الكاتب: kafej

Operational security is always tight when the most powerful political and military faction in Lebanon organises an event. 

The details for Hezbollah’s annual Martyrs’ Day commemoration were provided an hour or so in advance and we found ourselves driving through a section of south Beirut that forms the Iran-backed organisation’s stronghold.

We arrived at a local school, had our bags checked by guards clothed in black and were led into a cavernous basement that had been converted into a great assembly hall.

Follow latest updates: Tensions remain on London streets after march

Men and women, wrapped in yellow scarves, sat down on opposite sides of the hall and we were told they were the family members of the martyrs – the Hezbollah fighters who have died fighting in Lebanon and further afield.

The first Hezbollah martyr was a man called Ahmad Kassir. A suicide bomber – or ‘self-sacrifice operative’ in the words of the Iran-backed Shiite group – he blew up his vehicle in front the Israeli military’s headquarters in southern Lebanon in 1982.

Hezbollah is fuelled by its opposition to Israel and Western influence in the Middle East. It has been designated a terrorist organisation by the UK, the US and many other countries.

Its members have been deployed throughout the region, defending Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria and training members of Hamas. Well over 70 of its fighters have died since the conflict in Gaza began on 7 October.

Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in a tit-for-tat war of increasing intensity – and severity – and when the women in the hall hoisted pictures of loved ones killed on the battlefield, we knew there would be images of new martyrs among them.

Zeinab Rmoyti lost her son 7 days ago after he was killed by an Israeli airstrike. Ali Ibrahim Rmoyti was only 28 years old yet there was no trace of sorrow in his mother’s face.

I asked her what was going through her mind.

“We are not worried. My son died on the road to Jerusalem while defending the children and women of Gaza. Their homes are being destroyed and no one’s looking after them.”

“How will this end,” I asked her. “How will the cycle of violence we are witnessing ever stop?”

“Israel does not want peace, this violence ends if Israel stops the violence. Are the children of Gaza fighting Israel? Are the women of Gaza fighting Israel? They are not fighting. When Israel ends this war, the violence will stop.”

Some came to honour their loved ones – but others packed the basement to hear the leader of this powerful Shiite faction speak.

Read more:
What is Hezbollah and how powerful is its military?
Analysis: War between Israel and Hezbollah would be far more dangerous than current conflict

Hassan Nasrallah has not appeared in public for many years and when the Hezbollah chief did appear, his image was projected from a giant video screen.

Nasrallah said there had been “an upgrade” in Hezbollah’s operations along its front with Israel.

“There has been a quantitative improvement in the number of operations, the size and the number of targets, as well as an increase in the type of weapons,” he told the assembled crowd.

It is clear that the war on the Israeli border is intensifying. Nasrallah stated that new drones packed with explosives and powerful missiles have now been deployed.

Yet his threat to escalate could spiral out of control.

In response to Mr Nasrallah’s comments, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu later issued a warning.

He said: “I warned Hezbollah, don’t make the mistake of entering the war because it will be the mistake of your life. Your entry into the war will change the fate of Lebanon.”

Read more:
Israel’s PM Netanyahu vows to press on with ‘full force’

Lahore, Pakistan – For Eman Khosa, a 14-year-old schoolgirl who lives in Pakistan’s second largest city, the start of the last two months of the year marks the onset of familiar irritants – toxic air, allergies, a sore throat and a great reluctance to step outdoors.

“Every year, the beginning of winter is the same,” Eman, who is in ninth grade, told Al Jazeera. “Every year around this time, smog comes. The government takes some measures, and when the smog season ends, we go back to normal.”

Her mother, Suraya Saleem Khosa, a visual artist, said that while weather conditions last year meant that the smog was not quite as bad as usual, this year, it is “far more intense”.

“AQI [Air Quality Index] readings are once again sky-high. There is no respite, no wind. Lots of ill-thought government road projects which are only adding to the pollution,” Khosa said.

Air quality rated ‘hazardous’

Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, which borders India, is home to nearly 15 million people. This year, it is back in the headlines due to its toxic air.

Hundreds of people have reported illnesses from allergies to respiratory issues triggered by the worsening air quality in the city.

Lahore ranked as the city with the world’s worst air quality for three consecutive days this week, according to AirVisual, an international air quality monitoring service.

The index, which measures air pollution, uses calculations from the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The city scored 406, 372 and 422 on its AQI from Tuesday through Thursday, and only after a spell of rain on Friday did the AQI drop down to 108. Later on Friday, it sat at 152.

This compares with Friday’s reading of 25 for London, 61 for Istanbul and 88 for Mexico City.

