basic health, education and humanitarian needs of millions of Palestinian refugees living under its military occupation and system of apartheid.
Destroying UNRWA, Israel believes, will strip away the legal protection and international focus on the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Contrary to international law, Israel bars the return of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants ethnically cleansed from their homes solely on the racist grounds that they are not Jews.
The Biden administration evidently shares Israel’s goal of eliminating UNRWA.
The White House in January suspended US funding to the agency – and refuses to restore it – on the pretext of baseless Israeli allegations against a dozen of UNRWA’s thousands of Palestinian staff in Gaza.
Favored by Israel
All this explains why even after its deadly attack on World Central Kitchen’s staff, Israel has gone out of its way to praise the group’s work as “critical.”
It starts to make sense why World Central Kitchen has been given preferential treatment by both the United States and Israel, even while Israel continues to systematically block other humanitarian aid to Gaza, especially from UNRWA.
That preferential treatment includes the Israeli army helping World Central Kitchen to build a jetty to unload ships off the coast of Gaza using rubble from the homes of Palestinians bombed by Israel.
The Israeli-backed jetty project “was a milestone in a venture that Western officials hope will play a part in easing the enclave’s food deprivation,” The New York Times reported last month, adding that “the operation has been described as a pilot project for the broader opening of a maritime corridor to supply the territory.”
“Every step was carried out with permission from the Israeli military,” the Times reported, citing Sam Bloch, World Central Kitchen’s director of emergency response.
No one other than World Central Kitchen has been allowed by Israel to bring aid in by sea, and in the past Israel has attacked and massacred civilian groups attempting to do so.
And such a “venture” or “pilot project” only makes sense in a context where UNRWA is being eliminated.
After all, if these “Western” – read American – officials really wanted aid to flow to starving Palestinians, the instant way of doing that is for Israel to stop starving them and allow UNRWA – with its already existing infrastructure – to do its work.
It is also notable that Israel has facilitated the entry of some World Central Kitchen trucks into Gaza from Egypt, even as Israel holds up thousands of others.
While helping World Central Kitchen’s highly publicized efforts, Israel has regularly targeted aid trucks and has murdered over 500 Palestinians as they assisted with distribution or waited for aid.
That has not, however garnered a fraction of the international outcry as the attack on World Central Kitchen.
A recent article in The New Humanitarian discusses how COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation, has facilitated the work of World Central Kitchen at the expense of other humanitarian agencies.
“While aid workers who spoke with The New Humanitarian agreed that any food delivered to Gaza – where the entire population is at risk of famine – is a good thing, they asked why COGAT had allowed one agency, World Central Kitchen, to deliver a relatively small amount of food, while largely denying the UN and other agencies,” the publication states.
The article also notes how Israel is deliberately sidelining the UN.
“There’s been a clear desire to create an alternative structure that Israel has more direct oversight and control over,” Jesse Marks, a senior officer with the charity Refugees International, told The New Humanitarian.
Celebrity chef supports Israeli genocide
Following Israel’s murder of his colleagues, World Central Kitchen founder, the celebrity chef José Andrés, said that “they were targeted systematically, car by car.”
Andrés also said that Israel’s assault on Gaza is “not a war against terrorism anymore” but rather a “war against humanity itself.”
World Central Kitchen has also responded coolly to Israel’s preliminary self-investigation of its attack on the group’s staff.
But even with this shift of tone, Andrés cannot obscure his early, hardline support for Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza even as others were warning about the unfolding genocide.
On 16 October, when Israel had already killed 2,750 Palestinians and injured almost 10,000 in just over a week, Andrés reacted angrily to Spanish government minister Ione Belarra when she denounced the slaughter as a genocide.
A day earlier, 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, including prominent Holocaust scholars, published a statement to “sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Despite this, Andrés adamantly justified the bloodbath in Gaza as Israel “defending its citizens” and demanded that Spain’s prime minister fire Belarra for her comments.
Even though he is now more openly critical of Israel, Andrés continues to support its attack on Gaza.
In a 3 April New York Times op-ed, Andrés sticks to the line that the Palestinian resistance operation that primarily targeted and defeated the Israeli army’s Gaza division on 7 October amounted to “the worst terrorist attack in [Israel’s] history.”
