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By Walden Bello

The recent unilateral strikes by the United States on Iran’s nuclear development sites underline the fact that multilateralism is dead, and has been so for some time.

It is not only when it comes to the question of the deployment of military power that multilateralism is shown to be dead or dying. The key institutions of Western-led globalization are no longer functioning or are in sleep mode. This was underlined by the U.S. government’s decision to boycott both the Finance and Development Summit in Seville, Spain, this week, and the Bonn Climate Summit two weeks earlier.

The World Trade Organization has never recovered from the collapse of the Fifth Ministerial in Cancun in 2003, with the United States, in fact, taking the lead in emasculating it by preventing appointments to its decisive unit, the appellate court.

There has been stiff resistance at the IMF and World Bank to change the shares of voting power to give the China, the other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), and other countries in the Global South the weight they deserve in the changing global balance of economic power. For over four years now, since the end of the G-20 debt suspension initiative, even as many countries in the Global South lapse deeper into a debt crisis worse than that of the 1980s, no new effort at addressing the problem has come from the Global North. Instead, the Paris Club has played a blame game, accusing China of not joining a common front vis a vis the indebted countries.

As for climate finance—despite a conciliatory retreat by the Global South like the Bridgetown Initiative spearheaded by Barbados by folding development into climate finance—the $58 billion delivered after years of difficult negotiations is puny compared to the $1 trillion needed annually for the loss and damage inflicted on the Global South by the climate-destructive activities of the main climate polluters. And with a climate denialist administration now in the saddle in Washington, DC, the other leading climate criminals have been provided the excuse not to add to the commitments to the already weak, voluntary ones they have made. The UNFCCC will meet in Belem, Brazil, in November for its annual Climate Summit, but the reality is that negotiations are dead in the water.

Death of a Grand Strategy

The United States has been decisive in this retreat from multilateralism, and this process unfolded long before the advent of Donald Trump. It is Trump, however, who has cut the cant, shed the hypocrisy, and sounded the death knell on the grand strategy of liberal internationalism that served as the guiding U.S. strategy over the last 80 years, when it was committed to engaging threats to U.S. capital and U.S. state power where ever they were threatened globally. As Viktor Orban, the European figure most admired by Trump, has noted, his fellow strongman’s plan is to retrench to the Americas, focusing on reinvigorating the imperial heartland, North America, while strengthening the U.S. grip on Latin America in an aggressive reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine. And Orban adds, “there will be no more export of democracy.”

Trump may seem unpredictable, but there is a trend line cutting across the zigs and the zags. He is simply recognizing what his predecessors refused to see—that the empire is overextended and no longer has the resources to sustain its multiple engagements. Moreover, he is responding to the most significant and powerful section of his Make America Great Again base. This movement is a product of the four decades-long crisis of capitalism and imperialism. From a progressive standpoint, it has a number of contradictory features. It is, to use Althusser’s term, an “overdetermined contradiction” that combines the worst racist, ethnocentric, and anti-intellectual impulses with deep disdain for the neoliberal, pro-globalization initiatives and interventionist, warmongering policies of the liberal and neoconservative internationalists that have controlled policymaking over the last 80 years. It is fascism, but unlike in the 1930s, it is inward-looking, not expansionist fascism.

What is emerging is an imperialism that is on the defensive, that prioritizes tariff walls against foreign imports. It has adopted harsh measures to prevent the entry of non-white migrants and expel undocumented workers, uprooted the global supply chains set up by U.S. transnational capital, and reshored or brought back their productive facilities to the United States, and, last but not least, divorced the United States completely from collective efforts to address the climate crisis. The MAGA program espoused by ideologues like Peter Navarro, Vice President JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon is very popular, though to orthodox economists, it is madness.

The world is likely entering an era of geoeconomic competition whereby free trade and the free movement of capital are being replaced by close cooperation between national capital and the state to limit foreign penetration of the domestic market and prevent the acquisition of advanced technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI), by rival corporate-state actors. This is industrial policy with a reactionary vengeance. In the case of Trump, the preferred methods of dealing with the Global South are unilateral economic actions rather than multilateral initiatives via the Bretton Woods institutions, and unilateral military strikes rather than joint assaults under NATO, such as the recent attacks on Iran, and definitely no boots on the ground.

