Just International

I Live in Gaza. Famine Is Not Coming — It’s Already Here

By Malak Ridwan

The specter of famine has returned to Gaza, creeping through its shattered streets like a thief in the night, stealing the breath of children, the strength of mothers, and the dignity of fathers. It is a slow, cruel death—one that does not come with the sudden roar of bombs but with the silent gnawing of empty stomachs, the hollow eyes of those who have not known bread for days.

This is not Gaza’s first famine. Only last year, in January 2024, the people of the north endured a hunger no less severe than the current torment. Then, as now, flour, sugar, lentils—staples that once seemed too humble to notice—became treasures beyond reach. Families rationed grains like gold, stretching meager supplies to keep their children alive. Even then, medicine was a luxury few could afford. My own father, a diabetic, clutched his dwindling pills with trembling hands, counting each one, measuring his pain against the fear of running out.

Now, famine has returned, darker, deeper. The markets, if they can be called such, are graveyards of empty stalls. The few who find a sack of flour guard it like a secret, grinding it into coarse bread that tastes of dust and despair. Children no longer cry for sweets; they have forgotten the taste of sugar. Instead, they whimper weakly, their bellies swollen with hunger, their ribs pressing against skin stretched too thin.

And still, the world watches. Still, the trucks are stopped, the aid is delayed, the borders remain choked. Gaza starves in plain sight, while the powerful debate the arithmetic of suffering—how many calories a person needs to survive, how many grams of rice constitute a meal. But famine is not numbers. It is a father breaking his last piece of bread in half, pretending he is not hungry. It is a mother boiling water with a handful of salt, calling it soup. It is my diabetic father, counting his pills, praying they outlast the siege.

Gaza has known hunger before. It knows it too well. But how many famines must a people endure before the world remembers they are human?

Malak Ridwan is a writer from Gaza

21  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

At Least 18 Palestinians Died of Hunger in Gaza on Sunday Amid Israeli-Made Famine

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 18 Palestinians died of starvation on Sunday alone across the Gaza Strip, as Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from entering the enclave for over four months, with warnings that Gaza is “on the verge of catastrophic hunger.”

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 18 people died from starvation in the past 24 hours, including a man with special needs.

It added a total of 87 people, including 76 children and 10 adults, have died due to hunger and malnutrition since the start of the genocide in October 2023.

“This is a silent massacre. The Ministry of Health holds the Israeli occupation and the international community fully responsible. We urgently call for the immediate opening of all crossings to allow the entry of food and medicine,” it added.

On Saturday, two children also died from malnutrition: Yahya Al-Najjar and 35-day-old infant Jawad Al-Anqar.

On Sunday, at least one Palestinian died of hunger every 80 minutes in Gaza as “Israel maintains a systematic starvation policy against 2 million residents,” said Euro-Med Monitor.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.”

He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, over 650,000 children under the age of five face an imminent and severe risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks, out of a total of 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned on Sunday, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, warned that Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

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 Palestinians.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May 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. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.

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

Moreover, 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”.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 800 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 5,200 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Additionally, 46 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

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 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, 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 recent statement, 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.”

A new Associated Press report with leaked footage also detailed how American contractors at GHF aid sites used live ammunition, stun grenades and pepper spray against starving Palestinians seeking food.

21  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Starvation in The Gaza Genocide 

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Gaza is starving. There has never been like it in this Israeli-induced and enforced genocide that has now been going on for about 19 months and counting.

People are literally falling in the streets and in front of the television cameras because of the biting hunger that doesn’t seem to end at the hands of a merciless Israeli enemy.

Of the people who manage to get to the dilapidated and destroyed hospitals they are dropping off on the doors of these institutions with many losing consciousness and even shrieking the last breath of death. And people die while the people in the world looks on with lavish feasts.

UNRWA says Israel is systematically and willfully starving the Palestinian population into submission; they want them either dead or expelled from their ancestral homes in the Gaza Strip. The UN refugee organization says that up to 1 million children are threatened with death through starvation. These figures are given as they are the most natural thing in the world.

This is one of the worst periods of the genocide as Arab and Israeli makers meet in Doha and elsewhere try to end this nightmare but to no avail as politics over-rides common sense and decency.

Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, director of the Al Shifa Hospital says that neither patients nor medical staff nor ancillary personnel in the whole of the Gaza hospitals, which number 36 in total, have had anything to eat in the last 24 hours. 

Al Jazeera correspondent Anis Alsharif says neither him nor the other anchors have had a bite to eat since Saturday afternoon because there isn’t any. People around here walk aimless until their last breath of death. Yet people, except for the frail seems to go on, as if their is an ordained hand telling, forcing them to go on.

The Israelis have refused to let  anything into Gaza since last March when they realized that there was a possibility that Palestinians would flourish again; and this is after they threw on them around 100,000 tons of bombs, facilitated by their American benefactors – a situation that begun soon after, 7 October, 2023.

There is simply no food into the strip thanks to Israel. Even animal fodder, which Gazans had been reduced to eating in order to survive in the first period of starvation in 2024 and early 2025, has run out. Then fodder like wheat and barley was eaten to survive, but this appears to be the end game.

In this brave new world of starvation and famine, food has become a scarce, nay, non-existent commodity because of Israeli policies to beat the Palestinians with but they will not win despite the evil intentions.

UNRWA continues to appeal to the international community to force Israel to lift its tight and claustrophobic siege on Gaza and let the aid, food and medicine into the strip. Meanwhile, it says it has its cargoes lying in the Sinai Peninsula waiting to be delivered to the starving people of Gaza. It says in its storehouses, it has three months of supplies but it’s waiting for the might of Israel to upon up the borders.