At no point in the op-ed does Andrés call for a ceasefire, instead offering Israel praise and advice on how to wage its attack in what he would presumably consider to be a more acceptable manner.
“Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians,” he asserts, ignoring how the vast majority of the Israeli Jewish public supports depriving the population in Gaza of humanitarian aid.
“You cannot win this war by starving an entire population,” Andrés advises his Israeli friends, making clear that his goal is for Israel to “win” – whatever that might mean – against the Palestinian resistance struggling for their people’s liberation against a colonial power that has dispossessed, occupied, murdered and persecuted them for eight decades.
In other words, the chef’s line is not that of a true humanitarian, but rather echoes the Biden administration, which refuses to call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire – the one thing that would do more than anything else to save the lives of people in Gaza.
Close to the US government
Following the Israeli murder of the World Central Kitchen workers, President Joe Biden personally called Andrés to express his condolences and support.
By contrast there has been no report of Biden calling the head of UNRWA, even after Israel has killed more than 175 of that agency’s staff – the highest number of UN personnel to be killed during any conflict in history.
That is no surprise, given how close Andrés is personally to the Biden White House.
And in late February, more than a month after the International Court of Justice found that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza – something Tel Aviv can only do due to the weapons provided by the United States – Andrés showed up at the White House to promote a Biden administration political initiative.
That is only the tip of the iceberg of Andrés’ collaboration with the Biden administration and the US government.
As The Grayzone reports, Andrés even heaped praise on Secretary of State Antony Blinken as recently as February – in spite of Blinken being among the most hardline backers of Israel’s genocide.
But doesn’t every bit help?
World Central Kitchen is very good at promoting its efforts in Gaza – a public relations campaign calculated to elicit an emotional response, as well as donations to an organization that raised more than $500 million in 2022 alone.
Many reasonable and compassionate observers will say that if World Central Kitchen is actually getting food into the mouths and stomachs of Palestinians in Gaza, then it is doing good work, because in such a crisis every bit helps.
That would be true if World Central Kitchen were not being used as part of an effort to replace a far more comprehensive and effective mechanism for meeting basic needs: UNRWA.
No matter how many meals World Central Kitchen serves, it is a drop in the ocean.
As of 28 March, World Central Kitchen says that during 175 days of operations in Gaza it has served 42 million meals and now operates 68 “community kitchens.”
That may sound impressive, but there are 2.3 million people in Gaza. If each of them needs three meals a day, that means the overall population needs almost seven million meals per day or 49 million meals per week.
Currently, in northern Gaza, where the Israeli-imposed starvation is the most severe, people are surviving on an average of just 245 calories per day, around a tenth of their needs.
This needs a massive surge of aid to alleviate, something that cannot happen without a ceasefire and the unimpeded access for the UN and other humanitarian agencies ordered by the International Court of Justice just last week.
The objection then is not to World Central Kitchen operating in Gaza or serving food there, but to the organization being used – and allowing itself to be used – as a cover to dismantle UNRWA and impose a new Israeli-American regime on Gaza.
If that plan is allowed to succeed, then every meal served by World Central Kitchen – and promoted on its social media accounts – helps to conceal the many more Palestinians who will starve because effective aid on a massive scale is being deliberately kept out.
The destruction of UNRWA would mean not only more mass starvation and death – as if that is not bad enough – but permanent harm to Palestinian rights overall.
That’s why BADIL, a Palestinian organization that promotes refugee rights, is calling for the funding of the UN agency as a way to “resist colonial domination.”
By collaborating with Israel and the United States at the expense of bigger and more effective aid mechanisms, World Central Kitchen is serving their genocidal agenda.
Muslims shouldn’t be fooled by China’s anti-Israel rhetoric
Blogger Najm Al-Din argues that Muslims should not be fooled by China’s recent anti-Israel rhetoric as Beijing remains a key ally of Tel Aviv.
Throughout the War on Terror and Arab Spring, China avoided entanglement in Arab affairs and focused on maintaining the decades-long relationships with many authoritarian governments in the region.
And following the regime changes in Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, Beijing reinforced the historically close ties with those countries, driven primarily by its economic interests in the region whilst maintaining a risk-averse approach to contentious Middle Eastern issues.
