RANT: A RESPITE OR SOMETHING MORE?

  

LIKE EVERYONE (or most everyone), I was happy to see Trump’s improbable twenty-point Gazan peace plan actually take shape since 9 October, this year, when it came into effect, with the ceasefire holding and both sides more or less sticking to the deal.* More food aid is getting into the enclave, though it remains inadequate to address the nutritional needs of the Palestinian population, particularly those hard to reach communities scattered amid the moonscape of northern Gaza. We will see the results of this man-made famine in the next generation when the children grow up with learning difficulties, chronic diseases and physical infirmaries as a result of being deprived of adequate nutrition in their formative years. The current generation, including the parents and relatives of those children, live in the wreckage of their homes and livelihoods. I can't imagine how much psychological damage they've incurred and how that will manifest in the years and decades to come. I can't imagine what they've gone through, other than in the broad strokes. And in the end I cannot put myself in their shoes. I am not strong enough. 

👉AND Jared Kushner wants to build hotels atop the graves of Palestinian men, women, and children buried beneath the rubble! Such an obscenity. 

 

WELL, IT LOOKS like the various NGO charities still operating in the enclave have begun organizing actual humanitarian aid centres, shoving aside the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s bogus operations. [See here and here] However, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) has yet to be allowed back in, with Israel still claiming that some of the NGO’s staff were involved in the 7 October  attacks by Hamas which may or may not be the case, but recall that the UN agency had around 12,000 Palestinian workers at the time of its expulsion, with only a handful accused of being members of Hamas. UNRWA remains the only organization that can provide aid, at scale, for the entire Gazan population. And it is mandated by United Nations to do just that—deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Jordon and Syria. And it has done so for decades. Cancelling UNRWA's license to operate in Gaza is yet another example of Israel ignoring or deliberately trashing humanitarian law. 

👉NOTE: As an occupying power (something numerous UN resolutions have declared it to be ever since it seized Palestinian territory after the Six-Day War in 1967), Israel is obligated to ensure the health and well-being of its captive population, and to not ethnically cleanse or forcibly remove Palestinians from their land. So much for international law.

👉AS IT STANDS TODAY, we have witnessed the most abhorrent, criminal, and inhumane actions taken by a sovereign nation since the end of WWII. In these last two years, Gaza has been turned into a hellscape of destitution and fear, with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s relentless bomb, missile, and drone attacks, and sniper gunfire.¹

 

SINCE the 9 October  2025 ceasefire, brokered by President Trump, the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has paid a visit to Tel Aviv, as has VP Vance, Trump’s special envoys, Keith Kellogg and Steve Witcoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, the real-estate mogul, Jared Kushner (who’s had wet dreams for years about turning Gaza into the “French Riveria” of the Middle East, sans Gazans, of course). Commentators suggest the purpose of their visits was to prevent Israel’s PM Netanyahu from backsliding on Trump's peace deal by launching military attacks into Gaza. Trump has spent a good deal of political capital on his ceasefire deal and he doesn’t want to have egg on his face if Netanyahu tightens the screws and starts heavy bombardments of Gaza once more. Trump wants a ‘win’ and he doesn’t want Netanyahu spoiling it by resuming his genocidal campaign in the Palestinian enclave (or for that matter, allowing "Bibi" to take the leash of settlers in the West Bank to ratchet up their attacks against Palestinians living there.)  For now,"Bibi" has to content himself with lower body counts in Gaza and with intermittent bombing and a few deaths in Lebanon.

BY THE WAY, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) put forward a bill to annex the West Bank. It passed First Reading on the day American VP J D Vance arrived for his visit. The VP was not amused. He said the vote was a deliberate insult by the Israelis. Remember that Trump has publicly stated he would “not allow” the West Bank to be annexed². IIRC, there two further votes are needed to be taken before it becomes law.  

