‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 318:
Gazans given new evacuation orders as Netanyahu insists on additional ceasefire conditions
Antony Blinken arrives in the region to push for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers commit a new pogrom east of Qalqilya as Israeli forces ramp up raids on Jenin and Nablus.
By Qassam Muaddi, August 19, 2024
Casualties
· 40,139 + killed* and at least 92,743 wounded in the Gaza Strip. The identities of 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly, as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
· 632+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes 140 children.**
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
· 693 Israeli soldiers and officers have been recognized as killed, and 4096 as wounded by the Israeli army, since October 7.***
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on August 15, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of August 15.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
U.S. Parole Commission Denies Leonard Peltier’s Request for Freedom; President Biden Should Grant Clemency
In response to the U.S. Parole Commission denying Leonard Peltier’s request for parole after a hearing on June 10, Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, made the following statement:
“Continuing to keep Leonard Peltier locked behind bars is a human rights travesty. President Biden should grant him clemency and release him immediately. Not only are there ongoing, unresolved concerns about the fairness of his trial, he has spent nearly 50 years in prison, is approaching 80 years old, and suffers from several chronic health problems.
“Leonard Peltier has been incarcerated for far too long. The parole commission should have granted him the freedom to spend his remaining years in his community and surrounded by loved ones.
“No one should be imprisoned after a trial riddled with uncertainty about its fairness. We are now calling on President Biden, once again, to grant Leonard Peltier clemency on humanitarian grounds and as a matter of mercy and justice.”
Background
· Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of the murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He has always maintained his innocence. Amnesty International joins Tribal Nations, Tribal Leaders, Members of Congress, former FBI agents, Nobel Peace Prize winners and former U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, whose office handled Peltier’s prosecution and appeal, in urging his release.
· Parole was also rejected at Peltier’s last hearing in 2009. Due to his age, this was likely the last opportunity for parole.
· A clemency request is pending before President Joe Biden. President Biden has committed opens in a new tab to grant clemency/commutation of sentences on a rolling basis rather than at the end of his term, following a review of requests by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice.
Amnesty International has examined Peltier’s case extensively for many years, sent observers to his trial in 1977, and long campaigned on his behalf. Most recently, Amnesty International USA sent a letter to the U.S. Parole Commission urging the commission to grant him parole.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/u-s-parole-commission-denies-leonard-peltiers-request-for-freedom-president-biden-should-grant-clemency/
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Daniel Hale UPDATE:
In February Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale was transferred from the oppressive maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois to house confinement. We celebrate his release from Marion. He is laying low right now, recovering from nearly 3 years in prison. Thank goodness he is now being held under much more humane conditions and expected to complete his sentence in July of this year. www.StandWithDaniel Hale.org
More Info about Daniel:
“Drone Whistleblower Subjected To Harsh Confinement Finally Released From Prison”
https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/
“I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?” by Daniel Hale
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Gaza Cease-Fire Negotiators Meet Amid Threat of Wider Conflict
By Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon reporting from Jerusalem, August 15, 2024
Mourning over the body of a Palestinian killed in an airstrike, in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Monday. Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mediators and Israeli negotiators were meeting in Qatar on Thursday for a high-stakes push to end the war in Gaza, where tens of thousands have died, as the Middle East braced for an anticipated retaliation against Israel by Iran and its allies that could ignite a broader armed conflict.
The Biden administration and its allies called for the meeting last week, in the hope that making progress toward a Gaza cease-fire might avert or curb the expected Iranian-led reprisals for the recent assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander.
But Hamas was not participating in the meeting on Thursday, and it remained at odds with Israel over the details of a proposed framework for a truce being advanced by the mediators, Egypt and Qatar. Under the three-stage proposal, Hamas would gradually free the remaining hostages in Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel.
International pressure had already been rising for months for some kind of deal that would end the suffering in Gaza and allow for the release of hostages held in the enclave. The Gazan Health Ministry reported on Thursday that the Palestinian death toll in the war had surpassed 40,000. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
But prospects for a breakthrough still appear remote, leaving the Middle East facing a precarious moment. The United States has sent stealth fighter jets, a carrier group and a guided-missile submarine to the region in anticipation of an Iranian-led attack.
Israel and Hamas have been holding indirect negotiations on and off for months and are still deadlocked over numerous issues, including who would control the Gazan side of the enclave’s border with Egypt and how Israel could prevent armed Hamas fighters from returning to northern Gaza, which has been largely depopulated during the war.
In recent weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has toughened his country’s stance on several points. Hamas announced earlier this week that it would not participate in Thursday’s talks, though Hamas has told mediators it was open to consulting afterward should Israel present a serious response to its latest offer from early July, according to two officials familiar with the talks.
Hamas officials have said Mr. Netanyahu’s government is not genuinely interested in reaching a cease-fire, pointing to the assassination of Mr. Haniyeh in Tehran and the prime minister’s decision to introduce new conditions in recent weeks. “Hamas believes the Israeli occupation is trying to buy time with more negotiations,” said Ibrahim al-Madhoun, an Istanbul-based analyst close to Hamas.
In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition allies continue to insist that Israel rule Gaza indefinitely, and they have already denounced the latest Israeli proposal as tantamount to surrender, vowing to oppose it. If Mr. Netanyahu moves ahead with the deal, his governing coalition could splinter, potentially ending his political career.
Mr. Netanyahu himself has equivocated on the cease-fire deal, saying he supports the three-stage proposal even as he repeatedly promises the Israeli public an “absolute victory” over Hamas. Relatives of hostages held in Gaza have argued that the prime minister has prioritized his hold on power over signing a deal to free their loved ones.
Yaron Blum, a former Israeli security official who previously led the country’s effort to bring home hostages, said the meeting on Thursday — even if successful — would be just the start of a protracted process of hashing out the details of a deal. But if the talks go poorly, the region could descend into a wider confrontation, he said.
“If everyone doesn’t work in the coming days until white smoke comes out, I don’t see it coming together going forward,” said Mr. Blum. “But there’s still a chance now, because every side realizes that they need to advance.”
A White House spokesman, John Kirby, said on Thursday morning the talks had resumed and that officials from Egypt and Qatar were in contact with Hamas officials. He said the United States expects talks to continue on Friday.
Mr. Kirby said the American delegation was led by the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, and President Biden’s Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk.
Israel’s delegation is being led by the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea. The other principals in the talks are the head of Egyptian intelligence, Abbas Kamel, and Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, one of officials familiar with the talks said.
The stakes at the talks are particularly high for the families of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Over 40 of the 115 hostages are now presumed dead, according to the Israeli authorities.
“Every second there are hostages held in captivity is a severe risk to their lives,” said Jon Polin, the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, one of eight Israeli-American hostages. Three of them have been declared dead by the Israeli authorities.
In Gaza, most of the enclave’s more than two million people have been displaced, many repeatedly, and are living in tents or temporary lodgings. Finding enough food and safe drinking water is often a daily struggle, and swaths of the coastal enclave have been reduced to rubble.
Anas al-Tayeb, who lives in Jabaliya, just outside of Gaza City, said many there rejoiced in July, the last time mediators said cease-fire talks were progressing. But just a few days later, the Israeli military again stormed neighborhoods in Gaza City.
Mr. al-Tayeb said Israel and Hamas were both responsible for the failure to reach a deal. He wondered why Hamas had declined to accept any of the previous Israeli cease-fire proposals, which have broadly adhered to the three-stage framework.
“Those same conditions were offered before in previous rounds of negotiations,” said Mr. al-Tayeb. “So why didn’t they take it then?”
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Hersh’s mother, said she believed it was time for everyone to agree to a “true compromise.”
“Not everyone is going to agree,” she said. “But everyone has interests and everyone gets a little bit of the interests they’re looking for. Let’s make that happen and move forward.”
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Abbas tells Turkey’s Parliament that he intends to visit Gaza, and other news.
· The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to visit the Gaza Strip “even if it costs my life,” using a speech to Turkey’s Parliament on Thursday to renew criticism of Israel. It was not immediately clear whether such a visit was feasible, and Mr. Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has not been to the enclave since Hamas seized power there in 2007. Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Mr. Abbas, who was wrapping up a two-day visit to Turkey, received a standing ovation from lawmakers. Both he and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a harsh critic of Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza, entered the chamber wearing scarves bearing the Palestinian and Turkish flags.
· More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, including women and children, the Gazan Health Ministry said on Thursday. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said hours later that the Israeli military had killed more than 17,000 combatants in the enclave since the war’s start, but he did not say how the military had arrived at that number, or how it had distinguished combatants from civilians. Critics of the war contend that Israel is too quick to identify any man killed as a fighter. Israel has previously said that it has killed some 14,000 of Hamas’s estimated 25,000 fighters.
