NoW UPDATES: GAZA CEASEFIRE TAKES PLACE

 

IN AN UNEXPECTED BIT OF GOOD NEWS last week, Israel and Hamas concluded a ceasefire agreement which will see hostilities in Gaza stop for a period of six weeks. During this time, a specified number of hostages from both sides will be released; Israeli forces will partially withdraw from Gaza; critically-needed humanitarian aid will be allowed in once more; and Palestinians are free to return to their piles of rubble neighbourhoods. This accord is designed in three phases with the second and third treaty articles to be negotiated during the first phase. For the Netanyahu regime, this is seen as a temporary ceasefire, and it is quite possible the genocide we have been witnessing in the Gaza Strip for the past fifteen months will be restarted prior to end of the 42-day phase one. Israel's track record for abiding by such treaties is not good. And the Israeli prime minister has made it clear that he plans to renew the blockade and bombings in Gaza at the end of phase one if the ongoing negotiations are not to his liking.

For now, the killing has stopped and a number of hostages have been exchanged. Food, water and medicines are once more flowing into Gaza. And for however long the ceasefire lasts, we can be grateful that further Palestinian lives need not  be lost.

 

INTERESTINGLY, the incoming American president, Donald Trump, in December sent his special envoy Steve Witkoff, a billionaire New York real estate developer (and golf partner), to Qatar to broker the deal. Witkoff was acting as a private citizen with no political office—Trump had not been inaugurated—and yet, the billionaire negotiated, over the course of the first week of 2025, a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that Biden and his criminally incompetent administration were unable (really unwilling) to achieve. Commentators suggest the deal that Witkoff rammed down the throat of completed with Netanyahu probably was achieved through a combination of threats and promises. Perhaps Witkoff threatened that President Trump would withhold weapon shipments to Israel if the fighting in Gaza didn’t stop before his inauguration. It’s less clear if Witkoff made any promises to the Israeli prime minister, but one worrying possibility is that he gave Netanyahu the green light to ramp up his annexation of the West Bank during Israel's ceasefire with Hamas, and to confiscate Palestinian land there using tried and true methods developed during the Gazan genocide. Thus, Israel has stepped up its military actions in the West Bank against 2.7 million Palestinians who live there using planes to bomb and level their farms and villages. Hundreds have been killed. How many more will die or be wounded in the days and weeks to come is anybody's guess. 

THERE HAVE BEEN suggestions that West Bank Palestinians be forcibly removed into Jordon or Syria, and ethnically cleanse "Judaea" and "Samaria" as the Palestinian Territory is called by Zionist settlers and political leaders.

 

Canadian independent journalist Eva Bartlett quotes UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on September 2 with respect to violence in the occupied West Bank: “There is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control...The long-standing impunity granted to Israel is enabling the de-Palestinisation of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group.”   (RT) Eva Bartlett  

 

 We’ll have to wait and see what the next six weeks of 'peace' between Hamas and Israel brings. But, don't hold your breath. Israel has made deals like this before, i.e., a ceasefire followed by negotiations for a permanent peace, and it has invariably reneged on them.*

 

👉Note: Israel took advantage of the weakened Hamas and Hezbollah resistance forces, and the ceasefire in Lebanon to launch a brazen attack into Syria, a country in disarray after its president, Bashir al-Assad, fled in early December ahead of Idlib-based  militias  taking power in Damascus. [Idlib is a northern province of Syria] HTS (Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham) is the umbrella organization of Islamic extremist militias (many coming from around the world) that is in  control of a significant portion of Syria. In addition, HTS has taken upon itself to act as the titular head of state following its mostly bloodless overthrow of Assad. [But, lookout! The "head choppers" are in charge! Ed.] Israel’s incursion into southern Syrian territory bordering the occupied¹ Golan Heights seems to have been coordinated with Turkey as that country moved its forces along the border into northern Syria to conduct operations against Kurdish militias that operate separatist insurgencies within Turkey. HTS, which is supported by Turkey, says it wants to have good relations with Israel, despite a recent Israeli bombing campaign (nearly 800 sorties!) that destroyed almost the entire military weapons supply, army bases, air force, and weapons production facilities that were left in Syria after its military collapsed along with the fall of Assad. Israel wanted to 'de-militarize Syria so no potentially hostile force within the country could readily arm themselves. Mission accomplished! Which is to say there are interesting bed-fellows inside Syria, with Turkey, HTS, and Israel each annexing roughly one-third of the country and striving to avoid stepping on each others' toes. For now.

All of them, including the Americans, have “assets” (i.e. troops/proxy fighters) in the country and geographic zones of interest that are being carved out and solidified. It’s slice and dice time for the war-torn country. This division of the country has the effect of cutting off (at least temporarily) the flow of arms from Iran along smuggling routes through Iraq and Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. 

👉IN RECENT WEEKS, Israel has come back from what looked like a losing situation in Gaza against Hamas, and in Lebanon against Hezbollah militia forces.² But the “pager” attacks decimated Hezbollah's upper ranks and gave Israel a leg up on the militia. CURRENTLY, Israel has negotiated a 60-day ceasefire with Hezbollah by the end of which the Jewish state is supposed to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and Hezbollah, for its part, will cease firing missiles into northern Israeli settlements. However, it seems unlikely that the IDF will pull all their troops out before the ceasefire deadline, so it's likely that Hezbollah and Israel will restart their conflict shortly.

