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israel gaza war
Sanders Says Killing of Sinwar Must Bring End to 'Cruel and Illegal War' on Gaza
"There is now no justification for further delaying a hostage deal and a cease-fire. And there is absolutely no justification for continued U.S. support for Netanyahu's horrific policies, which are in clear violation of U.S. and international law."
Oct 18, 2024
Confirmation that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been killed by the Israeli military has lifted hopes that new traction can be found for a cease-fire deal in Gaza and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among those who said the development must be exploited to help end the "cruel and illegal war" that has largely targeted innocent Palestinian civilians.
With the death of Sinwar—first claimed by the Israeli military and confirmed publicly by Hamas officials Friday—Sanders said there should be no further obstacles for an end of the fighting and a surge of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
"There is now no justification for Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his extremist government to continue their all-out war against the Palestinian people, which has killed 42,000 Palestinians and injured 100,000—two-thirds of whom are women, children, and the elderly," Sanders said Thursday after the news broke.
"There is no justification for continuing to deny humanitarian aid to the many thousands of children in Gaza who are starving," Sanders continued. "There is no justification for continuing to destroy the housing, healthcare, and infrastructure of Gaza. There is now no justification for further delaying a hostage deal and a cease-fire. And there is absolutely no justification for continued U.S. support for Netanyahu's horrific policies, which are in clear violation of U.S. and international law."
In a statement released from the White House after DNA testing was said to have confirmed the death of Sinwar—believed to have orchestrated Hamas' deadly attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians on October 7 of last year—President Joe Biden said his killing by Israeli forces in Gaza represented "a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world."
In his remarks, Biden added that he would be speaking "soon with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to congratulate them, to discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people."
As many major outlets reported, Sinwar's killing resulted in Biden joining with other world leaders to push for a cease-fire process that Netanyahu has steadfastly sabotaged. According toThe Guardian:
Speaking as he arrived in Germany to meet European leaders, Biden said he felt "more hopeful" about the prospects of a cease-fire and would send the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to Israel in the next four or five days.
Biden joined figures including his vice president, Kamala Harris, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in urging progress towards a cease-fire.
Blinken held separate phone calls on Thursday with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, and the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, on ending the conflict in the Middle East, the U.S. State Department said.
Despite new diplomatic gestures, however, there remains plenty of skepticism that Sinwar's death will change anything on the ground. In his public comments Thursday, Netanyahu promised that the killing of the leader would not alter Israel's commitment to fully crushing the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
While Netanyahu said Israel "settled the score" by killing Sinwar, he promised that the war "will continue" until all the hostages were home. As critics have pointed out repeatedly, it was only a temporary cease-fire deal in November of 2023 that saw the safe return of Israeli hostages. In the meantime, many tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza—men, women, and children—have been killed, maimed, or remain missing.
In a column Friday, Steven Simons, a distinguished fellow at Dartmouth College and senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued that just because it's as good as time as any to reach a cease-fire deal, it doesn't mean the opposing sides will seize the opportunity.
"The question for both the Palestinians and Israelis is what happens next," wrote Simons. "If the two are smart, Sinwar's successors will offer to release all the remaining hostages, dead and alive, in exchange for an immediate cease-fire and a massive influx of humanitarian aid. The Israelis would be well-advised to declare victory and accept such an arrangement."
"The Biden administration, and presumably Vice President [Kamala] Harris, have signaled that Netanyahu’s government is skating on thin ice." he continued. However, Netanyahu "might calculate that he need only wait a few weeks for a president-elect Donald Trump and therefore pocket Sinwar's death and carry on with business as usual."
As far as Sanders is concerned, the only path forward is an immediate end to hostilities and the best way for the U.S. to facilitate that is to stop supplying Israel with weapons and end its political cover for Israel's many alleged war crimes, including the blocking of life-saving aid and indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.
"When Congress returns," Sanders said, "the Senate will be voting on my Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to block offensive arms sales to Israel. We must end our complicity in this cruel and illegal war."
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Yahya Sinwar's Miscalculation and What Comes Next
If the successors to Sinwar's leadership within Hamas are smart, they will offer to release all the remaining hostages, dead and alive, in exchange for an immediate ceasefire and a massive influx of humanitarian aid. The Israelis would be well-advised to declare victory and accept such an arrangement.
