Attention to the Unseen

CNN reports: The Biden administration sent a letter to the Israeli government demanding it act to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within the next 30 days or risk violating US laws governing foreign military assistance, suggesting US military aid could be in jeopardy. The Sunday letter, jointly written by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, is addressed to Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. It marks…

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CNN reports: No food has entered northern Gaza since the start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of going hungry, the World Food Programme told CNN on Friday. In August, approximately 700 hundred aid trucks entered northern Gaza. In September, only 400 aid trucks entered, after commercial operations ceased at the Allenby Crossing on the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, the WFP added. No food trucks have entered northern Gaza in October, the WFP told…

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Middle East Eye reports: Several MPs have urged the UK government to take firm action against Israel after it launched a major military offensive in northern parts of Gaza and ordered the forced mass displacement of nearly 400,000 Palestinians living there. For six consecutive days, Israeli forces have pummelled the Jabalia refugee camp with air strikes and artillery shelling, despite ordering residents to leave their homes and head south to the Mawasi “humanitarian zone”. At least 120 Palestinians are known…

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The New York Times reports: For more than a year, as Israeli bombs pounded northern Gaza around Mariam Awwad’s home, she and her family of 11 have refused to leave. Their resolve did not change even after the Israeli military dropped leaflets over the town of Jabaliya on Sunday, ordering Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south. The military was renewing an offensive on the north, saying it was going after Hamas fighters. “We refuse to flee only…

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New Lines Magazine reports: Dawood remembers the disgust in the eyes of the Turkish security guards in the deportation center where he was held last year. “I felt like humanity had died,” said the soft-spoken Syrian man in his 30s, who is identified by a pseudonym to protect his safety. “They just kept shouting: ‘You are like animals! We’re tired of you. If you are a man, go back to Syria and fight!’” The humiliation hit hard for Dawood, who…

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Razia Iqbal writes: History has a striking capacity to intrude on the present day, as it does when I meet Rashid Khalidi. The Palestinian American professor’s retirement from his position as the Edward Said chair of modern Arab history at Columbia University was imminent, and that morning he has received alarming news: a gang of extremist Israeli settlers had stormed a house on Silsila Road in Jerusalem, a property that had been in his family’s possession since the time of…

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  As long as the US extends “total impunity” to Israel, there’s no way to prevent further genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and further bloodshed in Lebanon, argues Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. One of the biggest factors preventing all-out war in the region is Iran’s desire to pursue its own interests and reconcile with the US, according to Iran expert Roxane Farmanfarmanian of Cambridge University. Join Friedman and Farmanfarmanian in their conversation with…

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  We get an update from Lebanon, where the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has risen to over 700 since Monday, following a series of explosions involving pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week. The Israeli military reiterated its troops were preparing for a ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Multiple Israeli tanks and armored vehicles have appeared across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. As the Biden administration claims it’s working toward a ceasefire…

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