Meanwhile people are continuing to die starting from Rafah, in Khan Younis in the center of the Strip to the far-northern areas in Jabalia, Biet Lahia and Biet Hanoon where fighting is still going on between Palestinian resistance fighters and the Israeli army. 

In comes the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which has since last May tried to provide food parcels at distribution centers run by US and Israeli personnel and which is today turning into a “free-shooting killing field” of starving Palestinian that has young been denounced by the United Nations as “weaponizing food” with very sinister connotations that include depopulating Gaza of its original inhabitants.

Seeing is believing. Palestinians, and on a daily basis, and under the eyes of the world are shot fatally on a daily basis. Take Sunday for example, the number of those that have been killed is already in the 60s. As they run to get their food parcels they are shot by Israeli soldiers guarding the distribution centers. They are shot with no compunctions but with a sense of hellish deliverance.  

And it is the social media who are narrating, nay “dancing” on the graves of the Palestinians. This war is probably the most documented set of atrocities, but people, the international community, gaze on with a sense of helplessness, frustration and complicity. Professor Amos Goldberg, who teaches Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University, doesn’t mince words. He says this is a “disgusting genocide”. 

Dr Marwan Asmar  is a journalist based in Amman

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

“A revolutionary shift is underway”

By Francesca Albanese

Remarks of Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, at the Hague Group Emergency Conference of States in Bogotá, Colombia.

Excellencies, Friends, 

I express my appreciation to the government of Colombia and South Africa for convening this group, and to all members of the Hague Group, its founding members for their principled stance, and the others who are joining. May you keep growing and so the strength and effectiveness of your concrete actions. 

Thank you also to the Secretariat for its tireless work, and last but not least, the Palestinian experts—individuals and organisations who travelled to Bogota from occupied Palestine, historical Palestine/Israel and other places of the diaspora/exile, to accompany this process, after providing HG with outstanding, evidence-based briefings.  

And of course all of you who are here today.

It is important to be here today, in a moment that may prove historical indeed. There is hope that these two days will move all present to work together to take concrete measures to end the genocide in Gaza and, hopefully, end the erasure of the Palestinians from what remains of Palestine—because this is the testing ground for a system where freedom, rights, and justice are made real for all. This hope, that people like me hold tight, is a discipline. A discipline we all should have.  

The occupied Palestinian territory today is a hellscape. In Gaza, Israel has dismantled even the last UN function—humanitarian aid—in order to deliberately starve, displace time and again, or kill a population they have marked for elimination. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, ethnic cleansing advances through unlawful siege, mass displacement, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, widespread torture. Across all areas under Israeli rule, Palestinians live under the terror of annihilation, broadcast in real time to a watching world. The very few Israeli people who stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid—while the majority openly cheers and calls for more—remind us that Israeli liberation, too, is inseparable from Palestinian freedom. 

The atrocities of the past 21 months are not a sudden aberration; they are the culmination of decades of policies to displace and replace the Palestinian people.  

Against this backdrop, it is inconceivable that political forums, from Brussels to NY, are still debating recognition of the State of Palestine—not because it’s unimportant, but because for 35 years states have stalled, refused recognition, pretending to “invest in the PA” while abandoning the Palestinian people to Israel’s relentless, rapacious territorial ambitions and unspeakable crimes. Meanwhile political discourse has reduced Palestine to a humanitarian crisis to manage in perpetuity rather than a political issue demanding principled and firm resolution: end permanent occupation, apartheid and today genocide. And it is not the law that has failed or faltered—it is political will that has abdicated. 

But today, we are also witnessing a rupture. Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation. Even if this is not fully reflected into political agendas (yet), a revolutionary shift is underway—one that, if sustained, will be remembered as a moment when history changed course.  

And this is why I came to this meeting with a sense of being at a historical turning point —discursively and politically.  

First, the narrative is shifting: away from Israel’s endlessly invoked “right to self-defence” and toward the long-denied Palestinian right to self-determination—systematically invisibilised, suppressed and delegitimised for decades. The weaponisation of antisemitism applied to Palestinian words, and narratives, and the dehumanising use of the terrorism framework for Palestinian action (from armed resistance to the work of NGOs pursuing justice in international arena), has led to a global political paralysis that has been intentional. It must be redressed. The time is now. 

Second, and consequentially, we are seeing the rise of a new multilateralism: principled, courageous, increasingly led by the Global Majority it pains me that I have yet to see this include European countries. As a European, I fear what the region and its institutions have come to symbolize to many: a sodality of states preaching international law yet guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vassals to the US empire, even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery and when it comes to Palestine: from silence to complicity. 

But the presence of European countries at this meeting shows that a different path is possible. To them I say: the Hague Group has the potential to signal not just a coalition, but a new moral center in world politics. Please, stand with them.  

Millions are watching—hoping—for leadership that can birth a new global order rooted in justice, humanity, and collective liberation. This is not just about Palestine. This is about all of us. 

Principled states must rise to this moment. It does not need to have a political allegiance, color, political party flags or ideologies: it needs to be upheld by basic human values. Those which Israel has been mercilessly crushing for 21 months now. 