Oct 18, 2024
Yahya Sinwar’s death, which was confirmed by Israeli authorities Thursday, was long anticipated. Within Gaza, he was one of three key targets; the other two, Mohammad Deif and Marwan Issa were killed months ago.
Sinwar will be remembered by some as an inspired, defiant champion of Palestinian rights, by others as a false prophet and by still others as a bloodstained villain. The one aspect of his role in the 100-year war over Palestine, to paraphrase Rashid Khalidi’s book title, that most will agree upon, is that he failed to understand not only his adversary, but also his friends. He believed, among other things, that his October 7 attack would precipitate Israel’s collapse and that others in the Axis of Resistance would coordinate serious attacks against Israel with his own.
He timed his “big project,” as its planners called it, to exploit civil discord in Israel over Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to hamstring the country’s Supreme Court and subordinate it to the will of the right-wing legislature. Netanyahu’s gambit spurred massive demonstrations against the government and led some in the reserves, including pilots, to declare that they would not serve until the court reform measure was shelved.
Sinwar interpreted this unrest as cracks in the foundation of the Israeli state. In the very long run he might well prove to have been right. But he was very wrong to think that these cracks could be widened by the big project. Indeed, Sinwar’s assault on Israel and the taking of hostages, was not the wedge he thought it would be, but rather the cement that instantaneously sealed the fault lines.
Sinwar united a factionalized society, reminded them of the rationale for their state and the dark history preceding it.
The result was an all-out war on Hamas. Traumatized Israelis, humiliated and scandalized by an historic intelligence failure, quickly coalesced in favor of a scorched-earth response and Netanyahu’s aim of total victory. And it was understood that as of October 7, Sinwar was dead, if unburied. Sinwar’s hubris triggered a massive assault that eviscerated Gaza’s civilian population and was — is — apparently replete with war crimes related to Israel’s failure to protect Gaza’s civilian population from attack, the targeting of humanitarian agencies, and the failure to ensure that Palestinian noncombatants had adequate access to food, water, and medical care.
Sinwar’s colossal misperception also led to Hezbollah's involvement, which to the grief of both Gazans and Lebanese, was too trivial to fulfill Sinwar’s expectations, but too much for Israel to ignore, as it emptied northern Israel of its inhabitants. This in turn brought Israel and Iran into direct conflict and threatened the escalation of a regional war. And it is undeniably regional — as Houthis increasingly target U.S. vessels in the Red Sea, the U.S. deploys B-2 bombers from Missouri to drop bunker busters on deeply buried installations in Yemen, and the Israelis bomb Yemen’s only port for the transfer of humanitarian assistance.
Sinwar understood well enough that many ordinary Gazans would die in furtherance of his vision of victory. In this, he evidently confused himself with Vo Nguyen Giap, who likewise understood that many Vietnamese would die, particularly in vast U.S. air raids on the North, but was correct in assessing that this would weaken the U.S. internationally, legitimize his campaign to destroy South Vietnam, and unify the country under Hanoi’s rule.
But North Vietnam had a powerful ally, a population many times the size of Gaza’s, a much larger land area, and a highly mobilized society and powerful army. And his adversary to the south was, unlike Israel, fatally divided against itself.
The question for both the Palestinians and Israelis is what happens next. If the two are smart, Sinwar’s successors will offer to release all the remaining hostages, dead and alive, in exchange for an immediate ceasefire and a massive influx of humanitarian aid. The Israelis would be well-advised to declare victory and accept such an arrangement.
The Biden administration, and presumably Vice President Harris, have signaled that Netanyahu’s government is skating on thin ice. The prime minister might calculate that he need only wait a few weeks for a president-elect Donald Trump and therefore pocket Sinwar’s death and carry on with business as usual. This might be a good bet.
But hedging might be a better bet, and that would mean using Sinwar’s death as a face-saving way to manage White House pressure.
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One Year of Genocide and the Strength of Palestinians
Despite the unbelievable pain and loss, there is now a powerful energy that is unifying Palestinians around their cause, and the Arabs and the whole world around Palestine.
Oct 10, 2024
No one had expected that one year would be enough to recenter the Palestinian cause as the world’s most pressing issue, and that millions of people across the globe, would, once again rally for Palestinian freedom.