Nature, it is said, hates a vacuum. With the U.S.-dominated global multilateral system dead in the water, many in the Global South are scouting around for alternative sources of economic and political assistance. Among the candidates is the formation known as the BRICS, which is backed by something that the G77, for all its virtues as a site of alliance-building for the developing countries, lacks: economic clout.

Rise of the BRICS

The BRICS developed institutionally in a gradual fashion. The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), which were conceived as performing functions akin to the World Bank and IMF respectively, were formed in 2015, but they remained relatively low profile, perhaps so as to assure the West they were not meant to supplant these key institutions of the Western-dominated multilateral system as well as discourage developing countries to think of them as major alternative sources of development and emergency finance. As of the end of 2021, the cumulative lending of the NDB came to only $30 billion, a fraction of World Bank lending for the period 2015 to 2021.

As of January 1, 2025, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had joined the original five members.  The 10-country formation boasts a total population covering over 40 percent of the world. They also have a substantial 28 percent share of the global economy, equivalent to $26.5 trillion.

That so many countries, including Thailand and Malaysia, are queuing up to join the BRICS club indicates that the Global South realizes that the scale is steadily tipping against the West, which has grown increasingly defensive, grouchy, and insecure.

Several current and prospective members have significant surplus funds potentially available for development lending. Aside from China’s massive resources, the UAE has $2.23 trillion in its sovereign wealth fund. Saudi Arabia, which has delayed its membership but is expected eventually to join, has $1.3 trillion in its fund. These sums could potentially bolster the firepower of the current CRA and the NDB.

Are these hopes for the BRICS exhibited by many in the Global South realistic?

First of all, the BRICS, especially China, have played a major role in moving the balance of global economic power vis a vis the North to a tipping point. China, in particular, has, over the last quarter of a century, provided many countries in the Global South a source of alternative finance, thereby opening up more development space. As progressive economist Kevin Gallagher has pointed out, China is now the world’s biggest development bank. This has elicited much negative feeling in the West. Although there are certainly flaws in China’s lending activities, there are so many lies being floated by Western sources, like the claim that China is steering many countries into a debt trap. This is IMF-instigated crap. Chinese aid is not disinterested, but it does not have the crippling conditionalities that accompany IMF and World Bank assistance.

Grounds for Caution

Still there are grounds for caution. The BRICS institutional mechanisms for delivering assistance are relatively underdeveloped. It is not only the scaling up of assistance-delivery systems that is in demand. Among the expectations of many queuing up to join is that the decision-making processes in these instiutions would be more participatory and democratic than those of the Western-dominated agencies. So one big question is: Are the key actors in the BRICS going to be open to sharing decision-making power over their resources?

A related question is: The leading forces in the BRICS are a mix of authoritarian and formally democratic states; is it not realistic to expect that they will bring their regime preferences and styles of governance to a multilateral setting?

This year is the seventieth anniversary of the iconic Bandung Conference. The Global South has travelled a long way in terms of decolonization and, especially in the last seven decades, in coming close to the tipping point in the global balance of power vis a vis the Global North. But the Bandung Declaration was not just a document promoting political and economic decolonization. Indeed, the very first of the 10 points of the Declaration was “respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations.”

Two of the key movers in Bandung were India and China, who play central role in the BRICS. Nehru and Zhou En Lai were exemplary voices of the Global South in 1955, when decolonization was the burning issue. However, when it comes to the first Bandung principle, their governments today are not exactly paragons of human rights. India today is ruled by a Hindu nationalist government that considers Muslim second-class citizens. Beijing is accused of carrying out the forcible cultural assimilation of the Uygurs, though there might be exaggeration of this process by the West. As for the other key sponsors of the Bandung meeting, the military regimes in Myanmar and Egypt are notorious for massive human rights violations.

Indeed, most states of the Global South are dominated by elites that, whether via authoritarian or liberal democratic regimes, maintain problematic social and economic structures. The levels of poverty and inequality are shocking. The gini coefficient for Brazil is 0.53, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. China’s 0.47 also reflects tremendous inequality, despite remarkable successes in poverty reduction. In South Africa, the gini coefficient is an astounding 0.63, and 55.5 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. In India, incomes have been polarizing over the past three decades with a significant increase in billionaires and other high-net-worth Individuals.