Meanwhile I applaud the calling of this emergency conference in Bogota to address the unrelenting devastation in Gaza. So it is on this, that focus must be directed. The measures adopted in January by the Hague Group were symbolically powerful. It was the signal of the discursive and political shift needed. But they are the absolute bear minimum. I implore you to expand your commitment. And to turn that commitment into concrete actions, legislatively, judicially in each of your jurisdictions. And to consider first and foremost, what must we do to stop the genocidal onslaught. For Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, this question is existential. But it really is applicable to the humanity of all of us.  

In  this context my responsibility here is to recommend to you, uncompromisingly and dispassionately, the cure for the root cause. We are long past dealing with symptoms, the comfort zone of too many these days. And my words will show that what the Hague Group has committed to do and is considering expanding upon, is a small commitment towards what’s just and due based on your obligations under international law. 

Obligations, not sympathy, not charity. 

Each state immediately review and suspend all ties with Israel. Their military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic,  relations – both imports and exports –  and to make sure that their private sector, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities and other goods, and services providers in the supply chains do the same. Treating the occupation as business as usual translates into supporting or providing aid or assistance to the unlawful presence of Israel in the OPT. These ties must be terminated as a matter of urgency. I will have the opportunity to elaborate on  the technicalities and implications in our further sessions but lets be clear, I mean cutting ties with Israel as a whole. Cutting ties only with the “components” of it in the oPt is not an option. 

This is in line with the duty on all states stemming from the July 2024 Advisory Opinion which confirmed the illegality of Israel’s prolonged occupation, which it declared tantamount to racial segregation and apartheid . The General Assembly adopted that opinion. These findings are more than sufficient for action. Further, it is the state of Israel who is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, so it is the state that must be responsible for its wrongdoings. 

As I argue in my last report to the HRC, the Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation, and has now turned genocidal. It is impossible to disentangle Israel’s state policies and economy from its longstanding policies and economy of occupation. It has been inseparable for decades. The longer states and others stay engaged, the more this illegality at its heart is legitimised. This is the complicity. Now that economy has turned genocidal. There is no good Israel, bad Israel. 

I ask you to consider this moment as if we were sitting here in the 1990s, discussing the case of apartheid South Africa. Would you have proposed selective sanctions on SA for its conduct in individual Bantustans? Or would you have recognised the state’s criminal system as a whole? And here, what Israel is doing is worse. This comparison— is a legal and factual assessment supported by international legal proceedings many in this room are part of.  

This is what concrete measures mean. Negotiating with Israel on how to manage what remains of Gaza and West Bank, in Brussels or elsewhere, is an utter dishonor international law. 

And to the Palestinians and those from all corners of the world standing by them, often at great cost and sacrifice, I say whatever happens, Palestine will have written this tumultuous chapter—not as a footnote in the chronicles of would-be conquerors, but as the newest verse in a centuries-long saga of peoples who have risen against injustice, colonialism, and today more than ever neoliberal tyranny.

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Gaza “on the Brink of Mass Death” as Israel’s Months-Long Blockade Continues

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Gaza is “on the brink of mass death” and facing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, as Israel’s blockade continues for more than four months.

“We are on the brink of mass death due to the Israeli occupation’s closure of all border crossings for over 140 consecutive days, the prevention of humanitarian and relief aid, baby formula, and fuel from entering, the complete tightening of the blockade, the depletion of food and medicine, and the continuation of a deliberate starvation policy,” Gaza’s Government Media Office warned on Sunday.

It added, “The world watches silently as Gaza is slaughtered and exterminated through hunger and genocide.”

“We are witnessing the largest mass massacre in modern history.”

The Office said, “Gaza is heading toward an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe amid ongoing Israeli genocide through mass killing and starvation targeting more than 2.4 million people, including 1.1 million children, in the Gaza Strip.”

Starvation in Gaza has reached catastrophic and unprecedented levels, aid groups and officials have warned.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.”

He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned on Sunday, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, fuel, 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 Palestinians.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May 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.

Mass killings of aid seekers near and at 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 and American mercenaries. Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 900 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 6,000 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

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

The markets are empty of all basic needs, including flour and vegetables. For the majority of people, such luxuries are unavailable except at unimaginable prices.

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Over 40 Starving Gazans Killed by Israeli Forces While Seeking Food

By Countercurrents Collective

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Over 40 starving people were killed and dozens more injured on Sunday after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd seeking aid in northern Gaza, amid a months-long blockade that has left the enclave “on the verge of catastrophic hunger.”

Local and medical sources confirmed that 45 starving aid seekers were killed and more than 60 others injured while waiting for flour trucks to enter through the Zikim crossing.

Reports said the number is expected to rise.

Israeli forces targeted and killed the aid seekers as they were starving.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that the number of aid seekers killed by the Israeli army over the last two months has risen to more than 900, with 6,000 others injured.

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Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 130 people have been killed and 495 wounded in the past 24 hours.

That brings the death toll since the start of Israel’s war to 58,895 with 140,980 people also wounded.

Israeli political analyst Gideon Levy has accused the government of planning ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

“Someone conceived it, there were discussions of pros and cons, alternatives were suggested, options of total cleansing vs. stages, and all done in air-conditioned conference rooms with minutes taken and decisions made,” Levy wrote in an opinion piece on Israeli media outlet Haaretz.

“For the first time since the war of revenge in Gaza began, it’s clear that Israel has a plan – and it’s a far-reaching one.

“This is no longer a rolling war. One can no longer accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of waging a war with no purpose. There is a purpose to this war, and it’s a criminal one. One can no longer tell army commanders that their troops are dying for no reason: They are dying in a war of ethnic cleansing.”

The article refers to the Israeli army’s plan to forcibly transfer Gaza’s entire population to a concentration zone in the south.

