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

Proportion of Israelis backing Netanyahu down to 23%, lowest ever. If elections were held now, Likud would be swept out of office in favor of a Gantz-led coalition which would also toss Smotrich and Ben Gvir out of the government. That's one reason, probably the most important reason, Netanyahu is doing everything he can to keep the war alight, so that there *won't* be an election.

do you have a link to the poll?

one thing I don't understand is why Netanyahu would be forced to call an election even after the war ended. He has a majority coalition, and I don't see why political pressure would force enough of them to defect for them to lose the majority, especially since their short-term political survival depends on it.

Dystopian. Evil. A checkpoint with a camera/facial recognition and a loudspeaker tormenting Palestinian refugees as they are forced to flee their homes: “Khaled Mashal did you send your suit to the dry cleaning today?” followed by “women and children pass only.” A genocide. pic.twitter.com/D0hWRSAMCH

— Hebh Jamal (@hebh_jamal) January 30, 2024

He has a majority coalition

He has a majority coalition because he has steadfastly refused to commit to a "day after the war" plan. He will lose the right-wing parties he despises but electorally requires once he makes clear he is not going to reoccupy Gaza and settle it with Jews. He perhaps thinks he can land on some kind of plan of indefinite military occupation where the territory isn't ethnically cleansed but every Israeli family is sending their teenagers to stand guard over an immiserated and hostile population basically forever, and somehow get the Israeli public and the Smotrich/Ben Gvir faction to both stay on board -- in fact I think he'd get neither.

every Israeli family is sending their teenagers to stand guard over an immiserated and hostile population basically forever

that seems to be the plan huh?

I don't think he's getting the Israeli public back on board anytime soon, but my worry is that if his political survival depends on doing whatever the Kahanists want, his incentive is to go along with it.

if his political survival depends on doing whatever the Kahanists want

Yesh gvul. It's one thing in the aftermath of the shock and horror of what happened on October 7 but in the long term or even the medium term the public won't stand for Hebron times ten; especially when the haredi families aren't putting their children in harm's way. And already one of the haredi parties is threatening to quit the coalition if their kids' exemption from military service isn't codified into law. Barring another big attack I can't see any stable configuration of the current government.

sounds like the Kahanists are threatening to bolt over any hostage deal, so maybe you're right about the coalition being unsteady. Hope you are, anyway

THREAD: The West's defunding of UNRWA doesn't just contribute to genocide, but tacitly justifies it. The readiness with which it cut off Gazans' lifeline was shaped by Israel's conflation of UNRWA with Hamas, which in turn erases the distinction between civilians and combatants

— Amal Saad (@amalsaad_lb) January 31, 2024

This is the woman at the Gaza settlement conference that was attended by many Israeli government ministers and governing coalition MPs. https://t.co/tRDVuflBHp

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) February 1, 2024

is that the lady that was in that new yorker piece a while back who was utterly delusional and insane?

Yes.

gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middleeast/Israel-gaza-war-demolish.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SE0.hWSB.MzjkcHWUeXdg&bgrp=a&smid=url-share

lots of (possibly disturbing) images at the link

A resort hotel overlooking the Mediterranean. A multistory courthouse built in 2018. Dozens of homes, obliterated in seconds, with the pull of a trigger.

The damage caused by Israel’s aerial offensive in Gaza has been well documented. But Israeli ground forces have also carried out a wave of controlled explosions that has drastically changed the landscape in recent months.

At least 33 controlled demolitions have destroyed hundreds of buildings — including mosques, schools and entire sections of residential neighborhoods — since November, a New York Times analysis of Israeli military footage, social media videos and satellite imagery shows.

In response to questions about the demolitions, a spokesperson for the Israeli military said that soldiers are “locating and destroying terror infrastructures embedded, among other things, inside buildings” in civilian areas — adding that sometimes entire neighborhoods act as “combat complexes” for Hamas fighters.

Israeli officials, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue, said that Israel wanted to demolish Palestinian buildings close to the border as part of an effort to create a security “buffer zone” inside Gaza, making it harder for fighters to carry out cross-border attacks like the ones in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

But most of the demolition locations identified by The Times occurred well outside the so-called buffer zone. And the number of confirmed demolitions — based on the availability of visual evidence — may represent only a portion of the actual number carried out by Israel since the war began.

Don’t really understand why anything Israel says can be believed, at all.

yeah the constant "and here's what this spokesperson said" is partic grating in that piece. otoh as the piece points out, "we're creating a buffer zone" may be an admission of war crimes anyway

I mean the country was founded on a war crime so that tracks

Making my way through this piece recollecting time spent reporting on Palestine.

"Two young Israeli soldiers, no more than 20 years old, climbed aboard, encumbered by their bulky weapons and protective gear in the narrow aisles. One of them took my passport and flipped through until he found my full-page visa.

“What do you do?” he asked me.

Not wanting to volunteer the fact that I was a journalist upfront, I responded: “I work in the West Bank.”

