Ex-Fatah leader says US complicit in ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians in Gaza

Ex-Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan has condemned the US as complicit in the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in Gaza during an interview with Hadley Gamble. (Screenshot/X/@_HadleyGamble)
Ex-Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan has condemned the US as complicit in the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in Gaza during an interview with Hadley Gamble. (Screenshot/X/@_HadleyGamble)
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Updated 20 November 2023
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Ex-Fatah leader says US complicit in ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians in Gaza

Ex-Fatah leader says US complicit in ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians in Gaza
  • Also blamed White House and administration of President Joe Biden for failure to demand ceasefire

LONDON: Ex-Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan has condemned the US as complicit in the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in Gaza during an interview with Hadley Gamble for TIME magazine.

He also blamed the White House and the administration of President Joe Biden for a failure to demand a ceasefire and said history would judge the US as having escalated the conflict.

“(Biden) is a participant in the war, he gave (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu the license to kill children,” he said.

“Today, he and his secretary of state gave permission to Netanyahu to storm Al-Shifa Hospital as it was a headquarter. What headquarter?

“They think that Hamas is like the Central Command of the US Army, that they have a leadership and are sitting under a hospital. It was the US that gave the green light to this crime,” he added.

In a clip released on X by Gamble on Sunday, Dahlan also accused Secretary of State Antony Blinken of turning the war in Gaza into a religious conflict.

“When we see the US secretary of state standing up to say ‘I came here, not as the American secretary of state, but as a Jew,’ are you calling for (Osama) bin Laden and his likes to stand up and say, ‘We are with the Muslims’ and turn this conflict from a national conflict to a religious one?”

He continued: “Do Americans like this? No. The US administration is a full partner in this crime.”

Dahlan said leaders in European countries, including France and the UK, were also partners “in varying degrees” for not acting against Israeli actions in Gaza.

In the full interview, the former Fatah leader, who was ousted in the 2006 elections in Gaza, told Gamble that Israel’s extensive bombardment was breeding the next generation of Palestinian militants. He said its actions in Gaza were potentially condemning Israeli citizens to long-lasting insecurity.

Speaking about Israeli military figures “boasting” about victories over buildings and taking revenge against Palestinian civilians, he asked: “If Israel, a stable country, is considering revenge, what do you expect from children now in Al-Shifa Hospital when they grow up?”

When Dahlan was asked by Gamble if he condemned Hamas for the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, he said Palestinians were not “warmongers” and that they would defend themselves “bravely” to the end.

“We are not the ones calling for killing others, but if others come to kill us, we have the right to defend ourselves,” he said.

Dahlan said any successful peace between Israel and Arab neighbors was wholly reliant on a satisfactory resolution to the plight of Palestinians.

“No peace can succeed with any Arab country without Palestinian rights. This is the result of Oct. 7 and earlier. We understood that, but others were not interested in it,” he said.

“I believe if Israel makes peace with the whole world and does not make peace with the Palestinian people, it will not have security … It will not achieve stability. It will not obtain it.

“They will not find the Palestinian people giving in to their will. Rather, we will enter a continuous cycle of resistance that has no end,” he added.

Dahlan was asked if Hamas’ attack was worth it given how many Palestinians were suffering in the Israeli retaliation as a result, to which he responded by telling Gamble she had never experienced living under occupation.

He predicted that more resistance would come from Palestinians living in the West Bank.

“Occupation destroys you from within, it means you cannot read freely, it means you cannot go to university freely, it means you cannot marry if one of you lives in Gaza and the other lives in the West Bank, it means many things that you don’t know, we know it and have lived it,” he said. 

“This conflagration is but the natural result of that, the next conflagration will happen in the West Bank,” he added.