· Marking 100 days since the Israeli closure of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, the Gaza government press office said at a news conference on Thursday that the closure had severely hurt Gaza’s health care system. The closure is preventing the entry of medical supplies and aid, and blocking critically ill patients from receiving necessary treatment abroad, a spokesman for the office said. The office estimated that more than 1,000 people had died because they could not leave through the crossing in southern Gaza. The Israeli military seized the crossing when it moved into the city of Rafah in May, calling it an important step in reducing Hamas’s control over the territory.
· Dozens of Israeli civilians illegally entered the military-run Erez border crossing with northern Gaza early Thursday morning, leading to several arrests, the Israeli military said. At least some of those detained belonged to Onward to Gaza, a group of far-right activists who hope to rebuild Jewish settlements in Gaza, according to their attorneys. Some right-wing Israelis, including senior government ministers and coalition lawmakers, have called for Israel to rule Gaza indefinitely and populate it with its own citizens.
· The United States imposed new sanctions on Thursday intended to cut off financing to Iranian-backed militias. The measures targeted several companies, individuals and vessels involved in shipping Iranian commodities to finance its proxy groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, the U.S. Treasury said. The Houthis have been targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea since last year in allegiance with Hamas, also an Iranian proxy, disrupting global shipping. Hezbollah has launched strikes into northern Israel for the same reason.
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2) A new Israeli settlement in the West Bank will encroach on a World Heritage Site, activists say.
By Ephrat Livni, August 15, 2024
Battir, a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Credit...Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A new Israeli settlement planned for construction in the occupied West Bank will encroach on Palestinian land recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage site, Israeli peace activists say.
Much of the international community views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, and many were established illegally under Israeli law, but tolerated by the government.
Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister and a settler himself, gave preliminary approval to the new settlement, Nahal Heletz, in June, and the country’s planning authorities signed off on it on Wednesday.
But the area designated for the settlement was much bigger than what was shown in a plan the government published in July, according to an Israeli advocacy group, Peace Now, which closely tracks settlements. The new plan claims over 150 acres rather than the 30 acres announced previously, and all of it is on UNESCO-designated territory, the group said.
Mr. Smotrich, who is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, has pushed for measures that would expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank in exchange for the release of funds withheld from the Palestinian Authority, which partly administers the territory.
Peace Now accused Mr. Smotrich of disregarding the UNESCO Convention in a statement on Wednesday. Israel is a party to the World Heritage Convention, though it left UNESCO in 2019, accusing the multilateral organization of trying to minimize Jewish ties to the land of Israel. It also objected to the organization’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011.
Peace Now said that the Israeli authorities were accelerating new claims over West Bank land in an effort to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Tor Wennesland, the United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in June that signs of expedited settlement expansion — and the retroactive legalization of West Bank outposts initially established in violation of Israeli law — undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
That is one of Mr. Smotrich’s stated goals. In a post on social media on Wednesday about the newly approved settlement, he said he wold continue to fight what he called “the dangerous idea” of establishing a Palestinian state.
The territory being claimed for the Nahal Heletz settlement is adjacent to the West Bank village of Battir and encroaches on its surrounding area, which UNESCO has designated a World Heritage site because of its terraced farming, irrigation system and architecture, according to the agency’s website.
The World Heritage Convention is the most widely accepted international conservation treaty. There are nine World Heritage sites in Israel.
“UNESCO is closely following the state of conservation of the World Heritage property,” the UNESCO World Heritage Center said in a statement in response to a query about the planned new settlement.
Last month, the governing body of the organization took note “with concern of the reports of ongoing illegal constructions, settlements and other developments within the property and its buffer zone” and asked “all parties to avoid any action that would cause damage to the property.”
In July, the International Court of Justice issued a nonbinding advisory opinion declaring that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its settlements there, violated international law. The court called for Israel’s presence in the territories to end “as rapidly as possible” and said that Israel was obligated to provide full reparations for the damage it had caused. Mr. Netanyahu dismissed the opinion as “absurd” in posts on social media, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”
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3) Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Will Resume Next Week, Officials Say
By Aaron Boxerman and James C. McKinley Jr., August 16, 2024
Palestinian women and children receiving food aid in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, on Wednesday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United States, Egypt and Qatar said on Friday that cease-fire talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza would continue next week in Cairo, as mediators raced to make progress toward a truce they hoped would help avert a wider regional conflagration.
The announcement came after top American, Israeli, Egyptian, and Qatari officials ended two days of talks in Doha, Qatar, as mediators try to bridge remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas. U.S. and regional officials hope that movement in the negotiations would blunt or stop a widely anticipated Iranian-led retaliation for the assassination of senior leaders in Hamas and Hezbollah, both backed by Iran.
During the talks, the United States said it had presented a proposal — backed by Egypt and Qatar, the main mediators — that narrows the gaps between Israel and Hamas on reaching a cease-fire. Details of the proposal were not immediately known. In a joint statement, all three governments characterized the meetings as “serious, constructive and conducted in a positive atmosphere.”
“This proposal builds on areas of agreement over the past week, and bridges remaining gaps in the manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal,” the three countries said. “Working teams will continue technical work over the coming days on the details of implementation.”
Senior officials will again convene before the end of next week in Cairo in the hopes of reaching an agreement based on the terms laid out in Qatar, the statement said. In the meantime, lower-ranking officials would continue to hammer out technical details on how the cease-fire proposal would be implemented, they added.
There was no immediate comment from Israeli or Hamas officials on whether they will participate in the talks in Cairo.
Hamas officials, who have accused the Israeli government of bargaining in bad faith, did not participate directly in the talks in Doha have signaled a willingness to consider new proposals from the Israelis.
The talks have taken on heightened significance as the region braces for an expected retaliation against Israel from Iran and Hezbollah after the recent assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in Tehran, and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander, in a Beirut suburb. The United States has deployed additional combat aircraft and warships to the region, and dispatched a guided-missile submarine, underscoring the gravity of the likely repercussions of any attack on Israel.
A cease-fire deal for Gaza, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern diplomats, could help persuade Iran to rein in its response and reduce the likelihood of a broader conflict.
International pressure has been rising for months for some kind of deal to end the suffering in Gaza and allow for the release of hostages. The Gazan Health Ministry reported on Thursday that the Palestinian death toll in the war had surpassed 40,000. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. On the same day, the Israeli military said that it had killed more than 17,000 combatants over the course of the war.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Israel further shrinks Gaza’s ‘humanitarian zone,’ and other news.
· The Israeli military called for more evacuations from the “humanitarian zone” it has designated for civilians in southern Gaza, distributing fliers calling for people to leave parts of Khan Younis and Deir al Balah. The military’s announcement on Friday in effect further shrinks a zone that by last month had already been reduced in size by more than a fifth. Israel said the evacuation orders followed rocket fire from those areas and what it described as resumed terrorist activity. The Israeli military has characterized the already overcrowded humanitarian zone as safer than other parts of Gaza, but has made clear that it will go after Hamas anywhere it believes it has a presence.
· Israel’s foreign minister called on allies to join in attacking Iran if Tehran conducts a retaliatory strike. “The right way to deter Iran and prevent war is by announcing that if Iran attacks, they will stand with Israel not only in defense but also in striking targets in Iran,” the foreign minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on Friday after meeting with his counterparts, David Lammy of Britain and Stéphane Séjourné of France. The French and British diplomats did not immediately comment on the statement. Iran and its ally Hezbollah have vowed to attack Israel in response to the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Tehran and a Hezbollah commander in Beirut. On Friday, Hezbollah released an unusual video showing its fighters operating in underground tunnels, part of an ongoing exchange of threats.
· The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to visit the Gaza Strip “even if it costs my life,” using a speech to Turkey’s Parliament on Thursday to renew criticism of Israel. It was not immediately clear whether such a visit was feasible, and Mr. Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has not been to the enclave since Hamas seized power there in 2007. Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Mr. Abbas, who was wrapping up a two-day visit to Turkey, received a standing ovation from lawmakers. Both he and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a harsh critic of Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza, entered the chamber wearing scarves bearing the Palestinian and Turkish flags.
· The United States imposed new sanctions on Thursday intended to cut off financing to Iranian-backed militias. The measures targeted several companies, individuals and vessels involved in shipping Iranian commodities to finance its proxy groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, the U.S. Treasury said.
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4) Israeli settlers storm a West Bank village, drawing rare rebukes from Israeli officials.
By Ephrat Livni, August 16, 2024
Jit, in the West Bank, on Friday, the day after an attack by Jewish settlers on the village. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank, but a riot on Thursday in the village of Jit stood out for drawing rapid and unusual rebukes from Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition government includes West Bank settlers in top positions.
The Israeli military condemned the attack, and said that dozens of Israeli civilians, including some wearing masks, had set fire to vehicles and hurled rocks and firebombs. It said that its forces, along with Israeli Border Police, were dispatched to the scene and dispersed the rioters by firing shots into the air and “removing the Israeli civilians from the town.”