The reality is that for the vast masses of people throughout the Global South, including indigenous communities, workers, peasants, fisherfolk, nomadic communities and women are economically disenfranchised, and in liberal democracies, such as the Philippines, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, and Kenya, participation in democracy is often limited to casting votes in periodic, often meaningless, electoral exercises. South-South investment and cooperation models such as the Belt and Road Initiative and free trade agreements frequently entail the capture of land, forests, water, and marine areas and extraction of natural wealth for the purposes of national development. Local populations—many of whom are indigenous—are disposessed from their livelihoods, territories, and ancestral domains with scant legal recourse and access to justice, invoking the specter of home-grown colonialism and counterrevolutions.

Two points are important here. Although the Global North has played a role in the perpetuation of poverty and inequality in the Global South, much of our current condition is the creation of the Global South’s own elites. Second, democratic governance at the global level cannot be delinked from democratic governance at the local level.

Capitalism and Multilateralism

There is a third, not minor, consideration when it comes to assessing the future of the BRICS, and here it is useful to compare Bandung’s historical moment to today. At the time of the Bandung Conference, the political economy of the globe was more diverse. There was the communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union. There was China, with its push to move from national democracy to socialism. Neutralist states like India were seeking a third way between the communism and capitalism. With decades of neoliberal transformation in both the Global North and the Global South, that diversity has vanished. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a new, equitable global order is the fact that all countries remain embedded in a system of global capitalism, where the pursuit of profits remains the engine of economic expansion, both creating great inequalities and posing a threat to the planet.

The dynamic centers of global capitalism may have moved, over the last 500 years, from the Mediterranean to Holland to Britain to the United States and now to the Asia Pacific, but capitalism continues to both penetrate the farthest reaches of the globe and deepen its entrenchment in areas it has subjugated. Capitalism continually melts all that is solid into thin air, to use an image from a famous manifesto, creating inequalities both within and among societies, and exacerbating the relationship between the planet and the human community. Whether market-driven, developmental, or state capitalist, the same dynamics of surplus extraction, with massive planetary externalities, cut across these variants of capitalism.

Is it possible to move towards a new, more participatory system of multilateralism without bringing forth a post-capitalist system of economic, social, and political relations?

The world is not doomed to repeat the experience of the West. It’s very positive that the hegemony of the North is breaking up and that the multilateral system it set up to dominate the Global South is breaking down. Rather than try to fix that system, it’s best to pursue the strategic objective of breaking it up, using a mix of negotiation, promoting a radical counter-agenda, and coercion as complementary weapons.

Derail Seville and Belem But…

With the United States pulling out of the Finance for Development process and boycotting the pre-COP 30 meeting in Bonn, the Europeans should be allowed to save multilateralism in Sevilla and Belem. Those assemblies should be used to further discredit multilateralism.

Replacing such a system will not be easy, however, and there will be setbacks and derailments in this process.

As the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci famously said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Getting to a safe harbor is not possible without taking great risks, and, as with Ulysses, the proverbial monsters of Scylla and Charybdis may still menace the voyage.

Walden Bello is currently the International Adjunct Professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Occupied Palestinian Territory – Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated that Israel’s ban on fuel entry to hospitals in the Gaza Strip constitutes a tool of direct killing and a means of forcibly displacing civilians, as it paralyzes medical facilities and turns them into death zones.

In a press release today, Euro-Med Monitor explained that the shutdown of generators and vital medical equipment puts the lives of thousands of patients—including newborns, ICU patients, and those with kidney failure—at immediate risk of death. It also forces their families to flee in search of alternative healthcare or energy sources at a time when no fully functioning medical facility exists in the Strip. This, the organization said, reflects a systematic Israeli policy aimed at dismantling the population’s means of survival, forming an integral part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The monitor emphasized that death is taking Gaza’s residents one by one through Israel’s intertwined methods, all of which amount to components of the genocide. Chief among them is the unlawful and systematic blockade aimed at destroying the Palestinian population by deliberately depriving them of essentials for survival.

Beyond the daily toll of victims from direct military attacks, many more die each day as a result of indirect means of genocide—deaths often unregistered in official war casualty records despite nearly 21 months of ongoing aggression.

Euro-Med Monitor highlighted that the total shutdown of the dialysis department at Al-Shifa Hospital today means that “we only have a few days before we begin documenting patient deaths one after another,” warning that this is not merely a health catastrophe but a deliberate execution of a slow-kill policy by Israel targeting the population’s right to life through denial of life-saving care.

