Relatives of Hostages Bloc Road to Netanyahu’s Office

Israeli protesters blocked the road, Tuesday, that leads to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in West Jerusalem and demanded a hostage swap deal with Hamas. 

The Walla news website said protesters placed ballot boxes on the road to demand early elections and advocated for a hostage swap.

The site confirmed that police forcibly cleared protesters and detained seven.

Rabbis from the far-right Religious Zionism party earlier urged Netanyahu to explore all options to secure the return of hostages held in the Gaza Strip, even if it requires negotiations.

The demand followed a warning from Abu Obaida, spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, who said he does not rule out the possibility of Israeli captives in Gaza entering a “dark tunnel,” indicating the complexities of the situation and the uncertainty regarding their future.

Tel Aviv estimates that there are 101 hostages in Gaza out of at least 239 Israelis who were taken captive Oct. 7, 2023, after a surprise attack by Hamas. 

Some were exchanged with Tel Aviv during a temporary cease-fire last November, while the Palestinian resistance group has reported the deaths of dozens more because of indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes.

Indirect negotiations between Tel Aviv and Hamas, mediated by Egypt and Qatar with support from the US, have reached a critical stage because of Netanyahu’s insistence on continuing the war in Gaza.

He remains committed to holding strategic positions in the Philadelphia and Netzarim areas in southern and central Gaza, while Hamas demands a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the unhindered return of displaced individuals.​​​​​​​

Israel has continued a brutal offensive on Gaza following the Hamas attack, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

Nearly 42,000 victims have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 97,600 injured, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.

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Hezbollah Strikes Led to The Evacuation of 300,000 Israelis  

Hezbollah stated that its fighters carried out 3194 military operations against Israel since 8 October, 2023.

In a statement,  received by Quds Press, Tuesday, it stated that “our operations led to the evacuation of 1,000 settlements and the displacement of more than 300,000 settlers.”

And since last 23 September, the Israeli forces expanded the scope of the genocide they were committing in Gaza since 7 October, 2023 to include most of Lebanon’s regions, including Beirut, through airstrikes with unprecedented violence and intensity, as well as a land offensive in the south of the country despite international warnings and UN resolutions.

And according to the official figures, 2044 people were martyred and 9,678 injured since the beginning of the aggression on Lebanon on 8 October, 2023.

In return, Hezbollah is responding to the aggression by launching rockets, drones and artillery shells targeting military positions and settlements throughout occupied Palestine.

And the Israeli occupation army, supported by the United States and Europe, has continued its war on Gaza for a whole year, where its planes bombarded the vicinity of hospitals, buildings, towers, and homes of Palestinian civilians and destroy them above the heads of their inhabitants, and have prevented the entry of water, food, medicine, and fuel.

The continuous aggression of the occupation of Gaza led to the martyrdom of more than 41,965 martyrs, and the injury of more than 97,590 others and the displacement of 90% of the population of the Strip, according to the United Nations organization.

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Iran’s FM to Israel: ‘Don’t Test Our Resolve’

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned Israel “not to test” Tehran’s resolve amid reports of possible military strikes in response to the barrage of missiles Iran launched last week in retaliation to Israel’s assassinations of senior Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian officials.

“Our missiles can reach all their targets. We will respond to any attack on our institutions or infrastructure,” Araghchi said during a conference discussing the impact of Hamas’s October 7 operation on Israel on the first anniversary according to the Quds News Network.

“We recommend the Zionist regime not to test the resolve of the Islamic Republic. If any attack against our country takes place, our response will be more powerful,” Araghchi said.

He added Iran will continue to support the Palestinian cause to establish their own state. Addressing the Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Araghchi said the “resistance” to Israel is not based on a person.

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Israelis Today: ‘Outcasts’ With an ‘Unknown Future’

On the 1st anniversary of the Al Aqsa Flood well-known Al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Mansour, wrote (in translation from Arabic)

Most of the Western press reports and documentaries that were written or published about the first anniversary of the battle of #طوفان_الأقصى emphasized a compelling fact: That the Israeli entity and society after 7 October, 2023 changed forever, and the residents of the occupying state lost the feeling of security, in addition to the spread of psychological illnesses, economic losses, and a feeling of hatred, and that they have become outcasts everywhere, and by all people, and that the blood of the Palestinians that was shed and their homes that were destroyed have become a curse that will follow them wherever they go, but their racist, hateful politicians are taking them to a deep abyss and an unknown future.