According to AirVisual, the concentration of tiny particulate matter in the air of Lahore approached 450 this week, which is 30 times higher than the World Health Organisation’s recommended maximum average daily exposure and is considered hazardous.

AQI exceeding 100 is considered “unhealthy” while higher than 300 is considered “hazardous”. Pakistan’s own classification system is more lenient – considering an AQI over 200 as “unhealthy” and a reading beyond 400 “hazardous”.

‘Stubble burning’ to blame

Regardless of whether the air was “hazardous” or merely “unhealthy”, the Punjab government declared a public holiday on Friday, allowing a four-day holiday in the province, which included the existing Thursday off.

Public spaces, restaurants and markets were all shut down, and the government announced a “lockdown” to improve the environmental situation, requiring people to remain indoors.

The interim health minister for Punjab, Dr Javed Akram, said the extra holiday was a one-off to reduce the traffic in the city, which could help to reduce the pollution.

But he blamed farmers in Pakistan and India who are burning crop stubble after harvesting rice to clear out space for wheat crops. “The stubble burning remains a key challenge, most of which takes place in India, and we cannot do much about that,” he told Al Jazeera.

Mohammad Farooq Alam, deputy director of the Punjab government’s Environmental Protection Agency, added: “Crop stubble burning in India is at least five times more than what Pakistani farmers burn. When wind direction is on our side, there is little that we can do to control that.”

He said the provincial government had taken steps where it could, such as imposing fines on local farmers and examining other means of getting rid of agricultural waste.

However, he also acknowledged: “Vehicular pollution is a major reason behind the degradation of our environment.”

Atmospheric conditions from October and late November in the region have also caused pollutants to be trapped closer to the ground, worsening the smog intensity, Alam added.

Sara Hayat, a lawyer specialising in climate change law, policy and advocacy in Pakistan, said that while she agreed with the government decision to announce a lockdown right now, “institutional policies” make it impossible to enforce.

“The government wants to clamp down but is never successful because they do not spread the requisite awareness beforehand. This is merely a temporary measure, without warning, and it won’t be useful without long-term policies in place,” the Lahore-based lawyer told Al Jazeera.

‘Mentally draining’

For citizens of Lahore, the shutdown only means further disruption to their daily routines on top of the toxic air they have no choice but to breathe in.

Moazzam Maqsood, a business owner based in Gawalmandi, one of the more densely populated areas of Lahore, said the government’s decision to close the markets had caused his printing business losses in the “hundreds of thousands” of rupees (100,000 rupees is equivalent to $353).

“We cannot go to market, we cannot have our staff come to the office either, which causes us loss of business. But then sitting at home breathing this foul air is not helping my health either,” he said.

Back at home with her 14-year-old daughter, Khosa said she is lucky enough to own an air purifier – a machine that lessens the physical, but not the mental, impact of the smog season.

“We stock up on face masks, keep checking if all the windows are shut, but mentally, it is draining,” she told Al Jazeera. “It is dreary and depressing and pulls us all down. We don’t look forward to spending autumn in Lahore any more.”

Eman said that after living through the COVID-19 pandemic for two years, during which she did online schooling, it is very important to her to go physically to school. Smog season means her daily routine is disturbed.

“We have exams coming up, and we need to go to school for preparation, but with school closed, we cannot. I love to play tennis in the evening, but I cannot do that either as that is when the smog is at its worst.

“Some of my classmates have allergies and have developed asthma. We barely have any opportunity to go out now.”

Two premature babies have died at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital after the neonatal intensive care unit stopped working due to a lack of electricity, the facility’s director has said.

Thirty-seven other babies, also in the neonatal intensive care unit, are at risk of losing their lives as the hospital runs out of fuel to power their incubators, Director Mohammed Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera on Saturday.

“Unfortunately, we’ve lost two out of 39 babies because of the power outage,” Abu Salmiya, the head of the largest medical complex in Gaza, said. “We are talking about premature babies who require very intensive care.”

He explained that the two babies died because of a lack of fuel at the hospital which provides electricity to the incubators allowing for warm temperatures and a constant flow of oxygen. The hospital has been under siege and a target of fierce Israeli attacks.

“They died due to low temperatures and a lack of oxygen. We are now using primitive methods to keep them alive,” the director said.

“We have electricity until the morning. Once electricity is out, these neonates will die just like the others,” Abu Salmiya warned.

Mohammed Obeid, a surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, confirmed the newborns’ deaths and said an adult patient also died because there was no electricity for his ventilator.

“We want someone to give us the guarantee that they can evacuate the patients, because we have about 600 inpatients,” he said, in an audio recording posted by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF).