The organization warned of catastrophic consequences as kidney dialysis services halt due to fuel shortages, signaling a critical collapse of the healthcare system. This could imminently affect ICU services at Al-Shifa and other hospitals, threatening the lives of thousands of civilians.

Israel is deliberately denying fuel entry, particularly into northern Gaza and Gaza City, with the calculated aim of halting hospital operations and compelling civilian displacement southward in search of treatment—a clear manifestation of forced displacement, banned under international law.

Refusing to allow fuel into hospitals amounts to a death sentence for most patients, Euro-Med said. It reflects a deliberate Israeli strategy to destroy Gaza’s health system by barring essential supplies, in clear violation of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obligates an occupying power to ensure the provision of medical care and prohibits starvation or health sabotage as methods of warfare.

Since March 2, Israel has fully closed Gaza’s crossings, banning fuel, humanitarian aid, and medical equipment. Thousands of aid trucks have been denied entry, causing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

Gaza’s health system now faces an unprecedented collapse, with:
    •    Severe shortages of medicines and supplies;
    •    Over 50% of hospital labs and 60% of primary care labs destroyed;
    •    Thousands of vital medical devices out of service;
    •    Breakdown of blood transfusions and lab diagnostics.

Meanwhile, infectious diseases like meningitis, malaria, chickenpox, and skin infections are spreading rapidly due to sewage overflows and contaminated water, particularly in overcrowded displacement camps.

According to OCHA and the WHO, harsh conditions in camps and shelters form a “fertile ground for epidemics,” with thousands of confirmed infections and likely many more unreported.

The worsening crisis is compounded by a lack of clean water—in some camps, a single toilet is used by hundreds of people, increasing the risk of widespread disease.

Euro-Med concluded that Israel’s blockade and deprivation policy is a genocidal tool, accelerating the systematic killing of civilians and destroying their means of survival in gross violation of international law, including peremptory norms and the Genocide Convention.

The organization:
    •    Urged UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations to take immediate joint action—legally, diplomatically, and operationally—to halt Israel’s crimes;
    •    Called for the end of Israel’s inhumane aid distribution mechanism and the restoration of humanitarian access;
    •    Called for UN-supervised humanitarian corridors to guarantee food, medicine, and fuel reach all of Gaza;
    •    Demanded independent international monitors be deployed to verify compliance.

Euro-Med also called on states to:
    •    Fulfill their legal obligations to halt genocide in all its forms;
    •    Ensure Israeli compliance with international law and ICJ rulings;
    •    Hold Israel accountable, including through the ICC arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister;
    •    Impose economic, military, and political sanctions, including:
    •    Arms embargoes;
    •    Freezing assets of responsible officials;
    •    Banning their travel;
    •    Suspending Israeli military and security firms from global markets;
    •    Halting preferential trade and financial agreements.

These urgent steps are necessary to stop the deepening catastrophe and ensure justice for the victims.

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

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorised by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant.  But that depended on what company you were keeping.  The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan.  The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF. 

The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete.  For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs.  All in all, approximately 75 precision guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.

Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result.  “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered.  “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm.  “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear.  We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.”  The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment.  “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”  Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”

Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement.  “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant.  “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.”  The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego.  The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”  IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats.  In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

This was a parade begging to be rained on.  CNN and The New York Times supplied it.  Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months”.  The entrances to two of the facilities had been sealed off by the strikes but were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings.  Sceptical expertise murmured through the report:  to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.” 

Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over.  The fate of over 400 kg of uranium that had been enriched up to 60% of purity is unclear, as are the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges.  Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament. 

After mulling over the attacks over the course of a week, Grossi revisited the matter.  The attacks on the facilities had caused severe though “not total” damage.  “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”  Tehran could “in a matter of months” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.”  Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

Efforts to question the effacing thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration.  White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish.  “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement.  “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”

Hegseth similarly raged against the importance placed on the DIA report.  In a press conference on June 26, he bemoaned the tendency of the press corps to “cheer against Trump so hard, it’s like in your DNA and in your blood”.  The scribblers had to “cheer against the efficacy of these strikes” with “half-truths, spun information, leaked information”.  Trump, for his part, returned to familiar ground, attacking any questioning narrative as “Fake News”.  CNN, he seethed, had some of the dumbest anchors in the business.  With malicious glee, he claimed knowledge of rumours that reporters from both CNN and The New York Times were going to be sacked for making up those “FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong.” 

