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By Busani Ngcaweni and Shiping Tang

The post-Cold War order is unravelling. The global trading system and the multilateral order, painstakingly built after the Second World War, have been torn apart. What once stood as a framework for cooperation is now a weapon of mass bullying. Trade wars strike like sudden cyclones. Tariffs rise unpredictably. One day they are 15 percent, then they shoot to 50 percent, jump to 100 percent the following week and drop again to 20 percent days later. Such turbulence shakes small and large economies alike, bringing uncertainty, disrupting supply chains and sending countries scrambling for new markets and solutions.

This new age of upheaval calls for BRICS+, a dynamic group of countries that believe in multipolarity. BRICS+ must rise not just as an economic grouping but as an empowering and stabilising structure for the Global South. BRICS+, is a brick-solid, enduring and purpose-driven framework.. Moreover, BRICS+ has to be empowering. Like any well-built structure, it must be firm enough to contain  the landslide of confusion yet adaptable enough to let water pass through,  allowing flexibility without compromising strength.

But it is not enough for BRICS+ to simply hold the line. It must also pave the road forward. Over 45 percent of the global population lives in BRICS+ countries, mostly in the Global South where life remains precarious and economic security is far from guaranteed. Strong bricks must be laid to create roads that lead towards resilience, inclusive growth and shared prosperity.

To achieve this, BRICS+ must deliver real and tangible results. People need to feel the benefits of cooperation. They need jobs, stable markets, corridors of trade and access to opportunities. The New Development Bank (otherwise known as the BRICS Bank) was a strong start. It is making a difference across Asia, Africa and South America, as a strong alternative to the traditional multilateral and private funding systems that have often proven difficult for developing countries to access on equitable terms. It is time now to build more permanent BRICS+ institutions that implement summit  resolutions.

These outcomes must not gather dust,  rather they must be carried out consistently and transparently. For this, we need permanent institutions that support policy coordination and implementation across member states, institutions that increase education and training exchanges between countries, institutions that manage trade, and that quickly respond to natural disasters. These are the institutions that should actively manage contradictions between BRICS+ members, taking mandates from heads of states.

To achieve this key goal, BRICS+, primarily needs a permanent secretariat. Without it, BRICS+  risks appearing as a provisional  or noncommittal  mechanism. Crudely stated, without a permanent secretariat, the grouping resembles a structure built without cement to bind all its bricks together.

For BRICS+ to increase trade among its members, it must mobilise all productive forces. It must ramp up manufacturing output and focus on producing more value-added goods. Only then will countries have something meaningful to offer each other beyond raw materials. Trade among friends must be more than substantial, it has to be mutually enabling.

Thus, the primary task for BRICS+ is to become an enabler of builders. No country can modernise without its leaders, development-oriented elites, stakeholders willing to make sacrifices and citizens yearning for a better life. But they can certainly use a little bit of outside help. Indeed, developing countries can utilise outside assistance more effectively if it can empower and enable their efforts.

In our globalised world, many developing countries still need outside assistance to weather the storms. As such, BRICS+ can also act as a shelter, a place of refuge for those battered by the storm of today’s economic bullying. The volatility we are witnessing is not new, it is just a variant of what the Global North has long imposed upon the Global South. The difference now is that it is more erratic and bombastic, equally traumatic if you listen to the rhetoric about the Middle East and recent warnings to countries like Namibia where economic pathways are being dictated by external parties.

Let us restate what many ignore when analyzing what sustained BRICS beyond a decade and a half. The leaders are more focused on what unites them than on sources of divisions. There is mutual respect and interest to build a multipolar world.  Contradictions are not being buried but actively managed by the leaders. That is a marker of strength, a signal to the Global South that the bond of solidarity can take nations forward.

The task before BRICS+ is daunting, yet necessary. The Global South cannot afford to be sidelined any longer. It is time to lay  firm, interconnected and enduring bricks that will advance development, shelter, security and shared prosperity for the people of the Global South.

Busani Ngcaweni is Adjunct Professor at Wits School of Governance, South Africa

Shiping Tang is Professor at Fudan University’s School of International Relations Public Affairs.

9 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Gaza is on the brink of total collapse. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Tuesday that 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza have not eaten for days. Their children face life-threatening risks; premature birth, death, and permanent health problems.

The World Health Organization echoed the alarm. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the severe shortage of food, fuel, and medicine is killing civilians, especially children.

At the heart of the crisis is a broken aid system created by the US and Israel as a tool to use aid for military goals. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy slammed the US-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), calling its aid delivery mechanism “completely unacceptable.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also raised the alarm. It reported a sharp rise in mass casualty events at aid distribution points across Gaza. The increase has overwhelmed Gaza’s already shattered health system.

Since late May, when GHF began managing aid sites, the ICRC’s field hospital in southern Gaza alone recorded over 200 deaths and treated more than 2,200 gunshot-wounded patients, many of them from over 21 separate mass shootings.

“The scale and frequency of these incidents are unprecedented,” the ICRC said. “We treated more casualties in just weeks than we did in all mass injury incidents last year.”