 


Israel not doing enough to allow fuel, aid into Gaza -US

An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
Updated 7 sec ago
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Israel not doing enough to allow fuel, aid into Gaza -US

An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
  • Israeli forces stormed southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, and hospitals struggled to cope with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded

WASHINGTON: Israel needs to do more to allow fuel and other aid into Gaza, the United States said on Tuesday as Israel’s offensive against Hamas in southern areas of the Palestinian enclave intensified.
“The level of assistance that’s getting in is not sufficient,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing. “It needs to go up, and we’ve made that clear to the government of Israel.”
On Monday, 100 humanitarian aid trucks and about 69,000 liters of fuel were delivered to Gaza from Egypt, the United Nations said, about the same as Sunday.
“This is well below the daily average of 170 trucks and 110,000 liters of fuel that had entered during the humanitarian pause that took place between 24 and 30 November,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his third trip to the Middle East since the Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, last week pressed the Israeli government to increase the flow of aid and to minimize civilian harm in its offensive against Hamas.
Israeli forces stormed southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, and hospitals struggled to cope with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded.
In what appeared to be the biggest ground assault in Gaza since a truce with Hamas unraveled last week, Israel said its troops — who were backed by warplanes — had reached the heart of Khan Younis and were surrounding the city
A World Health Organization official in Gaza said on Tuesday the situation was deteriorating by the hour.

 

 


UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels
Updated 1 min 36 sec ago
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UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations food agency said Tuesday it is stopping food distribution in areas of war-torn Yemen controlled by the Houthi rebels, a move that will impact millions of people.
The World Food Program said the “pause” was driven by limited funding and the lack of agreement with the rebel authorities on downscaling the program to match the agency’s resources.
“This difficult decision, made in consultation with donors, comes after nearly a year of negotiations, during which no agreement was reached to reduce the number of people served from 9.5 million to 6.5 million,” WFP said in a statement.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said WFP has tried unsuccessfully “to establish a system that is safe and accountable for the aid going through” to the rebel-held areas.
The war in Yemen has raged for eight years between the Iran-backed Houthis and pro-government forces, backed by a coalition of Gulf Arab states. The Houthis swept down from the mountains in 2014, seized much of northern Yemen and the country’s capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government to flee into exile to Saudi Arabia. Since then, more than 150,000 people have been killed by the violence and 3 million have been displaced.
The WFP announcement came as the Houthis have unleashed attacks on ships in the Red Sea, imperiling traffic along one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes, critical to global trade. The Houthis support the Palestinian militant Hamas group and the attacks are linked to the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war.
WFP said food stocks in Houthi-controlled areas “are now almost completely depleted and resuming food assistance, even with an immediate agreement, could take up to as long as four months due to the disruption of the supply chain.”
The Rome-based UN agency said it will continue its other programs, such as nutrition and school feeding projects, to limit the impact of the pause in food distributions. In government-controlled areas of Yemen, WFP said general food distribution will continue “with a heightened focus on the most vulnerable families.”
“Similar prioritization is taking place in nearly half of WFP’s operations around the world as the agency navigates the challenging financial landscape that the entire humanitarian sector is facing,” the agency said.
At the end of October, WFP and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned that acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in Yemen through April 2024. It called for urgent and scaled-up assistance to Yemen and 17 other “hunger hotspots” to protect livelihoods and increase access to food.


Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu

Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu
Updated 10 min 2 sec ago
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Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu

Israeli hostage families angry after meeting with Netanyahu
  • “They say ‘we’ve done this, we’ve done that.’ (Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya) Sinwar is the one who returned our people, not them
  • Several of the relatives who attended the meeting left bitterly critical of the government