The Palestinian Authority said that one Palestinian had been shot dead during the attack and that another was critically injured. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of a fatality and that it had opened an investigation with other security agencies. One rioter was arrested and transferred to the police for questioning.
The prime minister’s office said in a statement that Mr. Netanyahu took the riots seriously and pledged to find and prosecute those responsible for “any criminal act.”
The attack also drew condemnation from the United States and the European Union on Friday. Jack Lew, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he was “appalled” by the violence. “These attacks must stop and the criminals be held to account,” he said in a post on social media.
As the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has stretched into its 11th month, Israel has increased its military activity against what it terms suspected terrorism in the occupied West Bank, and violent settler attacks have surged at the same time.
Far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s government — particularly Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who are both West Bank settlers — have espoused divisive rhetoric and advanced policies to expand Israel’s hold on the territory.
The West Bank is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israelis have since settled there with both tacit and explicit government approval. The international community largely considers settlements illegal, and many outposts also violate Israeli laws.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks violent incidents in the West Bank, said in its latest update on Wednesday that Israeli settlers had carried out 25 attacks against Palestinians in the previous week. Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that set off the war in Gaza, the agency has recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property.
“There has been an uptick in vigilante attacks by a minority of settlers,” David Makovsky, director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel relations at the Washington Institute, said in an interview. “The West Bank is a tinderbox.”
Few attacks, however, have generated the kind of immediate approbation from Israeli officials that followed the storming of Jit.
In July, a departing Israeli general issued a harsh rebuke of the government’s policies in the West Bank and condemned rising “nationalist crime” by Jewish settlers. Retired Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuks, the former chief of Israel’s Central Command, said in a speech that the actions of a violent minority threatened Israel’s security, undermined Israel’s reputation internationally and sowed fear among Palestinians.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, expressed a similar sentiment on Thursday in response to the riot in Jit. “This is not our way and certainly not the way of Torah and Judaism,” Mr. Herzog said in a post on social media. He accused an “extremist minority” of settlers of harming Israel’s standing in the international community during an “especially sensitive and difficult time.”
Aaron Boxerman and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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5) The U.S. Prison System is Slowly Killing its Political Prisoners
By Natalia Marques, August 14, 2024
Mumia Abu-Jamal (Photo: Prison Radio)
Each year on Black August, socialists, revolutionaries, and those familiar with the Black radical tradition mark the month to “study, fast, train, fight” in honor of the many freedom fighters who were killed or languish behind bars in service to the Black liberation movement. Black August marks a number of key dates within the Black liberation movement, including when the first enslaved Africans landed in what is now the United States in 1619, Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1831, as well as more modern events such as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of 1963 and the Watts Rebellion on 1965.
Human rights organizations have often argued that the US prison system is condemning people to death through lengthy prison sentences, including life without the possibility of parole. This becomes even more apparent when looking at how the US prison system treats its political prisoners, imposing systematic medical neglect and decades of prison time.
Ruchell Magee was released in August of 2023 and at the time was the longest held political prisoner in the United States. He died only 81 days after his release, after spending most of his life behind bars. Magee was the only survivor among those involved in the Marin County Courthouse Rebellion of 1970, described as a “slave rebellion” by other prisoners and a key episode in the history of revolutionary politics in the United States.
Leonard Peltier, now the longest held political prisoner currently in the United States, had his bid for parole denied earlier this summer, despite suffering from multiple health issues due to his long term confinement.
“Leonard is going to be 80 years old on September 12 this year, and has been in prison for almost 50 years,” Gloria La Riva, longtime activist for the freedom of US political prisoners, told Peoples Dispatch in an interview. “Prison always has elements that for any average person would be extremely detrimental. Leonard is confined in a small cell, most of the time being on lockdown, where he can’t even walk properly and have circulation and sunshine and proper food.”
Political prisoner Mutulu Shakur passed away on July 6 of last year, shortly following his compassionate release after spending 37 years in prison. Shakur was lauded within the Black liberation movement for his involvement in organizations such as the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and the Republic of New Afrika, and his work as an acupuncturist who dedicated his life to holistically treating and transforming the lives of working class people addicted to drugs in the radical Lincoln Detox Center in New York City. The state only agreed to release him after doctors determined that he had months to live due to terminal bone cancer.
Sekou Odinga, a former United States political prisoner for 33 years stemming from his involvement in the Black liberation movement, passed away on January 12, only able to live ten years of freedom following his 33-year-long imprisonment. Odinga was a part of several of the most impactful organizations in US Black liberation history, including Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army. Odinga is also known for his role in the escape of fellow political prisoner Assata Shakur, who lives free in Cuba to this day.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, one of the most high profile prisoners in the world, let alone the United States, is surrounded by a powerful, multi-generational movement for his release. Abu-Jamal, like other political prisoners in the US, was jailed for his activism in the Black liberation movement. Abu-Jamal, however, continues to lend a hand to a variety of different struggles from behind prison walls, sending messages of solidarity to various Gaza solidarity encampments this year.
“I urge you to speak out against the terrorism that is afflicted upon Gaza with all of your might, all of your will and all of your strength. Do not bow to those who want you to be silent,” Abu-Jamal told students at the Gaza solidarity encampment at the City University of New York.
Abu-Jamal’s health continues to deteriorate behind bars, and yet his numerous appeals for release continue to be denied. Abu-Jamal’s struggles for adequate healthcare are not merely individually based struggles. Through his successful struggle for Hepatitis-C treatment, he set a precedent in improving treatment for the disease for other prisoners.
Abu-Jamal’s case has been described as “death by incarceration,” as he is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The systems of prisons and policing in the United States have in fact expressed explicit intentions of killing him since even before putting him behind bars. Abu-Jamal successfully fought off a death penalty charge, but that has not staunched the state’s determination to sentence him to a slow death of medical neglect behind bars, like so many other political prisoners past and present within the country.
This year, as Palestinians in Gaza endure genocide and the resistance continues to negotiate the exchange of Israeli hostages for prisoners, many across the world are hearing for the first time about the horrors committed by Israel against Palestinian political prisoners—including torture, starvation, and sexual violence.
“The Palestinian Freedom Movement is in many ways similar to the Black Freedom Movement in the US in that prison is an inescapable part of the struggle,” said Abu-Jamal. This year, following ten months of genocide in Gaza, it is worth reiterating the many struggles of political prisoners within the belly of the beast.
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6) Israeli Strike on Lebanon Kills at Least 10
The strike came as tensions between the two countries were running high over the Gaza war. Negotiators are pushing for a truce in Gaza, hoping to avert a wider regional conflagration.
By Maria Abi-HabibEuan Ward and Aaron Boxerman, Maria Abi-Habib reported from Toul, Lebanon, Euan Ward from Beirut, Lebanon, and Aaron Boxerman from Jerusalem, Aug. 17, 2024
The scene of a strike near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiye. The attack came amid rising tensions between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
An Israeli airstrike hit a factory in a small town in southern Lebanon, killing at least 10 civilians, Lebanese officials said on Saturday, as people across the Middle East uneasily awaited reprisals against Israel by Iran and its allies for a pair of assassinations.
Israel’s military said it had targeted a weapons warehouse in the area used by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, in the strike overnight on Friday. But the mayor of the town, of Toul, where the attack took place, denied the claim.
The strike appeared to have destroyed the factory and an adjacent structure inhabited by Syrian refugees who worked there and their families. Reporters who visited the site saw steel beams but no signs of weaponry.
The mayor of Toul, Saeed Mahmoud, said in a phone interview that the factory was used to collect steel spare parts.
The death toll was one of the largest so far in Lebanon amid the near-daily exchange of border attacks with Israel in the 10 months since the war in Gaza began. Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militants have been attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, leading to months of cross-border fire by both sides.
The tensions have escalated sharply in recent weeks following the killings of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander in Hezbollah, and Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas, groups allied with Iran. Hezbollah and Iran have vowed to retaliate more forcefully than before against Israel, leaving the Middle East on tenterhooks for more than two weeks, awaiting the reprisals.
The Biden administration has led a diplomatic push this past week for a Gaza cease-fire, which U.S. and regional officials hope would prompt Iran and its allies to curb any retaliation and avert a wider regional war. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is scheduled to travel to Israel on Saturday to help facilitate the talks, which are being mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
All of the people killed in the strike on Toul, near the southern city of Nabatiye, were Syrian refugees and included a woman and her two children, said the Lebanese health minister, Dr. Firass Abiad.
More than a million Syrian refugees fled to Lebanon to escape a long-running civil war at home that began in 2011. Syrian laborers often live with their families where they work.
On Saturday afternoon, Israeli drones circled above the remnants of the destroyed factory. Next door, a collapsed concrete building held what appeared to be the sleeping quarters of the workers and their families. The broken concrete and the metal rebar that once supported the structure were strewed with clothing and the broken plastic of a child’s car seat.