The last year witnessed an Israeli genocide in Gaza, unprecedented violence in the West Bank, but also legendary expressions of Palestinian sumud, or steadfastness.
It is not the enormity of the Israeli war, but the degree of the Palestinian sumud that has challenged what once seemed to be a foregone conclusion to the Palestinian struggle.
Yet, it turned out that the last chapter on Palestine was not yet ready to be written, and that it would not be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who would write it.
The ongoing war has exposed the limits of Israel’s military machine. The typical trajectory of Israel's relationship with the occupied Palestinians has been predicated on unhindered Israeli violence and deafening international silence. It was largely Israel that alone determined the timing and objectives of war. Its enemies, until recently, seemed to have no say over the matter.
Yet, this is no longer the case. Israeli war crimes are now met with Palestinian unity, Arab, Muslim and international solidarity, and early, albeit serious signs of legal accountability as well.
The ongoing war has exposed the limits of Israel’s military machine.
This is hardly what Netanyahu was hoping to achieve; just days before the start of the war, he stood in the United Nations General Assembly Hall carrying a map of a ‘New Middle East’, a map that had completely erased Palestine and the Palestinians.
"We must not give the Palestinians a veto over (..) peace," he said, as "Palestinians are only 2% of the Arab world." His arrogance didn’t last long, as that supposedly triumphant moment was short-lived.
Embattled Netanyahu is now mostly concerned about his own political survival. He is expanding the war front to escape his army’s humiliation in Gaza and is terrified by the prospect of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court.
And as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) continues to look into an ever-expanding file, accusing Israel of deliberate genocide in the Strip, the UNGA, on September 18, resolved that Israel must end its illegal occupation of Palestine within a year from the passing of its resolution on the matter.
It must be utterly disappointing for Netanyahu—who has worked tirelessly to normalize his occupation of Palestine—to be met with total and thundering international rejection of his schemes. The advisory opinion of the ICJ, on July 19, declaring that “Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (is) unlawful” was another blow to Tel Aviv, which despite unlimited US support, failed to change international consensus on the illegality of the occupation.
In addition to the relentless Israeli violence, the Palestinian people have been marginalized as political actors. Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, their fate has been largely entrusted to a mostly unelected Palestinian leadership, which, with time, monopolized the Palestinian cause for its own financial and political interests.
The sumud of the Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured a year of mass killing, deliberate starvation and total destruction of all aspects of life, is helping reassert the political significance of a long-marginalized nation.
This shift is fundamental as it runs opposite to everything that Netanyahu had tried to achieve. In the years prior to the war, Israel seemed to be writing the final chapter of its settler colonial project in Palestine. It had subdued or co-opted the Palestinian leadership, perfected its siege on Gaza and was ready to annex much of the West Bank.
The sumud of the Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured a year of mass killing, deliberate starvation and total destruction of all aspects of life, is helping reassert the political significance of a long-marginalized nation.
Gaza became the least of Israel’s concerns, as any discussion around it was confined to the hermetic Israeli siege and the resulting humanitarian, though not political crisis.
While Palestinians in Gaza have tirelessly implored the world to pressure Israel to end the protracted siege, imposed in earnest in 2007, Tel Aviv continued to conduct its policies in the Strip according to the infamous logic of former top Israeli official, Dov Weissglas, who explained the rationale behind the blockade as "to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."
But a year into the war, Palestinians, due to their own steadfastness, have become the center of any serious discussion on a peaceful future in the Middle East. Their collective courage and steadfastness have neutralized the Israeli military machine’s ability to exact political outcomes through violence.
True, the number of dead, missing or wounded in Gaza has already exceeded 150,000. The Strip, impoverished and dilapidated to begin with, is in total ruins. Every mosque, church or hospital has been destroyed or seriously damaged. Most of the region’s educational infrastructure has been obliterated. Yet, Israel hasn’t achieved any of its strategic objectives, which are ultimately united by a single goal, that of silencing the Palestinian quest for freedom, forever.
Despite the unbelievable pain and loss, there is now a powerful energy that is unifying Palestinians around their cause, and the Arabs and the whole world around Palestine. This shall have consequences that will last for many years, long after Netanyahu and his ilk of extremists are gone.
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