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met families of returned hostages on Tuesday in an encounter that some of those present described as loud and angry.
The meeting came as fighting has resumed in the Gaza Strip following a seven-day pause that saw the return of more than 100 hostages from the enclave. The fate of 138 captives who remained behind is still open.
“I heard stories that broke my heart, I heard about the thirst and hunger, about physical and mental abuse,” Netanyahu said at a news conference. “I heard and you also heard, about sexual assault and cases of brutal rape unlike anything.”
Several of the relatives who attended the meeting left bitterly critical of the government.
Dani Miran, whose son Omri was taken hostage on Oct. 7 by Hamas gunmen along with around 240 other Israelis and foreigners, said he felt his intelligence had been insulted by the meeting and had walked out in the middle of it.
“I won’t go into the details of what was discussed at the meeting but this entire performance was ugly, insulting, messy,” he told Israel’s Channel 13, saying the government had made a “farce” out of the issue.
“They say ‘we’ve done this, we’ve done that.’ (Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya) Sinwar is the one who returned our people, not them. It angers me that they say that they dictated things. They hadn’t dictated a single move.”
The meeting had been intended as a forum for released hostages to tell ministers of their experience in captivity. A group representing hostage families issued a series of unnamed quotes it said were taken from remarks made by some of the former hostages at the meeting.
The quotes told of mistreatment meted out to the captives by Hamas but the encounter was overshadowed by the emotions of families worried by the fate of relatives still being held.
“It was a very turbulent meeting, many people yelling,” said Jennifer Master, whose partner Andrey is a hostage.
Israel says a number of women and children remain in Hamas hands, while families with adult male relatives in captivity have been calling for them not to be forgotten.
“We are all trying to make sure our loved ones get home. There are those who want the women who are left or the children who are left, and those who say we want the men,” Master told Israel’s Channel 12.

 


Israel forces move into Gaza’s second-largest city

Palestinians salvage their belongings from the destruction by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir Al-Balah. (AP)
Palestinians salvage their belongings from the destruction by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir Al-Balah. (AP)
Updated 06 December 2023
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Israel forces move into Gaza’s second-largest city

Palestinians salvage their belongings from the destruction by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir Al-Balah. (AP)
  • Bombardment has grown fiercer across the territory, including areas where Palestinians are told to seek safety

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israel said Tuesday that its troops had entered Gaza’s second-largest city as intensified bombardment sent streams of ambulances and cars racing to hospitals with wounded and dead Palestinians, including children, in a bloody new phase of the war.
The military said its forces were “in the heart” of Khan Younis, which has emerged as the first target in the expanded ground offensive into southern Gaza that Israel says aims to destroy Hamas. Military officials said they were engaged in the “most intense day” of battles since the ground offensive began more than five weeks ago, with heavy firefights also taking place in northern Gaza.
The assault into the south is pushing a new wave of displaced Palestinians almost two months into the war, raising alarm from relief groups that they can’t keep up because insufficient aid supplies are entering Gaza. The UN said 1.87 million people — more than 80 percent of Gaza’s population — have been driven from their homes. New evacuation orders by the Israeli military are squeezing people into ever-smaller areas of the tiny coastal strip’s southern portion.

BACKGROUND

The assault into the south is pushing a new wave of displaced Palestinians almost two months into the war, raising alarm from relief groups that they can’t keep up because insufficient aid supplies are entering Gaza.

Bombardment has grown fiercer across the territory, including areas where Palestinians are told to seek safety. In the central Gaza town of Deir Al-Balah, just north of Khan Younis, a strike Tuesday destroyed a house where dozens of displaced people were sheltering. At least 34 people were killed, including at least six children, according to an Associated Press reporter at the hospital who counted the bodies.
Footage from the scene of the strike showed women screaming from an upper floor of a house shattered to a concrete shell. In a field of wreckage below, men pulled the limp body of a child from under a concrete slab next to a burning car. At the nearby hospital, medics tried to resuscitate a young boy and girl, placed together bloodied and unmoving on a single stretcher.
Under US pressure to prevent further mass casualties in the conflict with Hamas, Israel says it is being more precise as it widens its offensive into southern Gaza. Weeks of bombardment and a ground offensive obliterated much of northern Gaza.
Israel’s assault since Oct. 7 has killed more than 15,890 people in Gaza — 70 percent of them women and children — with more than 42,000 wounded, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. It says hundreds have been killed or wounded since a weeklong ceasefire ended Friday, and many still are trapped under rubble.