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An Eye For an Eye

CROSSFIREARABIA – Israelis will not rest if the Palestinians don’t get their independent homeland and statehood to live free just as was the case before 1948 when Israel was forcibly created.

This present Israeli war on Gaza has shown that clearly.

While the Israeli war machine may have destroyed, nay, obliterated the whole of the enclave, the strip continues to be filled with resistance fighters who move above and below grounds with their weapons fighting their enemies.

Israel, its leaders, politicians and military, long propped up by American weapons have long known that but they continue to destroy rather than own up to Palestinian aspirations and the fact that the incessant conflict will not end otherwise.

In this war, slaughter, genocide – going into its second year now and shows no signs of stopping but on the contrary moving northwards to Lebanon – there developed a sense of equilibrium and proportionality although on a much smaller scale judging from the vast different of the protagonists.

Israel used massive bombs on civilians and sent them into a whirl of displacements, while Hamas continually fired rockets and missiles on the settlements and military bases surrounding Gaza and further beyond.

The immediate effect of that was the mass evacuation of the Israeli population from all these settlements, in effect as soon as the Israeli big guns started to ‘hammer’ the cities, town, villages and hamlets of northern Gaza soon after 7 October, 2023.

Displacement

Today, the Jewish settlements, more likely big towns and cities with high tech infrastructure stand empty; their populations have long been moved to hotels and guest houses by the extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, for their safety.

They still wait their return but there is no end in sight as to when will this happen. The late Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, just before he was killed by Israel, said the occupation entity will not rest in peace, neither will the Jews return to their homes, until the bombs on Gaza stop.

Hezbollah had taken up the fight with Israel soon after 7 October as a support to Gaza through rocketing its northern parts with missiles. This process also set off a mass drove of Israelis to leave their homes, like their counterparts in the south, to be housed in a hotel accommodation away from the bombs and raging fires.

As the war genocide on Gaza continued in the following months, the return of these settler Israelis to their homes continued to be foggy, unknown. Many of these settlements and conurbations like Kiryat Shmona and Maalot today stand empty like ghost towns.

In Gaza around 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million were forced into internal displacement, continually moving between areas from the north of Gaza to its southern border.

Likewise, the number of Israelis that were displaced was, initially estimated at 400,000 people with an extra 60,000 forced to leave when Hezbollah increased their missiles on the north after June 2024.

While they have been living in hotel accommodation many Israelis have been trying to get out of the country over the past months with the figures ranging from 500,000 up to a million.

Further to that about a quarter of Israelis polled by the Kan official channel, say they are truly thinking of leaving the country and 14 percent of them are supporters of Likud and the extremist rightwing parties. Indeed, soon after 7 October, the Ben Gurion Airport became filled with travelers as Hamas rockets started to land on Tel Aviv.

The airport is filled again today with travelers because of incoming missiles from Hezbollah from the north and the occasional ballistic missiles coming all the way from Yemen by the Houthis and/or the fright Israelis got from the recent incoming 200 missiles they saw in their skies from Iran.

There is no doubt that ordinary Israelis are under a lot of strain with sirens going off and on, all the time signaling for them, to go into the underground shelters. Video clips see them running asunder to the shelters, and who wouldn’t be scarred?

After all, the people of Gaza and now Lebanon are experiencing it all the time. For them however, there are no sirens, no warnings of 2000-pound bombs being dropped on their heads with no questions asked; their slaughter appear to be “manageable” foe western states who sell weapons to Israel.

The war can stop anytime. Hostages, around 110 from the original 250, can be returned anytime if there is a ceasefire but the Israeli prime minister is stuck on bringing them home by force, or so he says.

 Meanwhile Israelis are literally running. One videoclip in a Tel Aviv mall show people moving hastily to ahead, no doubt, to the underground shelters as the sirens blast all over.

Thus, there is a military equation that is being played out here: ‘You bomb us we will bomb you’. The Israeli army must realize that this is what is happening, and the stakes of the war game just keep getting higher and higher with Israel headed by Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, being lead to the abyss.  

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