A postmodern nonsense has descended on the damage assessments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, leaving the way clear for over remunerated soothsayers.  But there was nothing postmodern in the incalculable damage done to the law of nations, a body of acknowledged rules rendered brittle and breakable before the rapacious legislators of the jungle. 

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

1 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 US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in central Gaza on Tuesday morning, killing at least seven people and injuring several others. On Monday, the Israeli military admitted that its forces “harmed” Palestinians seeking aid.

Local and medical sources confirmed at least seven people were killed and 15 others injured while waiting for food after Israeli forces opened fire at a crowd seeking aid near the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 580 aid seekers have been killed and over 4,216 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.”

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.”

1 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By The New Arab Staff

Palestinian artist Frans al-Salmi was among the dead and journalist Bayan Abusultan was wounded in the strike.

An Israeli airstrike has killed more than 30 Palestinians at a beachfront cafe in Gaza City on Monday, according to the health ministry.

Around 50 others were wounded in the attack, which struck the Al-Baqa cafeteria on Monday, one of the few remaining locations with internet access in the area.

Images shared by Quds Network showed emergency responders recovering bodies and searching through the rubble. The cafe was reportedly crowded with civilians, including journalists, at the time of the strike.

Gaza’s Government Media Office confirmed that Palestinian photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab, who has worked with several media outlets and had organised exhibitions about Gaza abroad, was among those killed. His death brings the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023 to 227, according to the same source.

Visual artist Frans al-Salmi was also reported among the fatalities, while famed journalist Bayan Abusultan was wounded in the strike, though her current condition remains unknown.

Witnesses described scenes of blood and carnage as people looking for a rare moment of calm were struck during the strike. Social media images shared by Gaza journalist Belal Khaled showed Abusultan injured and visibly shaken.

Continued attacks across the Strip

In the past 24 hours, Israel launched some of its heaviest air raids in recent weeks. Al Jazeera reported that at least 80 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday. The toll includes 57 people killed in northern Gaza and 15 near aid distribution centres in Rafah, in the south.

Two schools in Zeitoun and Tuffah, which were sheltering displaced Palestinians, were struck overnight. A food distribution warehouse in Zeitoun was also hit, as humanitarian infrastructure came under continued fire.

In a post on X, military spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued threats to residents in parts of Gaza City, including East Zaytoun, the Old City, Turkmen, Ajdida, Tuffah, and Daraj.

Evacuation orders in northern Gaza have forced repeated displacement, with over 76 percent of the enclave under military orders as of 15 June, causing severe instability.

Hospitals hit amid fuel shortage crisis

The World Health Organisation in occupied Palestine reported that a tent sheltering displaced people at Al‑Aqsa Hospital in Deir al‑Balah was hit on Sunday, injuring five. The attack damaged the internal medicine department and disrupted the hospital’s oxygen supply.

Since October 2023, WHO has recorded 734 attacks on health care facilities in Gaza. WHO said that “ongoing attacks on health care and continued hostilities near hospitals are fuelling fear among already traumatised communities and placing further strain on facilities struggling to cope”.

A growing fuel crisis now threatens the delivery of essential services, including hospital and water services. As of June 26, only around 140,000 litres of fuel remained in northern Gaza and 272,000 litres in the south, with allocations limited to healthcare facilities for just four days.

Hospitals are operating on minimal power with critical systems, including ventilators, incubators, and cold-chain storage, at risk of shutting down.

OCHA warns that water, sanitation, and waste services are collapsing, and only 40 percent of drinking water production is operational, meaning a failure to lift the fuel blockade is likely to result in more “senseless and preventable death”.

Meanwhile, mediators continue to push for a truce, with Qatar and the US expressing cautious optimism. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister is expected to be in Washington, while Prime Minister Netanyahu and senior officials debate sending a delegation to talks in Egypt or Qatar.

According to reports, more than half of the deal terms are agreed, but disagreements remain over troop withdrawal, Hamas disarmament, and humanitarian monitoring.

1 July 2025

Source: newarab.com

TEHRAN, Jul. 01 (MNA) – The secretary general of Hezbollah says the Lebanese resistance movement will never surrender to the tyranny of the United States and the occupying Israeli regime.

