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Israel’s Genocide Day 419: UNRWA warns conditions for survival are ‘diminishing’ for Palestinians in north Gaza
Israeli bombings erased 1410 Palestinian families from the civil registry, reports the Palestinian health ministry.
Casualties
· 44,330 + killed* and at least 104,933 wounded in the Gaza Strip, 59% of whom are women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*
· 796+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
· 3,7678 Lebanese killed and more than 15,669 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
· Israel recognizes the death of 890 Israeli soldiers, policemen and intelligence officers and the injury of at least 5,065 others 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 November 28, 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 November 24, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on November 25, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** 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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It’s Movement Time
It’s movement time.
As the Trump presidency take shape, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Disbelief meshes with despair, and some are quite frankly desolate.
Dry your tears, blow your noses, and join movements of resistance to this madness. Blacks in America have never known a time when resistance wasn’t necessary, including life under a Black president.
For centuries for generations, people have had to struggle for freedom, for respect, for justice. Why should this time be any different?
The ancestors, like the revered Frederick Douglass, lambasted Abraham Lincoln as a fool or coward who wouldn’t fight the civil war with thousands of willing Black troops. Said Douglass, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Said Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without demand.”
So let us struggle. Let us build movements that lift our hearts. Let us remake our history with the brick and mortar of struggle.
—Prison Radio, November 21, 2016
https://www.prisonradio.org/commentary/it-is-movement-time/
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
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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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) Hamas Faces a Future Without Its Most Important Ally
Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah and the cease-fire to stop the fighting in Lebanon have left Hamas increasingly isolated.
By Julian E. Barnes, Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman, Nov. 28, 2024
For more than a year, the reporters have written numerous stories about cease-fire negotiations for the Gaza war.
A mosque in Gaza damaged by an Israeli airstrike. The Biden administration has tried to increase pressure on Hamas to make a deal with Israel and release the hostages it holds in Gaza. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Hamas has long believed that a wider war in the Middle East would help deliver the organization a victory in its war with Israel.
But the cease-fire deal to stop the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah has left that strategy in tatters, potentially removing Hamas’s most important ally from the fight, according to U.S. officials.
The agreement is a step forward for the Biden administration, which has tried to contain that wider war and increase pressure on Hamas to make a deal with Israel and release the hostages it holds in Gaza.
But even before the Lebanese cease-fire was announced on Tuesday, Palestinian and U.S. officials said they believed that Hamas’s political leadership was ready to make a deal and abandon the strategy formulated by its leader, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces last month.
After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Mr. Sinwar had focused on trying to defeat the country by bringing it into a full-scale war with Hezbollah and Iran. U.S. officials said that as long as that strategy appeared to have a chance, Mr. Sinwar would block any cease-fire deal.
But the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, which devastated its leadership and stocks of long-range weaponry, and now the cease-fire agreement have left Hamas increasingly isolated.
“Hamas is all alone now,” said Tamer Qarmout, a professor of public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. “Its position has been seriously weakened.”
And Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, seems keen to avoid a direct fight with Israel, at least for now. Iran’s air defense systems were devastated in an Israeli attack in October, and after the victory of President-elect Donald J. Trump, the Iranians appear to have called off a reprisal attack.
Hamas has reached a painful crossroads more than a year after the Oct. 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people and led to more than 250 being taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and left much of the enclave in ruins.
Dozens of Hamas commanders and thousands of its fighters have been killed. Some Palestinians blame the group’s attack on Israel for provoking the devastating campaign in Gaza. And while Hamas may never be fully eradicated, it no longer fully controls the territory it has administered since 2007.
Yet a cease-fire for Gaza may still be far-off.
Before the Lebanon deal, U.S. and Palestinian officials said Hamas’s political council appeared willing to move toward its own cease-fire if Israel was willing to make compromises, particularly on removing occupying forces from Gaza.
Some American officials say Hamas might drop its demands and move forward on a cease-fire agreement acceptable to Israel’s government.
But Western officials said Israel did not appear to be interested in concessions. Most of the officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid compromising their work.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel seems to be waiting for Mr. Trump to take office before shifting his position on talks with Hamas, according to U.S. officials. While Mr. Trump has urged Israel to “finish up” the war in Gaza, he is unlikely to substantially pressure Mr. Netanyahu or the Israeli military by threatening to withhold military aid.
Western officials say Israel remains skeptical of American and Arab ideas for administering Gaza after the war. Mr. Netanyahu, the officials said, believes that plans to bring in the Palestinian Authority to run Gaza are doomed to failure and that Hamas would quickly reassert control.
American officials also believe that Hamas is angling to remain in power after a cease-fire deal.
The Biden administration’s frustration with Hamas has been growing since late August when its fighters executed a group of hostages, including an American, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. More recently, U.S. officials have pressured Qatar to expel Hamas’s political council from Doha.
