ramzy baroud – Evening Report

Why Israel assassinated Haniyeh – desperation over Gaza failure

Asia Pacific Report — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 10:18:48 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Ramzy Baroud

Israel’s assassination of the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, on yesterday is part of Tel Aviv’s overall desperate search for a wider conflict. It is a criminal act that reeks of desperation.

Almost immediately after the start of the Gaza war on October 7, Israel hoped to use the genocide in the Strip as an opportunity to achieve its long-term goal of a regional war — one that would rope in Washington as well as Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

Despite unconditional support for its genocide in Gaza, and various conflicts throughout the region, the United States refrained from entering a direct war against Iran and others.

Although defeating Iran is an American strategic objective, the US lacks the will and tools to pursue it now.

After 10 months of a failed war on Gaza and a military stalemate against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel is, once more, accelerating its push for a wider conflict. This time around, however, Israel is engaging in a high-stakes game — the most dangerous of its previous gambles.

The current gamble involved the targeting of a top Hezbollah leader by bombing a residential building in Beirut on Tuesday — and, of course, the assassination of Palestine’s most visible, let alone popular political leader.

Successful Haniyeh diplomacy
Haniyeh, has succeeded in forging and strengthening ties with Russia, China, and other countries beyond the US-Western political domain.

Israel chose the place and timing of killing Haniyeh carefully. The Palestinian leader was killed in the Iranian capital, shortly after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Israeli message was a compound one, to Iran’s new administration — that of Israel’s readiness to escalate further — and to Hamas, that Israel has no intentions to end the war or to reach a negotiated ceasefire.

The latter point is perhaps the most urgent. For months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done everything in his power to impede all diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war.

By killing the top Palestinian negotiator, Israel delivered a final and decisive message that Israel remains invested in violence, and in nothing else.

The scale of the Israeli provocations, however, poses a great challenge to the pro-Palestinian camp in the Middle East, namely, how to respond with equally strong messages without granting Israel its wish of embroiling the whole region in a destructive war.

Considering the military capabilities of what is known as the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran, Hezbollah and others are certainly capable of managing this challenge despite the risk factors involved.

Equally important regarding timing: the Israeli dramatic escalation in the region, followed a visit by Netanyahu to Washington, which, aside from many standing ovations at the US Congress, didn’t fundamentally alter the US position, predicated on the unconditional support for Israel without direct US involvement in a regional war.

Coup a real possibility
Additionally, Israel’s recent clashes involving the army, military police, and the supporters of the far right suggest that an actual coup in Israel might be a real possibility. In the words of Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid: Israel is not nearing the abyss, Israel is already in the abyss.

It is, therefore, clear to Netanyahu and his far-right circle that they are operating within an increasingly limited time and margins.

By killing Haniyeh, a political leader who has essentially served the role of a diplomat, Israel demonstrated the extent of its desperation and the limits of its military failure.

Considering the criminal extent to which Israel is willing to go, such desperation could eventually lead to the regional war that Israel has been trying to instigate, even before the Gaza war.

Keeping in mind Washington’s weakness and indecision in the face of Israel’s intransigence, Tel Aviv might achieve its wish of a regional war after all.

Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Palestinian prayer for Ramadan: May the voices of the oppressed be heard

David Robie — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 01:18:19 +0000

Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

The struggle of the Palestinians is integral to a larger struggle for fundamental human rights
that can be witnessed throughout the Middle East. IMAGE: France 24

By RAMZY BAROUD

COVID-19 cases in Palestine, especially in Gaza, have reached record highs, largely due to the arrival of a greatly contagious coronavirus variant which was first identified in Britain.

Gaza has always been vulnerable to the deadly pandemic. Under a hermetic Israeli blockade since 2006, the densely populated Gaza Strip lacks basic services like clean water, electricity, or minimally-equipped hospitals. Therefore, long before covid-19 ravaged many parts of the world, Palestinians in Gaza were dying as a result of easily treatable diseases such as diarrhoea, salmonella and typhoid fever.

Needless to say, Gaza’s cancer patients have little fighting chance, as the besieged Strip is left without many life-saving medications. Many Palestinian cancer patients continue to cling to the hope that Israel’s military authorities will allow them access to the better equipped Palestinian West Bank hospitals.

Alas, quite often, death arrives before the long-awaited Israeli permit does.