“We are in an active defensive mode. Don’t tell us not to defend ourselves! Don’t ask us to surrender to the tyrants who want to control the destiny of humankind. We will never bow down and surrender to aggressors. Never to humiliation!!!” Sheikh Naim Qassem said as he delivered a televised speech broadcast from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, late on Monday.

He called the Israeli occupation of the Lebanese territory temporary, while characterizing its liberation as definitive. “This land will remain noble, dignified, and free, by God’s will. The occupation is temporary, but liberation is ultimate.”

The Hezbollah chief stated that the resistance group’s ongoing confrontation with the US and the Zionist entity is a just and divinely inspired battle, Press TV reported.

Sheikh Qassem then described Israel as “an aggressive, oppressive, and criminal entity,” and the United States as “a tyrannical force” attempting to destroy dignified life around the world.

“Israel is criminal, and America is tyrannical. We have the right to say ‘No’ to both,” the Hezbollah leader said.

“Our commitment to defend our land emanates from the fact that it is ours by right,” Sheikh Qassem said, underscoring, “Others cannot deprive us of this right for the sake of their own interests. We will act in defense of our right.”

The Hezbollah chief stated that Israel is on the rampage, and so is the United States. “They want to exploit the status quo to reshape the region.”

“Whoever supports Israel and the US is the one driving our country towards the brink of the abyss,” Sheikh Qassem noted.

He urged all walks of Lebanese society to establish their national loyalty as their number-one priority, and to refrain from supporting the schemes of the US and Israel, especially at this critical juncture.

“We can shape a future of dignity and have glamour once justice prevails. It is when we liberate our land and prevent Israel and the US from imposing their diktats upon us,” the Hezbollah leader said.

MNA/

1 July 2025

Source: en.mehrnews.com

By OXFAM

Financing Development, Not Oligarchy

26 Jun 2025 – A decade ago, the world‘s countries agreed to a vision of the common good, the Sustainable Development Goals, and a plan to achieve that vision, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. Ten years later, that effort is failing. Nearly half the world‘s population— over 3.7 billion people— live in poverty, while gender injustice, hunger, and other denials of basic human rights are widespread. Since 2015, the richest 1 percent have gained at least $3.9 trillion in wealth in real terms, enough to end annual global poverty 22 times over. Billionaires—roughly 3,000 people—have gained 56.5 trillion in real terms, more than the $4 trillion estimated annual cost of achieving the SDGs.

A key factor undermining global development efforts is extreme economic inequality. A decade ago, major development institutions recast their mission to focus on enlisting powerful private Global North investors to achieve development goals, an idea the World Bank chief economist has since dismissed as a “fantasy.“ Today, the development agenda is captured by the interests of wealthy private investors to a considerable degree. Despite the significant evidence that this approach has not worked, can cause major harms, and is not superior to public financing, as the traditional aid system craters, there is alarming new momentum behind the idea.

A new agenda is needed—one that puts public power before private profit. The upcoming fourth Financing for Development Conference in Sevitta, Spain provides an opportunity for transformed muttitateralism that can be built on throughout 2025. Countries that are willing to lead can make real progress towards development goals by working together to tackle extreme inequality.

Countries and development actors should reject the “Watt Street Consensus“ around financing development, and embrace a public sector-first approach. They can start by taxing the very wealthiest—a new global survey finds 9 out of 10 people support taxing the super-rich to raise the revenue needed to invest in public services and climate action. Reforms to the international financial architecture and restoring aid are also key.

Extreme Inequality Is Derailing Global Development

A decade ago, the world‘s countries agreed to a vision of what the common good looks like—the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGsl—and a plan to finance that vision— the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.‘Ten years later, the SDGs and the Addis Agenda are failing.

0f a host of admirable aims—such as eradicating hunger and extreme poverty, achieving gender equality, and ensuring access to healthcare, education, and decent work—as of 2024, only 16 percent of the SDG targets were on track to be met by 2030. According to recent estimates, more than 3.7 billion people (nearly half the world) live in poverty,* over 700 million face hunger, and gender equality wilt not be achieved for another 123 years.‘The gap between the amount of money needed to meet basic needs and the amount actually mobilized to do so, the SDG “financing gap,“ has swelled drastically, from an estimated $2 trillion in 2015 to $4 trillion annually, and is projected to reach $6.4 trillion by 2030.* Moreover, countries are reeling from a sovereign debt crisis, the possibility of trade wars, the costs of climate inaction, and the rapid cratering of aid which could push millions more below the poverty line.

