Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

Iran blockading the Red Sea, apparently doing it's best to try to spin this into a wider regional conflict.

I don't think this would lead to a wider conflict, and I'm not sure thats Iran's direct intention here either. Surely if Iran wanted a wider conflict it would involve Hezbollah, but is Hezbollah stronger than in 2006? I don't know if its all that clear what Iran's realisable goals over the next 6-18 months are here (I'm not all that clear on Israels either)

BBC report on "administrative detention" in the West Bank: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67600015

In a family home in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, Yazen Alhasnat was sitting next to his mother rubbing sleep from his eyes.

The 17-year-old had been released from prison the night before, nearly five months after being arrested in a 4am Israeli military raid on the home.

Yazen had been held under "administrative detention" - a longstanding security policy, inherited from the British, that allows the Israeli state to imprison people indefinitely without charge, and without presenting any evidence against them.

"They have a secret file," Yazen said. "They don't tell you what's in it."

He was back at home because he was among the 180 Palestinian children and women released from prison by Israel in the recent exchange for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

But at the same time the Palestinian prisoners were being released, Israel was detaining people at its highest rate in years. In the weeks since 7 October, the number of people in administrative detention - already at a 30-year high of 1,300 - has shot up to more than 2,800.

...

Palestinians have been subject to administrative detention in this region since 1945, first under the British Mandate and then in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The law has in some very rare instances been used against Israeli settlers, but it is overwhelmingly used to detain West Bank Palestinians, including children.

Administrative detainees are granted a hearing - at a military court, in front of an Israeli military judge - but the state is not required to disclose any of its evidence to the detainees or their lawyers. The detainees can then be sentenced to up to six months. But the six months can be extended indefinitely by the military court, meaning that administrative detainees have no real idea at any point how long they are going to be locked up.

"What really gets to you is the uncertainty," Yazen said, sitting in his living room. "Will you finish your six months and leave? Or will you be extended for a year, for two years?"

The detainees can mount an appeal, all the way up to Israel's Supreme Court, but with no access to the evidence against them, they have nothing to base it on. Palestinians who are formally tried in the military courts have more access to evidence, but the courts boast a roughly 99% conviction rate.

Nobody should be holding up Guantanamo Bay as an example for how to do anything. It would be good if they can release all the detainees in a hostage swap and truce.

yeah the Gitmo reference stood out to me too, very dismaying

Good mourning!

i don't think it really helps to think of the houthis or hezbollah as just 'iran' - they are obviously backed by iran but have their own interests too and act autonomously. hezbollah does not seem to desire a wider conflict given the domestic situation in lebanon and that it would mean the usa getting involved. a lot of the israeli government do want to escalate against hezbollah though. the houthis seem to want to do everything they can in their power to oppose israel, out of solidarity with hamas and aren't particularly concerned who gets involved to oppose them - they basically won the yemeni civil war against the us/saudi-backed forces after all.

I definitely don't think they're just Iran, and there is obviously some autonomy there, but I don't think they act without the greenlight from Iran. Though its arguable that while they don't act without Iran's say so, they also don't act at Iran's behest unless they also want to. But then the level of control Iran have is difficult to really know. A relatively decoupled relationship with big picture alignment would make sense

I'd agree Hezbollah doesn't want a wider conflict right now, but I'm not convinced Iran does either - or at least it doesn't want to expend Hezbollah on that. Hybrid war makes a lot more sense than actual conflict anyway, and that kind of disruption doesnt need to have regional goals, the Red Sea, the Baltic, the Arctic, East Africa are all potentially tenable

Tenable in general, not all for the same actor

But also the delineations between nation states, security services, organised crime groups, pmcs, cartels, and other nation state actors aren't necessarily clear and obvious

i couldn't stop crying after watching al jazeera reporter hani mahmoud, who was live on air as us-israel bombed kuwait special hospital, screaming: "oh my god, that's the hospital! oh my god! why? why? why???" why, indeed? there's no other question. i have no answer. just tears. pic.twitter.com/HU6fFn41zM

— 🍉Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, CPT (@thrasherxy) December 20, 2023

The other thing re the Red Sea stuff is thats a major route for Chinese exports, and in reverse Russia's oil exports to India. I don't know how much specificity there is with any of the Houthis attacks, theoretically the latter could be avoided but not sure about the former

the houthis claim they're only targeting ships that are bound for israel or owned by israeli companies, but some of the ships targeted have denied israel was their destination, and shipping companies are more broadly avoiding the red sea now, i'd assume because they don't feel assured of safety and also because it increases the pressure for intervention against the houthi attacks. i would imagine russia and china would possibly be able to arrange safe passage (with the help of iran) for their ships if necessary at the moment though?

