After rockets fired from Gaza landed near Tel Aviv Friday morning, Israel launched 100 raids on the enclave. And the organizers of the Great March of Return suspended the demonstrations in their 51st week out of concern for safety of protesters.
The Gaza protests will mark their one-year anniversary in 2 weeks, with real political potential for the Palestinian struggle. Gaza has always been a crucible for political movements in part because its population has such a high percentage of refugees of the Nakba in 1948. Helena Cobban traces the history.
After nearly two months of arbitrary detention, brutal interrogations, a hunger strike, and sexual harassment, 31-year-old Suha Jbara is expected to be released from Palestinian Authority custody in the next two days. Jbara, a Palestinian activist with American and Panamanian citizenship, was arrested by PA security forces on November 3rd over accusations that she collected and distributed money through “illegal methods,” a claim herself and her family vehemently deny. Her father spoke to Mondoweiss about the “nightmare” that his daughter and family have experienced over the past two months.
Ahmad Kabariti reports from Gaza on how the unfolding crisis in the Gulf around Qatar could move Hamas closer to Iran, or cripple the group in its power struggle with the Palestinian Authority.
In a recent video, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu slammed the new Hamas charter saying, “[Hamas] brainwashes kids inside suicide camps,” before throwing the document in a trash can. But Jonathan Ofir asks – what about the ways Israeli institutions are brainwashing children to hate Palestinians?
Fatah and Hamas reached consensus in July to hold municipal elections on October 8th. The agreement came about amid reconciliation efforts aimed at ending internal Palestinian political divisions. Hani el-Massri, a Palestinian political analyst based in Gaza, believes this election cycle is the last best chance to settle the division.
At the height of the Gaza onslaught in July, Netanyahu’s right-hand man met with a group of journalists in Jerusalem to equate Hamas with ISIS. The latest Israeli rhetoric is overheated: Both organizations seek to establish an Islamic caliphate, both “educate (read: brainwash) children to sanctify death and to die as a martyr (shahid) in jihad.” Oh and Hamas is global, but Boko Haram isn’t.
On Monday former Republican Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee visited the Gush Etzion settlement and claimed that radical Islamists are after American boys.
The cease-fire that ended seven weeks of hell in Gaza is only two days old. But the countdown to the next round began as soon as the ink dried on the agreement between Israel and the Palestinian armed factions. The deep-rooted problems bedeviling the Palestinian people and Israel have not gone away. The only question is when that next spasm of violence breaks out.