Concentrated Private Wealth Alongside Public Immiseration

TO READ FULL REPORT Download PDF file:

OXFAM: From Private Profit to Public Power

30 June 2025

Source: transcend.org

By UN News

Most families in the Gaza Strip are surviving on one meal a day and one-third go entire days without eating as a result of Israel’s continued bombardment of food aid seekers on the enclave, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and partners.

26 Jun 2025 – The meals which families are able to obtain are nutritiously poor — thin broths, lentils or rice, one piece of bread or sometimes just a combination of herbs and olive oil known as duqqa.

Adults are routinely skipping meals in order to leave more for children, the elderly and the ill. And still, on average since January, 112 children have been admitted on a daily basis for acute malnutrition.

“[When my children wake up at night hungry] I tell them ‘Drink water and close your eyes.’ It breaks me. I do the same – drink water and pray for morning,” as one parent said.

Risking lives for food

Due to these extreme food shortages, people in Gaza are forced to risk their lives on a daily basis to access small amounts of food. Since 27 May, 549 Palestinians have been killed and 4,066 have been injured trying to access food, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza.

“The majority of casualties have been shot or shelled trying to reach US-Israeli distribution sites purposefully set up in militarized zones,” said Jonathan Whittall, head of office for the UN humanitarian affairs agency, OCHA, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Since the end of May, the US-Israeli backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been distributing aid in Gaza, bypassing the UN and established NGOs.

The UN has said Palestinians who seek aid from the GHF face threats of gunfire, shelling and stampedes.

“We don’t want to be out there. But what choice do we have? Our kids cry for food. We don’t sleep at night. We walk, wait, and hope we come back,” one Palestinian told WFP.

Systems near collapse

Protracted conflict and bombardment have pushed almost all service systems in Gaza to the brink.

As a result of fuel shortages, only 40 per cent of drinking water facilities are functional and 93 per cent of households face water insecurity.

The fuel shortage is also negatively affecting the provision of medical services with medical equipment and medicine storage reliant on electricity.

For the first time since the resumption of limited aid entry on 19 May, nine trucks containing medical items offloaded supplies on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing on Wednesday.

Displaced, over and over again

Since the resumption of Israeli bombardment in Gaza on 18 March after a 42-day ceasefire, over 684,000 Palestinians have been displaced. And for almost all of them, this is not the first time.

With over 82 per cent of Gaza either designated as an Israeli militarized zone or under a displacement order, there are few places — much less safe places — that the newly displaced can go.

They have been forced to take shelter in overcrowded displacement camps, makeshift shelters, damaged buildings and sometimes just on open streets. Schools are no longer buildings of learning but of shelter.

“Schools have transformed into empty shelters, devoid of any elements of a safe learning environment,” said Kamla, a teacher with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Nuseirat.

All of these shelters are experiencing rapidly deteriorating conditions as a result of insufficient shelter materials, according to Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

“No shelter materials have entered Gaza since 1 March, before the Israeli authorities imposed a full blockade on aid and any other supplies for nearly 80 days,” he said at a briefing on 19 June.

“While some commodities have subsequently been allowed in small quantities, tents, timber, tarpaulins and any other shelter items remain prohibited.”

The UN and its partners have 980,000 shelter items prepared to dispatch into Gaza once authorization is granted by the Israeli authorities.

‘Symbols of hope’

Since the beginning of the violence in Gaza, UNRWA has continued to work tirelessly to provide displaced and injured Palestinians with many types of support.

“Despite all this, the eyes and hopes of our community remain fixed on us. UNRWA staff are not merely service providers. In the eyes of people in Gaza, we are pillars of resilience, lifelines of stability and symbols of hope,” said Hussein, an UNRWA worker in Gaza City.

But as fuel shortages continue and only small amounts of humanitarian aid — food, medicine, shelter materials — trickle through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the job of UNRWA workers and other humanitarians in Gaza is increasingly untenable.

“We have lost all the tools needed to work, so we have had to adapt,” said Neven, a psychosocial UNRWA worker in Khan Younis.

Despite their best efforts, the bombardment and devastation of Gaza continues with children going hungry and some even expressing suicidal thoughts.

“I told my daughter her deceased father is safe, eating and drinking with God,” one mother said. “Now, she cries every day and says, ‘I’m hungry and want to go to my father because he has food to feed us.’”