One laborer was killed where he was sleeping along with his wife and two children, according to rescue workers who dug them out of the rubble. At least six other laborers were killed in the strike and two were wounded, the rescue workers said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the claim that civilians were harmed in the attack.
Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened in July to hit new targets in Israel if it continued to target civilians in Lebanon. In response to the latest attack, Hezbollah said it fired a barrage of rockets at Ayelet Hashachar, a kibbutz in northern Israel.
The Israeli military said roughly 55 rockets crossed into Israeli territory, some of which ignited fires. There were no immediate reports of casualties. An Israeli soldier was severely wounded in a separate rocket attack from Lebanon on Saturday morning, the military said.
For months, Israel and Lebanon have appeared to carefully calibrate their attacks in an attempt to avoid a wider escalation.
Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets and drones at northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, which led the massive surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that set off the war in Gaza.
Israel has responded to attacks from Lebanon with bombardments that have killed more than 500 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, according to figures from the Lebanese health ministry, Hezbollah and the United Nations.
But after a rocket attack from Lebanon in late July that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Israel killed Mr. Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s highest-ranking military commanders, in an apartment in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Hours later, an explosion widely attributed to Israel killed Mr. Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’s political bureau, who was staying in a closely guarded state guesthouse in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to attend the inauguration of a new Iranian president. Israel never publicly confirmed its involvement.
Iran and its ally Hezbollah have pledged to avenge the killings. But U.S., Iranian and Israeli officials said on Friday that Iran had decided to delay any reprisals against Israel to allow mediators to continue working toward a cease-fire in Gaza.
High-level talks in Qatar on a truce and the release of the 115 hostages still held by Hamas and its allies in Gaza ended without an immediate breakthrough on Friday. But the United States, Egypt and Qatar said the negotiations would go on next week in Cairo, as mediators raced to try to secure a deal.
Even as senior officials have shuttled from capital to capital in an attempt to end the war, the fighting in Gaza has gone on. Israeli aircraft struck dozens of sites across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the Israeli military said on Saturday, and ground troops swept through parts of the southern city of Khan Younis, already devastated in an earlier assault.
The Israeli military again ordered Palestinians to flee parts of central Gaza that Israel had previously designated a “humanitarian zone” for many of the nearly two million Gazans who have been displaced during the war.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said Hamas and other militant groups had repeatedly fired rockets from the area.
Many Gazans have been displaced multiple times by the war. Aid groups say there is still nowhere safe for them to go, as Israel has vowed to target Hamas wherever it believes the organization is operating.
“Many of the thousands of families affected only recently arrived in the area, after other displacement orders in Khan Younis,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees.
Gazans are “trapped in an endless nightmare,” she said.
Hwaida Saad, Victoria Kim and Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting.
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7) ‘There Is No Childhood in Gaza’
A 9-year-old Palestinian boy lost his mother, father and two siblings in an Israeli airstrike early in the Gaza war. Within months, he, too, was killed.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 17, 2024
Khaled Joudeh bade farewell to his baby sister, Misq, at the morgue in a hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in October. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
The war in Gaza had barely begun when 9-year-old Khaled Joudeh suffered an unimaginable loss. His mother, father, older brother and baby sister, along with dozens of other relatives, were all killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home.
In the months that followed, Khaled tried to be brave, his uncle, Mohammad Faris, recalled. He would comfort his younger brother Tamer, who, like Khaled, had survived the Oct. 22 strike that killed their family. But Tamer, 7, was left badly injured with a broken back and a broken leg, and was in constant pain.
“He would always quiet his brother when he cried,” Mr. Faris told The New York Times in a recent phone interview. “He would tell him: ‘Mama and Baba are in heaven. Mama and Baba would be sad if they knew we were crying because of them.’”
At night, when the unrelenting Israeli airstrikes on Gaza would start up again, Khaled would wake up shaking and screaming himself, sometimes running to his uncle to seek comfort.
It was a short and terrifying existence for the young brothers that ended when another airstrike hit the family home where they were sheltering on Jan. 9, killing Khaled, Tamer, their 2-year-old cousin, Nada, and three other relatives, according to two family members.
Their story epitomizes how the 10-month-old Israeli war in Gaza has taken an exceptional toll on children, who are caught in the middle of the conflict.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Israeli military launched the war with the stated aim of eradicating Hamas, unleashing one of the heaviest aerial bombardments the world has seen in this century on densely populated Gaza. Israel has accused Hamas of taking advantage of Gaza’s urban terrain to provide its fighters and weapons infrastructure with an extra layer of protection, running tunnels under neighborhoods, launching rockets near civilian homes and holding hostages in city centers.
Hamas denies these accusations and says its members are Gazans themselves and live among the population.
International law experts have said that Israel has a responsibility to protect civilians, even if Hamas exploits them the way Israel says it does. The Israeli military says it takes “all feasible precautions” to mitigate harm to civilians.
The children of Gaza have suffered in myriad ways. Of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the war, an estimated 15,000 were under 18, according to Gazan health officials. The United Nations estimates that at least 19,000 more children have been orphaned. And nearly one million children have been displaced, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.
“Gaza remains the most dangerous place in the world for children,” said Jonathan Crickx, a spokesman for UNICEF.
Most children are living in overcrowded homes where multiple families shelter together, or in ramshackle tents that can feel like ovens in the summer heat, lacking both running water and sanitation. Thousands are severely malnourished and at risk of dying of hunger.
The United Nations called on Friday for a weeklong cease-fire in Gaza to allow vaccinations to prevent an outbreak of polio, saying many children were at risk. The same day, the first case of polio in the enclave in many years was confirmed by the Gaza health ministry.
It has been a constant struggle just to survive in Gaza, and children have had to help out.
When he visited the territory a few months ago, Mr. Crickx said, he rarely saw children playing or laughing. Instead, he mostly saw them helping their families: carrying jugs of water from filling stations, trying to find food, and helping to move their few belongings when the family was displaced.
Mr. Crickx said he had seen a boy on the street who appeared to be no older than about 5, pushing a wheelchair with two jerrycans, which he had filled with water, resting on the seat. The handles of the wheelchair were higher than the top of the boy’s head and he could barely see where he was going.
“There is no childhood in Gaza,” Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, wrote on social media last month. “Malnourished, exhausted. Sleeping in rubble or under plastic sheeting. Same clothing for 9 months. Education has been replaced by fear & loss. Loss of life, home & stability,” she added.
Throughout the war, parents have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to protect their children.
They scrawl their children’s names directly onto their skin to identify them if they are lost, orphaned or killed. At morgues, burial shrouds are cut into smaller pieces to wrap the youngest victims. Sometimes, children’s bodies are wrapped in the same shroud as their parents, laid to rest on the chest of their mother or father.
Some parents quietly say that if their child is killed, they hope they will at least die in one piece and have someone to bury them.
In the first weeks of the conflict, families began planning for the worst. Khaled’s father told his relatives that if any of them were killed, those who survived must protect and educate the children, Mr. Faris said.
Not long after that, on Oct. 22, an Israeli airstrike destroyed two buildings where Khaled’s extended family was living in the town of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, according to relatives and local journalists.
Khaled and Tamer were the only ones in their immediate family to survive. Nada, their 2-year-old cousin, was the sole survivor of that first strike from her own immediate family.
Just after the October strike, in the courtyard of the morgue where dozens of shrouded bodies were laid out on the ground, Khaled, barefoot and crying, kissed the faces of his parents and siblings a final, sorrowful farewell.
A total of 68 members of Khaled’s extended family were killed that day as they slept in their beds, according to accounts at the time from three of the boy’s relatives. They were laid to rest together, side by side, in a mass grave.
For nearly a month after their parents were killed, Khaled and Tamer stayed with their uncle, Mr. Faris, in another family building in Deir al-Balah. Khaled, Tamer and Nada would occasionally venture out to play in the rubble-lined street.
“They are kids and would try to hold on to their childhood,” Mr. Faris said. “They would play outside at certain points of calm. But then airstrikes would often send them back screaming,” he added.
“He would come quickly and hide near me,” Mr. Faris said of Khaled.
Then, on Jan. 9, Khaled’s all-too-short life came to an end.
About 2 a.m., as the family slept, an Israeli airstrike hit the home where they were sheltering, according to Mr. Faris and another relative, Yasmeen Joudeh, 36. Khaled, Tamer and Nada were killed, along with two uncles and their grandfather.
The body of the grandfather, who had recently returned to live with them, was found in the street. He had survived long enough to stagger out of the bombed building, cradling Nada’s body in his arms, said Ms. Joudeh, who was in Egypt at the time and heard the details from relatives in Gaza later.
The Times learned of Khaled’s death months afterward.
When asked about the strikes on the Joudeh family homes in October and January, the Israeli military did not provide a reason.
Regarding the October attack, the military said only that it could not address questions about a strike on this family.
After the January strike, The Times gave the military the date, time and street location. But the military said The Times “did not provide the I.D.F. with enough information in order to properly look into the alleged strike,” and asked for the coordinates to pinpoint the location of the building that was hit.
