A week of relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has destroyed power lines, smashed water pipes beneath roads and left human waste spilling out of the ground.
With 188 Palestinians having been killed, and families trapped under rubble, fears are mounting of a deepening humanitarian crisis in the enclave, where 2 million people live under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade in place for 14 years.
Six of Gaza’s 10 electricity lines are down and supply has been more than halved, according to Mohammed Thabet, a spokesperson for the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company. “There are some border areas completely cut off from electricity,” he said. Repair crews were unable to fix the lines due to continued attacks.
Throughout its intense bombing campaign, Israel has blocked access to the territory, including for aid workers, and prevented fuel from entering, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Guardian
The Israeli army spokesperson’s office said the strikes targeted Hamas’s “underground military infrastructure”. As a result of the strike, “the underground facility collapsed, causing the civilian houses’ foundations above them to collapse as well, leading to unintended casualties”, it said.
Guardian
Seriously? Too bad your house is above the basement?
On Sunday, air-raid sirens sounded for the seventh consecutive day across southern Israel as Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza launched more rocket attacks into the country – and reaching further – than in the entirety of the 2014 war.
As the UN security council met in a specially convened session, foreign ministers and ambassadors called for a ceasefire and for both sides to respect international humanitarian law, but there was no sign of even a temporary truce to allow medics in Gaza to recover people – alive and dead – from under collapsed buildings.
[...]
The latest outbreak of violence began in East Jerusalem last month, when Palestinians clashed with police in response to Israeli police tactics during Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers.
[...]
In a televised address, Netanyahu said Israel’s attacks were continuing at “full force” and would “take time”. Israel “wants to levy a heavy price” on the Hamas militant group, he said, flanked by his defence minister and political rival, Benny Gantz, in a show of unity.
And the Palestinian civilians are in the way.
In his staunch defence of Israel, Joe Biden is sticking to a course set decades ago as a young senator, and so far he has not given ground on the issue to the progressive wing of his party or many Jewish Democrats urging a tougher line towards Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden has even been prepared to face isolation at the UN security council, at the potential cost of his own credibility on multilateralism and human rights.
Guardian
That would be a grave mistake.
He was a staunch defender in the Senate for decades, supporting the Israeli bombing of a suspected nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, for example, and labelling himself “Israel’s best Catholic friend”.
His foreign policy outlook is based on the foundation of adhering to and strengthening America’s traditional alliances.
[...]
American Jews have grown increasingly sceptical of Netanyahu and his policies. A Pew Research Center survey published last week found that only 40% thought the prime minister was providing good leadership, falling to 32% among younger Jews. Strikingly, only 34% strongly opposed sanctions or other punitive measures against Israel.
The liberal Jewish American lobby, J Street, has growing influence in the Democratic party and has urged Biden to do more to stop the bloodshed and the Israeli policies that have helped drive the conflict.
“We’re also urging the administration to make clear publicly that Israeli efforts to evict and displace Palestinian families in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are unacceptable, as is the use of excessive force against protesters,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the group’s president.
[...]
US evangelicals such as Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo helped shape Trump policy on Israel. They are not a force in the Democratic party but a consideration in red and purple states Biden will have to win in next year’s midterm congressional elections to maintain a majority.
Maybe. But leadership in painting Netanyahu with reality and doing the right thing for Palestinians should be overriding.
Biden worked hard to cultivate the progressives during the campaign and afterwards, setting up policy workshops with them, but the current crisis has brought that honeymoon [to] an end.
What she said.
Daniel Levy, the head of the US/Middle East Project thinktank, agreed that the political ground is shifting under Biden’s feet. “It is premature to suggest that the special treatment Israel receives in American politics and policy, and that has previously traversed Republican and Democratic administrations, is definitively over,” Levy said. “Yet the dynamics are pushing in that direction and the signs of change are already visible – the question is how far and how fast those will move.”
Not fast enough.
A third United Nations Security Council emergency meeting in a week – amid the deadly Israeli offensive in Gaza – has again ended with no concrete outcome after the United States blocked a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The meeting on Sunday came after the US reportedly twice blocked over the last week resolutions that would have condemned Israel’s military response and called for a ceasefire.
alJazeera
The assault has displaced about 34,000 Palestinians from their homes, the UN Middle East envoy, Tor Wennesland, told an emergency meeting of the UN security council, where eight foreign ministers spoke about the conflict.
Efforts by China, Norway and Tunisia to get the UN body to issue a statement, including a call for the cessation of hostilities, have been blocked by the US, which, according to diplomats, is concerned it could interfere with diplomatic efforts to stop the violence.
Guardian
Jesus wept.
No comments:
Post a Comment