Palestine’s quest for survival still remains in limbo, a path drenched in blood. With at least 89 Palestinians having been killed and 250 other victims of the war wounded in Khan Younis in “one of the bloodiest” Israeli attacks in the past eight months. Around 150,000 residents were forced to flee the area in one day due to the attacks. Survivors say they barely got a couple of minutes to escape to areas that had little or no infrastructure.
Since yesterday, Israeli forces have arrested at least 25 Palestinian citizens from the occupied West Bank including occupied East Jerusalem, Palestine Prisoner’s Society has said in a statement. Among the detainees are two wounded people, two female students, a journalist, a child and former prisoners, it said. The arrests occurred in the governorates of Tulkarem, Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Tubas, Nablus, and Jerusalem. Israeli forces have arrested more than 9,785 people in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war on Gaza in October. The society said this number includes those who were arrested from homes, at military checkpoints, those who were forced to surrender themselves under pressure, and those who were held hostage.
As the Zionist regime’s war in Gaza worsens the Israeli state’s noose tightens around the people of the West bank. The role of the civil society group Palestine Prisoner’s Society is to raise awareness of the Palestinians’ right to freedom of expression being restricted by Israeli authorities. This includes detaining hundreds of Palestinians in administrative detention. Administrative detention in the occupied West Bank can last up to months, years or even decades. The reason why major West Bank towns such as Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem have been targeted is because they are the main source of mass demonstrations by the Palestinians against the occupiers in the West Bank. The main goal of the Israeli Authorities is to prevent another Intifada (uprising) against their continued occupation.
Meanwhile in the United States even the American Jews have come out to oppose the Zionist regime. According to Lilly Greenburg Call a supporter of US Democratic Party presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris the time for a new era in American foreign policy towards Israel is now. Greenburg resigned from the administration of US President Joe Biden over his continuing the same diplomatic policy on Gaza.
I resigned because of Joe Biden’s disastrous policy on Gaza, providing the financial and diplomatic support for the Israeli military to massacre, starve and forcibly expel countless Palestinians in Gaza. As a staffer in the administration, I heard reports that Harris and her staff pushed the US president to adopt a policy on Gaza that was both more humane and in alignment with international law, but were rebuffed. I saw the Harris I moved to Iowa for in her speech in Selma, becoming the first senior administration official calling for a ceasefire, even as I was disappointed that it was only for six weeks. This was reportedly an effort by Biden’s team to water down her speech. It is shameful that Biden refused to listen to Harris – or the majority of Americans for that matter. Now that Biden has stepped aside, she has the opportunity to chart her own path on Israel and Palestine.
Biden’s unequivocal support for the Israeli regime may have to do more with keeping the donor money flowing from the Israeli lobby group American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than any fanatical loyalty and affiliation to the regime in Tel Aviv. The continued bombing and massacre of Palestinians in Gaza as stated previously has so sickened the members of Biden’s administration such as Harris and those like Greenburg that they want a more rational approach to the war. The war being waged by the Hawkish Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition of supporters. If this war was truly about retrieving Israeli hostages taken on the seventh of October why did the Israeli government not go the path of negotiation with Hamas.
Carrying out a genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza or ordering further administrative detentions of Palestinians in the West Bank is not going to bring those hostages back. Kamala herself already knows this.
For months, the majority of Democrats and Americans, including American Jews, have supported a lasting ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Harris must make clear that she supports using the US government’s leverage to end the bloodshed and reunite families. One clear way that she can do so is by supporting an arms embargo on offensive weapons for the Israeli military – a policy floated by Biden before he ultimately backtracked and greenlit Israel’s devastating ground invasion of Rafah. Once Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza ends, a President Harris could begin a new era in which the US government uses commonsense diplomatic and financial pressure to bring about a long-term political solution that would end Israel’s system of apartheid over Palestinians and guarantee equality, justice and safety for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
The calls for a permanent cease fire and just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Washington has barely budged on its willingness to finance Tel Aviv’s genocide on Gaza. Harris and those who support her election like Greenburg need to step up and oppose the continued and unacceptable funding of the destructive Israeli Military, whose actions in Gaza and the West Bank have made them unaccountable. The main cheerleaders for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in the US are the right-wing of the Republican Party led by their Presidential Candidate and former president Donald Trump. Meanwhile it is the ordinary Palestinian children, women and men of the occupied territories that have suffered the most. Even if there is a President Harris at the helm of the Oval Office, it will take the pressure of a grassroots movement in the US to stop the killing.
Article written by:
Yacoob Cassim
Journalist at Radio Al Ansaar