Mr. Faris said that his extended family was not associated with any of the Palestinian armed groups that Israel says it has been targeting in the war in Gaza.
“They had nothing to do with anything,” he said.
Like other members of their family — and so many other Gazans since — the three children, their grandfather and the two uncles were buried together in an unmarked grave.
Samar Abu Elouf contributed reporting.
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8) A Family Flees and a Mother Mourns After Israeli Settlers Attack a Palestinian Village
Residents of the village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank say one Palestinian man was killed by rampaging settlers. Israel’s military confirmed the village was attacked.
By Raja Abdulrahim. Reporting from the village of Jit, in the West Bank. Aug. 18, 2024
The aftermath of an attack on the village of Jit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
They came into the village just past sundown, dozens of Israeli settlers wearing masks, dressed in dark clothes and armed with rocks, Kalashnikovs and M-16s, witnesses said.
A local resident, Muawiya al-Sidee, said his 13-year-old daughter was one of the first to spot them as she and her younger siblings were playing on Thursday in their front garden in the village of Jit, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“‘Baba, settlers are coming!’” the girl screamed.
Mr. al-Sidee and his wife, who was breastfeeding their 2-year-old daughter at the time, piled their five children into their car and drove off just as the settlers reached their front door.
Seconds later, he said, the Israelis from the nearby Eli settlement smashed the windows of his family’s home and threw in three Molotov cocktails, burning rooms where, moments earlier, the family had gathered.
As the family fled, a call went out over mosque loudspeakers in the village of some 3,000 people, imploring young men to come out and defend against the rampaging settlers.
When Mr. al-Sidee returned hours later, after the settlers had withdrawn, he found the sofas in his house were charred husks and the overhead lamps had melted.
Elsewhere in the village, Rasheed al-Seda, 23, awoke when the call for defenders sounded from the mosques. He joined a group determined to defend the village, armed with nothing but stones.
It would cost him his life, his mother and the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
The Israeli military confirmed the attack on the village.
“Dozens of Israeli civilians, some of them masked, entered the town of Jit and set fire to vehicles and structures in the area, hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails,” a military statement said, adding that the military had opened an investigation and was looking into reports of a fatality.
More than 2.7 million Palestinians reside in ancestral cities, towns and farming villages in the West Bank, where, for generations, many have lived off the land. But that existence is increasingly under threat as more Israelis move to the territory — they now number nearly 500,000 — to live in settlements considered illegal under international law.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians across the West Bank have become common. There have been about 1,250 such attacks in this time, according to the United Nations — 25 in the past week alone.
More than 589 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or Jewish settlers in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health officials. Eighteen Israelis have been killed in the territory in the same time period, according to the United Nations.
On Thursday night, Mr. al-Seda became one of the latest Palestinian casualties.
He had just joined the other men who were running in the direction of the rampaging settlers when, according to residents and Palestinian health officials, he was shot in the chest by a settler.
Multiple residents said the Israeli army was preventing ambulances and fire trucks from entering the village. The Israeli military denied the accusations.
Other men carried Mr. al-Seda to a car — his blood staining the pavement. Residents said he was driven to the entrance of the village, where he was transferred to an ambulance that had been blocked from entering. From there he was taken to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
In total, four houses and six vehicles were burned, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group.
The military said that its forces, along with Israeli Border Police, had been dispatched to the site and dispersed the rampage by firing shots into the air and “removing the Israeli civilians from the town” within about 30 minutes from the time it began.
But rights groups and Palestinians have said in the past that the Israeli military often does nothing to stop such attacks. And Jit residents said that the military had not arrived at the scene until more than an hour after the settler rampage had begun.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose coalition government includes West Bank settlers in top positions, said the leader “takes seriously the riots that took place this evening in the village of Jit, which included injury to life and property by Israelis who entered the village.”
But far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, including Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, have made inflammatory statements about Palestinians before and have advanced policies to expand Israel’s hold on the West Bank.
In October, Mr. Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, promised to provide thousands of guns to Israelis, including to settlers. He posted photographs that showed him handing out assault rifles to civilians.
Jit residents said Mr. Netanyahu’s government bore some responsibility for the attack.
“Ben-Gvir gave them these weapons to attack us,” said Oomyma al-Sidee, a relative of Muawiya al-Sidee. She said she was holed up in her home with her six sons and other relatives as settlers tried to break through the metal front door.
“This is terrorism,” she said.
From the roof of their home, her sons threw rocks at the settlers, trying to push them away from the home and two vehicles parked out front. Some of the settlers smashed the vehicles’ windows and set them on fire with Molotov cocktails, she said.
Despite the danger, she said, Ms. al-Sidee’s husband ran outside with a hose to try to put out the fire, worried that the vehicles would explode and ignite their home.
“We escaped death,” she said.
This was not the first time that the family had been targeted, she said. In October, Israelis from the same settlement kidnapped her husband for an hour, beat him with guns and threatened to shoot him.
Since then, Ms. al-Sidee said, she has kept their IDs, important documents and gold jewelry in a lunchbox that she carries with her every time she leaves her house.
On Thursday night, after the attack, she and her family slept at a relative’s house.
“Tonight, I don’t know where we will sleep. They might come back,” Ms. al-Sidee said on Friday, expressing a widespread fear throughout the village.
She had just returned from the wake for Mr. al-Seda, who had been a student in an Arabic class she teaches.
Throughout the village, mourning posters had gone up for Mr. al-Seda. At his family’s home, a banner hung outside as villagers streamed in to attend the wake. Recitations from the Quran played in the background as women came in, offering their condolences and sipping bitter coffee.
In one corner, his mother, Iman al-Seda, sat reciting prayers and lamenting the loss of her son.
“My love, my life,” she said, weeping and wiping her bloodshot eyes with a crumpled tissue.
Mr. al-Seda, who had worked in computers, was a sociable person who brought life to their home, his mother said. He would always kiss on her cheeks and hands, a common sign of respect for elders in Arab culture.
“What am I going to do?” she said. “I wish he hadn’t gone to help.”
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9) Three More Victims of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Found With Gunshot Wounds
Officials are exhuming bodies to learn more about the victims of one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.
By Hank Sanders, Aug. 18, 2024
Crews at the Oaklawn Cemetery during an excavation of bodies from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Three victims were exhumed and determined to show evidence of gunshot wounds. Credit...Mike Simons/Tulsa World, via Associated Press
Three victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, whose remains were exhumed along with those of eight others, were found to have gunshot wounds, investigators announced on Friday, in the latest findings from research about one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.
G.T. Bynum, the mayor of Tulsa, Okla., announced in 2018 that the city would begin searching for and analyzing the bodies of victims of the massacre to learn more about their identities and causes of death.
Between 36 and 300 people are thought to have died during the massacre, officials have said, however only 26 death certificates were issued in connection to it.
“The people that we are searching for, our fellow Tulsans, they’re not just names in history,” Mr. Bynum said at a news conference on Friday. “These are our neighbors who were murdered in horrible ways.”
Investigators are looking for “simple wooden caskets” that fit a variety of parameters that could indicate a possible victim of the massacre, according to Kary Stackelbeck, a state archaeologist.
“Two of those gunshot victims display evidence of munitions from two different weapons, meaning that those two individuals were shot with at least two different kinds of arms,” Dr. Stackelbeck said. “The third individual who is a gunshot victim also displays evidence of burning.”
The bodies were exhumed from wooden caskets in Oaklawn Cemetery near where the body of C.L. Daniel — the first person identified through this project — was found and identified last month, Dr. Stackelbeck said in a recent interview.
The three gunshot victims were not named at the news conference and were referred to by their burial numbers. Their wounds came from a variety of bullet calibers and the wounds were on different parts of their bodies, including their torsos and an ankle, said Phoebe Stubblefield, an anthropologist at the University of Florida.
As of the end of the day on Friday, 47 sets of remains had been exhumed, at least one of which was a woman, Dr. Stubblefield said.
Tulsa officials are working with a lab, Intermountain Forensics, on DNA and genealogical analysis to better understand who died during the massacre.
The Tulsa Race Massacre began on May 31, 1921, after a Black man was accused of attacking a white woman. A white mob descended on the courthouse where the man was being held; he would later be cleared of guilt. When the white mob confronted a group of Black men, shots were fired and a fight broke out.
The white mob then went to Greenwood, a successful community known as Black Wall Street. In less than 24 hours, the mob had destroyed the community, killed and injured hundreds and left 8,000 to 10,000 people homeless.
During the news conference on Friday, Dr. Stubblefield thanked Tulsans for being engaged and invested in the discoveries of those who died during the massacre.
“You’re helping us to restore the history to those victims and their descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre,” she said.
Audra D. S. Burch contributed reporting.