Meanwhile, Israel continues to block aid. Since March 2, it has sealed Gaza’s crossings to most humanitarian trucks. Only a few dozen are allowed in daily only to be looted by Israeli-backed gangs. At least 500 trucks per day are needed to meet minimum survival needs.

Israel’s genocide, backed by the US, has devastated Gaza since October 7, 2023. The ongoing genocide includes indiscriminate bombing, mass displacement, starvation, and the targeting of aid sites.

The results are catastrophic. More than 194,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, most of them women and children. Over 11,000 remain missing under the rubble. Hundreds of thousands are displaced, and famine is claiming more lives daily, many of them children.

The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to stop the genocide. But Tel Aviv continues, undeterred by global appeals or legal rulings.

9 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israeli forces opened fire on starving civilians waiting for food near an aid distribution site run by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in southern Gaza, killing at least seven people.

Local and medical sources confirmed that at least seven people were killed and 50 others injured while waiting for food after Israeli forces opened fire at a crowd seeking aid near the GHF aid site, north of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 580 aid seekers have been killed and over 4,200 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Additionally, 39 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

Israeli mass killings of aid seekers near GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces.

Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinains.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report last month warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that “weaponizing aid in this manner may constitute crimes against humanity.”

“Every day Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza,” MSF said.

The commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, condemned the “lethal” US-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza. In a post on X, Lazzarini indicated that Palestinian lives “have been so devalued”.

“It is now the routine to shoot & kill desperate & starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries,” he said.

“Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime. Those responsible of this system must be held accountable. This is a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the US-backed aid distribution mechanism is “inherently unsafe” and “it is killing people.”

“Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,” Guterres told reporters.

Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel, as the occupying power, is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.

“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.

According to a Haaretz report last week, conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered forces to shoot at crowds waiting for food near or at the US-backed GHF aid sites to drive them away or disperse them, despite posing no threat.

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier said.

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

In a statement on Monday, the Israeli military admitted that its forces “harmed” Palestinian civilians at US-Israeli aid distribution centers in Gaza. The army claimed new field instructions were issued based on “lessons learned.”

9 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

Caption: “IOF soldier wearing the map ‘Greater Israel,’ which includes all of Palestine, the Syrian Golan, and the Egyptian Sinai, openly, calling for more land theft from Arabs.” [https://t.co/m0y193d3GN]

Today, the world is witnessing the original logic of Zionist territorial consolidation in the Levant as it mutates but persists — like a serpent uncoiling through time, holding Plan Dalet in its forked tongue and injecting it with new poison. From the Allon Plan to the Dahiya Doctrine, from Lebanon to Syria and Gaza, Israel’s expansionism continues to adapt to legal, geopolitical, and technological terrains.
 
 The blueprint of Plan Dalet — seize territory first, reshape the population map through force, negotiate later — remains embedded in the architecture of peace negotiations. Gaza, like the West Bank, Golan and Southern Lebanon before it, has become a space where military control precedes political settlement, and where humanitarian crisis is not a constraint, but a tool of leverage.

Gaza is the boiling point of this logic: a site where displacement, catastrophe, and domination are weaponized to shape political outcomes — where genocide is wielded not in spite of diplomacy, but in service to it.
 
 Since early 2025, Israel has seized large swaths of the Strip, confining over two million Palestinians into shrinking “humanitarian zones” while maintaining full military control over the rest. It has backed armed proxies to destabilize governance, restricted aid to exert pressure, and floated plans for “voluntary emigration” in its post-war vision.
 
 These moves echo Plan Dalet’s ethos. While settlers don’t populate Gaza, demographic shifts are achieved through displacement, and the ensuing humanitarian crisis is framed not as a failure — but as an opening for political restructuring. In effect, suffering becomes the bargaining chip.

As normalization talks with Saudi Arabia and Syria advance, Israel continues its occupation, curbs aid, and confines population movement. These aren’t violations to be reversed — they’re increasingly treated as facts on the ground that diplomacy must accommodate.
 
The proposed ceasefire includes phased withdrawals, but contingent on Hamas’s removal and the rise of a compliant authority — echoing the 1949 armistice logic where Palestinians were absent from negotiations andDarwis maps were redrawn under duress. Thus, occupation becomes the diplomatic baseline; normalization proceeds through devastation.

While U.S.–Israel negotiations rest atop this architecture, some actors — including South Africa, UN Rapporteurs, and transnational solidarity networks — are beginning to name its logic.

Though rarely invoking Plan Dalet directly, they condemn its enduring legacy: forced displacement, demographic engineering, and territorial conquest as strategic tools of domination. South Africa’s 2023 case at the International Court of Justice accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, citing patterns of ethnic cleansing rooted in the Nakba. The UN Human Rights Council and Special Rapporteurs have repeatedly referenced the ongoing Nakba — linking present-day violations to the foundational expulsions of 1948.

