Friday, August 23, 2024

CURRENT SITUATION: NOTES ON THE GLOBAL CRISIS (24. ON THE DOHA NEGOTIATIONS.- updated)


 “GAZA WAR”: At the negotiating table, only what was won on the battlefield is agreed upon

The main Zionist-imperialist military objective of the so-called “Gaza War”: the destruction of Hamas, the Palestinian armed resistance and the terrorizing of the other resistance forces in the MoA region, has not been achieved. It remains a pending issue. The Palestinian people’s war of national resistance can never be stopped.

According to the media, the United States, Qatar and Egypt are acting as mediators in the conflict between Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas. At the weekend, after the first round, the three made a final call to all parties to the conflict to put aside everything that prevents an agreement. The Palestinian resistance is not taking part in the talks in the capital Doha (Qatar).

 

According to these media, the talks are not only about a ceasefire and more than 100 prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance since October 7, 2023. But a possible agreement could also prevent or at least lessen the scale of a punitive blow against Israel by Iran and its allies in the region. This could prevent an escalation of the conflict.

 

On the latter, the Iranian delegation to the United Nations clarified that achieving a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is Tehran's highest priority. “Any agreement that is acceptable to Hamas is also acceptable to us,” the delegation said.

 

There are three direct negotiators in the negotiations, while Hamas, the Palestinian resistance, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Houthis are not present. Is this new in this conflict since 1948? No. It has happened before. Where US imperialism and Israel and others have participated as direct negotiators, and the Palestinian resistance and its allies inside and outside the region have participated indirectly.

 

“Hamas declared that it was not participating in the talks. For them, a clear plan is missing for the implementation of the proposal for a ceasefire by US President Joe Biden, which also has the subsequent support of the UN Security Council. Biden’s proposal is a three-phased plan: first, a complete six-week ceasefire. During that time, a certain group of Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance would be released. In exchange, a group of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel would be released. Afterwards, fighting would cease indefinitely and the remaining Israeli prisoners would be released by the resistance. In the last phase, reconstruction of the Gaza Strip would begin.

 

Diplomats from the US, France, Britain and Germany are also seeking to prevent an escalation of the conflict through talks” (the source of the information we are providing is the Handelsblatt of the 18th and 19th of this month, which we have modified some terms in our translation, for example, where the source says “hostages” we have correctly written “prisoners”, or we have also deleted the word “terrorist” when referring to Hamas, etc. The comments are ours and do not have quotation marks).

As on previous occasions, Israel's current military campaign against the Palestinian people, mainly against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, is officially presented as a legitimate Israeli defense against the attack (counter-campaign) launched by the Palestinian resistance, led by Hamas, on October 7, 2023.

 

Since the negotiating table only agrees on what has been won on the battlefield, based on the declarations made by the Zionist side and the expressions of willingness to continue the struggle for Palestinian resistance, it is necessary to draw a conclusion:

 

That, despite the disproportionate use of force by the current Zionist-imperialist campaign in its war against the Palestinian people, in man and modern means of mass destruction and the most atrocious genocide to date used by the Zionist-imperialist military forces against Gaza and, also, the West Bank and countries in the region such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc. The military objective of the Zionist-imperialist front of aggression, which is aimed at destroying Hamas and the Palestinian armed resistance as a whole and at terrorizing the other forces mentioned above, has not been achieved. It is pending, as can be deduced from the discussions on the military withdrawal of the Zionists from the Gaza Strip. It remains pending, and the other objectives that have to do with the prisoners and the future of the Gaza Strip are of lesser importance.

 The Palestinian resistance and that of the entire region not only remains, but is strengthened by the immense support of internal and international public opinion, which increases the hatred of the masses of the world against imperialism and world reaction.

 

The latest news is illustrative in this regard:

 

Abraham Lincoln battle group arrives in the Middle East to reinforce Israel's defence against a possible Iranian attack

 

The so-called Abraham Lincoln battle group, made up of the aircraft carrier of the same name and the entire auxiliary fleet that accompanies it, has arrived in the Middle East, in an area where it could support Israel's defence in the event of an Iranian attack.

 

Last week, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin ordered the battle group, which includes the aircraft carrier, including its F-35 fighters, and a destroyer, to speed up its arrival in the region to deal with a possible Iranian response to the assassination, on 31 July in Tehran, of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniya. Iran accuses Israel of the assassination, although the Israeli government has neither recognised nor denied its responsibility.