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

What It Feels Like When You Die from Hunger: Gaza’s Starvation Crisis in Slow Motion

By Quds News Network

In Gaza’s emergency rooms, doctors now face a wave of patients suffering not from injury, but from hunger. The Ministry of Health confirmed that unprecedented numbers of people, from infants to the elderly, are arriving at hospitals in extreme exhaustion due to starvation.

The cause is not a drought or a natural disaster. It is the direct result of Israel’s full blockade, now in its 139th consecutive day. And the death toll is rising.

So far, 69 children have died from malnutrition. Another 620 patients have died due to the lack of food and medicine. Behind every number is a slow, painful process that strips the human body of life one stage at a time.

The Body’s Breakdown: A Four-Stage Collapse

Stage One: The Hunger Takes Over
In the first 48 hours without food, your body uses up its stored sugar (glycogen) from the liver and muscles. Hunger pangs hit hard. You feel anxious, irritable, and dizzy. Your stomach cramps. You may struggle to focus. Energy vanishes quickly, and even walking becomes a task. Children scream in discomfort or go silent from exhaustion.

Stage Two: Muscle Melts, Immunity Crumbles
After a few days, your body switches to survival mode. It starts breaking down fat into ketones for fuel. But when fat runs low, your muscles become the next target. You begin to lose strength. Your immune system weakens. Small infections grow dangerous. You feel cold, even when it’s hot. Simple tasks like standing or thinking become harder.

Stage Three: Your Organs Struggle to Keep Up
Now weeks in, your body is wasting away. You look skeletal. Your skin turns dry and brittle. Some parts of your body, like your belly or feet, may swell due to protein loss. Your heart rate drops. Your liver and kidneys slow down. Your mind becomes foggy. You may forget where you are. Some start hallucinating. You no longer recognize your own voice or the people around you.

Stage Four: The Final Shutdown
Eventually, your body gives up. You no longer feel hunger. Swallowing becomes impossible. You might fall unconscious or slip into a coma. Your organs (heart, lungs, liver) begin to fail. Death often comes quietly, not from hunger itself, but from a final, irreversible shutdown.

The Gaza Numbers That Should Alarm the World

In addition to the rising death toll, the Government Media Office in Gaza released staggering figures today:

  • 650,000 children are now at risk of dying from hunger and malnutrition.
  • 76,450 aid and fuel trucks have been blocked from entering Gaza in the past 139 days.
  • 42 charity kitchens and 57 aid centers have been directly targeted by Israeli forces.
  • 877 people have been killed near American-Israeli “aid centers.”
  • 12,500 cancer patients and 60,000 pregnant women are also facing starvation without access to treatment or food.

A Man-Made Famine, a Global Failure

Starvation is not just physical. It destroys dignity, memory, and hope. In Gaza, it comes with the added trauma of displacement, bombardment, and abandonment by the international community.

“This is not just a humanitarian crisis,” the Government Media Office stated. “It is a deliberate policy. And the governments who support Israel or remain silent are complicit.”

The office called for immediate global action: opening the crossings, lifting the siege, and allowing unrestricted humanitarian aid into Gaza before more lives are lost.

But as of today, the siege remains. And every passing hour brings Gaza closer to a famine that the world could stop, but hasn’t.

18  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

70 Killed in Gaza Since Dawn, Including 36 Seeking Aid, as Famine and Siege Deepen

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 70 starved Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Friday, including 36 people trying to collect humanitarian aid, according to medical sources in Gaza hospitals.

Al-Awda Hospital reported that nine Palestinians, including a baby and a child, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in southern Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Three more bodies of aid seekers were recovered near the Netzarim corridor, south of Gaza City, according to al-Shifa Hospital.

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[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1946440586317177112]

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1946457943957774760]

A separate Israeli strike hit an apartment near Al-Shaabiya intersection in Gaza City, injuring several civilians, Gaza emergency services confirmed.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said it holds enough food to feed the entire population of Gaza for more than three months. But the supplies remain stuck in warehouses, awaiting Israeli permission to enter.

Some of the food is stored in Al-Arish, Egypt, ready for distribution. UNRWA stressed that its logistics are in place, but it cannot operate unless the crossings open and the siege is lifted.

The agency renewed its call to allow aid entry, saying it is ready to fulfill its humanitarian duty and support the population, including one million children.

The Gaza Ministry of Health issued a grim warning in a statement, saying:

“A deadly famine and bloody massacres near aid centers are threatening thousands of lives.”

The ministry confirmed that the Strip is facing a “real famine,” marked by a severe shortage of basic food and a surge in malnutrition.

Health teams have recorded a sharp rise in hunger-related deaths and urged immediate international intervention, warning of an “unprecedented health and humanitarian disaster.”

The spokesman for Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said that all departments are full, and medical teams can no longer admit or treat new cases.

Gaza’s healthcare system is collapsing under Israel’s siege and repeated strikes. With famine spreading and aid blocked, the situation continues to spiral toward catastrophe.

 19 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Fragmenting a Nation: Israel’s Enduring Pursuit of Palestinian Disunity

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Israel is aggressively implementing plans to shape Palestine’s future and the broader region, sculpting its vision for the ‘day after’ its genocide in Gaza.

The latest, bizarre iteration of this strategy proposes fragmenting the occupied West Bank into so-called ’emirates,’ starting with the ’emirate of Hebron.’

This unexpected twist in Israel’s protracted search for alternative Palestinian leadership first surfaced in the staunchly pro-Israeli US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. It then quickly dominated all Israeli media.