However, China’s recent condemnation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza represents a stark departure from Beijing’s previous neutrality towards Middle East conflicts.
The strident anti-Israeli tone amongst Chinese officials reflects Xi Jinping’s new foreign policy strategy, where far-flung conflicts are leveraged to accrue political capital and consolidate China’s strategic footprint in the Arab World whilst undermining its foremost rival, the U.S.
Amidst this shift in rhetoric and with the CCP calling for an end to Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza on the sidelines of a recently held BRICS summit, China’s calls for a ceasefire mustn’t detract from its important strategic relationship with Israel.
Technology
Soon after the establishment of full diplomatic relations between both countries, Israel’s status as a global technology hub was not lost on Beijing.
As China transitioned from a low-cost manufacturing giant to a high-tech economy, its government recognised that capitalising on Israel’s capabilities in the tech sphere could help the country meet its developmental needs.
Israel’s evolution from a start-up nation to an innovation hub partly explains China’s decision to court high-tech collaboration with Tel Aviv, granting it access to innovations in Artificial Intelligence, robotics and cybersecurity.
Over the past two decades, the formal rapprochement between both countries became more significant after growing concerns in Western nations over industrial espionage from China’s involvement in its tech sectors.
As China’s meteoric ascent fuelled its rivalry with the U.S., it was essential for the country’s conglomerates to curry favour with Israeli politicians as part of its competition with Washington to establish a sphere of influence in the Middle East.
With China being Israel’s largest East Asian trading partner and Israel ranking among the highest recipients of Chinese private and state-owned venture capital investments in technology, it’s no surprise that Netanyahu sees Israel as a crucial partner to help both nations solidify their status on the global stage.
Surveillance
The development of powerful AI ecosystems and in particular surveillance technologies is another crucial pillar of China-Israel relations.
Israel is monitoring Palestinians in the occupied territories with an intrusive database connected to smartphone apps and facial recognition cameras, echoing China’s repressive crackdown on Uighur Muslims.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Israeli Wolf Pack database which has a security profile and threat rating for every Palestinian in the West Bank mirrors China’s extensive data sources on the Turkic and Uighur populations, which are aggregated to compile social credit scores to determine the trustworthiness of citizens.
An Amnesty International report titled “Automated Apartheid” reveals that in places like Hebron and the Damascus Gate where demonstrations and social gatherings are often held, the movements of Palestinians are tracked and traced without their consent in vast biometric databases, much like the geo-fencing of Muslims in the heavily surveilled Xinjiang province.
With both countries having developed a draconian checkpoint regime to surveil Muslim populations, it is no coincidence that the vendors behind Israel’s surveillance tech apparatus happens to be Hikvision, a Chinese state-owned manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment for civilian and military purposes.
Hikvision is Israel’s primary instrument of oppression of Palestinians in West Bank neighbourhoods and the illegal settlements and has also installed surveillance software in and around internment camps, schools and mosques in East Turkistan as part of a predictive policing system targeted at the Uighur Muslims.
In both countries, the use of ubiquitous AI-based surveillance systems architected by Chinese software engineers has impeded access to education, employment and healthcare for millions of Muslims and restricted their fundamental human rights including the freedom of movement and assembly.
Infrastructure
Being strategically located at the junction of three continents (Europe, Africa and Asia), Israel is also pivotal for the successful implementation of China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), a sophisticated network of transcontinental railways and ports connecting Southeast Asia to central Europe and Africa.
Having recognised its geographic advantage, China has invested billions of dollars for more BRI projects in Israel compared to any other Middle Eastern country in the hopes of reviving the historic “Silk Road” trade route. As a vital conduit for China’s global power projection, China has undertaken large scale infrastructure projects across Israel’s energy and transportation sectors, ensuring the smooth functioning of Israel’s critical infrastructure.
These include the HaDarom Port Project, an important maritime gateway for the import and export of cargo which expands and modernises Israel’s second deepwater port. The tender for the project was awarded to China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) and is expected to accelerate the flow of trade into and out of Israel by offering accommodation for larger docking capacity, thus making Israel increasingly accessible to global trade.