 

Austin also announced that he would send a submarine equipped with guided missiles to the area.

 

Netanyahu says Israel will not withdraw troops from Philadelphia corridor along Egypt-Gaza border

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel has not agreed to withdraw its troops from the Philadelphia corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border. The Israeli prime minister's office thus denies reports on state television. "Israel will insist on achieving all of its war objectives, as defined by the Security Cabinet, including ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel's security. This requires securing the southern border," Netanyahu's office said in a statement. (Reuters)

 

In the news agency below, we see the urgency of the genocidal Biden and Kamala Harris to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas that will help them win the next US elections.

“The vice president of the United States and Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has called on Israel and Hamas to close a ceasefire in Gaza now that will allow the release of the hostages.”

Another says:

 

Biden is scheduled to speak with Netanyahu today about the Egypt-Gaza corridor, according to Axios

 

US President Joe Biden is scheduled to hold a phone call later in the afternoon with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During the conversation, the two leaders will address the Israeli authority's new demand to keep forces deployed along a land corridor between Egypt and Gaza, according to Axios, which reports that Biden wants Netanyahu to soften Israel's position on the issue.

 

In the talks to stop the fighting in Gaza, Hamas is seeking a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, including the so-called Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow 14.5-kilometer stretch of land on the coastal enclave's southern border with Egypt. Israel wants to maintain control of the corridor, which it captured in late May after destroying dozens of tunnels beneath it that it says had served militant groups to smuggle weapons. (Reuters)

 

Act. 22 Aug 2024 - 07:31 CEST

 

Biden urges Netanyahu to finalize Gaza ceasefire deal

 

U.S. President Joe Biden has spoken by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about ways to move forward on a possible Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal, the White House said, adding that Vice President Kamala Harris also took part in the call. According to the note, Biden stressed to the Israeli leader “the urgency of finalizing the ceasefire and hostage release agreement and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles.” The talks in the Egyptian capital, scheduled for Wednesday, were postponed.

 

 

In the call, the two leaders also discussed US efforts to defend Israel “against all threats from Iran and its allied terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.”

 

The call came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to the Middle East ended on Tuesday without an agreement between Israel and Hamas militants on a truce in the Palestinian enclave. Blinken and the mediators from Egypt and Qatar have pinned their hopes on a US “bridge proposal” aimed at bridging the gaps between the two sides. (Agencies)

 

The development of the campaign and counter-campaign between the Zionist State of Israel and US imperialism against the Palestinian resistance is the result of the sharpening of the nation-imperialism contradiction, the main one in Palestine and in the entire Greater Middle East region, plus the development of the inter-imperialist and other contradictions. According to commentators, the following issues must therefore be taken into account: internal Palestinian, Israeli, regional and international politics.

 

The question is, what are the warring parties after and why is Israel carrying out this campaign as if it were the war of the end of the world?

 

The Zionist State of Israel with the participation of US imperialism - military, political, diplomatic, armament, financial, etc. with destruction, death and massive displacement (genocide) exceeds all the disproportionate "responses" of its previous military campaigns in its colonial war against the Palestinians. And, from the beginning, the Israeli-US imperialist military action, encompasses different countries of the OMA such as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and three seas of the region, and implicates on one side or the other all the countries of that region.

 

It is a military campaign that is being waged not only in its main theater (Palestine, Gaza Strip and the West Bank), but in a very wide war scenario, where the other countries that suffer from the Zionist-imperialist aggression cannot give a proportionate military response to the attack received, in order to avoid the real threat of large-scale punitive operations by Yankee imperialism, which is why they prefer to mainly support the guerrilla resistance forces in the region, what the imperialists call asymmetric warfare. Thus, a regular war is configured, which uses operations typical of the imperialist war of "low intensity" against all those who make up the patriotic forces and the front against the aggression in Palestine and the region, as part of a large campaign of encirclement and annihilation with the use of all its military potential by the Zionist State of Israel with the participation of the political, economic, military and diplomatic force of Yankee imperialism. Who, in addition, in order to impose its order acts as a mediating power and sets the agenda for the negotiations in motion.