‘Can’t provide safety to my newborns’

Ismail Yassin, the father of two premature baby girls – Mira and Dahab – at al-Shifa Hospital, said he was separated from the 33-day-old twins when he had to evacuate to southern Gaza with his wife.

“They had to stay behind in the incubators at al-Shifa. I cannot describe my feelings. I can’t provide safety to my newborn children,” he said, adding that he has appealed to the Red Cross and international organisations to help transfer his children.

“I want some information about my daughters. I hope they are all right. I want someone to transfer the girls from al-Shifa to me and their mother in the south,” he pleaded over the phone to Al Jazeera.

Witnesses at the hospital told the AFP news agency by phone that there was relentless gunfire, air raids and artillery fire which prevented people from moving even within the medical complex.

According to Abu Salmiya, the hospital has tried to arrange an evacuation with the Red Cross but it remains unclear if they can help.

“When we communicated with the Red Cross, requesting protection from them, they gave us permission to move the babies to another place within a single hour,” he said.

“We need a safe exit and safe transport with ambulances and incubators to keep them [the babies] alive. If these guarantees are offered by the Red Cross, we will do this.”

‘No help from Israeli army’

Abu Salmiya denied that the Israeli military offered to help transport the babies, despite his attempts to arrange an evacuation.

“I offered this to them [the Israeli army]. I offered to evacuate the babies to safe places, using ambulances, but they did not answer,” he explained.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it would aid the evacuation of the babies.

“The staff of the al-Shifa hospital has requested that tomorrow [Sunday], we will help the babies in the paediatric department to get to a safer hospital. We will provide the assistance needed,” military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a televised briefing.

Reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said that Hagari’s supposed plan to move the babies to another hospital seemed unrealistic.

“That puts up a number of questions. One, ‘How would that work? How would they safely be able to move the babies when there is fighting ongoing in the area?’” Fisher said.

“Secondly, to what hospital would they go? We are hearing from across the Gaza Strip that they are running out of essentials to treat the babies, including the premature.”

He added that Israel was possibly acting out of concern about criticism it had received about the situation at al-Shifa Hospital and the death of two of the babies.

 

Relatives of victims of enforced disappearances in the 80s and 90s held a sit-in in Istanbul following a court ruling.

Members of a group of relatives of victims of enforced disappearances in Turkey held a vigil in central Istanbul without police intervention for the first time since 2018.

Known as the “Saturday Mothers” (“Cumartesi Anneleri” in Turkish), the group has met every Saturday since May 1995 in the heart of Istanbul, holding peaceful sit-ins to demand justice and remember relatives who went missing after a military coup in 1980 and during a state of emergency in the 1990s, especially in the predominantly Kurdish southeast.

In 2018, police violently cracked down on their demonstration following an announcement by local authorities that it would be banned because calls for the rally had been allegedly made on social media accounts linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies. Police used force and tear gas to disperse participants.

Ten protesters held their vigil on Saturday without any police interference, at Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square. It was their 972nd such vigil, the group said in a statement on X.

The resumption of the vigil comes after Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, the former governor of Istanbul, on Wednesday said the government had “good intentions” and a peaceful solution would be found over the issue, responding to questions by opposition lawmakers during a parliamentary session.

“We will not stop searching for all our missing people and demanding that the perpetrators be tried and punished,” the “Saturday Mothers” group said on X.

The Constitutional Court’s decision was followed; no police blockade or detention, ongoing for 700 weeks, occurred today.

After a 5.5-year, Saturday Mothers/People made a statement at Galatasaray Square and left carnations there afterward.#CumartesiAnneleri972Hafta pic.twitter.com/e09XhAtFrn

— MLSA (@mlsaturkey) November 11, 2023

The disappearances happened at the peak of the PKK’s rebellion demanding self-rule in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.

The activists have said their relatives went missing after reported abductions, in police detention, or in extrajudicial killings. International rights groups have called for a probe into the allegations. The group says the government has never properly investigated the fate of those who disappeared after being detained by the authorities.

Members of the group went on trial in 2021 on charges of refusing to disperse despite police warnings, and for the past five years, police have been dispersing and detaining members of the group every Saturday when they attempt to stage their protest.

In February, the Constitutional Court ruled that the right to organise demonstrations of some members of the group had been violated.

Israel before October 7 was a riven nation. After nine months of mass demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his judicial coup, polarisation was at an all-time high.

The bitterness and determination to bring down his government had galvanised more than half of the country. Remarkably the protests were joined by former officers from the army, Mossad and Shabak, as well as employees of leading high-tech companies which make up the backbone of the Israeli military industrial complex (MIC).