Another major naval infrastructure project includes the cutting-edge Gulf Port in Haifa which will be capable of rapidly unloading huge vessels and significantly increasing maritime capacity, promising to bring prosperity to the economy of northern Israel. One of the world’s largest shipping managers-Chinese Shanghai International Port Group-was recently afforded a 25 year tender for the maintenance and operation of the port
These are just some examples of China-Israel cooperation enabling greater economic connectivity and efficient transportation, which I am expecting to accelerate in light of the increasing levels of congestion which shipping ports are experiencing worldwide.
New Middle East
With heightening tensions in the Red Sea threatening to sabotage transpacific shipments and disrupt a vital economic artery for the free flow of international trade, there is growing speculation that a new trading axis connecting Asia to Europe, known as IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe-Economic Corridor) will bypass China’s BRI, transform Israel into a key energy and logistical hub whilst securing Europe’s influence in the Gulf.
This “New Middle East” can convert Israel into a highly strategic outpost connecting the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, marking Tel Aviv’s arrival on the scramble for Eurasia and breaking Egypt’s monopoly over transcontinental trade routes.
However, any de-risking from Beijing doesn’t imply a break between the Middle East and China, as Israel and its neighbouring Gulf monarchies would rather maximise the benefits which can be accrued by delicately balancing ties between both China and the Western powers and relying on globalised supply chains.
After all, Israel remains a highly attractive BRI market while Israel’s status as a gateway connecting Europe and the Middle East is inextricably tied to the railways and ports which China has been building over the past decade. IMEC is unlikely to reverse this dynamic.
Given Beijing’s energy dependence on the Middle East and the potential threat to its maritime trade in the Suez Canal, any broader regional spillover will persuade the CCP to assume a more prominent role as conflict mediator in the region.
It can also encourage Xi Jinping to pivot closer to Israel by converging China’s Afro-Eurasian integration project with Israeli maritime corridors which bypass the Suez.
As tensions escalate in the Sinai and blockades in the Red Sea plunge Egypt into a period of uncertainty, Israel will be deemed a more reliable maritime partner for reaching China’s European export market, offering faster navigation and avoiding a backlog of ships which we saw recently when a vessel’s bow got lodged in the eastern bank of the Suez resulting in the blockage of transit.
Multipolarity
In an increasingly fractured global order which increasingly favours a redistribution and realignment of global power, the overlapping strategic interests of Israel and China could radically restructure the international rules based order.
Given Washington’s receding strategic footprint on the world stage and the emergence of new power blocs such as BRICS as major drivers of global trade and investment, the return to multipolarity looks increasingly likely with a large concentration of financial and technological power converging in China and Israel as America’s status as the global hegemon par excellence begins to fade.
It begs a question. With Tel Aviv diversifying strategic partnerships to balance its reliance on Washington and having close relations with leading BRICS signatories such as Russia, India and China, will Israel’s strategic shift in foreign policy mean pivoting away from the U.S.?
At present, Israel remains deeply anchored to the U.S.-led security architecture in the Middle East as America continues to bear the military and financial costs to protect its interests in the region. Therefore, Washington’s growing apprehension towards Israel-Sino relations will naturally impose limits on such a partnership.
However, as American unipolarity begins to unravel and Israel slowly emerges from its status as a U.S. protectorate, such an alliance offers Tel Aviv a hedge against any potential U.S. retrenchment from the Middle East and uncertainty surrounding America’s long term willingness to act as a guarantor of Israel’s regional security.
Conclusion
With Beijing and Tel Aviv utilising their capital, technology and manpower to consolidate mutual interests, the Muslim world shouldn’t be duped by the CCP’s soft power strategy in the Middle East.
China’s underdog diplomacy vis-a-vis Palestine is not motivated by any aversion towards Israel but rather its antagonism towards the U.S. and desire to be seen as the voice of the Global South. It’s a carefully calibrated approach to avoid fallout with Arab regimes whilst maintaining strategic ties with Tel Aviv.
Ultimately, China and Israel have much more in common than they would like to admit. With Israel an important node in the New Silk Road and China being indispensable for Israel’s infrastructural needs, both countries are central to each others’ strategic calculus.
Furthermore, we cannot forget that both nations are complicit in the genocide of Muslim populations and are actively contributing towards the systematic erasure of Islamic culture, history and ideology.
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