Bi-Weekly Brief – March 3, 2025
Gaza ceasefire process on hold as ‘Gazafication’ of West Bank and Israel’s settlement drive accelerate
Is there no end to how cruel and surreal things can become? On Feb. 25, exactly a year after US Air Force member Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire to protest US complicity in genocide, a ‘Trump Gaza’ video was posted on President Trump’s Truth Social platform depicting his aspirations for the Gaza Strip. It features belly dancers on the beach, Trump and Netanyahu in bathing suits sipping drinks, Trump dancing with a scantily-dressed woman, a giant golden statute of the US president and dollar bills showering down on Elon Musk.
Just days before, on Feb. 21, Israeli planes showered the Gaza Strip with leaflets in Arabic showing Trump and Netanyahu side by side with a genocidal message translated into English as follows: “After the events that have taken place, the temporary ceasefire, and before the implementation of Trump’s mandatory plan – which will impose forced displacement upon you whether you accept it or not – we have decided to make one final appeal to those who wish to receive aid in exchange for cooperating with us…The world map will not change if all the people of Gaza cease to exist. No one will feel for you, and no one will ask about you. You have been left alone to face your inevitable fate…Even your Arab countries, which are now our allies, provide us with money and weapons while sending you only shrouds. There is little time left – the game is almost over. Whoever wishes to save themselves before it is too late, we are here, remaining until the end of time.”
The impunity with which Israel is openly advertising its intent to carry out the war crime of ethnic cleansing in Gaza magnifies the urgency of the appeal posted on Feb. 25 by members of the recently-formed Hague Group (South Africa, Bolivia, Columbia, Honduras, and Namibia) who ask: “What remains of the international order? For more than 500 days, Israel, enabled by powerful nations providing diplomatic cover, military hardware, and political support, has systematically violated international law in Gaza. This complicity has dealt a devastating blow to the integrity of the United Nations Charter and its foundational principles of human rights, sovereign equality, and the prohibition of genocide.”
Some new attempts are underway to try to put a brake on US complicity. On Feb. 20, Senator Bernie Sanders tried to stop the sale of $8.56 billion in weapons to Israel by filing four different Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) in the Senate. The US-based human rights organization DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now) announced on Feb. 24 that it had sent a 172-page Communication to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) making the case for an ICC investigation of former President Biden, former Secretary of State Blinken and former Defense Secretary Austin for “aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.” According to a recent Gallup poll, 83 percent of Republicans, but only 33 percent of Democrats have favorable views of Israel.
Meanwhile nothing is being done to stop Israeli airstrikes on Syria – including on Damascus - which intensified shortly after Interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara demanded that Israel leave the Syrian territory it is occupying in the water-rich south of the country where it has built seven bases and shot residents of nearby villages. Israel has also continued to carry out military strikes in southern Lebanon and has entirely destroyed many villages. Rather than withdraw its troops by Feb. 18 as stipulated by the ceasefire agreement, it has established five military bases just north of its border with Lebanon where it says it intends to stay.
Phase I of the temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, which ended on March 1, was – like the ceasefire in Lebanon - routinely violated by Israel. Israeli forces have frequently fired at residents said to be “approaching forbidden areas” and have killed more than a dozen people during Feb. 26-27 alone, and at least 116 since the ceasefire began. OCHA reported that by Feb. 25 the UN and its partners had delivered 100,000 tents to displaced people in Gaza. However, Israel has blocked the supply of heavy equipment and tens of thousands of caravans and mobile homes slated to enter during Phase I, as babies perished of cold in unheated, flimsy tents. Israel also blocked the entry of what it terms “dual-use” items, including equipment needed to repair what Oxfam reports to be more than a thousand miles of destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure. In addition, Israel has refused to withdraw its troops from the Philadelphia Corridoralongside Egypt, as it was supposed to do by the end of Phase I.
The exchange of prisoners for hostages has been especially fraught. On Feb. 22, Israel refused to release 620 Palestinian hostages in exchange for six hostages and four bodies handed over by Hamas. It cited Hamas’ “degrading” release ceremonies and the fact that the body that had been released on Feb. 20 which Hamas said was that of Shiri Bibas, the mother of two young children, in fact belonged to a Palestinian woman. A military spokesman then ignited an emotional firestorm by claiming – without presenting any evidence - that the Bibas children were not killed in an airstrike but were “murdered by terrorists in cold blood…they killed them with their bare hands. Afterwards, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.” Publicly Israel seemed poised to scuttle any hope for a second phase of ceasefire agreement.
On Feb. 26, Trump declared that he would be dispatching his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to oversee belated negotiations. According to The Guardian, Israel told UN officials on the same day that it had full US support for its ‘COGAT plan,’ casting doubt on whether it has any intention of loosening its military grip on the territory. Under the plan Israel would create “humanitarian bubbles” where aid would be distributed, with a crossing from Israel (not Egypt) being the sole entry point and UNRWA being entirely blocked from operating in Gaza.