Jewish Voice for Peace has gone further, explicitly naming Plan Dalet as the blueprint for a settler-colonial regime expanding through military and legal means. The Arab League and Iran continue to denounce Israeli expansionism in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine as part of a broader Zionist project of regional domination. Even when “Plan Dalet” isn’t spoken aloud, its logic — conquest first, negotiation later — is being recognized and increasingly challenged.

Meanwhile, in a moment of stark geopolitical irony, Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the century-old Sykes–Picot Agreement, claiming that British and French diplomats “failed to draw the borders correctly.” This framing was offered as part of a justification for Israeli territorial claims — particularly regarding the Golan Heights — but it underscores a deeper contradiction: the borders imposed by colonial powers were deemed illegitimate, yet the Zionist project itself was midwifed by those very powers, and has been expanded not through correction but through annihilation.

Netanyahu’s critique is weaponized to justify neocolonial violence. It inadvertently lays bare the hypocrisy: he laments artificial borders while presiding over a regime whose own blueprint for expansion — Plan Dalet — did not seek to redraw maps based on indigenous presence, but to erase it altogether. It wasn’t bad cartography that Israel challenged — it was the refusal to accept Palestinian existence on any map at all.

And in tandem with conquest, Arab resistance has persisted — not as reaction but as structural refusal.
 
 In 1948, amid the Nakba’s mass expulsions, the Holy War Army and Arab volunteer fighters mounted defense amid collapsing support and British withdrawal. Yet Zionist militias prevailed through coordinated force, village massacres, and British facilitation. Palestinian resistance was militarily quashed and diplomatically erased. “The Palestinian cause is not a quest for charity, it is a revolution,” wrote Ghassan Kanafani, transforming ruin into political clarity.
 
By 1967, guerrilla movements like Fatah and the PFLP erupted. The PLO emerged as a diplomatic force, while grassroots organizing laid the groundwork for the First Intifada. But counterinsurgency and diplomatic exclusion gutted their momentum. “We don’t want peace, we want victory,” declared Yasser Arafat — yet what was granted was autonomy without sovereignty.
 
 In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s rise defied Israel’s deterrence doctrine — but bombings, sieges, and diplomatic isolation followed. “You cannot defeat a people who believe that martyrdom is a beginning, not an end,” said Hassan Nasrallah, even as resistance was branded illegitimate.
 
 In Syria, legal denunciation of Golan’s annexation met global silence. Iran-aligned militias confronted entrenchment, but territorial shifts remained unchanged.
 
 In Gaza, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Great March of Return met military invasions, sniper fire, and diplomatic framing as terror. Legal bids like South Africa’s ICJ case remain pending, while BDS and documentation campaigns grow. “We chose resistance because it is the only way to defend ourselves,” declared Leila Khaled, affirming Gaza’s voice amid siege.
 
 And through it all, Mahmoud Darwish’s words echo: 
 “Where should we go after the last border? Where should birds fly after the last sky?”
 
In July 2025, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese issued one of the most forceful condemnations to date. Her report accuses Israel of operating an “economy of genocide” — a system where occupation, apartheid, and mass displacement are monetized.
 
 Corporate actors — including Microsoft, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar — are named as complicit in this settler-colonial project. Gaza, she writes, has become a “live-testing ground” for AI targeting and biometric surveillance, with over 85,000 tons of explosives dropped since October 2023. Corporate profits and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange soared in tandem.
 
 Her demands:
 — Global arms embargo 
 — Sanctions on complicit corporations 
 — Suspension of trade agreements 
 — Legal accountability for enabling institutions 
 
Albanese insists: this is not a string of abuses. It is a systemic machinery where genocide is not merely tolerated — but incentivized.
 
 This is not a distortion of diplomacy — it is its monstrous fulfillment. 
 Plan Dalet has not faded into history; it has evolved into an architecture of annihilation, where suffering is transmuted into bargaining power and domination is dressed as peace. Every forced displacement, every stalled aid truck, every bomb dropped is part of the negotiation.
 
 If diplomacy demands genocide to proceed, then it is not peace we are chasing — it is a reckoning. And that reckoning begins by naming this system for what it is: A machinery that profits from death, and a world order that enables it.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

8 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It’s made to order.  First, eliminate the aid system after creating circumstances of enormous suffering.  Then, kill, starve, vanquish and displace those in need of that aid.  Finally: give the pretence of humanity by ensuring some aid to those whose suffering you created in the first place.

As things stand, the system of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is intended to cause suffering and destruction to recipients.  Since May 26, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an opaquely structured entity with Israeli and US backing, has run the distribution of parcels from a mere four points, a grim joke given the four hundred or so outlets previously operated by the United Nations Palestinian relief agency.  The entire process of seeking aid has been heavily rationed and militarised, with Israeli troops and private contractors exercising murderous force with impunity.  Opening times are not set, rendering the journey to the distribution points even more precarious.  When they do open, they do so for short spells. 

Haaretz has run reports quoting soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces claiming to have orders to deliberately fire upon unarmed crowds on their perilous journey to the food sites.  In a June 27 piece, the paper quotes a soldier describing the distribution sites as “a killing field.”  Where he was stationed, “between one and five people were killed every day.”  Those seeking aid were “treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.  Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they can approach.  Our form of communication is gunfire.”