It looked like Netanyahu would fall within months. As all eyes were focused on a much-awaited verdict of the Supreme Court on one of his government’s judicial legislation changes, no one was paying much attention to Gaza. Despite intelligence warnings from Egypt, Hamas’s attack on October 7 came as a surprise.

To fully comprehend the shock it inflicted on the Israeli society, one needs to go back to the point of creation of the Israeli nation.

A nation-building institution

The building of the Israeli army started well before the creation of Israel. The Zionist leadership in British-ruled Palestine was well aware of the need for a modern military force to take the land from its indigenous population. Zionist organisations controlled less than 7 percent of the Palestinian territories as late as 1946.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, three competing organisations – Haggana, Irgun and Lehi – secretly and illicitly trained and armed tens of thousands of fighters and built rudimentary but efficient armament plants. By the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, their ranks swelled to 120,000 troops, as thousands of British soldiers who had fought in World War II and survivors of Nazi Germany’s death camps joined them.

During the 1948 war, this formidable force easily defeated the few thousand untrained irregulars from Palestine and the rather inferior forces from the surrounding Arab polities – Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. As a result, some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled while the new state of Israel came to control 78 percent of Palestine.

Newly created Israel had a large army but had no nation. The 650,000 Jews within the new polity were far from a homogenous group: They spoke numerous languages, came from diverse cultures and did not share a political ideology.

This was immediately noted by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The nation he would create would be a nation at arms, in a permanent state of neither peace nor war. To make this mode of existence into Israel’s modus vivendi, a major social engineering project lasting decades would follow, requiring constant renewal.

Thus, just as the Israeli state was created by the Zionist army, so too was the Israeli nation. After all, it was the largest, richest, and most powerful institution in Israel. Drafting all male adults, as well as many women, created a common experience on the basis of which common identity started to emerge, grounded in conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab nations.

Through a long series of wars initiated by Israel, as well as more limited military campaigns in between, a national identity was created totally dependent on the Israeli army. Other issues could divide the Israelis, but – almost – all were members of the largest club in society, one which cut across class, culture, language and religious boundaries. The army became an organisation trusted by all Israeli Jews, as opposed to all other, civic and state organisations, which divided rather than united Israelis.

Israel became a warrior democracy akin to a modern Sparta, with a citizen army of Jews and a small minority of Druze and Bedouins.

From a professional army to a colonial police force

The army in Israel was elevated in public opinion to such heights that even when the Egyptian and Syrian forces dealt it a devastating blow in the 1973 war, the blame was mainly put on the politicians, like Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, rather than on army officers.

The partial defeat was an early sign of an important process which had started in 1967, transforming the army into a glorified colonial police force. Its troops, instead of focusing on the threat of fighting back foreign armies, were tasked with subjugating more than a million Palestinians in the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza. As the Israeli state started settling these lands illegally, the military was deployed to guard and facilitate the process.

Another factor that further accelerated this transformation was peace-making and normalisation with Arab states achieved with the help of Israel’s closest ally, the United States, pressuring these nations. These diplomatic efforts totally disregarded the Palestinians.

Normalisation started with Egypt signing a peace treaty in 1979, which was followed by Jordan in 1994. Then came the Abraham Accords of 2020 with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan also normalising relations, and Saudi Arabia declaring plans to follow suit.

This process removed the threat of military attacks from neighbouring Arab countries on Israel, allowing the Israeli army to focus on suppressing the Palestinian population.

More confident than ever in its security arrangements, the Israeli state became also much more extreme in its policies towards the Palestinians. This escalated even further in 2023, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power, buoyed by the Abraham Accords and supported by extreme far-right settler parties.

His government started to move even more aggressively towards the final stage of the Zionist project – that of dispossessing Palestinians of the 12 percent of historical Palestine still under their partial control.

Recently, as tension heightened in the West Bank due to settler pogroms, thousands of Israeli troops were moved there from the envelope around Gaza, to protect settlers in their continuing attacks on Palestinians and facilitate the expulsion of Palestinian families from their land.

Amid this escalation, Netanyahu continued to believe that trouble from Gaza is most unlikely, as Hamas and Islamic Jihad could not possibly face the might of the Israeli army, with its technological superiority and vast intelligence apparatus. This only fitted his policy of helping Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians were a disorganised, poor, and isolated nation, without a proper army, with no heavy weapons of any kind – what was there to worry about?