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10) Europe’s Crackdown on Environmental Dissent Is Silencing Voices the World Needs to Hear
By Christopher Ketcham, Aug. 18, 2024
Mr. Ketcham is writing a book about direct climate action and citizen rebellion in defense of nature. He is the author of “This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West.”
Agnes Jonas
A British court last month issued extraordinarily harsh prison sentences to five climate activists convicted of helping to plan a series of road blockades in London. One of the activists, Roger Hallam, 58, a co-founder of the direct action groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, got five years. The others were each sentenced to four years.
Mr. Hallam’s crime wasn’t that he participated in the protest, which snarled London’s major beltway, the M25, during four days in November 2022. He merely gave a 20-minute talk on Zoom, a few days before the event, to explain the tactics of civil disobedience and emphasize its value as society’s failure to curb carbon emissions is increasing the chance of catastrophe within our lifetimes. He also stated during the Zoom call that he thought the action should go forward.
This is only the latest example of a wave of repressive government measures against climate protesters across Europe. The crackdown has come in response to a rise in demonstrations and disruptive tactics such as blocking roads and access to airports, defacing art in museums and interrupting sporting events.
Reflecting growing public frustration with such tactics, Rishi Sunak, the former British prime minister, endorsed this tough approach last year after two climate protesters were sentenced to prison terms of three years and two years and seven months for creating a public nuisance by climbing Queen Elizabeth II bridge in Kent. Forty hours of traffic gridlock followed after authorities closed the crossing.
“Those who break the law should feel the full force of it,” Mr. Sunak asserted, writing on X. “It’s entirely right that selfish protesters intent on causing misery to the hard-working majority face tough sentences. It’s what the public expects and it’s what we’ve delivered.”
But Michel Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, sees this crackdown as “a major threat to democracy and human rights,” as he put it in a report in February.
The effort to crush environmental dissent has come as some Europeans appear to have soured on the clean energy transition. In March, farmers across Europe protested climate and environmental policies that they believe are squeezing them financially. While Europeans generally think climate change is a serious issue, in recent European Parliament elections, Green parties lost one-third of their seats. Richard Youngs, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, noted in February that protests and campaigns have also raised concerns “against wind farms, low-emission traffic zones, requirements for households to change gas heaters, cuts in fuel subsidies, and other issues.”
Tolerance for environmental protesters appears to have waned. But the outrageous sentencings of the Whole Truth Five, as Mr. Hallam and his fellow defendants have come to be known, is yet another turn toward authoritarianism in the nation that gave the world the Magna Carta, habeas corpus, and a bill of rights.
Across much of Western Europe, extreme measures have been used against demonstrators, Mr. Forst told me in an interview. As he detailed in his report, legislation is “increasingly being used to stifle environmental protest” with “new offenses, harsher sentences and bans on particular forms of protest.”
The Italian Parliament has heavily increased fines to punish protest. In Britain, Parliament has authorized police to crack down on protests if they become too loud. Several cities in Germany have prohibited protesters from sitting down in roads. In the German state of Bavaria, activists were detained for several weeks, without any charges, to prevent them from protesting. An environmental group in France was banned, albeit briefly, for what the government said was provoking violence.
Counterterrorism laws have been used to place activists under surveillance, according to Mr. Forst’s report. Their homes have been raided, phones and computers seized, and some activists have been arrested pre-emptively for saying that they were planning a protest. The police have used water cannons, pepper spray, tear gas and flash grenades to disperse protesters. Once in custody, protesters say, they have been strip searched, verbally and physically abused and held for days without charge. Journalists covering the protests have been rounded up as well.
Mr. Forst, whose position was created by the U.N. in 2021 after growing reports of state persecution of environmental activists, sat in on the trial of Mr. Hallam and his co-defendants. Prosecutors charged that they were part of a “conspiracy to commit a public nuisance.” Under a 2022 law, British courts can issue sentences of up to 10 years in prison to defendants convicted of “nuisances” such as peaceful marches.
After one of the sentencings, Mr. Forst said in a statement, “Today marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom.” As he told me, “Five years for taking part in a Zoom meeting is appalling.”
In his report to the United Nations, Mr. Forst said that the governments of Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, among others, had created “a climate of fear and intimidation for environmental defenders.” He said public figures of all sorts — politicians, lawmakers, commentators — have described environmental movements using words such as “extremists,” “eco-terrorists” and “the green Taliban.”
Mr. Forst went on to argue that the media “spreads and reinforces the idea that environmental protests are illegitimate, illegal and even violent,” which has catalyzed an atmosphere of cruel indifference where inconvenienced drivers blocked by demonstrators (in Germany, for example) have felt free to drag them by the hair, punch and kick them, and even run them over.
“The climate crisis poses a well-documented and terrifying threat to life, to humanity, to our planet,” Mr. Forst told an online news outlet last month, arguing that Britain “may end up filling up its prisons with the very people who realize that and try to change this deadly path.”
The case of the Whole Truth Five, so emblematic of the crackdown on environmental protests across Europe, sends a dismal message globally. Environmental activists are being murdered at a rate of one every other day as of 2022, according to one nonprofit, for a total of at least 177 in 2022 and nearly 2,000 between 2012 and 2022. The killings occur primarily in countries in Latin America and Asia where mining and other extractive interests run amok and the rule of law is weak or failing. The world needs to hear their voices.
At Mr. Hallam’s trial, the judge barred him from telling the jury about the impacts of climate change, ruling it wasn’t relevant to the case. “Without the whole truth,” Mr. Hallam wrote on X, “it is not a fair trial.”
Last year was the warmest since global record-keeping began in 1850. The 10 warmest years have occurred in the past decade. At the same time, emissions of greenhouse gases have continued to rise, and the European Union remains among the world’s top emitters.
Truth is what the world needs, even if it must be delivered by protesters on the streets and reiterated again and again from the ramparts. The European countries suppressing dissent are smothering the sense of urgency that might otherwise compel those nations to do their part to stop this looming calamity.
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11) Israel Says It Recovered Bodies of 6 Hostages in Gaza
The bodies were retrieved in an overnight operation in southern Gaza, the Israeli military said. Five of the hostages were already known to have died in captivity.
By Isabel Kershner, reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 20, 2024
Protesters calling for the release of hostages, in Tel Aviv on Monday. Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages from southern Gaza in an overnight operation, the Israeli military said on Tuesday, highlighting the plight of the scores of captives remaining in the Palestinian enclave. Five of the six were previously known to have lost their lives.
Of the roughly 250 people Israeli authorities say were taken hostage during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, Israeli forces have so far rescued only seven hostages alive. Scores of others, mostly women and children, were returned to Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. More than 100 captives still remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that the six bodies had been retrieved from Hamas tunnels beneath the city of Khan Younis in a “complex operation,” and the military released their names.
Avraham Munder, 79, was the only hostage among the six whose deaths had not already been established. He was abducted from Nir Oz, a kibbutz, or communal village, near the Gaza border, along with three of the others: Haim Peri, 80; Yoram Metzger, 80; and Alexander Dancyg, 75. The remaining two, Nadav Popplewell, 51; and Yagev Buchshtab, 35, were taken from another border community, Nirim.
The exact circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear. Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said in March that Mr. Metzger and Mr. Peri were among seven hostages who had been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Hamas then said in May that Mr. Popplewell had died from injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike more than a month before.
Weeks later, the Israeli military said that it was examining the possibility that the three hostages had been killed while Israeli forces were operating in the Khan Younis area.
The retrieval of the bodies came as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken continued a diplomatic push in the region for a cease-fire deal that would see hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Frustration has grown in Israel over the months of halting negotiations, and family members of the hostages still in Gaza have led regular protests demanding a deal to secure their freedom.
Mati Dancyg, Alexander Dancyg’s son, said he believed there had been opportunities to get him out of Gaza alive. He accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prioritizing political considerations over the hostages’ return under pressure from key members of his governing coalition who oppose a cease-fire deal, considering it a surrender to Hamas.
“It is absolutely clear to me that it was possible to bring him back home,” Mati Dancyg said Tuesday on Israel’s public radio network, Kan, adding, “Netanyahu chose to sacrifice the hostages.’’
Mr. Netanyahu has blamed Hamas for obstructing a deal. His critics in Israel, as well as Hamas officials, say that Mr. Netanyahu recently added new conditions to a proposal outlined by President Biden in late May, adding to the difficulty of finalizing a deal.
“Our hearts grieve over the terrible loss,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday following the military’s announcement about the retrieval of the bodies. “The State of Israel will continue to make every effort to return all of our hostages — the living and the deceased.”
The Hostages Families Forum, an organization that represents many of the hostages’ relatives, said in a statement on Tuesday that “Israel has a moral and ethical obligation to return all the murdered for dignified burial and to bring all living hostages home for rehabilitation.”
“The immediate return of the remaining 109 hostages,” it added, “can only be achieved through a negotiated deal.”