The interviewed soldier could recall no instance of return fire.  “There’s no enemy, no weapons.”  IDF officers also told the paper that the GHF’s operations had provided a convenient distraction for continuing operations in Gaza, which had been turned into a “backyard”, notably during Israel’s war with Iran.  In the words of a reservist, the Strip had “become a place with its own set of rules.  The loss of human life means nothing.  It’s not even an ‘unfortunate incident’, like they used to say.”

An IDF officer involved in overseeing security at one of the distribution centres was full of understatement.  “Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that’s highly problematic, to say the least.”  It was “neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snippers and mortar shells.”

Much the same story can be found with the security contractors, those enthusiastic killers following in the footsteps of predecessors who treat international humanitarian law as inconvenient if not altogether irrelevant.  Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to the blood-soiled record of private military contractors, with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad city’s Nisour Square by Blackwater USA employees in September 2007 being but one spectacular example.  While those employees faced trial and conviction in a US federal court in 2014 on an assortment of charges – among them murder, manslaughter and attempted manslaughter – such a fate is unlikely for any of those working for the GHF.

On July 4, the BBC published the observations of a former contractor on the trigger-happy conduct of his colleagues around the food centres.  In one instance, a guard opened fire on women, children and elderly people “moving too slowly away from the site.”  Another contractor, also on location, stood on the berm overlooking the exit to one of the GHF sites, firing 15 to 20 bursts of repetitive fire at the crowd.  “A Palestinian man dropped on the ground motionless.  And then, the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’.  And then they laughed about it.”

The company had also failed to issue contractors any operating procedures or rules of engagement, except one: “if you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later.”  No reference is made to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers.  To journey to Gaza was to go to a land unencumbered by laws and rules.  “Do what you want,” is the cultural norm of GHF operatives.  And this stands to reason, given the reference of “team leaders” to Gazans seeking aid as “zombie hordes”.

The GHF, in time honoured fashion, have denied these allegations.  Ditto the IDF, that great self-proclaimed stalwart of international law.  It is therefore left to such contributors as Anas Baba, NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip, to enlighten those who care to read and listen.  As one of the few Palestinian journalists working for a US news outlet in the strip, his observations carry singular weight.   In a recent report, Baba neatly summarised the manufactured brutality behind the seeking of aid in an enclave strangled and suffering gradual extinction.  “I faced Israeli military fire, private US contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations and masked thieves – to get food from a group supported by the US and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”. 

If nothing else, it is high time that the GHF scrap any pretence of being humanitarian in its title and admit to its true role: an adjutant to Israel’s program of extirpating Gaza’s Palestinian population. 

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. 

8 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor 

Palestinian Territory – After 21 months of continuous Israeli assault, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are confined to less than 15 per cent of the enclave, i.e. no more than 55 km². Approximately 2.3 million people are crammed into suffocating conditions, each with less space than that allocated to detainees in Guantanamo Bay.

The population is trapped in this narrow space under constant bombardment and blockade, deprived of water, food, shelter, and healthcare, and effectively barred from returning to their destroyed or restricted areas of origin. This is part of a deliberate policy that reflects a genocidal process by Israel to uproot the people and erase their physical and demographic presence through mass killing, forced displacement, starvation, and systematic destruction of life.

As the Israeli genocide enters its twenty-second month, the reality on the ground is no longer one of mere bombing and killing, but of a comprehensive process of erasure of the Gaza Strip. Residents are now treated as detainees in a mass detention facility, confined to a stifling area of no more than 55 km², under strict military surveillance and direct targeting. This follows Israel’s conversion of approximately 85 per cent of the enclave into restricted zones through evacuation orders or unlawful military control.

Such measures form a deliberate policy to erase the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip by uprooting residents, undermining human life, and dismantling the Strip’s social and geographical structure in a systematic pattern of crimes that, taken together, constitute an act of genocide under international law.

Residents live in a confined and devastated area, targeted around the clock and deprived of even the most basic services, under conditions of extreme overcrowding. The average population density is around 40,000 people per km², while the al-Mawasi area exceeds 47,000 people per km², a density unmatched in any other populated area on Earth.

These are not abstract figures, but the contours of an ongoing Israeli crime committed in broad daylight and full view of the world. Residents are forcibly isolated and repeatedly expelled from their original areas, and then from their displacement areas to what the occupying power calls “humanitarian and safe zones,” only to find that each time these zones are nothing but new death traps.

All families in the Gaza Strip have been forced to relocate, with many displaced five, six, or even ten times or more, in a scene that reflects a systematic and ongoing policy of collective pursuit in search of safety that does not exist.

No area in the Gaza Strip is safe. There is no place today that can serve as a haven or even a temporary shelter. Electricity, drinking water, healthcare, and food are all unavailable. Sewage floods the alleys, while disease, epidemics, rodents, insects, and hunger spread, and every aspect of life collapses. In reality, people are left with nothing but the terrifying and coercive option of endless displacement, amid relentless psychological and physical suffering and deep daily despair.