The shock of October 7

But then, out of the blue, came Hamas’s attack of October 7 and the sky caved in. A small Palestinian force of just more than 2,000 fighters moved in to take over several military bases and strongholds in Israel’s south. Like in 1973, the surprise attack caught the Israeli army unprepared, with some Israeli soldiers still in their underwear and without their rifles when they came under fire.

Within hours, using a combination of missile attacks, drones, small arms, motorcycles, and power gliders, Hamas’s fighters were able to defeat all the forces defending the Gaza theatre, kill hundreds of Israeli soldiers, carry out massacres of civilians, and return to Gaza with more than 250 hostages, which they planned to exchange for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

After the initial shock, the Israeli army struggled to launch a coordinated response. Some back-up units took hours to arrive on the scene and when they did, the battles with Hamas’s fighters were anything but well-thought-out. According to reports, civilians held as hostages and Israeli troops may have been killed in the crossfire or due to the use of indiscriminate firing, air raids and tanks to target Hamas fighters in the kibbutzim. The military was unable to re-establish full control over the south for several days.

This was perhaps unsurprising given that the Israeli army has never won a battle decisively since 1967 and has not fought a regular army since 1973. When facing small resistance groups, like the PLO, Hezbollah, or Hamas, its success has been rather limited.

The reason for this is the transformation of the Israeli army into a brutal colonial police force that for decades has mostly fought unarmed men, women and children. It is no longer trained to fight a war and continuously underestimates the capabilities of its enemies.

What was especially shocking for Israelis about Hamas’s attack was the fact that army spokespeople and commanders admitted to the utter chaos and the innumerable mistakes made by all involved in the military response. The Israelis realised their army was not able to protect them, despite the enormous budget it has, the huge number of soldiers it retains, the advanced technologies it employs, etc. That the painful defeat was dealt by such an inferior opponent is the most hurtful insult to Israeli militarised identity.

As most Israeli adults, men and women, served in the army, their identity, both personal and socio-national, owes more to it than to any other institution in Israel. When the army fails so dramatically, it is a failure shared by all Israelis. The defeat of the Israeli military is a defeat of all Israeli Jews.

The socio-political change in Israel was immediate and all-encompassing, turning the Jewish Israelis sharply to the racist right that many of them opposed before the Gaza crisis. Even famous academics, like the sociologist Sami Shalom Chetrit, found it acceptable and necessary to write, just two days after the attack: “First I wish to clarify: All Hamas members, from the head to the lowest murderer, will all die. I dislike wars (one was enough for me) but I am not a pacifist. I would shoot them myself.”

This is typical of many reactions of the professional middle class, and is certainly not the most disturbing. One is tempted to think that this was written in the heat of the moment, but this is not so – the reaction to the Hamas attack, and the deep humiliation it caused to all Jewish Israelis has pushed them to a position which before was held by the far-right settler militias carrying out the pogroms, against all Palestinians.

“Everyone in Gaza is Hamas” is a normalised by-line of many of the journalists and columnists right now, and the stakes are raised daily and ratchetted up, with the full support of the population.

I do not believe this is either short-term or reversible. And there are no signs of any soul-searching in the Israeli public now that it is crystal clear that there is no military solution to the colonial conflict, unless Israel decides to undertake the elimination of everyone in Gaza.

This genocidal option has already been floated around by some Israeli ministers – one even suggested using nuclear weapons for the task. Unfortunately, as activist and journalist Orly Noy pointed out in a recent article, large sections of Israeli society have also embraced it.

An internal document dated October 13 leaked to the Israeli media lays bare the Israeli endgame after the “expected defeat of Hamas”. It outlines three phases of the planned Israeli takeover of the Gaza Strip which include a bombing campaign focused on the north, a ground attack to clear the underground network of tunnels and bunkers and finally the expulsion of Palestinian civilians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with no option for return.

Over the past few days, we have been witnessing this three-phase programme take shape in the terrible landscape of the Israeli destruction of Gaza. At the time of writing, Israel has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians and injured tens of thousands, apart from nearly 3,000 missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Israel’s ire knows no bounds. The Israeli dehumanisation of Palestinians is not a sign of social strength, but of a terminal ailment of the social fabric of Zionism. It is what will bring its dissolution, I believe.

The Israeli army, the author and the executioner of the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 Naksa now carries out the 2023 Nakba. It is a terrifying act of genocide and ethnic cleansing, unlikely to be the last.

There are still more than four million Palestinians between the river and the sea. The plan to expel them has been written a long time ago. The leaders of the West, in their political and moral criminality, have enthusiastically signed up to this plan, without even reading it. If they think this will help Israel and bring stability to the region, they must be very deluded.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.