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Palestine Open Thread 2024-163
New & views related to the war in Palestine …
Of interest:
‘I’m bored, so I shoot’: The Israeli army’s approval of free-for-all violence in Gaza – 972 magazine Israeli soldiers describe the near-total absence of firing regulations in the Gaza war, with troops shooting as they please, setting homes ablaze, and leaving corpses on the streets — all with their commanders’ permission.
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“In light of the massacres, killings, and displacement it is carrying out, Ismail Haneyya made urgent contacts with the mediators, warning of disastrous repercussions, noting that this would return the negotiation process to square one,” the Hamas Movement said in a statement issued on Monday evening.
https://english.palinfo.com/news/2024/07/08/321757/
It is apparent that the Zionists have intensified the murder operation and destruction in Gaza with full impunity as no-one in the world is doing anything effective to stop them.
The cease-fire negotiations are just a show to create the impression that the Zionists are interested in ending the genocide and that the US wants a cease fire.
The real goal seems to be to let Israel 1) murder as many Palestinians as possible so that the few that survive are permanently demoralized, and 2) to level Gaza completely so that US/Israel plans for “the day after” or, the “redesign of Gaza”, can be implemented in the void where no resistance exists.
The essential idea is to ensure full Zionist control of Gaza and the West Bank, the expansion of Israel over the entire territory of historic Palestine, one way or another, but so that it doesn’t look that way, at least for a while. All with the help of some Arab states which would be engaged in building the “redesigned Gaza”.
These Arab states will, presumably, have no qualms about coming face to face with the thousands of Palestinians lying under the rubble that must be removed for the construction of this “redesigned Gaza”.
They presumably are not burdened by any moral or other dilemmas in confronting the Palestinians who may survive the genocide and who are to see Gaza sold off to the rich friends of US/Israel, who, by the way, are also friends of the Arab states doing the re-building. Friends are friends, and business is business.
All the grumbling about Israel’s actions coming from the US is obviously fake. The money and arms are flowing, iron clad support has been officially pledged.
“In light of the massacres, killings, and displacement it is carrying out, Ismail Haneyya made urgent contacts with the mediators, warning of disastrous repercussions, noting that this would return the negotiation process to square one,” the Hamas Movement said in a statement issued on Monday evening.
https://english.palinfo.com/news/2024/07/08/321757/
It is apparent that the Zionists have intensified the murder operation and destruction in Gaza in full impunity as no-one in the world is doing anything effective to stop them.
The cease-fire negotiations are just a show to create the impression that the Zionists are interested in negotiating and that the US wants a cease fire.
The real goal seems to be to let Israel 1) murder as many Palestinians as possible so that the few that survive are permanently demoralized, and 2) to level Gaza completely so that US/Israel plans for “the day after” or, the “redesign of Gaza”, can be implemented in the void where no resistance exists.
The essential idea is to ensure full Zionist control of Gaza and the West Bank, the expansion of Israel over the entire territory of historic Palestine, one way or another, but so that it doesn’t look that way, at least for a while. All with the help of some Arab states which would be engaged in building the “redesigned Gaza”.
These Arab states will, presumably, have no qualms about coming face to face with the thousands of Palestinians lying under the rubble that must be removed for the construction of this “redesigned Gaza”.
They presumably are not burdened by any moral or other dilemmas in confronting the Palestinians who may survive the genocide and who are to see Gaza sold off to the rich friends of US/Israel, who, by the way, are also friends of the Arab states doing the re-building. Friends are friends, and business is business.
All the grumbling about Israel’s actions coming from the US is obviously fake. The money and arms are flowing, iron clad support has been officially pledged.
Posted by: JB | Jul 8 2024 22:42 utc | 22
From a few months ago – March 26, 2024
Very relevant today. I tried to catch the highlights, but the whole article is worth reading:
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U.S. Inks Deal to Build New Military Bases that Can Serve as Launching Point For Attacks on Yemen and Potentially Iran
On February 15, the Biden administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Government of Somalia to construct up to five military bases for the Somali National Army in the name of bolstering the army’s capabilities in the ongoing fight against the militant group al-Shabaab.
According to statements by U.S. officials, the bases are intended for the Danab (“Lightning”) Brigade, a U.S.-sponsored special operations force that was established in 2014.
This force has been linked to repeated incidents of brutality, according to a Somali newspaper, including one near the village of Shanta Barako in Lower Shabelle, where U.S. troops were present when two civilians were killed.
Danab operates out of Baledogle, a Soviet-built airport about 100 kilometers north of Mogadishu, which was reconstituted as a U.S. military base in 2012, and is host to one of the largest concentrations of U.S. troops in Africa, behind only bases in Djibouti and Niger.
Funding for Danab initially came from the U.S. State Department, which contracted the private security, i.e., mercenary, firm Bancroft Global1 to train and advise the unit, though more recently it has received funding, equipment and training from the Department of Defense under the the classified 127e program.
The latter is a U.S. budgetary authority that allows the Pentagon to bypass congressional oversight by allowing U.S. special operations forces, described in Foreign Policy magazine as some of the American military’s most highly trained killers, to use foreign military units as surrogates in counter-terrorism missions.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. provided several billion dollars to train and equip the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali security forces between 2012 and 2022.
[…] The new military bases in Somalia could be used as a launching pad for threatened U.S. aggression against Iran, which neo-conservatives in Washington have long desired.
[…]CovertAction Magazine has previously reported on a widening network of U.S. military bases in both Africa and the Middle East to which the new Somali bases are a significant addition.
In August, two months before the Tribe of Nova Music Festival massacre in Israel, the Pentagon awarded a $35.8 million contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev Desert, just 20 miles from Gaza, code-named “Site 512.”
Procurement records describe the secret base, located off Mt. Qeren, as a “life support area,” typical of the kind of language the Pentagon uses for U.S. military sites that it wants to conceal.
The largest U.S. military base in the Middle East—the Al Udeid Air Base—is west of Doha, the capital of Qatar. It hosts the U.S. Air Force Central Command, which coordinates U.S. bombing operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and some 11,000 U.S. military personnel.
Construction of the $60 million facility, which the Air Force says “resembles the set of a futuristic movie,” was completed in 2003.
The U.S. currently hosts at least 10 military bases in Saudi Arabia, according to a 2021 report by Al Jazeera. Additionally it hosts 10 bases in Kuwait, 12 bases in Bahrain, at least 12 bases in Iraq, six bases in Oman, two bases in Jordan, four bases in Syria, two bases in Turkey, one in Egypt, and three bases in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
According to Al Jazeera, the U.S. hosts 3,731 of its troops in Bahrain, 2,169 in Kuwait, 2,500 in Iraq, and 600 in Syria. Overall, the U.S. has 40,000 troops stationed across the Middle East, according to Axios, and, on October 31, announced the deployment of an additional 900 troops to the region.
CovertAction Magazine has previously reported on the Biden administration’s efforts to establish drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin after a coup in Niger jeopardized a $110 million base the U.S. considered to be the “largest Airman built project in U.S. Air Force history.”
In February 2020, journalist Nick Turse reported that a secret AFRICOM map showed a network of 29 U.S. military bases stretching from one side of Africa to the other. […]
https://www.easternangle.com/u-s-inks-deal-to-build-new-military-bases-that-can-serve-as-launching-point-for-attacks-on-yemen-and-potentially-iran/
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Posted by: teri | Jul 9 2024 16:45 utc | 73
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