xp - Al Jazeera says the airstrike was near the hospital, not on the hospital

Accuracy is important.

the houthis claim they're only targeting ships that are bound for israel or owned by israeli companies, but some of the ships targeted have denied israel was their destination, and shipping companies are more broadly avoiding the red sea now, i'd assume because they don't feel assured of safety and also because it increases the pressure for intervention against the houthi attacks. i would imagine russia and china would possibly be able to arrange safe passage (with the help of iran) for their ships if necessary at the moment though?

I think the labyrinthine ownership models of some of these tankers complicates that, and some of the ships targeted had no connection to Israel (also I think this goes back in less frequent form at least as far back as 2019 when a ship headed to Italy was targeted). Obviously the insurance situation affects all ships regardless of destination or ownership, and for now just safer to go the long way round

Russia might be able to arrange for its traffic not to be targeted - I think their ships don't necessarily have the capability to go the long way round, but I'm not sure where I heard that so might not be true, and they could be underwritten by the state rather than insurance companies. China though? The ships headed for Europe or Israel and the ships coming from China are likely to be the same ships much of the time

I don't know to what extent Iran wants this particular level to be pushed

After the soldier blows up Gaza neighborhood, and hears the cries of civilians, he says:

“Neighborhood of Shujaiya gone. 30 homes. Nahal Oz [Israeli Kibbutz bordering Gaza], with God’s help, this will be yours, for a sea view. How beautiful.” https://t.co/D3yApjq9LA

— Huwaida Arraf (@huwaidaarraf) December 21, 2023

In private encounters, Netanyahu urged Biden, Sunak and Macron to pressure Egyptian President Sisi to take hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai. They each refused the request, noting Sisi doesn't want to be complicit in the mass displacement of Gazans🧵

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) December 21, 2023

A missive from a Palestinian:

To live in the crosshairs is to occasionally yield to the dominance of the sniper’s lens. In this realm, two types of submission are recognizable. The first is to dodge, to acknowledge the sniper's omnipotence, to shield oneself from death and to persist within the boundaries of the scope's vision. The second is to stand defiantly, touched with a dash of madness, unconcerned with the meticulous contemplation of one’s past or future. It is to be utterly devoted to the present, a moment of absolute submission to the now.
To live in the crosshairs is to grow accustomed to being “undesirable” and “untouchable” except through the deadly kisses of bombs and bullets sprayed from a distance. Indeed, to resist is to assert the preeminence of the present, to prioritize the immediacy of the here and now. Thus, if one questions whether resistance is a form of madness, the answer is yes, it is indeed mad to resist the supremacy of math and machine. Yet, there is no idiocy in a touch of madness, for it is the only way to affirm existence.

That's highly romanticized prose, but it does contain an obdurate truth. When all other forms of resistance to an oppressive force majeure are unavailing, then a simply refusing to acknowledge its power over your actions is the last option open to you.

Edited transcript of interview, audio linked at end (both are stark)

Philippe Lazzarini is the commissioner-general for UNRWA — the United Nations relief agency that aids Palestinians — and he spoke to All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly on Wednesday to share more about the situation in Gaza.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Interview highlights
Mary Louise Kelly: So I know that you're just back from Gaza. You were there last week. This was your third visit since war began. And I saw where you said that every time you go back, you think it cannot get worse. I gather it gets worse.

Philippe Lazzarini: Each time it's getting worse. Each time it's getting more desperate. Last time I went was on the eve of the truce.

At that time, I have seen how desperate people were in the United Nations shelter. They were overcrowded. They were living in unsanitary condition, sleeping on the floor without mattresses, without blankets. Winter is coming. And when I went last week, I thought that what I saw before was already heartbreaking enough.

But an offensive has been expanded now in the south of Gaza Strip, pushing additional hundreds of thousands of people to the south in Rafah. And we have today more than 1.2 million people across the Gaza Strip sheltered in our premises. These are not even shelters. These are schools. These are warehouses. These are health centers. But you have also hundreds of thousand of people now just living in the open.

Kelly: So the shelter is already overflowing and thousands and thousands of people living outside the shelter. Is there one story, one person who you spoke to that'll stay with you?