 


West Bank family sees no hope of justice in settler killings

West Bank family sees no hope of justice in settler killings
Updated 06 December 2023
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West Bank family sees no hope of justice in settler killings

West Bank family sees no hope of justice in settler killings
  • Many families fleeing south to Rafah which is already overcrowded with dire conditions

AS-SAWIYAH, Palestinian Territories: Moussa is eight years old and really likes marbles. But for the past month, this Palestinian boy, living in the occupied West Bank, has a new game: “Pretend daddy isn’t dead.”
He calls his dad, imagines what he did with his day, and acts like he’s suddenly going to run into him.
But his father, Bilal Saleh, was killed on October 28.
The 40-year-old was shot in the chest while picking olives with his family near his home in the village of As-Sawiyah.
Saleh is one of more than 250 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, according to a Palestinian government tally, since Hamas’s attack on October 7 sparked a new war with Israel.

A Palestinian checks a car burned in Israeli settlers raid near Salfit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 3, 2023. (REUTERS)

“He was a simple man, attached to his land,” says his widow, Ikhlas, showing images on her phone of Saleh in the fields, reciting the Qur’an with Moussa and at a wedding.
She struggles to even look at them, let alone tell the story of what happened.

BACKGROUND

The 40-year-old was shot in the chest while picking olives with his family near his home in the village of As-Sawiyah.

The children pressed around her fill in the details.
Videos from the scene show four men wearing the knitted yarmulkes that are popular among Israeli settlers, shouting toward the family as they are harvesting.
One is armed with an automatic rifle.
The family flees, but Saleh has forgotten his phone and runs back to fetch it.
A few minutes later, a gunshot rings out.
The family rushes back to find Saleh bleeding from the chest.
He was taken to a hospital about 10 kilometers (six miles) away but declared dead soon after.
The family says Ikhlas’ brother and father saw on social media that a man had been arrested for the shooting but released a few hours later.
The police and COGAT, an Israeli Defense Ministry body overseeing civilian activities in the Palestinian territories, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AFP.
A few days later, without knowing why, Ikhlas was called to a police station in Ariel, a neighboring Israeli settlement, where police asked her to explain what she saw.
“At the entrance, while a guard was checking my identity papers, a settler drove by. He saw that I was veiled and he rolled down his window to spit on me,” she told AFP.
“After that, I don’t see what kind of justice they could give us,” she added.
Israeli human rights group Yesh Din convinced her to file a complaint anyway, though it says a study of settler violence cases between 2005 and 2021 showed 92 percent were dismissed by the Israeli authorities.
Nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
Nearly half a million Israelis also live there in settlements considered illegal by the United Nations.
“For the past 10 years, it has been getting more and more serious,” said Hazem Saleh, Bilal’s brother-in-law. “We are being attacked, our land is being taken from us, settlements are being built. They have the power, they can do what they want.”
But it has been “even worse,” he said, since Hamas militants from Gaza launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
In retaliation, Israel declared war on Hamas and launched a large-scale military offensive in Gaza, which has killed nearly 15,900 people, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Hamas authorities.
Israel has also relaxed laws on access to weapons, promising to arm Israeli civilians in at least 1,000 localities, including settlements.
On Saturday, settlers opened fire on a 38-year-old Palestinian in the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.
The As-Sawiyah residents’ WhatsApp group is a litany of fear and violence.
Mouna Saleh, 56, Bilal’s mother-in-law, fears for the children, especially Moussa and Mayce “who are so small — what can we explain to them?“
“How can you kill a man in a few seconds, in front of children? What is this world?” she said.
“We’re not calling for violence or revenge. We call for peace, justice, mercy as our Prophet Muhammad did,” said Hazem.
“All we can do is tell our story, even if it pains us.”