The report details a letter from a person identified by the WSJ as “the leader of Hebron’s most influential clan.” Addressed to Nir Barakat, Jerusalem’s former Israeli mayor, the letter from Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari appeals for “cooperation with Israel” in the name of “co-existence.”

This “co-existence,” according to the “clan leader”, would materialize in the “Emirate of Hebron.” This “emirate” would “recognize the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” in exchange for reciprocal recognition of the “Emirate of Hebron as the Representative of the Arab residents in the Hebron District.”

The story may seem perplexing. This is because Palestinian discourse, regardless of geography or political affiliation, has never entertained such an absurd concept as united West Bank “emirates.”

Another element of absurdity is that Palestinian national identity and pride in their people’s unwavering resilience, especially in Gaza, are at an unprecedented apex. To float such clan-based alternatives to legitimate Palestinian leadership seems ill-conceived and is destined to fail.

Israel’s desperation is palpable. In Gaza, it cannot defeat Hamas and other Palestinian factions who have resisted the Israeli takeover of the Strip for 21 months. All attempts to engineer an alternative Palestinian leadership there have utterly collapsed.

This failure has compelled Israel to arm and fund a criminal gang that operated before October 7, 2023, in Gaza. This gang functions under the command of Yasser Abu Shabab.

The gang has been implicated in a litany of violent activities. These include hijacking humanitarian aid to perpetuate famine in Gaza and orchestrating violence associated with aid distribution, among other egregious crimes.

Like the clan leader of Hebron, the Abu Shabab criminal gang possesses no legitimacy and no public support among Palestinians. But why would Israel resort to such disreputable figures when the Palestinian Authority (PA), already engaged in “security coordination” with Israel in the West Bank, is ostensibly willing to comply?

The answer lies in the current Israeli extremist government’s adamant refusal to acknowledge Palestinians as a nation. Thus, even a collaborating Palestinian nationalist entity would be deemed problematic from an Israeli perspective.

While Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is not the first Israeli leadership to explore clan-based alternatives among Palestinians, the Israeli prime minister and his extremist allies are exceptionally determined to dismantle any Palestinian claim to nationhood. This was explicitly stated by extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He famously declared in Paris, in March 2023, that a Palestinian nation is an “invention.”

Thus, despite the PA’s willingness to cooperate with Israel in controlling Gaza, Israel remains apprehensive. Empowering the PA as a nationalist model fundamentally contravenes Israel’s overarching objectives of denying the Palestinian people their very claim to nationhood and, consequently, statehood and sovereignty.

Though Israel has consistently failed to establish and sustain its own alternative Palestinian leadership, its repeated efforts have invariably proven disruptive and violent.

Prior to the Nakba of 1948, the Zionist movement, alongside British authorities colonizing Palestine, heavily invested in undermining the Arab Higher Committee, a nationalist body comprising several political parties. They achieved this by empowering collaborating clans, hoping to dilute the Palestinian nationalist movement.

When Israel occupied the remainder of historic Palestine in 1967, it reverted to the same divide-and-conquer tactics. For instance, it established a Palestinian police force directly commanded by Israeli military administrations, in addition to creating an underground network of collaborators.

Following the overwhelming victory of nationalist candidates in the 1976 elections in occupied Palestine, Israel responded by cracking down on PLO-affiliated politicians, arresting, deporting, and assassinating some.

Two years later, in 1978, it launched its ‘Village Leagues’ project. It hand-picked compliant traditional figures, designating them as the legitimate representatives of Palestinians.

These individuals, armed, protected and financed by the Israeli occupation army, were positioned to represent their respective clans in Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Gaza and elsewhere.

Palestinians immediately denounced them as collaborators. They were widely boycotted and socially ostracized. 

Eventually, it became evident that Israel had no alternative but to engage directly with the PLO. This culminated in the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the subsequent formation of the PA.

The fundamental problem, however, persisted: the PA’s insistence on a Palestinian state remains anathema to an Israel that has shifted dramatically to the right.

This explains the Netanyahu’s government’s unwavering insistence that the PA has no role in Gaza in any ‘day after’ scenario. While the PA could serve Israel’s interest in containing the rebellious Strip, such a triumph would inevitably recenter the discussion of a Palestinian state—a concept repugnant to most Israelis.

There is no doubt that neither the Abu Shabab gang nor the Hebron emirate will govern Palestinians, either in Gaza or the West Bank. Israel’s insistence on fabricating these alternatives, however, underscores its historic determination to deny Palestinians any sense of nationhood.

Israel’s persistent fantasies of control invariably fail. Despite their profound wounds, Palestinians are more unified than ever, their collective identity and nationhood hardened by relentless resistance and countless sacrifices.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

17 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Shackled and Unbowed: How Georges Ibrahim Abdallah Became A Universal Emblem of Resistance

By Rima Najjar

Four Decades of Zionist–US Containment, Transnational Solidarity, and the Unwritten Epilogue in Lebanon

Caption: Top:People march towards Lannemezan prison to call for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Oct 26 2024. Bottom: A poster reading “Freedom for Georges Abdallah” outside the prison.

If you don’t know who Georges Abdallah is, you’re unfamiliar with one of the world’s longest-held political prisoners — a defiant symbol standing at the crossroads of Palestinian liberation and the sprawling machinery of Zionist–U.S. influence where “anti-terror” laws are weaponized.

Who is this Man?

