Israeli Defence Forces units withdrew wholesale from the devastated Jabalia permanent refugee camp in northern Gaza last week claiming “mission accomplished” (for the second time). At the same time, United States President Joe Biden suddenly announced a vaguely-worded “ceasefire” proposal for Gaza (but not for the West Bank or elsewhere targeted by Israel).
The US, itself, is pre-occupied by last week’s “guilty” verdict by a New York criminal court jury against former American President Donald Trump in his notorious case of financial fraud in bribes to a porn star illicit lover. Meanwhile, India and South Asia await the expected third political triumph by the incumbent BJP coalition in Delhi as Indians voted yesterday in the final phase of the weeks-long Lok Sabha general elections.
Though IDF officials claim a successful mission in Jabalia, international news agencies quoted their own correspondents and Palestinian sources on the ground that the IDF pull-out was actually due to its own casualties caused by stiff Gazan militia resistance. The Gazan militia resistance emerged afresh in the Jabalia camp after it was reportedly “conquered” and “cleared of Hamas” by the IDF in previous assaults much earlier in Israel’s ongoing Gaza war.
Jabalia
The Israeli 98th Division that withdrew last week was sent into Jabalia in late April after Gazan militia miraculously began operating from the once-crowded refugee settlement that had been pulverised and emptied by previous successive IDF assaults since Israel launched its war in October last year. Jabalia is (or, was, until it was emptied) an impoverished, permanent refugee camp for Palestinians forcibly displaced during Israel’s founding in 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansings of Palestinian territory being progressively annexed by the exclusively Jewish state.
As the IDF’s 98th Division began meeting strong defensive action by Gazan militia during its fresh assault, reports coming out from Gaza confirmed that, despite Israeli claims of previous “clearing” of militia from the camp, the Palestinian resistance had remained entrenched in the largely devastated camp. The Gazan militia groups likely stayed literally underground in the now-famous tunnel system which the Israelis have yet to penetrate.
Hamas and other Palestinian sources indicated that those units hiding in Jabalia, defending the undemolished remainder of the camp, were subsequently reinforced via the tunnel system by fresh militia elements from other parts of Gaza. Reportedly Hamas itself had deployed three of its battalions to push back the latest onslaught on Jabalia.
Videos coming out of Jabalia on social media (the world’s new “Fifth Estate” that has replaced the historic Fourth Estate) show the now routine use of armoured bulldozers by the IDF to flatten the already pulverized tenement-style blocks of the refugee settlement. The reason for this full-scale urban demolition is that it denies Gazan militia the use of even the building ruins to take cover during firefights.
This is a typical tactic in ‘fighting in built-up areas’ (FIBUA). But it can only be done under the cover of fire dominance. Hamas videos on social media also show the targeting of such bulldozers by guerilla fire.
The Gazan death toll last week topped 36,300 and the injured count topped 82,000. While militia units reportedly unearthed the bodies of 70 civilians in Jabalia during initial searches after the 98th Division’s pull-out, the full tally is expected to be much more.
The US President’s Friday announcement of a “ceasefire offer” ostensibly formulated by the Israeli Regime, comes only after the Gazan death toll was allowed to reach that number.
For months, as the immensely destructive and bloody, Western-backed, Israeli military offensive proceeded, the Western powers have notoriously ignored numerous ceasefire appeals by the UN leadership, Arab states, new Global South governments like Africa and, even by some of their own allies like Ireland.
Successive UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions have been blocked by the US veto. Similarly, the threat of veto by the US has effectively compelled the Security Council from implementing or, being guided by, several overwhelmingly-endorsed UN General Assembly resolutions as well as historic International Court of Justice rulings of “plausible genocide”.
The very fact that it is the United States and not Israel, the supposed combatant State, that is announcing this “ceasefire proposal” is further indication of the complicit role of the US (and its Western allies) in the historically momentous human tragedy unfolding in West Asia.
History-making
Meanwhile, that same United States is, within its own society, mostly engrossed over the illicit sexual depredations and their financially illegal cover-up by one its former heads of State who is also campaigning to re-take the American presidency in forthcoming national elections.
In a history-making verdict, a New York City criminal court jury last Thursday unanimously found former President Donald Trump “guilty” on all 34 felony counts in his criminal “hush money” trial. It was the first time a former U.S. President was ever tried or convicted in a criminal case.
It is also the first of Trump’s four indictments to reach trial. The aspiring Republican Party presidential nominee faces three other cases in the coming months, but none are expected to reach any conclusion before November’s presidential polls.
In the New York case, prosecutors accused Trump of falsifying internal business records to cover up hush money payments tied to an alleged scheme to bury news media revelations that might undermine his 2016 White House bid. The charges referred to reimbursements paid to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to restrain her claims about a 2006 illicit sexual dalliance with Trump.
Prosecutors argued that the payments were falsely logged as “legal expenses” to hide the true nature of what is, in effect, a bribe to hide the affair from the public eye during the elections. The charges Trump faces are punishable by up to four years in prison. He denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
The presiding judge, Justice Juan M. Merchan, has set Trump’s sentencing for July 11. New York law requires an unanimous Jury verdict in such criminal convictions.
The Jury’s deliberations apparently lasted just a few hours, indicating the clear weight of evidence against someone who just might yet become a “leader of the Free World” as the US media and sundry loyal liberals still like to call the USA.
Analysts also point out that Trump’s own refusal to take the witness stand in his own trial would have also psychologically helped in the jury’s conclusions.
Trump has already announced his intention to appeal the verdict. There is much debate whether the court sentencing later this month would involve imprisonment of any kind. The fact that he was found guilty of all 34 counts are thought likely to make it difficult for the bench not to rule a jail term.
Jail term
Even a jail term apparently does not prevent a US citizen to contest a presidential election, nor to even win and occupy the White House. Of course, the opinion polls in the lead up to party nomination, will decide whether the Republican Party will risk choosing Trump as its candidate.
Already Trump critics within the party are warning that a hard sentencing could cause a small shift in the vote that would be enough to cancel out any electoral edge Trump may have over Democratic candidate Biden. But most analysts expect GOP voter opinion to remain firmly behind Trump.
There is also some speculation that President Biden’s sudden “ceasefire” proposal for devastated Gaza may have also been a move to whip up domestic public opinion in favour of his presidency in the wake of the possibly electorally damaging court ruling against rival Donald Trump. Biden is known to have suffered some reduced popularity among his own Democratic voter base due to his intransigence over domestic public pressure for an end to Palestinian bloodshed.
The details of the US-Israeli proposal are yet to be revealed although the Gaza Hamas administration is understood to have indicated an initial positive attitude. How much of this announcement is a mere time-buying tactic to further devastate Gaza and weaken Palestinian resistance overall remains to be seen.
After all, neither the Western power bloc nor its protégé, Israel, has a good record of any fulfillment of peace offers throughout the miserable history of the West’s long-defended outpost in West Asia.
In India, as the country awaits this week’s Lok Sabha elections results announcement, many of the ethnic minorities are bracing themselves for violence against them by victorious governing party members.
Media coverage of the election campaigning indicates the fervour among the more ‘lumpen’ elements of the ruling BJP-NDA regime’s grassroots activists, who have been religiously and ethnically incited by possibly the worst racist rhetoric ever seen in postcolonial India’s elections.