Confining the population between bombing, hunger, and disease on one hand, and preventing them from returning to or even remaining near their destroyed homes on the other, makes it clear that the measures imposed in the Gaza Strip are not a temporary emergency displacement, but part of a permanent and premeditated policy of forced displacement.

This policy aims to bring about a comprehensive demographic transformation in the enclave by depopulating it, placing it under full military control, and encircling it with an unprecedented blockade. In this context, displacement is not a byproduct of war, but a strategic objective.

Data documented by Euro-Med Monitor up to early July indicates that Israel has destroyed over 92 per cent of homes, fully or partially demolished more than 80 per cent of schools and 90 per cent of hospitals, and completely destroyed all universities in the Gaza Strip.

Entire neighbourhoods, cities, villages, and camps have been erased from the map—along with their homes, streets, institutions, markets, mosques, and even memories. They were physically removed from existence in a manner that aims to eliminate any prospect of return, with Israeli forces even clearing the rubble and transferring it into Israel to ensure Palestinians cannot return by any means.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the individual or mass forcible transfers of civilians from occupied territories unless “the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.” The article also states that the population transferred in this way must be “transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.”

Furthermore, the article states that “the occupying power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.”

In the case of the Gaza Strip, however, the large-scale displacement operations are carried out systematically, without any urgent military necessity and without providing protection, shelter, or the possibility of return. This constitutes a grave violation of the Convention and amounts to a war crime under international humanitarian and criminal law.

When carried out as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, such displacement meets the threshold of a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

More gravely, when mass displacement is paired with mass killing, the deliberate denial of food, water, shelter, medical care, and return, and public calls to erase Gaza and uproot its people, there is no doubt that Israel is deliberately imposing life-destroying conditions with the intent to destroy a protected group as such. This meets the definition of genocide under international law.

The pattern of forced evacuation orders, widespread killings, destruction, and the deliberate use of starvation are all integral parts of an Israeli plan clearly advancing toward its final objective: the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land, particularly beyond the Gaza Strip.

This follows more than 20 months of genocidal crimes, including the killing and wounding of over 200,000 civilians, the destruction of entire towns, the near-total collapse of Gaza’s infrastructure, the eradication of basic living conditions, and systematic internal displacement. All of this has taken place within a broader effort to eliminate the Palestinian community as an entity and existence.

The forced displacement of Palestinians is a direct extension of Israel’s decades-long settler-colonial project, rooted in the erasure of Palestinian existence and the seizure of their land. What sets this phase apart is its unprecedented scale and severity, demonstrated by the comprehensive targeting of all 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 through genocide and the denial of people’s most basic human rights. The conditions of extreme coercion and deprivation forced upon the Palestinian people represent a deliberate effort to push them out of their homeland, not by choice but as a condition for their very survival. This stands as one of the most blatant cases of planned mass displacement in modern history.

Euro-Med Monitor urges all states to recognise that what the people of the Gaza Strip are facing is not evacuation, but the systematic erasure of an entire people. It is not enough to merely acknowledge or condemn these crimes; states must stand firmly between the people of Gaza and the completion of the genocide, to protect them from annihilation and to ensure their right to remain on their land with dignity.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; holding Israel accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip; and providing redress to victims as per international law.

The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel ban on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli military and security industries companies in international markets; banning involved companies’ access to banking services; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.

Euro-Med Monitor calls for an immediate and comprehensive reconstruction process in the Gaza Strip, with priority given to rebuilding homes, infrastructure, and health and education facilities, as well as restoring the foundations of community and economic life. This is essential to re-establish a dignified standard of living for the population, provide compensation for the immense losses endured, and address the consequences of the systematic destruction inflicted by ongoing Israeli attacks.

States must urgently push for the restoration of humanitarian access and the lifting of the illegal blockade, as this is the only way to stop the accelerating humanitarian deterioration and ensure the entry of aid, given the imminent threat of famine.

The establishment of safe humanitarian corridors under UN supervision is vital to ensure the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of the Strip, with independent international monitors deployed to verify compliance.

Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity. They must also hold accountable their citizens found to have committed violations against Palestinians, in line with their national and international legal obligations and within their territorial or personal jurisdiction.

Furthermore, the International Criminal Court (ICC) must expedite its investigations and issue arrest warrants for every Israeli official involved in international crimes committed in the Gaza Strip. These crimes must be formally recognised and treated as acts of genocide. States Parties to the Rome Statute are reminded of their legal obligation to fully cooperate with the Court, ensure the implementation of the arrest warrants, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

8 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

US President Donald Trump received Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a formal dinner on Monday, during which both men reiterated their plans to forcibly remove the Palestinian population from Gaza in preparation for the enclave’s annexation.

When asked, “Is your Palestinian relocation plan still on the table?” Netanyahu praised Trump’s “brilliant vision” to expel the Palestinians from Gaza. “I think President Trump had a brilliant vision. It’s called free choice,” Netanyahu said.

He continued, “We’re working closely with the United States to find countries that will accept” the forcibly displaced Palestinians. Trump added, “And we’ve had great cooperation from surrounding countries. So something good will happen.”