30 June 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Nikki McCann Ramírez

The Israeli military is managing aid distribution sites with live fire against crowds of unarmed civilians. Hundreds are dead.

27 Jun 2025 – Soldiers in the Israeli military have told the Israeli news outlet Haaretz that aid distribution centers in Gaza have become “a killing field,” with military leadership ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Palestinians.

Massacres at aid distribution sites have become a common occurrence in recent weeks as the Israeli military ever so slightly loosened its blockade against humanitarian aid into Gaza, and tasked itself with aid management under the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The Palestinian Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, estimates that 549 have been killed and several thousands injured near aid sites since late May, when the foundation first began operations. The United Nations estimated that least 410 had been killed at aid sites over a similar time frame.

Soldiers and officers in the Israeli Defense Forces who spoke to Haaretz paint a bleak picture of the scene, indicating the killings are the result of IDF policies targeting civilians in violation of international law.

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day,” one soldier said. “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.”

The same soldier called the scene “a killing field,” adding that he was “not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”

Another enlisted officer acting as security for a GHF aid center said that “it’s neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.”

Under Israel’s blockade against humanitarian aid, Palestinians in Gaza have been living in rubble under near famine conditions. Despite the creation of the GHF, the United Nations issued a report earlier this month indicating that its operations were insufficient, and it was imperative for an “unlimited and unfettered supply of aid to enter” Gaza.

According to IDF sources who spoke to Haaretz, the Israeli military is theoretically not supposed to be in direct contact with Palestinians at aid points. But as the over 2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza become increasingly desperate for life-sustaining resources, their efforts to secure what limited amounts of food they can are being met with gunfire.

“A combat brigade doesn’t have the tools to handle a civilian population in a war zone,” an Israeli officer said. “Firing mortars to keep hungry people away is neither professional nor humane. I know there are Hamas operatives among them, but there are also people who simply want to receive aid. As a country, we have a responsibility to ensure that happens safely.”

One officer, serving in the division of the notorious IDF Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, said that it was Vach who instituted the policy of using live munitions to disperse crowds. “This is Vach’s policy,” they said, “but many of the commanders and soldiers accepted it without question. [The Palestinians] are not supposed to be there, so the idea is to make sure they clear out, even if they’re just there for food.”

Another soldier, a tank operator, told the publication that while technically tank fire was supposed to be used as a warning, “firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there’s never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders.”

Earlier this week, as President Donald Trump attempted to enforce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, reports emerged that dozens of Palestinians — as many as 50 — as well as three aid workers, were killed by IDF gunfire while awaiting aid in Southern Gaza. Similar massacres are taking place on a near daily basis.

“They talk about using artillery on a junction full of civilians as if it’s normal,” one military source told Haaretz of a meeting they attended with leaders of the IDF’s Southern Command. “An entire conversation about whether it’s right or wrong to use artillery, without even asking why that weapon was needed in the first place. What concerns everyone is whether it’ll hurt our legitimacy to keep operating in Gaza. The moral aspect is practically nonexistent. No one stops to ask why dozens of civilians looking for food are being killed every day.”

Markers of the callousness in the IDF’s operations within Gaza continue to elicit shock after more than a year of brutality. One source who spoke to Haaretz indicated that the militarized aid operation in his region of Gaza has a name: Operation Salted Fish.

“Salted Fish” is a reference to an Israeli children’s game similar to red light, green light.

“You know it’s not right. You feel it’s not right — that the commanders here are taking the law into their own hands,” one soldier said. “But Gaza is a parallel universe. You move on quickly. The truth is, most people don’t even stop to think about it.”

Nikki McCann Ramírez is a Politics Reporter at Rolling Stone, where she covers breaking political news, far-right media, and misinformation.

30 June 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Prof. Richard Falk

23 Jun 2025 – The Gaza Peoples Tribunal at the end of its first public assembly in Sarajevo issued a Declaration that expresses our commitment to peace and justice for the Palestine people in their struggle to realize their basic rights, above all their inalienable right to self-determination.

We are inviting likeminded friends to read and endorse the Sarajevo Declaration and to share the link with others who might join our solidarity initiative at this critical time.

Here is the link to the change.org where you find the text of the Declaration and endorser information:

[https://chng.it/nf5gKSCmG8]

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

30 June 2025

Source: transcend.org