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is a Lebanese Christian militant and founding leader of the Marxist-Leninist Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF). Arrested in France in 1984 and convicted in 1987 for the 1982 assassinations of a U.S. military attaché and an Israeli diplomat in Paris, he was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 with a minimum term of 15 years, and has now served 41 years behind bars. He completed the required minimum portion of his sentence in 1999 but has been kept imprisoned for 26 years beyond that term, making him one of Europe’s longest-held political prisoners.

Originally a Christian militant fighting for a predominantly Muslim cause, Abdallah defies sectarian categories. In prison, his identity has been reshaped by movements as varied as the Gaza Great March of Return and the French Yellow Vests, reflecting solidarity that crosses religious, national, and class lines.

Like Nelson Mandela, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Angela Davis, Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has become emblematic of resistance far beyond the confines of their incarceration. Their cases illuminate the political nature of imprisonment when state power seeks to suppress movements for justice, sovereignty, or liberation. Abdallah’s prolonged captivity aligns with these figures whose imprisonment catalyzed broader struggles: Mandela’s moral authority, Abu-Jamal’s critique of racial injustice, Davis’s abolitionist vision, and Sa’adat’s and Barghouti’s embodiment of Palestinian resistance all reflect how the prison cell can become a platform for defiance and a symbol of collective resolve.

Zionist–US Containment and Transnational Repression

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s decades-long detention in France exemplifies how Zionism’s security doctrine operates transnationally, extending its reach beyond Israeli borders to suppress Palestinian resistance through legal, diplomatic, and security networks. This doctrine mobilizes allied states to criminalize dissent, neutralize activists, and insulate Zionist interests from challenges abroad.

From the earliest stages of his trial, Abdallah’s fate was sealed by U.S. intervention. The Reagan administration, keen to delegitimize Palestinian armed struggle, petitioned to join the French proceedings as a civil party, effectively outsourcing Israel’s security concerns to American hands. Behind closed doors, U.S. diplomats warned of “retaliatory measures” against American and Israeli interests if France showed leniency. This alliance ensured that every glimpse of judicial relief — parole hearings in 1999, a release order in 2003, conditional rulings in 2013 and 2023 — was met with immediate appeals from anti-terror prosecutors, muted by the specter of U.S. pressure.

France’s adoption of “recidivism” statutes in 2008, the repeated executive vetoes on deportation orders, and the endless legal gamesmanship illustrate how Zionist–U.S. methods of control mimic Israel’s own domestic containment strategies — administrative detention, exile requirements, and the criminalization of thought. By treating Abdallah’s unyielding Marxist-Arabist convictions as proof of perpetual danger, these Western partners have turned the French judicial system into an extension of Israel’s counter-insurgency toolkit, criminalizing solidarity and dissent under the rubric of “anti-terrorism.”

This containment apparatus reaches far beyond Abdallah himself. In Toulouse, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra was dissolved in 2022 for “apology of terrorism,” its members raided and bank accounts frozen. In Paris, planned rallies are banned, banners confiscated, demonstrators dispersed under CRS threat. Even student activists bearing simple signs at Sciences Po Toulouse found themselves hauled into court and threatened with prison. Across Europe — in Girona, Hamburg, Berlin — plain-clothes officers shadow, photograph, and intimidate anyone daring to invoke “Liberté pour Abdallah.” These crackdowns mirror Israel’s crackdown on international solidarity with Gaza, showing how legal repression is exported in tandem with military hardware and surveillance technologies.

Abdallah’s case has mobilized leftist movements across continents, yet each act of solidarity provokes escalated containment, revealing the exportation of Israel’s counterinsurgency blueprint into European jurisdictions. What emerges is not merely a national case of political imprisonment, but a study in how Zionist geopolitics weaponizes allied legal systems to silence Palestinian advocacy worldwide. Abdallah’s continued detention thus serves as a prism through which we can examine the architecture of extraterritorial repression — a doctrine designed not only to confine a single revolutionary, but to stifle the possibilities of global dissent.

Transnational Solidarity: A Counterweight to Repression

Yet from this sustained pressure has emerged an equally transnational solidarity. Abdallah’s name now adorns protests from the Basque Country to Beirut, from the South African Students Congress to Latin American decolonial seminars. Human-rights groups in France, Jewish peace activists in Montréal, and Arab networks from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur have woven his struggle into a tapestry of anti-colonial resistance. His decades in Lannemezan inspired clandestine communiqués linking European underground movements — Action Directe, Red Brigades, GRAPO — with Palestinian detainees, forging bonds that outlasted prison bars.

This dialectic of containment and solidarity has reshaped global politics. On one hand, it has normalized ever-stricter “anti-terror” laws — banning speech, dissolving organizations, erasing the line between protest and violence. On the other, it has taught a new generation to see beyond the Israeli–Palestinian theater, recognizing how security pacts, tech transfers, and lobbying networks erect barriers to all forms of dissent. In this crucible, Abdallah transcends his Marxist and Arab-nationalist origins to become a universal emblem against state overreach.

Each denial of parole, each suspended release order, each political veto is an index of how Israel and Washington project their security doctrine across borders. His story is not simply one of a lone revolutionary; it is the story of how global alliances, legal architectures, and diplomatic pressures have conspired to contain a symbol rather than to resolve a conflict.

Legal and Political Obstacles

On July 17, 2025, the Paris Appeals Court ruled for his conditional release after nearly 41 years, on the proviso he leave French territory. The U.S. Department of Justice and France’s general prosecutor have signaled further appeals, maintaining that his release poses risks to U.S. diplomats and regional stability. This happened after multiple legal and political interventions that prevented Abdallah’s release, from his parole eligibility through to the recent 2025 ruling.