Several members of the Hamas political leadership have now left Qatar, relocating to Turkey for the time being.
Before he was killed in late October, Mr. Sinwar had tasked the five-member council of officials in Qatar with running the group’s affairs, a senior Hamas official, Mousa Abu Marzouk, said in interview with Russian television. Mr. Sinwar had steered Hamas since the conception of the Oct. 7 attack and overseen its strategic decision-making throughout the war.
But Mr. Abu Marzouk said that Mr. Sinwar delegated powers to the council because “he was on the front fighting” and having difficulty communicating with Hamas leaders outside Gaza.
Two weeks before his death, Mr. Sinwar sent a message to Hamas’s leaders telling them to prepare for a long fight, according to Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official.
“The longer it lasts, the closer we get to liberation,” Mr. Hamdan recalled Mr. Sinwar saying. “Prepare yourselves for a long war of attrition against this occupation.”
But after Mr. Sinwar’s death, reality started to sink in, given Iran’s reluctance to begin a more intense war with Israel and the devastation Hezbollah was suffering in Israel’s offensive.
Hamas has long thought Mr. Netanyahu was demanding its complete surrender, something the group still will not give in to. But some leaders have discussed potential concessions they could make if Israel showed a genuine interest in ending the war and withdrawing from Gaza.
One proposal discussed by some Hamas leaders would permit Israel to maintain a presence — at least temporarily — in the border region between Egypt and Gaza, according to two people familiar with the group’s internal thinking. Hamas officials have publicly rebuffed any long-term Israeli control of the area, which is known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
In a statement on Wednesday, Hamas praised Hezbollah and said it was committed to efforts to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza based on parameters it had agreed to previously. Hamas said those parameters included a cease-fire, Israel’s withdrawal, the return of displaced people to northern Gaza and an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for hostages.
But beyond that broad position, Hamas remains divided over other key issues, including what role it should have in Gaza after the war and which compromises it should make with Israel.
The movement has yet to nominate a leader to replace Mr. Sinwar, a towering figure who dominated the group’s decision-making.
How the divisions will shake out is difficult to predict.
“The solution to Hamas’s military losses is simpler — there’s a pyramid of command and each commander or soldier can be replaced,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, an analyst close to the Hamas leadership and a member of the group. “But on the political level, things are far more complicated. There will ultimately need to be elections. There are different factions and balances of power. All this makes it hard to predict.”
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2) With Joy and Tears, Lebanese Return Home: ‘Look at All the Destruction’
A cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah allowed those displaced by the war to return to their homes. Many found buildings cleaved in half, crushed cars and ruined towns.
By Ben Hubbard and Christina Goldbaum, Nov. 27, 2024
Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut and Christina Goldbaum from Sidon and Tyre, Lebanon
A resident of Dahiya surveying the destruction in the aftermath of the cease-fire announcement on Wednesday. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
As day broke on the newly established cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel on Wednesday, Hussein Nassour returned to his Beirut neighborhood to inspect the ruins of his former life.
Israeli airstrikes had blown out the doors and windows of his apartment, ruining his furniture. His family’s market was destroyed, along with the nearby buildings where his customers used to live.
He failed to see how the war had done anyone any good.
“We did not win. We lost,” he said. “No one gained anything from any of this.”
Across Lebanon, people greeted the cease-fire that ended the country’s deadliest war in three decades with profound relief, hoping that both sides would stick to it and allow some sense of normalcy to return.
For many of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people who had fled Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion, it provided a chance to return home and take stock of what they had lost.
Many found homes that would require forbiddingly costly repairs to make them livable again. Some found no homes at all, just piles of concrete and twisted metal with their possessions somewhere beneath.
In one hard-hit neighborhood in the capital, Beirut, Zubaida Amru, 37, stood atop such a pile, looking for her belongings. She spotted her family’s oven, destroyed, and furniture from her late father’s bedroom.
“My whole life was here,” she said. But now, that life was gone. “It is not just your possessions. It’s the way that you felt walking through your own home.”
Throughout the war, Israel focused its attacks on predominantly Shiite Muslim communities near Beirut, in southern Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley. These were places where Hezbollah operated freely, providing social services and enjoying significant support for what it called its armed “resistance” against Israel.
Hezbollah started the conflict by firing on Israeli troops in support of Hamas in Gaza after that group’s deadly assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Even though the war killed more than 3,800 people in Lebanon, displaced more than a million others and caused billions of dollars in economic losses, Hezbollah and its supporters on Wednesday portrayed it as a win.
“The cease-fire, of course, is a victory for the blood of the martyrs,” said Manal Hamadeh, 49, referring to Hezbollah militants who died fighting Israel.
Her beauty shop supply business in Beirut was destroyed in an airstrike. But she said the most painful loss was Hassan Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for 32 years before Israel assassinated him in September.