The following day, without any ceremony, Hamas handed over the bodies of four Israeli hostages, and Israel began to free the Palestinian prisoners – many of them swept up during the war and held without charges - whom it had initially refused to release. Twenty-four of them were children. Released wearing demeaning t-shirts calling for their destruction, some showed visible signs of ill treatment. Twenty-five Israeli hostages, five Thai nationals, and the bodies of eight dead hostages have been handed over by Hamas in exchange for up to 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were sent to Egypt before being exiled to other countries. Twenty-five living hostages and 30 hostage bodies remain in Hamas’ hands.
On March 2, as a gloomy Ramadan entered its second day and Israeli soldiers attacked various parts of the Gaza Strip, Israel announced it was cutting off all aid to Gaza until Hamas agreed to an extension of Phase I for six weeks, during which time the rest of the hostages would be released with no withdrawal of Israeli troops as was supposed to happen in Phase II. It said it had full US backing for this arrangement. The day before, Secretary of State Rubio had fast-tracked Israel a further $4 billion in weapons sales, bringing to $12 billion the amount of military sales to Israel the Administration has approved since it took office on Jan. 20.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the courageous head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza who had refused to leave his patients when it was subjected to a weeks’ long attack by Israeli forces, has not been among the released prisoners. A surgeon in Gaza, Dr. Khaled Aser, described on Feb. 28 Democracy Now! the horrendous conditions which he personally, Dr. Safiya and other medical workers endured when being detained without charge in the Sde Teiman military facility. They were routinely beaten, tortured in various ways, sexually assaulted and humiliated, and set upon by military dogs.
Dr. Aser’s account matches the findings of a Guardian investigation, released on Feb. 25, that details the systematic targeting of Gaza’s hospitals and the beatings, torture and humiliation inflicted on more than 160 medical workers. According to “Unlawfully Detained, Tortured and Starved: the Plight of Gaza’s Medical Workers in Israeli Custody,” a harrowing report by the Israeli Physicians for Human Rights that was also featured on the Feb. 28 Democracy Now!, Israel had detained more than 250 healthcare workers in Gaza by September 2024.
The Physicians for Human Rights report concludes: “Despite widespread reporting by international bodies, the inhumane conditions and abuse continue without consequences. By disregarding the extensive evidence from human rights organizations submitted to Israeli courts and authorities, and allowing abuse to persist, the state creates an environment of impunity where these acts are normalized, further exacerbating human rights violations. The lack of accountability for perpetrators further underscores the systemic nature of the issue, with victims facing ongoing violations and no legal recourse.”
Rather than seeking accountability for gross human rights abuses, the Knesset seems bent on making sure that human rights organizations cease to function by considering legislation that would put an 80 percent taxon funds raised by Israeli nonprofits that get most of their funding from abroad and preventing them from making petitions to the courts.
Meanwhile in the West Bank -- which Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the new chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, insists must be called ‘Judea & Samaria’ -- some 14,500 Palestinians have been arrested since October 2023. Forced displacement in refugee camps and rural areas is intensifying as, in the words of The New York Times, “Israel appears to be laying the groundwork for a prolonged military presence in the area.”
In its recent Gaza-like assault on Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps and surrounding areas where tank platoons are now operating, heavy damage has been caused to buildings and the water infrastructure. Defense Minister Katz has said the 40,000 Palestinians who have been forced out of the refugee camps will not be allowed back, claiming that “we are at war against Islamic terror. We will not return to the reality that existed in the past.” One of the nearly 50 residents of Jenin camp shot dead in the latest Israeli operation was 73-year-old Waleed Lahlouh, who “didn’t believe soldiers would open fire on an old, unarmed man in broad daylight.” According to Gideon Levy, “this is not a war on terror. You don’t fight terror by destroying water infrastructure, power grids, roads and sewage systems. This is the systematic destruction of refugee camps” which, he fears, will continue until “nothing is left.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023 armed settlers have expelled from their homes the residents of 60 Palestinian communities and are spreading terror throughout the West Bank. On Feb. 27 OCHA described how in ‘Ein al ‘Auja, near Jericho, settlers have been “regularly breaking into the community, in some cases setting fire to structures, cutting off water pipes, making their livestock feed on fodder belonging to families, or physically assaulting residents seeking to access the nearby water spring.” Israel recently issued tenders for 1,000new West Bank settler homes that would block the growth of Bethlehem. How Airbnb and Booking.com profit from Israeli settlement expansion like that around Bethlehem is illustrated in this multimedia piece in The Guardian.
With Trump endowed by his base and some Orthodox Jewish leaders with messianic qualities, and the new‘Friends of Judea and Samaria’ Congressional caucus making common cause with a pumped up settler movement seeking to expand through all of Eretz Israel (and maybe beyond), the W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’ has never seemed more apt. It ends with these lines:
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