By giving the Palestinians in Gaza a “free choice” to leave, Netanyahu means that he intends to starve and kill them by the thousands, so that those who remain alive will “choose” to leave.

When Trump first proposed his plan to “own” Gaza and expel the Palestinian people to other countries earlier this year, it was dismissed by the US media as a flight of fancy with no connection to actual US and Israeli plans.

In reality, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza has been a long-term aim of the Netanyahu government, which used the events of October 7, 2023 as a pretext to carry out this plan. Trump, in contrast to his predecessor Biden, openly stated the actual Israeli policy the US was supporting.

Now, six months after it was first proposed, the Israeli government is making far-reaching plans to carry out this ethnic cleansing policy, using its takeover of the provision of starvation rations as a means to lure the population of Gaza to the enclave’s south, where they will be herded into concentration camps and then expelled from the country.

The plan by Trump and Netanyahu to displace the people of Gaza is a flagrant violation of the prohibition of the forcible transfer of civilians during armed conflicts under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Their plan to steal the Palestinians’ land also violates the 1970 United Nations treaty, ratified by the United States, which stipulates that “The territory of a State shall not be the object of acquisition by another State resulting from the threat or use of force.”

As a result of the war crimes committed by Israel in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

When asked about the statement made five months ago by Democratic New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani that he would enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu were he to be elected mayor, Trump and Netanyahu launched into a tirade against Mamdani, calling him a communist. Netanyahu dismissed the war crimes charges against him as “silly” and “not serious.”

The blood-curdling remarks by the two men turned into a farce when Netanyahu presented Trump with a letter he sent to the Nobel Prize Committee nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, declaring, “He’s forging peace, as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other.”

After Netanyahu called for the American president to be given the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump could not resist boasting about dropping “the biggest bombs ever, the biggest bombs that we’ve ever dropped on anybody, when you think non-nuclear” on Iran just last month.

Despite the grotesque and farcical nature of the event, the homicidal plans the two men were discussing are very real and very serious.

On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced plans to construct what he called a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, which would hold the entire Palestinian population.

Katz stated that once inside, residents would not be allowed to leave by the Israeli military, which would patrol the camp.

He also said that the building of the camp would be coordinated with “the emigration plan, which will happen.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—a US- and Israeli-backed aid organization—has drawn up a proposal for establishing camps, which it calls “Humanitarian Transit Areas,” both inside and outside Gaza.

At least 600 Palestinians have been killed over the past five weeks at food distributions operated by the GHF, according to Gaza’s government media office.

These killings have taken place in over 20 separate massacres, which have become an almost daily occurrence as a critical component of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Last week, the Financial Times reported on a secret strategy document drawn up by the Boston Consulting Group, a major US corporate consulting firm, for “relocating” Palestinians from Gaza. The FT reported that the Boston Consulting Group estimated a “23k savings on every Palestinian relocating.” In a front-page article on Sunday, the Financial Times revealed that the plan was created with the involvement of staffers from former UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Condemning the US-Israeli ethnic cleansing plans, Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers, declared, “While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary,’ people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual.”

He added, “When you drive someone out of their homeland, that would be a war crime in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity.”

Last week, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an investigation featuring interviews with Israeli troops, who said they were repeatedly ordered to open fire on unarmed crowds of aid seekers.

To date, Israel has killed 57,000 people in Gaza, while the entire enclave is on the brink of starvation, with thousands of cases of acute malnutrition diagnosed last month alone.

8 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chase Lawrence and Patrick Martin

The death toll has climbed past 80 in the flash flood disaster in central Texas, as rescue and recovery workers continued their search for survivors and victims into Sunday night. The vast majority of the deaths, 68, are in Kerr County, northwest of San Antonio, where the Guadalupe River overflowed its banks in a wall of water as much as 30 feet high.

Those who died in Kerr County included 40 adults and 28 children, many of them from the Mystic Camp, a sleepaway Christian girls camp on the edge of the river which was inundated in the early morning hours of Friday, July 4. Eleven girls and one adult are still missing from the camp, which housed 750 people, including children as young as eight.

Heavy rains Sunday obstructed the rescue and recovery efforts. By the evening, officials in Kerr County urged journalists and the few remaining local residents in the flood zone to get to higher ground, as a new surge of river water was considered likely.

Torrential rains stemming at least in part from the breakup of Tropical Storm Barry over the Gulf of Mexico were the immediate cause of the flooding, but both climate change and the impact of Trump administration budget cuts certainly played a role in the massive human toll.

The Texas “Hill Country” is a vast arc of rough and broken ground, crisscrossed by gullies, extending from the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area west and south around Austin and San Antonio. The rivers that drain the relatively dry region can collect massive amounts of water runoff in a heavy storm, particularly one that lingers for several days, as was the case last week.

There is a long history of flooding on the Guadalupe River, but this is by far the worst of the dozen or so such disasters in the past century. The worst previous flood took the lives of ten girls at another sleepover camp along the river in 1987.