 

Although this type of campaign in its genocidal war is not new on the part of the occupying power, it surpasses all previous ones. Thus, it can be seen that if the objectives of the resistance in its long and hard struggle for national liberation were to give a new great impetus to its war of national resistance, to unite the Palestinian national front and the anti-Zionist-imperialist front in the MOA and to stop the recognition of Israel by the Arab states of the region, it can be said that they have been achieved to a large extent, which is being paid with a necessary cost, which would be very high, but fair and correct. Israel's objective is to carry out the war to destroy the main force of the Palestinian resistance and to crush a crushing blow to all the armed Palestinian resistance and to teach a lesson to the resistance forces in the region, drying up the fish tank and imposing its recognition as such with full right to impose its occupation order and to serve to impose the "pax americana" in the MOA, as has been said, it has not been achieved and will not be achieved either.

 

The Zionist State of Israel does not only seek recognition beyond the boundaries of the 1967 war, but within the current boundaries of the occupation of Palestinian territory, including its “new colonies.” This is evident from the content of all official government statements, as well as from the statements of the ministers of the ruling coalition in Israel and from the attacks on the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, as well as from the massive US military presence, as well as the growing pressure of US imperialism and its “allies” in the other theaters, which involve Russia and China. For the US national strategy, one campaign is only part of a set of campaigns in a war to seek to maintain its hegemony as the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower, in decline, which is challenged from all sides. The campaigns that the Yankee imperialists are engaged in, according to the national security strategy, encompass all political, military, economic, etc. components, in order to impose their national objectives, that is, to maintain their declining imperialist world hegemony.

 

If one begins by focusing on the “Gaza war,” the observer immediately notices an unparalleled disproportion in the military action of the Zionist armed forces. If in the 3 or 4 previous “Gaza wars,” counted so far this century, the Zionists killed between 4,000 and 5,000 Palestinians, in these almost 11 months they have already killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 100,000. The destruction caused in the cities and towns includes what is called the air, the ground, and the subsoil of the Gaza Strip with its buildings, houses, sidewalks, streets, underground water and sewage installations, etc. more hospitals, schools, aid centers, etc. The description of all the death, destruction caused and terror they have sought to spread not only to try to subject the population to their genocidal will but to get a large part of it displaced to Egypt, confirms the objective of this Zionist genocidal action to annihilate Hamas and isolate the resistance of the masses, divide the resistance front, reduce the size of the Strip and the population. Add to this the statements of the genocidaires of the Israeli government, who have refused to reveal the plans they have for the administration of the Strip, but it has transpired that since the transition period where there will still be an Israeli military presence in the Strip, a single administration will be established.

 

Comments on military operations and military campaigns by the Zionists of Israel, say that: By displaying its conventional power, as it has been during decades of wars or attacks similar to those carried out in recent months, Israel is trying to regain its deterrent legitimacy, transferring its asymmetric challenges to a scenario of strategic symmetry in which it feels it can act with much greater security.

Similarly, the constant speculations alleged in recent years, regarding the existence of Israeli plans to attack and destroy the main facilities that are part of the Iranian nuclear program, obviously have the value of a deterrent act of great weight, impossible to be ignored by Iranian strategic thinking.

 

The imperialist "allies" of the US such as Norway, Spain, etc. have given their diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian State, according to the tenor of the news:

May 22, 2024

Spain, Ireland and Norway recognized this Wednesday the existence of the Palestinian State, a historic decision that has provoked the condemnation of Israel and the joy of the Palestinian people.

"The recognition of the State of Palestine is not only a question of historical justice with regard to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people; it is also an urgent necessity to achieve peace," said Pedro Sánchez, head of the Spanish government, in the last few hours.

"The Palestinians have a fundamental and independent right to have their own State. Both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live in peace in separate States," said the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, when announcing the decision.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, based in the West Bank, had expressed its satisfaction at learning of the intention of the three European governments.

 

If one looks at the Zionist-imperialist military campaign on the regional stage, one sees how the aggression is delimiting the fields. On the one hand, there are the countries that before October 7 had advanced agreements for the diplomatic recognition of the Zionist State of Israel, plus Egypt, which had already done so in the 1970s, and on the other, those who refuse this recognition, such as Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. These facts are eloquent in giving us an idea of ​​what Yankee imperialism and the representatives of its Zionist protectorate are seeking in this military campaign, which would be nothing other than the recognition of Israel as a legitimate State by the Arab States of the region based on Israel's recognition of a quasi-state Palestinian entity, representing the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, with some minor compensations regarding the "illegal" settlements. Thus, Israel will be able to continue to maintain that it practices apartheid because the Palestinians live in their own territory, which is subject to its authority.