 👉Note: The Lebanese ceasefire gave Israel enough mojo to pivot to Syria, invade the country while taking advantage of the confusion following the collapse of the Assad government and its military, and the added confusion of Turkish incursions into northern Syria, and the continued American troop placements in NE Syria where oil fields and productive farmland are located. Farewell, Syria.

👉Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza in its failed bid to eradicate Hamas has left the Palestinian enclave a "moonscape" of rubble and debris, utterly uninhabitable, with every infrastructure badly damaged or destroyed. Following the ceasefire negotiated by Steve Witkoff last week, thousands of tents, including field hospitals, water purification systems, food and medical supplies have begun to arrive this week. It remains to be seen how long the peace will hold. Gaza, like Syria, has died. What will emerge there will never be the same.³ 

 

Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20/2025 and his initiatives were instrumental in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza. Any halt to the carnage is welcome for however long it lasts. Of Gaza, Trump said the other day it looked like a "massive demolition site" adding it also was a "phenomenal location on the sea....It's like, some beautiful things could be done with it." I hope he was speaking as a humanitarian and upholder of international law and not as an old-school real estate developer.🙏 Time will tell.  

 

Cheers, Jake.___________________________________________________

 

* Like the 60-day ceasefire with Hezbollah it negotiated in late November. Israel has broken its treaty obligations almost from the get-go continuing periodic air and ground attacks in southern Lebanon (though it stopped bombing the capital, Beirut.) The goal of the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) is to create a buffer zone between Hezbollah militia fighters and Israeli settlers living near the Lebanese border. Hezbollah has, for the most part, kept its side of the bargain and not conducted further military operations during the ceasefire. Note: This ceasefire will end in a couple of weeks and there is every possibility Israel will resume its bombing campaign with the goal of cowing the population into accepting a permanent presence of IDF in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, for its part has said it will respond to any Israeli incursions when the ceasefire ends on January 26. Stay tuned!

 

1. Illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Israeli-Arab War.

 

2. Yemen’s Houthis continued to target Israel-bound shipping in the Red Sea until the ceasefire deal was implemented on January 19. It will  hold fire as long as  Israel's genocidal attacks against Gaza remains in abeyance. It will resume attacks on Israel proper or on shipping and naval assets of any country that attacks Yemen, however. Under international law, a subjugated people have the legal right to take up arms against their oppressors as Hamas did in Gaza against Israel. Countries may legally come to the aid of oppressed people as did the Yemeni people following October 7 2023. Yemen is the only country to come to the aid of the Palestinians by direct military action, and in doing so upholds international law. (Hezbollah is a Lebanese militia, not a state actor. Iran supports Hamas indirectly with arms and money. And South Africa took a principled stance in international jurisprudence, raising a charge of genocide against the Israeli state before the International Court of Justice in the Hague on December 29 2023. The ICJ is still deliberating on the matter.)

 

3. In his first day as President of the United States, Trump mused that the rebuilding of Gaza will have to be done "differently". What he meant by that wasn't clear. He went on to say the Gazan shore was "beautiful", as was the weather, these observations perhaps make it clearer what his thoughts are in regard to the Gazan people and their land. It should be remembered that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law still plans to engage in Gaza's reconstruction following the end of hostilities. Beachfront condos, anyone?😎

 

    Former British Ambassador Craig Murray

 FUN FACT#1: DID YOU KNOW that the United States is constructing the second-largest embassy in the world in Beirut? [The largest is the American embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Ed.] It is on the site of a former U.S. embassy that was bombed by the then-nascent Hezbollah militia in 1984 that objected to America's presence in Lebanon. According to fmr. British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, the complex (it’s huge! 104 acres—almost the size of Vatican City!) will house over 5,000 embassy ‘staff’. Five thousand. By contrast, the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Washington has about 210 diplomats and approximately 250 additional staffers (cooks, cleaners, spies, etc.). Canada has around 265 staff in its Washington embassy compound. 

Just goes to show that the embassy in Beirut is not geared, or sized, to suit the needs of the Lebanese people or Americans in Lebanon who are there for various purposes. Why is this huge diplomatic compound being constructed and what are the ‘job descriptions’ of its personnel? ONE COMMENTATOR suggests America’s diplomatic mission would act as a “shadow government” in Lebanon, interfering in the country’s fractured politics in various ways. It will, no doubt, act as a base of operations for all sorts of CIA fukery and “special ops” operations in the region. Five thousand staff! That’s a small army!

 

Hmmm....would we be comfortable with a similarly sized mission encamped in Ottawa’s embassy row? Considering Canada’s penchant to kow-tow to our American overlords, the cucks currently in charge up here would be overjoyed that our neighbourly hegemon would grace us with such munificence. Just sayin’.

 

FUN FACT#2: Steve Witkoff, Trump 's special envoy to the Middle East mused last week that it would be a good idea to "relocate" two million Palestinians from Gaza to Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population (241 million) They'd fit right in and what's a million or two more Muslims over there going to matter? Re-construction could begin on Gaza 2.0 after which the Palestinians could then return to their homeland. 😆 Who are they kidding! In reality, any Palestinian who leaves Gaza will never be allowed to return. 

See artist's spiffy conception below. Can you spot the Trump Tower?

 

 "Mommy, why does Chester keep digging up bones?" 💀