Just hours after the Israeli aggression on Iran ended and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of “a new Israeli-led Middle East,” a campaign began promoting the so-called “Israeli Coalition for Regional Security,” which reportedly includes 10 Arab leaders, notably from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Colonial Project: Inside ‘Israel’s Coalition for Regional Security’ and the Role of Arab Leaders
H/T: Rachel Blevins & Sarah Bils
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Frontier of global anti-imperialist struggle: China’s perceptions of the Palestinian struggle from 1955 to 1976
China is probably one of few states which flipped its diplomatic stance on the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” in the most dramatic manner from the 1950s to 1970s. In only 20 years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s official foreign policy dramatically changed from almost establishing diplomatic relations with Israel in 1950 to denying any legitimacy of the Israeli state in the 1960s to 1970s. As I aim to demonstrate in this article, the Maoist era, especially from 1955 to 1976, established the foundation of China’s diplomatic support for the Palestinian liberation movement, and this legacy is still one of the main factors guiding China’s official stance on Palestine today.
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THE CHINESE PEOPLE FIRMLY SUPPORT THE ARAB PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE AGAINST AGGRESSION
Vladimir Putin answered questions from the heads of leading BRICS media agencies. The meeting was held ahead of the BRICS summit in Kazan.
The meeting was attended by the heads of media agencies from Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the UAE. It was moderated by Head of the Rossiya Segodnya Media Group Dmitry Kiselev.
Meeting with journalists from BRICS countries • President of Russia
by Brian Berletic
Beginning in October 2023 a renewed cycle of violence began destabilizing the Middle East. Hamas’ October 7, 2023 military operation into Israeli-held territory served as a pretext for Israel, not to dismantle Hamas itself, but to conduct an indiscriminate punitive military operation against all of Gaza.
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U.S. to Deploy Missile Defense System and About 100 Troops to Israel + More Updates
The Postwar Vision That Sees Gaza Sliced Into Security Zones
A plan that is gaining currency in the government and military envisions creating geographical “islands” or “bubbles” where Palestinians who are unconnected to Hamas can live in temporary shelter while the Israeli military mops up remaining insurgents.
Other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party are backing another, security-focused plan that seeks to slice up Gaza with two corridors running across its width and a fortified perimeter that would allow Israel’s military to mount raids when it deems them necessary.
The ideas come from informal groups of retired army and intelligence officers, think tanks, academics and politicians, as well as internal discussions inside the military. While Israel’s political leadership has said almost nothing about how the Gaza Strip will look and be governed after the heaviest fighting ends, these groups have been working on detailed plans that offer a glimpse of how Israel is thinking about what it calls the Day After.
The plans—whether or not they get adopted in full—reveal hard realities about the aftermath that rarely get voiced. Among them, that Palestinian civilians could be confined indefinitely to smaller areas of the Gaza Strip while fighting continues outside, and that Israel’s army could be forced to remain deeply involved in the enclave for years until Hamas is marginalized.
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According to people familiar with the effort, it aims to work with local Palestinians who are unaffiliated with Hamas to set up isolated zones in northern Gaza. Palestinians in areas where Israel believes Hamas no longer holds sway would distribute aid and take on civic duties. Eventually, a coalition of U.S. and Arab states would manage the process, these people said.
Ziv, who oversaw Israel’s exit from Gaza in 2005, proposes that Palestinians who are ready to denounce Hamas could register to live in fenced-off geographic islands located next to their neighborhoods and guarded by the Israeli military. This would entitle them to reconstruction of their homes.
The process would be gradual, and in the longer term, Ziv envisages bringing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority back to Gaza as a political solution, with the whole process taking roughly five years as the military fights Hamas insurgents. Under his plan, Hamas could be part of Gaza’s administration, if it frees all the hostages held there and disarms, becoming purely a political movement.
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Northern Gaza, under the plan, would remain without reconstruction, and Palestinians there wouldn’t be allowed back to their homes until Hamas’s miles-long tunnel network was destroyed. Like the bubbles plan, it promotes the notion of de-escalation zones where aid can be delivered by the Israeli military or by international forces, but stops short of articulating an idea for governance.
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Another plan published by the Washington-based Wilson Center* also advocates a coalition-style approach to the conflict but refrains from calling for Israel to consider the adoption of a Palestinian state. It says the U.S. should establish an international police force to manage security in Gaza and over time hand the job to a yet-to-be-defined Palestinian administration.
Robert Silverman**, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq who is a co-author, said his team discussed the plan with Israeli officials for months, even changing parts of the proposal to make it more agreeable to Israel’s war objectives and political dynamics, but it stalled with the prime minister’s office.
“He believes we finish the war first and then plan the postwar,” Silverman said of Netanyahu. “All the people who have done this before say that’s a huge mistake.”
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Another document, drafted by Israeli academics, that has made its way to the prime minister’s desk draws on historical precedents in rebuilding the war zones in Germany and Japan after World War II, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. It considers how to tackle Hamas’s Islamist doctrine by learning from the defeat of ideologies such as Nazism and that of Islamic State.
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The Strategic Hamlet Program (SHP; Vietnamese: Ấp Chiến lược) was a plan by the government of South Vietnam in conjunction with the US government and ARPA during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency by pacifying the countryside and reducing the influence of the communists among the rural population through the creation of concentration camps.
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The Strategic Hamlet Program was unsuccessful, failing to stop the insurgency or gain support for the government from rural Vietnamese, it alienated many and helped contribute to the growth in influence of the Viet Cong. After President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in a coup in November 1963, the program was cancelled. Peasants moved back into their old homes or sought refuge from the war in the cities. The failure of the Strategic Hamlet and other counterinsurgency and pacification programs were causes that led the United States to decide to intervene in South Vietnam with air strikes and ground troops.
The *Wilson Center plan isn’t much better. 👇🏻
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Read More »The question is, will the US see this as a benefit or continue to play critic?
Xi’s whirlwind European tour, playing mediator to mixed reviews
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The Belt and Road Initiative wasn’t a sinister plot. It was a blueprint for what every nation needs in an age of uncertainty and disruption.
The Red Sea Crisis Proves China Was Ahead of the Curve (archived)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has informed the United States that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar scenario, underscoring the deep divisions between the close allies three months into Israel’s assault on Gaza that aims to eliminate the territory’s Hamas rulers
Netanyahu States the Obvious- No Palestinian State- No 2 State Solution
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Foreign Affairs so, yes, it has a bias. Author Mark Leonard
Still there are some points of interest. One obvious point made is the lamentable state of US diplomacy. Perhaps better acknowledged as non existent.
China’s Game in Gaza: How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South
The USG is doing a good enough job of ruining its reputation, on the international stage, but let’s blame China! 🤦🏼♀️
11.12.2023 Author: Brian Berletic
A surprising change of tone came from the Pentagon in early December. After weeks of devastating Israeli military operations inside Gaza, the US Secretary of Defense implored Israel to demonstrate restraint and concern for the civilian population.
US Seeks Plausible Deniability as it Lights Middle East on Fire
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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