Lazzarini: Well, the story is the story of the man who is a father of children who basically started to burst into tears when he told me that he feels that his dignity has been stripped because he cannot take care of his children anymore, since they are begging every day for a sip of water, for a loaf of bread. They are queuing hours to go to toilets, and basically they feel treated like a human animals.

Kelly: Talk to me about food. I understand it's become so scarce that people are scrambling for it, fighting for it if they see a food truck go past.

Lazzarini: Oh, this is also something completely new, and I warned more than once that very soon people will not just die because of the bombardment, but they will die because of a combination of weakened immunity, disease outbreak and hunger.

And now most of the people I was encountering during my visit were telling me, "Listen, I haven't eaten for the last day or two days. Sometimes we have to skip for three days."

So in an environment like this, indeed, people are so desperate that they try to jump on our truck and take the food from the truck and just eat it from the street.
Kelly: Where do your efforts stand to get more food in, to get more medicine in, any aid into Gaza?

Lazzarini: Our goal is very clear. We need the full opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel. Two days ago, it reopened. Few trucks came in. But unfortunately, it's not yet at scale to respond to such a massive humanitarian crisis.

Kelly: I interviewed the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, yesterday and I asked him about aid. He was very critical of the U.N. He essentially blamed the U.N. for the bottleneck in getting aid into Gaza. He says the U.N. could be getting more aid in if you wanted. How do you respond to that?

Lazzarini: Well, that's true. We could have much, much more if Israel would allow more trucks to come in.

Today, for example, we had only 46 truck coming from Kerem Shalom and a hundred trucks coming from Rafah. So basically, despite the reopening of the crossing, we do not have overall additional trucks coming into the Gaza Strip. What we need is something much more meaningful because what we are getting today is far from enough to respond to such a crisis.

Kelly: I just want to stay on for this for a minute because it's obviously incredibly frustrating to hear Israel is blaming the U.N. I just heard you say, you know, if Israel would open the crossings and keep them open, we could get more in. How do you break the impasse?

Lazzarini: Listen, you have many bottlenecks. First of all, you have still ongoing bombardment — roads which have been destroyed, trucks which have been destroyed.

When trucks come in, they are not allowed to go to the final destination. They have to download and then you have to re-offload.

If we would let trucks go into the final destination, you can let trucks come in in the hundreds, and this would not be a problem. So the bottleneck is a series of issues related to the conflict but also to administrative procedure.

Kelly: Before I let you go, I want to ask about your team, your staff, because I read that it's 135 UNWRA staff have been killed in Gaza since the war began. How many do you still have there and how are they doing?

Lazzarini: So indeed, we have 135 people who have been killed since the beginning of the war. This has been devastating for the agency. Today, we still have between 3000 to 5000 staff working on a daily basis. But we should never forget, they are living the same condition than anyone else they are supporting. They are also struggling to find a shelter, they are struggling to find water, electricity and food. And many of the staff are, in fact, coming to work with their children, because basically what they say is, "I want to be sure that either I see my child at the end of the day, or if we have to die, we will die together."

Zionists are too bloody boring and predictable - Refaat called it a whole 2 months ago 🥱 https://t.co/6xwVuz7cN0 pic.twitter.com/Yxy3IebWOf

— Fatima (@fatimazsaid) December 21, 2023

https://lithub.com/these-are-the-poets-and-writers-who-have-been-killed-in-gaza/

Confirming what we knew all along.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/israeli-hamas-command-center-al-shifa-hospital-falls-report-1234934784/

https://x.com/ishaan_jhavs/status/1738240404787548386?s=46&t=z1egexpHAtHcPPxgbp4Hrw

I really want to wake up and be told that AI is making all of this up.

Instead I see one new atrocity, one new war crime through the bad app.
Posted about 30% because it should be enough. Or so one would hope.

I guess Israel will just keep killing people until Hamas, like, apologises? What is the end game here???

Whatever it is it’s definitely not ethnic cleansing even though Christian Palestinians haven’t been spared

see they’re killing Christians too, not ethnic cleansing. checkmate

it’s definitely ethnic cleansing

I guess Israel will just keep killing people until Hamas, like, apologises? What is the end game here???