👉FUN FACT: Something I was not aware of: Israel has been funding terrorist cells from outside Gaza and local criminal clans inside the enclave to steal food and to destabilize the fragile ceasefire by creating “false flag” operations designed to give the IDF an excuse to step up operations against the Palestinians. I knew there were criminal gangs in Gaza (recall recently the public execution of several criminal gang members by Hamas. Rough justice no doubt, but what do you do when all the courts and prisons have been blown up?) I was also unaware that Israel has inserted terrorists from outside the country into the Gaza Strip and was funding them along with the gangs. These traitors and infiltrators may yet provide Netanyahu with the "false flag" excuse he needs to resume bombing and starving the already weakened Gazan population. Rest assured that the Israeli PM Netanyahu has not given up on his goal of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, most MPs in the Knesset agree with him, as do most Jewish Israelis. It's a sorry state of affairs.

👉It should be noted that settler violence continues in the West Bank with attacks on the homes, groves, and fields of Palestinians who live there, killing over 1,000 since October 7/23. The goal of the Israeli regime is to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the West Bank, probably by forcing them into neighbouring Jordon, which has a large percentage of it's population that's  of Palestinian heritage  (60% to 70%). 

Let’s see how long the ceasefire lasts and when the killing begins again. 

Fun times in the Levant.

  

CHEERS, JAKE. ____________________________________

 

*  Of course, when I say both sides are keeping the ceasefire I don’t include Israel in the equation. Since the ceasefire came into effect two weeks, over 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli missile and bomb attacks. Granted, it's a lower count than during the murderous rampage we’ve been witnessing on our screens for lo these many months, but it’s supposed to be a ceasefire, after all, not shooting ducks in a barrel, something the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) is wont to do. 

👉It's too soon to predict whether the ceasefire will hold; some commentators suggest Israel broke it at the get-go with bombings and destruction continuing, if at a lesser pace, for now. [I predict the ceasefire won’t last much beyond the autumn. Ed.] 

FOR NOW it is something of a breather for Gazans as they stock up on food and medicines and try to organize life among the ruins. 🙏

 

1. The official death toll of Gazan civilians is at nearly seventy thousand (with some studies suggesting this is an under count, with thousands of Palestinians buried under the rubble and others needlessly dying of treatable diseases and injuries, now that Israel has destroyed most of the enclave’s health care system. Starvation is another factor in Gazan mortality rates. Upwards of four-hundred-and fifty Gazans, many of them children, have died from malnutrition resulting from Israel’s draconian blockade that kept all but a trickle of humanitarian aid supplies from entering the enclave since earlier this year. Only recently, under Trump’s peace initiatives, has roughly two-thirds of the nutritional needs of Gazans been met. Last week Israel closed the gates, cutting off aid supplies once more, in reprisal, for the deaths of two IDF soldiers by an "Improvised Explosive Device" (IED). Their claim was refuted by Hamas and investigators who concluded it was a civilian bulldozer that ran over unexploded IDF ordinance. Israel opened the gates a few days later, letting in a still inadequate amount of aid once more.

👉Using food as a weapon against civilians for any reason is a war crime and against the Geneva Conventions. 

 FUN FACT: Over 2,000 Gazans were killed and fifteen thousand injured seeking aid at “food hubs” run by the Gazan Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an NGO hastily set up in June by the U.S. and Israel whose mission was (ostensibly) to dispense food aid to Gazans, but really it was nothing more than a means to lure Palestinians into the southern part of the Gaza Strip pending their eventual expulsion. A spokesperson for GHF says the NGO ready to resume its role which it suspended during the prisoner swap earlier this month. [Be still my beating heart! You say GHF is ready to return to not serving the Gazan population. Praise the Lord! Ed. 😆]

 

2. Of course, the West Bank has been so balkanized by scores of Israeli settlements and over six-hundred-thousand thieves settler-colonists in residence there, that it’s been de facto annexed by Israel already. A “two state” solution with Palestinians having a viable homeland seems increasingly like a mirage, like wishes on the wind.

 

 

Gaza City