Despite this, Kerr County officials have rebuffed calls to set up an early warning system against flash floods, similar to that used in tornado-prone regions of the US, claiming it would be too costly. While largely rural, the county is not without resources, with a middle-income population of more than 50,000 on the outskirts of the San Antonio metropolitan area.

The area is dominated politically by extreme right Republicans who oppose nearly all forms of public spending. Trump carried Kerr County with 77 percent of the vote last November. The local congressman is Republican Chip Roy, one of the most right-wing members of the fascist House Freedom Caucus.

Residents reported receiving little to no warning before the flood started. Many were awakened to the floods themselves, with National Weather Service warnings only arriving via phone alerts at 1 a.m. Friday, when most people were already asleep. Only a flood watch was previously issued on Thursday, which cautioned the region to prepare for ‘excessive runoff’ with rainfall expected to be “5 to 7 inches.” Instead, from 10 to 12 inches fell in a matter of hours, and there were isolated readings of up to 16 inches of rain.

The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet within 45 minutes according to state officials, leaving those awakened to the flooding little if any time to respond.

Christopher Flowers, who was quoted in the Associated Press, noted that nothing in the forecast alarmed him, and he only learned about the flood when he woke up in the middle of the night in ankle-deep water. “What they need is some kind of external system, like a tornado warning that tells people to get out now,” Flowers, 44, said.

On Wednesday, the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) was activated saying there was ‘increased threats of flooding in parts of West and Central Texas.’ Swift-water rescue teams and other types of rescue equipment were moved into the area because some models predicted high levels of rainfall.

In Texas and around the world, floods have become worse and more frequent as a result of ongoing global warming. So too have other varieties of severe weather events. The Trump administration, as part of its rampage against science, has effectively forbidden any discussion of climate change by disaster management agencies, while also inflicting severe cuts on the National Weather Service (NWS) and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

During the budget-cutting spree initiated by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), some 2,300 jobs were eliminated at NOAA, as well as 600 at the NWS. Both of the NWS offices near the flood zone, in San Antonio and San Angelo, were understaffed. The meteorologist at the San Antonio office in charge of liaison with local disaster management agencies took early retirement in April as a result of the DOGE purge.

These cuts led to a situation in which offices for predicting tornadoes were above the 20 percent vacancy levels experts say is critical. The number of weather balloons, necessary for timely and accurate prediction of a number of weather phenomena including floods, decreased by around 15 to 17 percent. Some local NWS offices reduced their twice-daily balloon launches or even suspended them altogether due to a lack of staffing.

The Democrats are also directly implicated in the disaster, offering only the most perfunctory opposition to the DOGE rampage, then passing a continuing resolution backed by Trump to avoid a federal shutdown. As Trump’s $4 trillion tax and spending bill passed Congress last week, the Democrats did nothing but wring their hands, refusing to call a single protest.

They claim to oppose the cuts in NOAA, Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies responsible for the well-being of hundreds of millions of Americans. But the funds cut from these agencies are going towards the buildup of the military-intelligence apparatus, which the Democrats fully support, as well as the enormous deportation machine that Trump is constructing.

Trump has dismissed suggestions that these cuts played any role in the central Texas tragedy.

“If you look at that, what a situation that all is, and that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup, but I wouldn’t blame Biden for it either,” he said, after a weekend at his New Jersey golf club. He claimed that given the scale of the flooding, no amount of preparation would have made a difference. Instead he resorted to the usual reassurances of capitalist politicians in the face of disaster, hailing the patriotism of first responders and offering his prayers “for all of the families impacted by this horrible tragedy.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s fascist allies in Congress raised yet another conspiracy theory to explain the disaster, with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) saying she would introduce a bill forbidding “weather modification” by government agencies or private individuals.

The catastrophe in central Texas is a crime of capitalism. Dozens are dead not because such events are unpredictable, but because society is organized around the profit interests of the financial oligarchy, not human need.

7 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The evidence surrounding the Nuseirat Massacre committed by the Israeli army on 8 June 2024 is now supported by a growing body of documented data, most notably the Al Jazeera documentary Nuseirat 274: The Hostage Massacre. The film offers a significant contribution to reconstructing the sequence of events and exposing the nature of the force used against the civilian population.

The testimonies and visual material presented in the film closely align with the findings of Euro-Med Monitor’s field investigation and reinforce evidence of Israel’s use of indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in a densely populated civilian area, in clear violation of international humanitarian law.

This level of documentation, combining professional journalism with human rights investigation, underscores the need to launch an independent investigation with international criminal jurisdiction to uncover the truth, hold those responsible for the massacre accountable, and prevent the recurrence of such violations against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

Al Jazeera’s investigative film provides evidence-based documentation and detailed field analysis of one of the deadliest massacres committed by the Israeli army during the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, which left 274 Palestinians dead and 814 injured in a single day.

The data presented in the film, consistent with Euro-Med Monitor’s field documentation, constitutes conclusive evidence that the Israeli army committed a full-fledged war crime on 8 June 2024 in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. The military operation, ostensibly aimed at “liberating hostages,” in fact resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties due to the excessive use of force and the deliberate targeting of civilians without military necessity, including in areas far from the site of the Israeli special operation.