The end game is imo exactly as you see it; the goal is to kill as many Gazans as possible, raze as much of Gaza as possible, keep asking Biden et al “can we evacuate the Gazans to Egypt?”, al-Sisi balks and Biden says no, massacre and razing of Gaza continues to a point where a “no” is no longer an option, whatever Gazans remain are evacuated, Netanyahu blames the Gazan dead on al-Sisi and Biden refusing an earlier evacuation, Israel annexes Gaza.

The goal of Israel is to continue to build an economy based on the worst and most nefarious industries possible (weapons and diamonds), all while being able to test out the former on a captive and colonized population. The only reason Israel won’t completely expel the Palestinian population of the Strip or have settlers just kill all Palestinians in the West Bank is because Israel needs a population on which it can test its weapons and military technology.

Sorry, takes are getting out of control ridiculous.

Of Israel's ten largest companies, the top three by revenue are a pharma company, a shipping company, and a chemical company. There is one weapons company and no diamond company in the top 10.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/an-overview-of-israels-economy

There is no goal to "build an economy on the worst and most nefarious industries possible."

xp no they aren't

Israel just wants to be evil and drink blood (rubs hands)

keep stanning for genocide, great look

While I know the source table is talking about (I posted a piece on the Israeli arms industry in the other thread) a potential 'end game' seems to be as described by fgti.

There have been reports that Netanyahu is putting pressure on Biden and Westerns leaders to try and negotiate a passage to the Sinai. Sisi will not go for it, and so rn that is a difference between this and other ethnic cleansings where migration to another place is at least a possibility.

keep stanning for genocide, great look

Not sure what the Israeli economy looks like.

They do need a migrant population; they may make arrangements for migrants from India like many Gulf estates, and they will need a lot of money from the US in aid and perhaps future investment as many countries cut ties. That is without even going over the cost of this war, which I am assuming the American people will not be happy at paying the cost for.

Lots of economies use migrant workers, including the US and most of Europe. Many in the middle east much moreso than Israel.

We are getting weirdly close to “Israel needs Palestinians to harvest their blood for matzoh.” Pretty sure we all agree ethnic cleansing and war crimes are happening and the Israeli government is an apartheid state! That’s bad enough!

Man alive is not stanning for genocide at all. No one is

xp - yes, what I am saying is that Israel will need to replace Palestinians that worked in construction with workers from South Asia, for example. Like other states in the Gulf

pretty sure Taboola is Israeli.. so click bait banner ads

lol ok I stand corrected

man alive, the article you linked actually…confirms much of what I am saying.

There is ample evidence of Israeli governmental and weapons manufacturers’ complicity in repressive regimes around the world, from Suharto and Pinochet to Mbasongo and many of the leaders of Europe, who rely on Israel-developed checkpoint and drone technologies to control, imprison, and inflict violence against migrants.

Re diamonds, as of 2016 they were the country’s biggest export, and as this article in the Jerusalem Post notes, there aren’t many guardrails on how the diamonds are acquired.

Israel was more than happy to sell weapons to Apartheid South Africa when no one else would

I am not even bringing stuff up out of thin air— this isn’t some sort of antisemitic conspiracy. This is reality, borne out in pretty easily verifiable facts.

^^^

Re xxxxetc.post killing civilians aboveground, while perps have left via tunnels, making me think of Vietnam, V-word comes up again:

‘Not seen since Vietnam’: Israel dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza, analysis shows

In the first month of its war in Gaza, Israel dropped hundreds of massive bombs, many of them capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away, analysis by CNN and artificial intelligence company Synthetaic suggests.

Satellite imagery from those early days of the war reveals more than 500 impact craters over 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter, consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs. Those are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, during the war against the extremist group there.

Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy munitions such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. The population of Gaza is packed together much more tightly than almost anywhere else on earth, so the use of such heavy munitions has a profound effect.

“The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover,” said John Chappell, advocacy and legal fellow at CIVIC, a DC-based group focused on minimizing civilian harm in conflict.

Sorry, takes are getting out of control ridiculous.

I disagreed with tabes framing arms exports as “the goal” of Israel— implying that the swelling arms export industry in the nation is an intention of the Gazan massacre etc., rather than a by-product thereof; but the basis of him making this statement is not ridiculous, it’s based on published research. This is the book recommended to me on the topic, I haven’t read it yet but I got it when it was free from Verso:

https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/2684-the-palestine-laboratory

And articles this year report that Israel’s arms export industry has doubled this year (the article is from July 2023):

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-arms-sales-doubled-in-a-decade-hit-new-record-of-12-5-billion-in-2022