The tragedy in Gaza – in fact in all of occupied Palestine – is long and painful. Still, it ought not to be classified as another sad occasion that invokes much despair but little action.

In fact, the struggle of the Palestinians is integral to a larger struggle for fundamental human rights that can be witnessed throughout the Middle East which, according to a recent Carnegie Corporation report, is one of the most economically unequal regions in the world.

From war-torn Libya to war-torn Syria, to Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and many parts of the Arab and Muslim world, the dual tragedy of war and want is a scathing reminder of the price ordinary people pay for frivolous power struggles that yield nothing but more uncertainty and achieve nothing but more hatred.

Tragedies still festering
Once more, the holy month of Ramadan visits the Muslim Ummah while its tragedies are still festering – new conflicts, unfinished wars, an ever-expanding death toll and a never-ending stream of refugees.

Sadly, not even Ramadan, a month associated with peace, mercy and unity, is enough to bring about however fleeting moments of tranquility, or a respite from hunger and war for numerous Muslim communities around the world.

In Palestine, the Israeli occupation often takes even more sinister turns during this month, as if to intentionally compound the suffering felt by Palestinians.

On April 14, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque called on Arabs and Muslims to intervene so that Israel may cease its harassment of Palestinians at the holy shrines of Al Quds – occupied East Jerusalem.

Aside from the increased attacks by Jewish extremists, who are now storming Al-Aqsa Mosque at a significantly higher rate than ever before, the Israeli occupation authorities have “removed the doors of the Mosque’s minarets, cut the electrical wires of loudspeakers to prevent the Adhan (call to prayer) and seized (Ramadan) iftar meals, in addition to threatening to storm the Mosque on the final days of the holy month of Ramadan,” Sheikh Hussein said in a statement.

Israel fully comprehends the spiritual connection that Palestinians, whether Muslims or Christians, have to their religious symbols. For Muslims, this rapport is further accentuated during the holy month of Ramadan. Severing this connection is equal to breaking the collective spirit of the Palestinian people.

These are only a few examples of a multifaceted and deeply rooted tragedy felt by most Palestinians. Numerous similar stories, though of different political and spatial contexts, are communicated every day throughout the Muslim world.

No meaningful discussion
Yet, there is no meaningful discussion of a collective remedy, of a strategy, of a thoughtful answer.

Ramadan is intended to be a time when Muslims are united on the basis of a wholly different criterion: where political and ideological differences disappear in favor of spiritual unity which is expressed in fasting, prayer, charity and kindness.

Unfortunately, what we are witnessing is not Ramadan as it was intended to be, but different manifestations of the holy month, each catering to a different class – a painful but true expression of the disunity and inequality that have afflicted the Muslim Ummah.

There is the Ramadan of boundless wealth, finely catered iftar meals, coupled with endless, cheap entertainment. In this Ramadan, platitudes are often offered about charity and the poor, but little is delivered.

There is also the Ramadan of Palestine, Sudan and Yemen, of the Syrian refugee camps and of little dinghies dotting the Mediterranean, carrying thousands of desperate families, holding little but their hope of a better future beyond some horizon.

For them, Ramadan is a stream of prayers that the world, especially their Muslim brethren, may come to their rescue. For them, there is little entertainment because there is no electricity and there are no massive iftar feasts because there is no money.

“Dua” is Arabic for supplication. For the oppressed, dua is the last resort; at times, even a weapon against oppression in all of its forms. This is why we often see bereaved Muslims raising their open palms to the sky whenever tragedy has befallen them.

Hear their prayers
Ramadan is the month where the poor, destitute and oppressed raise their hands to Heaven, beseeching God in various accents and languages to hear their prayers.

They are reassured by such hadiths – sayings of Prophet Mohammed – as this: “The supplications of three persons are never turned away: a fasting person until he breaks his fast, a just ruler and the supplication of the oppressed which is raised by Allah above the clouds, the gates of Heaven are opened for it, and the Lord says: By my might, I will help you in due time.”

There has never been a more critical time for the Ummah to work together, to heal its collective wound, to uplift its down-trodden, to care for its poor, to embrace its refugees and to fight for its oppressed.

Many Muslim communities around the world are aching and their pain is unbearable. Perhaps this Ramadan can serve as the opportunity for social justice to be finally enacted and for the oppressed to be heard so that their hymn of torment and hope may rise above the clouds.

Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press). Dr Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

This article was first published on Café Pacific.