At the time, Euro-Med Monitor’s field team documented the Israeli army carrying out intense and concentrated aerial, land, and sea attacks lasting approximately two hours on the Central Market area of the Nuseirat refugee camp, which is densely populated with tens of thousands of civilians daily. The attacks later expanded to much of central Gaza, resulting in a high number of casualties.

The investigation, aired by Al Jazeera on its digital platform Al Jazeera 360, employed a rigorous methodology that combined open-source analysis, satellite imagery, and air navigation data with exclusive testimonies, photographs, and never-before-published footage. It accurately reconstructed the scene of the massacre and systematically refuted the Israeli army’s narrative of the incident.

The film also exposes precise details of the deliberate targeting of civilian objects during the Israeli operation, including multiple airstrikes on residential homes, such as the Shalat family home where over 30 civilians were killed, and the intentional targeting of women and children in densely populated areas, indicating a premeditated intent to maximise civilian casualties.

Following the massacre, the Israeli army announced that its forces, in coordination with the General Security Service (Shin Bet) and the Israeli police (Yamam), had recovered four Israeli detainees in an operation conducted by special forces in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

The Israeli special operation involved intensive, indiscriminate air and artillery attacks used to cover the withdrawal of Israeli forces, resulting in extensive civilian casualties and widespread destruction of civilian objects. These actions violated international humanitarian law, including the principles of humanity, distinction, military necessity, proportionality, and precaution.

At the time, a young man named Faisal, who requested anonymity for his surname, told the Euro-Med Monitor team that Israeli fighter jets and drones launched intensive attacks, initially targeting the northwest area of Nuseirat camp before expanding to broader areas. This included indiscriminate shelling from Israeli vehicles positioned at the entrance to al-Bureij camp and in the al-Awda Street area, northeast of Nuseirat.

He added that the intense Israeli bombardment forced thousands of civilians to flee Nuseirat camp, but they were pursued by Quadcopter drone fire and artillery shells, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries. Numerous bodies were seen in the Julis Street area in the centre of the camp.

The killing of Palestinian journalist Ahmed Elshayyah, a field contributor to the documentary, in an Israeli airstrike carried out after the investigation was completed, underscores Israel’s policy of targeting journalists and those documenting its actions, as part of a broader effort to conceal evidence and eliminate witnesses.

The Nuseirat Massacre cannot be dismissed as a military error or an isolated incident, as it was neither accidental in execution nor exceptional in context. The operation involved the use of heavy, indiscriminate firepower in a densely populated civilian area, despite prior knowledge of the presence of hundreds of civilians. This reflects a deliberate policy of targeting the civilian population collectively and inflicting the highest possible number of deaths among a besieged, starving, and forcibly displaced population.

It constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity, as part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians, as well as an act of genocide, given the clear intent to destroy a portion of the Palestinian population. This occurs within a broader context of public incitement, mass killings, the infliction of severe suffering, forced displacement, siege, starvation, deprivation of necessities, and the systematic destruction of civilian areas.

Immediate, independent, and impartial international investigations into the targeting of civilians in the Nuseirat Massacre are essential. Pressure must be exerted on Israel to allow international and UN fact-finding missions into the Gaza Strip, as per international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice.

The International Criminal Court must investigate all crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, including the Nuseirat Massacre and the thousands of other atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli army in the enclave. The Court should also broaden the scope of its investigation into individual criminal responsibility to include all those involved, issue arrest warrants, and prosecute them in accordance with international law and the Rome Statute. Furthermore, the Court must acknowledge the reality of the situation in Gaza and address Israel’s actions seriously and objectively, recognising them as constituting genocide.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; and holding Israel accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip. The International Criminal Court must implement the arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.

The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel ban on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli military and security industries companies in international markets; banning involved companies’ access to banking services; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.

Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings, even with the accused in absentia, to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

7 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Over 288 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces over the past 100 hours in 59 massacres across the Gaza Strip, including 99 aid seekers, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

In a statement issued last night, the Office said that over the past 100 hours, the Israeli military committed 59 massacres targeting civilians in the Gaza Strip, killing 288 people and injuring 1,088 others.

99 aid seekers were killed by Israeli forces and 394 others injured while waiting for food near the so-called “death traps”, near US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid sites.

Here are some of what Israel has targeted over the past 100 hours across Gaza, according to the Office:

• Public rest areas
• Palestinian families inside their homes
• Markets and civilian gathering spots
• Starving civilians while searching for food
• Medical clinics, health centers, and vital infrastructure
• The Al-Mawasi area, which the Israeli occupation falsely designates as a “safe zone”
• Overcrowded shelters housing tens of thousands of displaced people

The majority of those killed are children, women, and the elderly. All unarmed civilians, the Office noted.

Israel has escalated its attacks in Gaza amid ceasefire, in one of the deadliest and most intense bombardments in the devastated Palestinian territory for many months.

7 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org