“Which bank?”

I stifled my laughter when I realized he wasn’t joking. It dawned on me: To him, this is Judea and Samaria, and the only bank I could be conceivably speaking of at this moment is a financial institution. Two parallel realities superimposed on top of the same land, colliding in this unbelievable misunderstanding."

https://themarkaz.org/nothing-out-of-the-ordinary-a-journalists-west-bank-memories/

that piece is great, thanks for sharing it

Biden issues order targeting Israeli settlers who attack West Bank Palestinians
UPDATED FEBRUARY 1, 20244:37 PM ET
By James Hider

resident Biden issued an executive order on Thursday targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied territory.

The order named four people and will lay the groundwork for financial sanctions against settlers who carry out violent assaults, which have increased since Hamas launched an attack on Israel three months ago, triggering a full-scale war in Gaza.

The order will not target U.S. citizens, who make up a significant number of the settler community. The Biden administration had issued an order late last year imposing travel bans on Israeli settlers who had attacked Palestinians.

No expertise here, but chances are good that the laws cited in the XO to justify its actions can't be invoked against US citizens.

Yes as to the immigration restrictions, but the executive order also prohibits conspiracy to violate its prohibitions and provides that funds in the possession of United States persons are subject to being frozen and blocked to the extent they are enabling the prohibited settler actions.

There is nothing in the order making US citizens or their funds exempt or anything.

I really think Israel and its mouthpieces have totally misjudged public sentiment. I don't think basically anyone looks at something like this and sees a "badass woman" and a "terrorist." I think they see a guy who's had his life destroyed and the person who helped destroy it https://t.co/QzfUMlIzwk

— Erik Hane (@erikhane) February 1, 2024

that piece is great, thanks for sharing it

― symsymsym, Friday, 2 February 2024 bookmarkflaglink

np. There are some incredible details in that piece.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas has begun to resurface in areas where Israel withdrew the bulk of its forces a month ago, deploying police officers and making salary payments to some of its civil servants in Gaza City in recent days, four residents and a senior official in the militant group said Saturday.
...n recent days, Israeli forces renewed strikes in the western and northwestern parts of Gaza City, including in areas where some of the salary distributions reportedly took place.

Four Gaza City residents told The Associated Press that in recent days, uniformed and plainclothes police officers deployed near police headquarters and other government offices, including near Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest. The residents said they saw the return of civil servants and subsequent Israeli airstrikes near the makeshift offices.

The return of police marks an attempt to reinstate order in the devastated city after Israel withdrew a significant number of troops from northern Gaza last month, a Hamas official told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The official said the group’s leaders had given directions to reestablish order in parts of the north where Israeli forces had withdrawn, including by helping prevent the looting of shops and houses abandoned by residents who had heeded repeated Israeli evacuation orders and headed to southern Gaza.

...Meanwhile, combat continued in southern Gaza.

At least 11 people were injured when Israel’s military fired smoke bombs at displaced people sheltering at the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent in the southern city of Khan Younis, the organization said. It followed a siege that Israel’s military has laid on the Red Crescent’s facilities for 12 days, the organization said.

The charity said it had documented the killing of 43 people, including three staff members, inside the buildings by Israeli fire in those 12 days, with another 153 injured.

Israel’s military didn’t address the charity’s allegations of firing on the buildings, the killings or the blocking of access, and asserted that the Al-Amal Hospital facilities had adequate fuel and electricity and that the military helped to replenish two oxygen tanks.

The military said operations in Khan Younis would continue for several days.

At least 17 people, including women and children, were killed in two separate airstrikes overnight in Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah on the border with Egypt, according to the registration office at Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital, where the bodies were taken.

The first strike hit a residential building east of Rafah, killing at least 13 people from the Hijazi family. The dead included four women and three children, hospital officials said.

“Two children are still under the rubble, and we don’t, still we don’t know anything about them,” relative Ahmad Hijazi said.

The second struck a house in Rafah’s Jeneina area, killing at least two men and two women from the Hams family.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said Saturday that 107 people were killed over the past 24 hours, bringing the wartime total to 27,238. More than 66,000 people have been wounded.

The conflict has leveled vast swaths of the tiny coastal enclave, displaced 85 percent of its population and pushed a quarter of residents to starvation.

More than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has taken refuge in Rafah and surrounding areas. A United Nations official on Friday said Rafah was becoming a “pressure cooker of despair.”

Israel’s defense minister warned earlier in the week that Israel might expand combat to Rafah after focusing on Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza. While the statement alarmed aid officials and international diplomats, Israel would risk significantly disrupting strategic relationships with the United States and Egypt if it were to send troops into Rafah, a key entry point for aid.

And a plurality of the Israeli public cheers this on.

Very detailed (mentions that CNN International doesn't have these problems so far; this is about what's being filtered for domestic)

CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’
Insiders say pressure from the top results in credulous reporting of Israeli claims and silencing of Palestinian perspectives

I would have put this on the Israel Palestine other countries thread,but it's currently derailed and has other etc.