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s path to release has been obstructed for over two decades by a series of legal setbacks and political interventions, despite repeated findings that he met the basic criteria for parole. In 1999, Abdallah became eligible under French law, and by 2003, a provincial court authorized his release — provided he leave France. This order was immediately suspended following a prosecutorial appeal. Concerns over diplomatic fallout and the optics of freeing a convicted militant further shaped the state’s resistance throughout the mid-2000s; in 2005 and 2006, authorities explicitly warned that Abdallah’s release would harm France’s standing with U.S. allies and doubted that deportation would prevent him from resuming activism.

His seventh parole request in 2007 was denied after protracted deliberation, and although an eighth request was approved in 2013, it too was suspended under pressure from France’s anti-terror prosecutors. In 2014, a ninth request was rejected over Abdallah’s refusal to provide proof of compensation to victims’ families, a condition that became central to future rulings. In November 2023, a French court again ruled for conditional release, citing exile as a sufficient safeguard, but the decision was frozen pending appeals that emphasized Abdallah’s unrepentant political stance.

The debate intensified in February 2025, when a Paris court demanded further evidence of financial compensation. Although Abdallah’s lawyer cited a €16,000 prison deposit intended for the families of the slain diplomats, prosecutors questioned both its origin and sufficiency. These concerns stalled progress until July 17, 2025, when the Paris Appeals Court finally ordered his conditional release after 41 years — again contingent on his departure from French territory. The U.S. Department of Justice and France’s general prosecutor swiftly signaled further appeals, citing ongoing risks to diplomatic security and regional stability. Abdallah’s release, while judicially authorized, remains politically fragile and legally contested.

Abdallah’s hoped-for release, even with a favorable court ruling, faces a dense network of diplomatic, security, and political obstacles. U.S. officials pressure Lebanon to avoid involvement, linking cooperation to aid and security deals. Israel lobbies against Abdallah’s return, citing national security concerns, while France’s anti-terror prosecutor may challenge the release through legal appeals. Lebanon itself, caught between Western alliances and Hezbollah’s influence, may hesitate to act decisively, fearing international fallout or internal discord. Additional hurdles — ranging from unmet legal conditions to complex transfer logistics — further complicate the process. Together, these forces create a layered blockade that risks converting judicial approval into symbolic rather than substantive liberation. As Che Guevara noted, a struggle’s legacy hinges not on its inception but on how it concludes.

Abdallah’s Legacy

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s legacy inside French prisons exceeds the mere endurance of a life sentence — it charts an expansive, insurgent form of solidarity that defies isolation. His writings, often smuggled to revolutionary journals and republished in mainstream outlets, marked a deliberate departure from the confines of party affiliation toward a more universal front: anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and uncompromising in its opposition to state-sponsored violence.

His gestures of collective defiance were not limited to the page. In 2019, Abdallah joined Basque, Corsican, and Arab inmates in a rare cross-national protest action — refusing lunch trays in solidarity with Palestinian hunger-striker Bilal Kayed. It was, as prison solidarity sites noted, one of few coordinated inmate demonstrations inside French jails, demonstrating Abdallah’s ability to inspire relational resistance across linguistic, ethnic, and ideological divides. In 2023, amid Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza, a Lebanese delegation delivered an official message to Hamas demanding Abdallah’s inclusion in any future prisoner-exchange deal — an assertion of his symbolic stature within Arab liberation circles that transcends both borders and decades.

Yet his resistance often took creative, sardonic, and intimate forms: origami doves folded from prison laundry tags and distributed as tokens of welcome to new inmates; percussion instruments smuggled in for an improvised birthday drum-circle, later photographed and shared on international solidarity feeds. Inmates recall quips that captured his dark humor, “the bars are imaginary, our walls do the real work”, while underground newsletters report he once presided over a mock trial in the prison yard, chalk in hand, meting out satirical justice to the warden for denying recreational time.

Despite over four decades of confinement, Abdallah’s record remains, paradoxically, “irreproachable,” according to French courts: no solitary confinement, no violent infractions. And yet, release continues to stall.

In February 2025, prosecutors challenged a €16,000 deposit meant to compensate families of the assassinated diplomats, citing its murky provenance. Judges leaned on this unresolved financial dispute to suspend conditional-release rulings, echoing years of political interference. Palestinian solidarity network Samidoun recounts how U.S. officials privately pressured France to keep him locked up so “no one catches the revolutionary disease” — a phrase that Arabic blogs proudly recycled as a sardonic badge of honor, dubbing Abdallah “the genie of revolt.”

That genie, if anything, has multiplied — not through escape, but through acts of imaginative and militant presence. Abdallah remains not just a prisoner but a connective thread between movements, a quiet architect of transnational resistance whose wit disarms and whose legacy endures far beyond the prison yard.

Media Coverage

The media coverage of his possible release is also telling. Across Lebanon and the wider Arab world, the airwaves have treated Abdallah’s impending release as a repudiation of colonial-era injustices and Western “anti-terror” overreach. State networks like Al-Manar celebrated “Freedom at Last,” casting his decades in French prisons as proof that sustained Palestinian and Arab solidarity can crack the façade of Zionist–U.S. hegemony. Pan-Arab satellite channels have looped footage of mass rallies from Beirut to Cairo, while call-in programs buzz with voices hailing his vindication as a collective triumph over political incarceration.