 

Therefore, it will not be an independent Palestinian State that definitively responds to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people. It will not be able to end the occupation of Palestine, nor will it allow the return of the displaced people, and therefore it will not be able to put an end to the Palestinian resistance movement, and the Palestinian armed resistance and the Arab peoples will continue their fight to the death against imperialism and Zionism, will adopt Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, will form their Communist Parties as Marxist-Leninist-Maoist militarized parties, and will transform their armed resistance struggle into a people's war of resistance, and will put an end to imperialism, Zionism, semi-feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, culminating in the democratic revolution and immediately stopping the socialist revolution.

 

ABOUT THE NEGOTIATIONS IN DOHA (QATAR)

 

The news, about the negotiations that are taking place in Doha, after the first round held last Thursday and Friday, the second round is scheduled for last Wednesday and which have been postponed, are:

 

Hamas rejects new ceasefire proposal

 

The ceasefire proposal according to Hamas is too close to Israel's demands. There will be further discussions later in the week.

 

Updated on August 19, 2024 according to Reuters, dpa,

 

Negotiations on a ceasefire will continue this week.

 

The Palestinian resistance organization Hamas has rejected the proposals of the latest round of indirect negotiations with Israel on a ceasefire in the Gaza war. "After listening to the mediators what was discussed in the last round of talks in Doha, we are once again convinced that Netanyahu continues to put obstacles in the way of the agreement," Hamas said on Sunday, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

On Friday, mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States reached a new compromise. Hamas did not participate, but was informed of the results. The core of the compromise is the release of Israeli hostages and, in return, the handover of Palestinian prisoners and an end to fighting. The individual steps toward these goals are controversial. Netanyahu also insists on the complete destruction of Hamas as a prerequisite for a permanent ceasefire.

 

Hamas said the American proposals were too close to the demands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Among other things, Hamas will not accept a permanent presence of Israeli troops in strategic locations in the Gaza Strip, as Netanyahu demands. This is mainly about the so-called Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow strip of land running in southern Gaza along the border with Egypt. Israel suspects that Hamas has been supplying itself with weapons via this border.

 

Hamas rejects Israel's proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza

Updated: 19/08/2024 source.dpa

 

A ceasefire in Gaza is still not in sight. Hamas does not want to accept Israel's conditions.

 

- Hamas rejects the conditions imposed and accuses Netanyahu of wanting to prolong the war.

 

- Hamas in the Gaza Strip rejects the proposals of the latest round of indirect negotiations with Israel for a ceasefire in the Gaza war. "After listening to the mediators' discussions in the last round of talks in Doha, we are once again convinced that (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu continues to put obstacles in the way of an agreement," the Palestinian resistance group said in a statement from the organization.

 

It was the first statement by Hamas since the latest round of talks, which took place on Thursday and Friday in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Hamas did not participate, so the mediators informed it of the results. So far, Israel and Hamas have only negotiated indirectly.

 

Hamas further claimed that Netanyahu would “impose new conditions and demands to torpedo the efforts of mediators and prolong the war.” Egypt, Qatar and the United States are mediating the talks, which are also intended to lead to the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

 

Indirect talks must continue

 

The new proposals, according to Hamas, are in line with Netanyahu’s conditions and deviate from the negotiating framework presented by US President Joe Biden in May and accepted by the parties. Among other things, Hamas will not accept a permanent presence of Israeli troops in strategic locations in the Gaza Strip, as Netanyahu now persistently demands. This primarily concerns the so-called Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow strip of territory running in southern Gaza along the border with Egypt. Israel suspects that Hamas has been supplying itself with weapons via this border.

 

Indirect discussions are expected to continue at various levels and lead to a potentially decisive phase in the second half of the week. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Monday to meet with Netanyahu. The Israeli head of government has yet to give any signs of budging.

 

According to Israeli media reports, the meeting between Netanyahu and his negotiators on Sunday morning was extremely stormy. The negotiators strongly warned that insisting on the Philadelphia Corridor would derail the desired deal. The prime minister said that evening through his office that he continued to insist “that we remain in the Philadelphia Corridor to prevent terrorist elements from rearming.”