Also, as you can see from some of my pastes, the CNN website'a eyewitness reports can be stark.

Oh that's interesting. I was looking at Allsides.com media bias charts on this recently as well.

BREAKING: Prime Minister of Qatar @MBA_AlThani_ met today in Doha with the families of two hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, a source with knowledge of the meeting said. This is the 2nd time the Qatari prime minister is hosting families of hostages in Doha

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) February 5, 2024

this article tries to game out possible ways the Israeli government could collapse, as discussed upthread: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-americans-elections.html

It’s official 🙌

Eden Golan will be representing us at this year’s @Eurovision!

Good luck Eden ❤️🇮🇱#Eurovision2024 pic.twitter.com/He6UhcLeAf

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) February 7, 2024

Do they actively boo at eurovision or is it one those things where Civility is importatn

I'd be surprised if there was no booing.

At least it's not Eyal Golan:

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/1704376559-south-africa-includes-eyal-golan-lyrics-as-evidence-against-israel-at-icj

I've spent the last few days confused about whether those were two different people

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-09-2024-d3229eec6a85c071248d3ddc2de2a73e

GROWING FRICTION
Comments from top U.S. officials about Rafah have signaled growing friction with Netanyahu after a visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Blinken, who has been working with Egypt and Qatar on trying to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, left the region Thursday without an agreement. But he said he believed it was still possible to strike a deal that would include an extended pause in fighting in exchange for the release of many of the more than 100 hostages held by Hamas.

Netanyahu appeared to snub Blinken, saying he will settle for nothing short of “total victory.” The Israeli leader has said the war seeks to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and return all hostages home. With Blinken still in town, Netanyahu said achieving those goals would require an operation in Rafah. Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday that going ahead with such an offensive “with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster.”

John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, said an Israel ground offensive in Rafah is “not something we would support.”

Aid agency officials have also sounded warnings over the prospect of a Rafah offensive. “We need Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, shelters, markets and water systems to stay functional,” said Catherine Russell, head of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF. “Without them, hunger and disease will skyrocket, taking more child lives.”

With the war now in its fifth month, Israeli ground forces are still focusing on the city of Khan Younis, just north of Rafah, but Netanyahu has repeatedly said Rafah will be next, creating panic among hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

these repetitive reports about Blinken and Biden's growing frustration with Israel remind me of all the articles about President Trump being "increasingly isolated"

Yeah it's such bullshit.

Thread on Rafah:

Israel is set to invade Rafah, not in spite of, but precisely because of the fact that it's a densely packed refugee camp where 1.1 million people, including 600k children have nowhere else to flee. There are two main aims behind this: 1/

— Amal Saad (@amalsaad_lb) February 9, 2024

Palestinians have for generations been telling the world what israel is. israel has been telling the world what israel is. It exists to steal land & eliminate Natives. Theyve always done it with support from OG colonial powers. Only a global anti-colonial coalition can stop it. https://t.co/1pgBbdd0Er

— michael (@Sisyphusa) February 10, 2024

Unsurprising and infuriating. Of course the West will ignore this like it has ignored all of the Zionist entity’s crimes, which at this point are too numerous to name.

Germany is also on the concern trolling trip.

Already, the suffering in #Rafah is unfathomable. In an extremely confined space 1.3 million people are seeking shelter from the fighting. A large-scale IDF offensive in Rafah would be a humanitarian catastrophe in the making. The people of #Gaza cannot vanish into thin air. 1/2 https://t.co/ORgOBYJXdc

— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) February 10, 2024

The hunger situation is also unbearably bleak. I mean the entire situation is, but Israel is conducting a campaign to starve Gazans, and I guess they get a pass on this because...?

If Israel is causing "unfathomable suffering" maybe someone should do something ffs. This has gotten genuinely maddening

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/trying-to-keep-his-family-safe-in-rafah

xp otm, also what rings more hollow than countries who spend hundreds of millions buying this exact thing & who actively suppress criticism of it suddenly issuing the stern message “oh isn’t that a bit much”

Yeah, it’s blatant manipulation of narrative: “We’re so concerned about this,” well why now? Because it’s having negative effects on approval ratings? Sickening and maddening.

When they were among the survivors of the ethnic cleansing in 1948, my grandfather and young uncle at the time went to the make shift Israeli military outpost for a food ration permit, my uncle realized the commanding officer was using their stolen dinner table as his desk. https://t.co/tTWkKyXIuk

— Yousef Munayyer (@YousefMunayyer) February 11, 2024

frustration, increasing

President Biden reportedly has grown increasingly frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, finding him to be harder to privately influence as Israel continues its ground assault on the Gaza Strip. https://t.co/765ZDjnNWm

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 11, 2024

Results for Biden “increasingly frustrated”
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it's unfortunate that there's no option for the President to take any action commensurate with his frustration

Maybe stop shoveling money and weapons to the Israelis, has anyone thought of that?