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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12) Israeli and Hamas Officials See Little Chance for Cease-Fire Breakthrough
By Ronen BergmanAdam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, August 20, 2024
Searching through rubble at the location of a strike in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, on Tuesday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Biden administration is again putting its diplomatic heft behind an effort to dislodge months of stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the 10-month-long war in Gaza, and voicing optimism over the potential for a breakthrough.
Israeli and Hamas officials are striking a far different tone. Both sides have poured cold water on the idea that a deal could be imminent, saying that mediators’ efforts — and the latest American proposal aimed at bridging gaps between the two sides — have failed to resolve some of the most substantive disputes in the talks.
On Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, making his ninth visit to Israel since the war began, emerged from a three-hour-long meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced that the Israeli leader had assented to the new U.S. “bridging proposal,” introduced at talks in Qatar last week.
But Israeli and Hamas officials familiar with the talks said the U.S. plan left major disagreements mostly unresolved. Hamas quickly dismissed the American-led framework as conforming to Mr. Netanyahu’s conditions, which he has stiffened in recent weeks. And on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu showed little sign of being ready to compromise, repeating his message that Israel would do everything to “preserve our strategic security assets” and “will continue to fight until total victory is achieved over Hamas.”
On Tuesday, as Mr. Blinken traveled to Egypt and Qatar to continue pushing for an agreement, Hamas issued a statement criticizing “misleading claims” by the Biden administration about the talks. It said the latest American proposal amounted to “a reversal” of a framework that Hamas had presented in early July and that U.S. officials repeatedly called a breakthrough.
The negotiations have taken on renewed urgency following the assassinations of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran and Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in Beirut in late July. Diplomats hoped that a cease-fire in Gaza, or even the prospect of one, might persuade Iran and Hezbollah to hold off or blunt their reprisals.
Under the new U.S. proposal, Israeli troops would be able to continue to patrol part of the Gazan border with Egypt, albeit in reduced numbers — one of Mr. Netanyahu’s core demands, according to four officials familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
That is likely a non-starter for Hamas, which has consistently called for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Egypt has also voiced staunch objections to a long-term Israeli presence in that area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
Cairo has maintained that it will not accept Israeli troops remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor, which Egyptian officials say would pose national security concerns and would likely anger the Egyptian public.
In a sign of Egypt’s frustrations, state-controlled media outlets, which serve as government mouthpieces, have escalated their language against Israel in recent days, accusing it of trying to pick a fight with Egypt over the corridor to delay progress on a cease-fire in Gaza.
“Netanyahu doesn’t want a cease-fire. So he is creating an artificial problem with Egypt,” a former general, Samir Farag, said on one talk show that aired Monday night.
During the cease-fire talks that ended last Friday, U.S. officials also asked to delay in-depth conversations over Israel’s demand to screen displaced Palestinians returning to northern Gaza for weapons, another key stumbling block, according to two officials familiar with the talks.
Over the past several months, U.S. officials have repeatedly sought to drum up momentum in the negotiations mediated by Egypt and Qatar. In May, President Biden endorsed an Israeli-backed cease-fire proposal, saying both sides had reached a “decisive moment.” The talks crept along for months until the Hamas counterproposal in July, and then stalled.
The talks now appear to be at risk of reaching yet another dead end.
The United States, alongside Egypt and Qatar, have called for another summit in Cairo before the end of the week. Two Israeli officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said that a date for the meeting had yet to be set and that it was unclear where it might be held. Hamas did not participate in the last round of talks, and it has not said whether it will agree to join this time.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Vivian Yee and Emad Mekay from Cairo.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Israel strikes a school building in Gaza City, and other news.
· Israel’s military struck a school building in Gaza City on Tuesday, targeting what it said was a Hamas command and control center. The Palestinian Civil Defense emergency services said that 12 people, including women and children, had been killed in the attack, which hit the Mustafa Khaft school. The Israeli military did not say whether the strike had caused casualties. In recent weeks, Israel has launched dozens of strikes at school buildings, which are being used as shelters by tens of thousands of displaced in Gaza, drawing sharp criticism from the United Nations and others. The Israeli military says that Hamas has “cynically exploited” schools, hospitals and shelters as bases and civilians as human shields.
· The Gazan Health Ministry said Tuesday that it was still waiting to receive polio vaccines as the risk of an outbreak grows in the territory. After Gaza recorded its first polio case in years, aid groups made plans to vaccinate over 600,000 children in Gaza. The World Health Organization and UNICEF have called for a cease-fire of at least seven days so they can carry out a mass vaccination campaign. It was not immediately clear when the vaccines would arrive. On Sunday, COGAT, the Israeli agency that supervises aid deliveries to Gaza, had said that vaccines to inoculate more than a million children would arrive “in the coming weeks.”
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13) Greenpeace Tries a Novel Tactic in Lawsuit Over Dakota Access Pipeline
The environmental group, which is being sued by the pipeline company in North Dakota, threatened to use new European rules to try to limit potential damages.
By Karen Zraick, Aug. 20, 2024
The pipeline company is suing Greenpeace for millions of dollars in a case that Greenpeace claims is designed to put it out of business. Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Greenpeace recently unveiled a new strategy for fighting a costly lawsuit by an energy company that the group contends is designed to silence critics of the oil industry.
The suit, first filed in federal court in 2017, alleged that Greenpeace had incited the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017, and it sought $300 million in damages.
Greenpeace disputes the claims. It says the lawsuit is designed to essentially force the environmental group to go out of business with an expensive legal fight.
Its new tactic, led by Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, would use the European legal system to try to minimize the financial consequences of a potential loss in United States courts. In a letter to the company last month, lawyers for the group cited a new European Union directive aimed at curbing SLAPP suits, or Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. Those are defined as meritless suits that seek to shut down civil society groups.
The letter called on the company suing it, Dallas-based Energy Transfer, to drop its suit against Greenpeace International, and to pay damages for its legal costs, or risk a countersuit under the new European rules.
The Background
After the Dakota Access Pipeline was approved in 2016, it became the target of high-profile protests by Native American tribes and environmental groups. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe argued that the pipeline encroached on reservation land and endangered the water supply. Thousands of its supporters joined a nearly eight-month protest encampment near the reservation, and tribal leaders mounted their own legal challenge to the project.
The protesters clashed with the police and private security at times, and the camp was razed after an evacuation order by the North Dakota governor. The state and federal governments are still wrangling over who should pay for $38 million in associated costs, including the response by law enforcement.
The pipeline was paused under the Obama administration, but began operating in 2017 after President Donald J. Trump gave it the green light in an executive order. While the pipeline remains in operation, it is still awaiting final federal approval, which is expected early next year.
The lawsuit by Energy Transfer, the company behind the 1,170-mile crude oil pipeline, names two U.S.-based Greenpeace entities, as well as Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands and coordinates other Greenpeace groups around the world.
After being kicked back to a state court, the suit is scheduled to go before a jury in Morton County, N.D., early next year.
The Claims
Energy Transfer, which is led by a close ally of Mr. Trump, Kelcy Warren, alleged that Greenpeace and other activists incited the protests, spread misinformation and vandalized the project, leading to delays that cost the company millions of dollars.
Energy Transfer initially sued in North Dakota federal court, where it argued that the activists had violated Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, laws. A judge dismissed that claim and found that others were out of its jurisdiction, allowing the case to continue in state court.
Greenpeace says the protests were directed by Native American leaders, not the environmental organization. The group said that it supported the protests but never engaged in property destruction or violence, and that the suit seeks to impose “collective liability” for anything that might happen at a demonstration. Greenpeace International says that its branches operate independently, and that its only involvement was to sign an open letter in 2016 along with 500 other organizations.
Energy Transfer said in a statement that the lawsuit “is not about free speech as they are trying to claim,” referring to Greenpeace. “We support the rights of all Americans to express their opinions and lawfully protest,” the statement said. “However, when it is not done in accordance with our laws, we have a legal system to deal with that. Beyond that we will let our case speak for itself in February.”
Why It Matters
The new legal strategy in Europe is an early test of the anti-SLAPP rules there. The directive that took effect this year was spurred by a long campaign by journalism and civil-society groups that said powerful interests were trying to clobber them with long, costly legal battles.
The directive instructs national governments to not recognize judgments in foreign SLAPP suits, and to allow countersuits. It leaves it to national governments to decide what constitutes a SLAPP suit.
A growing number of American states also have some sort of anti-SLAPP laws, though North Dakota is not one of them. On the federal level, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, cited the oil and gas industry’s use of lawsuits against opponents when he introduced an anti-SLAPP bill in 2022.
Deepa Padmanabha, acting co-executive director of Greenpeace USA, said she saw the case as particularly concerning given a rise in anti-protest laws in many states since 2017. “How this case is fought is going to impact the future of advocacy and peaceful protest,” she said. “Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are what this case is about.”