In France, the United States, and much of Europe, coverage has been conspicuously procedural — an almost clinical account of appeals court rulings and exile conditions that obscures the deeper power plays at work. BFM TV and France 24 dutifully summarize the Paris court’s decision, noting only that Abdallah must depart French territory. American outlets from Reuters to USA Today foreground Department of Justice warnings about threats to U.S. diplomats and remind readers that eight previous parole bids fell victim to “anti-terror” statutes. This neutral, juridical framing mirrors how Western governments have weaponized legalities to contain dissent and curry favor with Israeli security interests.

Elsewhere — in major African and Australian press — the story barely registers beyond wire-service briefs, reflecting a manufactured apathy toward struggles that challenge entrenched power structures. Only niche campus bulletins and solidarity newsletters in South Africa and Australia have amplified Abdallah’s cause, underscoring how selective coverage and geopolitical convenience conspire to erase inconvenient narratives from mainstream discourse.

By contrast, Israeli outlets such as The Times of Israel and Ynet cast Abdallah strictly as an unrepentant terrorist, their headlines warning that his return could embolden Iran-backed militias on the northern border. Security analysts quoted by these papers frame his release as a dangerous precedent, revealing how Zionist-aligned media channels wield fear to justify perpetual detention and extend Israel’s domestic containment tactics onto foreign soil.

Lebanon’s Role

Successive Lebanese administrations have treated Abdallah’s case with studied indifference: despite his unqualified Lebanese citizenship, no government has ever formally petitioned Paris for his repatriation. By refusing to activate the bilateral transfer agreements that France requires, Beirut has signaled its unwillingness to antagonize its primary patrons in Washington and Brussels, trading solidarity with a veteran of the Palestinian struggle for continued financial aid and diplomatic cover. At home, pro-Hezbollah and Lebanese Communist Party deputies have tabled parliamentary motions and staged sit-ins demanding his return, but each cabinet — from Hariri’s Sunni-led coalitions to the stalemated unity governments — has declined to align state policy with those demands. In practice, Beirut’s reticence served the political currents of Western leverage and internal sectarian balancing, sacrificing a potent symbol of anti-imperialist resistance to preserve fragile alliances and stave off deeper domestic fissures.

But behind the high-stakes legal wrangling and diplomatic vetoes lies a man whose days in Lannemezan have been marked by small, courageous acts that speak to his character: staging a days-long hunger strike to protest another inmate’s mistreatment, folding dozens of origami doves out of prison-laundered tags as symbols of hope, and smuggling handwritten poems in the margins of library books — all under constant threat of solitary confinement. These gestures of solidarity and defiance offer a window into the serious risks Abdallah has willingly shouldered, reminding us that his story is as much about the human will to resist as it is about geopolitics.

Conclusion

Che Guevara’s assertion that a struggle is measured by its conclusion rather than its inception provides a compelling lens through which to view Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s decades-long resistance. While Abdallah emerged from the chaos of Lebanon’s civil war as a determined fedayee, the defining feature of his legacy lies not in his militant origins but in his prolonged defiance within the confines of French imprisonment. Refusing to barter his release through ideological compromise, he has embodied Guevara’s archetype of principled resistance.

Yet his unfinished struggle poses unresolved questions about what constitutes victory. If Abdallah is eventually freed, the conditions and symbolism of that release will determine whether he is remembered as an uncompromising revolutionary or as a figure whose cause was eclipsed by geopolitical paralysis. The final chapter, not the first, will ultimately define his legacy.

Here is how I imagine the beginning of that final chapter:

The moment Abdallah steps off the plane at Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, the air will crackle with emotion. Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of supporters will line the tarmac: veterans of the Lebanese Communist Party and Hezbollah delegations standing shoulder-to-shoulder with young activists draped in Palestinian keffiyehs. As the crowd breaks into a spontaneous chant of “Abo Danny,” his first steps onto Lebanese soil will be a balm for families who’ve wept for him in exile, and a vindication for decades of tireless solidarity work.

On a personal level, Abdallah will be frail — his gait slowed by forty years in prison, his voice raspy from days spent shouting slogans through cell bars. Yet when he embraces elderly comrades and greets children whose parents once organized his defense, you’ll see in his eyes a mix of relief and steely resolve. Expect him to slip away from the official platform for a private reunion with cousins in Zahle or Chateau Ksara, savoring home-cooked labneh and freshly baked man’oushe — small pleasures denied to him for too long.

Politically, Abdallah will tread a careful line. In a staged press conference under cedar-tree banners, he’ll express gratitude to those who battled for his freedom, but he’ll also issue a sober call for unity — warning Lebanon’s fractured parties that regional crises demand solidarity over sectarian squabbling. He may visit Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, laying a wreath at the monument for fedayeen fighters, and deliver an impassioned appeal for renewed Palestinian self-determination. International media crews will swarm him there — contrasting his grassroots welcome with Beirut’s cool official response, as successive cabinets downplay any state-level accolades to avoid upsetting Western backers.

In the weeks that follow, Abdallah could spearhead a new “Committee for Political Prisoners,” drawing together families of detainees from Syria, Iran, Turkey, and beyond. He’ll offer counsel to younger activists — teaching them how to navigate courtrooms and international tribunals as he once did. But true to his lifelong ethos, he’ll refuse any formal office, insisting instead on being a living bridge between past struggles and the next generation’s fight against imperialism. In that dual role — elder statesman and humble grand-uncle — Georges Abdallah will transform from captive icon into active catalyst, reminding Lebanon and the world that the end of one sentence can spark the beginning of a broader struggle for justice.

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.

18 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org