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14) Israel and Hezbollah Exchange Strikes Amid Fears of Escalation
By Gabby Sobelman and Euan Ward reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Beirut, Lebanon, August 21, 2024
A destroyed home in Katzrin, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, on Wednesday. Credit...Ariel Schalit/Associated Press
The Israeli military and Hezbollah traded cross-border strikes on Wednesday, leaving at least one person dead deep inside eastern Lebanon, as tensions between the adversaries continued to fuel concerns about a wider regional conflagration.
Israel said that it had struck weapons storage facilities used by Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed militia, in eastern Lebanon for the second time this week. The overnight airstrikes, in an area close to the Syrian border, killed at least one person and injured 30 others, including children, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement.
In response, Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli military base in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israel’s military said that two houses had been damaged in the village of Katzrin on Wednesday and that at least one person had been injured when dozens of projectiles crossed into the area from Lebanon.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, posted on social media a photo of what he said was a house damaged in Katzrin and said, “There was no other target in the area other than a civilian neighborhood and kids on their summer vacation.”
He added: “Attacks against our civilians will not go unanswered.”
The tit-for-tat strikes, and the Israeli official’s threat of further retaliation, highlighted how months of diplomatic efforts have failed to ease hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border. And they came as the Biden administration has intensified its push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in hopes of averting a broader Middle East war, although Israeli and Hamas officials have been cool to the latest U.S. proposal.
The sites of the most recent Israeli strikes, in a range of about 40 to 60 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border in the Bekaa Valley, are deeper inside Lebanon than many of the near-daily attacks the two countries have exchanged since the war in Gaza began. Hezbollah, like other groups in the region backed by Iran, has been attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, leading to the cross-border fire from both countries. Hamas is also backed by Iran.
The military said in a statement that it had detected secondary explosions after its strikes on Wednesday, which it said indicated that there were large amounts of weapons at the sites. At least three areas were targeted, including the town of Nabi Chit, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. There was no immediate comment from Lebanese officials on exactly what was hit.
On Monday, the Israeli military also said it had targeted a number of Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities in the Bekaa Valley. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said those strikes injured nearly a dozen people, including two children.
Tensions have escalated sharply in the region in recent weeks since the killings of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander in Hezbollah, and Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas. Israel has claimed responsibility for Mr. Shukr’s death and is widely believed to be responsible for Mr. Haniyeh’s. Hezbollah and Iran have vowed to retaliate more forcefully than before against Israel.
In a separate strike on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had killed a commander in the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group associated with the Palestinian Fatah faction that has fought alongside Hezbollah. The commander, Khalil al-Miqdah, who was killed in the strike in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, worked closely with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, the Israeli military said in a statement. That claim could not be independently verified, though the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades confirmed Mr. al-Miqdah’s death in a statement.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken toured the region this week to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, but there appeared to be no breakthroughs in talks. Officials familiar with the latest U.S.-backed proposal said it left major disagreements between Hamas and Israel unresolved.
On Tuesday, a senior Iranian military official, Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, the spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, suggested that an attack on Israel might have been placed on hold.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Protesters tell Netanyahu to make a hostage deal, and other news.
· Protesters marched in front of the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept a deal to end the war and free the remaining hostages. Among the protesters was Zahiro Shahar Mor, whose uncle, Avraham Munder, 79, was confirmed dead by the Israeli military earlier on Tuesday when it announced that it had recovered his body and those of five other hostages in southern Gaza. A group representing some of the hostage families said in a statement that the blood of the hostages was on the hands of Mr. Netanyahu and every member of his government.
· An Israeli strike near a crowded area in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, killed at least nine people on Tuesday, the Palestinian Civil Defense said. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had transported at least 14 others who were injured. Many victims of the strike were children, according to a reporter for Al Jazeera who was on the scene. Photos taken by a photographer for the Reuters news agency showed medics treating several bloodied children on the floor of nearby Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. All told, at least 43 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza by Tuesday evening, according to Mahmoud Basal, a Civil Defense spokesman.
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15) Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
By David E. Sanger, Aug. 20, 2024
David E. Sanger has written about American nuclear strategy for The New York Times for nearly four decades.
A soldier stands before vehicles carrying China’s DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Credit...Thomas Peter/Reuters
President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the United States that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal.
The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade.
The White House never announced that Mr. Biden had approved the revised strategy, called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which also newly seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed to a few national security officials and Pentagon commanders.
But in recent speeches, two senior administration officials were allowed to allude to the change — in carefully constrained, single sentences — ahead of a more detailed, unclassified notification to Congress expected before Mr. Biden leaves office.
“The president recently issued updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. nuclear strategist who served in the Pentagon, said earlier this month before returning to academia. “And in particular,” he added, the weapons guidance accounted for “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal.
In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, also referred to the document, the first to examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.
The new strategy, Mr. Vaddi said, emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously,” using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
In the past, the likelihood that American adversaries could coordinate nuclear threats to outmaneuver the American nuclear arsenal seemed remote. But the emerging partnership between Russia and China, and the conventional arms North Korea and Iran are providing to Russia for the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking.
Already, Russia and China are conducting military exercises together. Intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether Russia is aiding the North Korean and Iranian missile programs in return.
The new document is a stark reminder that whoever is sworn in next Jan. 20 will confront a changed and far more volatile nuclear landscape than the one that existed just three years ago. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, including during a crisis in October 2022, when Mr. Biden and his aides, looking at intercepts of conversations between senior Russian commanders, feared the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher.
Mr. Biden, along with leaders of Germany and Britain, got China and India to make public statements that there was no role for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the crisis abated, at least temporarily.
“It was an important moment,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official for several Republican presidents, and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in an interview. “We are dealing with a Russia that is radicalized; the idea that nukes wouldn’t be used in a conventional conflict is not longer a safe assumption.”
The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.
Although former President Donald J. Trump confidently predicted that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, would surrender his nuclear weapons after their three in-person meetings, the opposite happened. Mr. Kim has doubled down, and now has more than 60 weapons, officials estimate, and the fuel for many more.
That expansion has changed the nature of the North Korean challenge: When the country possessed just a handful of weapons, it could be deterred by missile defenses. But its expanded arsenal is fast approaching the size of Pakistan’s and Israel’s, and it is large enough that it could, in theory, coordinate threats with Moscow and Beijing.
It was only a matter of time before a fundamentally different nuclear environment began to alter American war plans and strategy, officials say.
“It is our responsibility to see the world as it is, not as we hoped or wished it would be,” Mr. Narang said as he was leaving the Pentagon. “It is possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter-century after the Cold War as nuclear intermission.”
The new challenge is “the real possibility of collaboration and even collusion between our nuclear-armed adversaries,” he said.
So far in the presidential campaign, the new challenges to American nuclear strategy have not been a topic of debate. Mr. Biden, who spent much of his political career as an advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, has never publicly talked in any detail about how he is responding to the challenges of deterring China’s and North Korea’s expanded forces. Nor has Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic Party’s nominee.
At his last news conference in July, just days before he announced he would no longer seek the Democratic nomination for a second term, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he had adopted a policy of seeking ways to interfere in the broader China-Russia partnership.
“Yes, I do, but I’m not prepared to talk about the detail of it in public,” Mr. Biden said. He made no reference to — and was not asked about — how that partnership was altering American nuclear strategy.
Since Harry Truman’s presidency, that strategy has been overwhelmingly focused on the Kremlin’s arsenal. Mr. Biden’s new guidance suggests how quickly that is shifting.
China was mentioned in the last nuclear guidance, issued at the end of the Trump administration, according to an unclassified account provided to Congress in 2020. But that was before the scope of Mr. Xi’s ambitions was understood.
The Biden strategy sharpens that focus to reflect the Pentagon’s estimates that China’s nuclear force would expand to 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, roughly the numbers that the United States and Russia now deploy. In fact, Beijing now appears ahead of that schedule, officials say, and has begun loading nuclear missiles into new silo fields that were spotted by commercial satellites three years ago.
There is another concern about Beijing: It has now halted a short-lived conversation with the United States about improving nuclear safety and security — for example, by agreeing to warn each other of impending missile tests, or setting up hotlines or other means of communication to assure that incidents or accidents do not escalate into nuclear encounters.
One discussion between the two countries took place late last fall, just before Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met in California, where they sought to repair relations between the two countries. They referred to those talks in a joint statement, but by that time the Chinese had already hinted they were not interested in further discussions, and earlier this summer said the conversations were over. They cited American arms sales to Taiwan, which were underway long before the nuclear safety conversations began.
Mallory Stewart, the assistant secretary for arms control, deterrence and stability at the State Department, said in an interview that the Chinese government was “actively preventing us from having conversations about the risks.”
Instead, she said, Beijing “seems to be taking a page out of Russia’s playbook that, until we address tensions and challenges in our bilateral relationship, they will choose not to continue our arms control, risk reduction and nonproliferation conversations.”
It was in China’s interest, she argued, “to prevent these risks of miscalculation and misunderstanding.”
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