Many of the displaced came from southern Lebanon and loaded up their cars on Wednesday to head back that way. Heavy traffic clogged the highway south. Cars were loaded with the suitcases, mattresses and blankets that people had grabbed when they fled or received in the shelters where they had spent the war.
A bakery along the road blared songs by the Lebanese diva Fairouz, a familiar and comforting soundtrack in the country, and gave out cookies with tiny banners that read, “Smile, better days are coming.”
But the sense of jubilation for returning home faded as people drove further south, passing piles of wreckage where buildings once stood and storefronts shattered by blasts.
At a Lebanese Army checkpoint at the entrance to the southern city of Sidon, soldiers distributed fliers warning not to touch any unexploded bombs people might find near their homes.
“We are happy now, but I know it won’t last,” said Maryam Shoaib, 42, who had stopped for lunch with her relatives in Sidon before heading to their home further south.
“Heartbreak awaits us in the village,” she said.
Samia el Zein, 53, said that she, too, had hit the road in the morning in a good mood, thrilled at the thought of returning to her own bed. But as soon as she arrived in her neighborhood in Tyre, an ancient city on the Mediterranean coast, her chest tightened and tears rolled down her face.
“I’m sad. I’m happy. I don’t know,” she said. “Look at all the destruction.”
As she carried her bags into the entry hall of her apartment, glass from the broken front door crunched under her feet. Inside, the sliding glass doors that once opened onto a large balcony were shattered and curtain rods from the windows were flung across the floor.
Her brother, Mohammad el Zein, 55, had arrived earlier and swept the shards of glass into neat piles. On the dining room table, he had organized the remains of everything he found: plates, teapots, pans, cups and lamps, some of which he hoped to salvage.
His father’s collection of antique ceramic pots was intact — a tiny miracle, he said.
Still, he and his sister felt uneasy, worried that the bombardment could resume at any time.
“We’re not feeling the victory,” Mr. Zein said. “I don’t think it’s over yet.”
Elsewhere in Tyre, some families waved yellow Hezbollah flags from their car windows and young men who appeared to be from the group’s civil defense force flashed peace signs and cheered at the passing cars.
That was too much for Ousama Aoudeh, 60.
“What victory? Look at the destruction. Look at all the death,” she said. “How can anyone say this is a victory? We were defeated.”
She was the first member of her family to return to Tyre and was pleased to find her apartment still standing, she said.
But her daughter’s building had been cleaved in half and a blast had thrown two cars on top of the building’s remains, with windshields shattered and doors hanging from their hinges. Mattresses still wrapped in purple and green bedsheets stuck out of the rubble.
“I was watching the news from Tyre on TV this whole time. But seeing it for myself, I can’t believe it,” she said, taking in the crushed cars and tangled piles of electric wires as men elsewhere in the neighborhood fired celebratory gunshots.
“There’s no electricity. These buildings are all gone,” she said. “Why are they shooting? What do they have to celebrate?”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Tyre and Dayana Iwaza from Beirut.
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3) Syrian Rebels Reach Outskirts of Major City in Escalating Offensive
A new rebel assault on Syrian regime forces was closing in on the major city of Aleppo, according to rebels and a war monitor. Government warplanes struck rebel territory.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Nov. 29, 2024
Fighters fire at Syrian government troops on the outskirts of the major city of Aleppo on Friday. Credit...Bakr Alkasem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Syrian rebels reached the outskirts of the major city of Aleppo on Friday, according to the fighters and a war monitor, raising fears that the nation’s long-running civil war is reigniting with an intensity not seen in years.
Government forces and their Russian allies launched intense airstrikes on opposition-held territory on Friday, including 23 attacks on the city of Idlib, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group. But on the ground, the rebel fighters did not appear to meet much resistance from government forces, according to the rebels, Syrian media and the Observatory.
The rebel offensive launched on Wednesday is the most serious challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in years. And the timing of it has raised questions about whether the rebels are trying to take advantage of weakness across an alliance with Iran at the center, and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian regime closely aligned with it.
But rebels said they had been preparing the offensive for months.
Weapons and money have long flowed from Iran across Syria’s borders to Hezbollah in Lebanon, part of a so-called ‘axis of resistance’ that includes the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza. Iran and Hezbollah also provided vital military support to Mr. al-Assad that helped him survive the civil war.
But now, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran have all been weakened by more than a year of conflict with Israel. A cease-fire this week halted more than 13 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah while Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza continues.
Israel has been bombing Syria for months, targeting Iranian commanders and fighters in the country and weapons shipments transiting through Syria to Hezbollah.
At the same time, Mr. al-Assad’s other key military ally, Russia, is bogged down in the war in Ukraine.
The rapid shifts over the past three days “serve as a powerful reminder that the Syrian conflict is far from “frozen,” said Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, head of policy for the Syrian American Council, a Washington-based advocacy group.
“What remains clear is that these developments expose Assad’s deep vulnerabilities and his regime’s lack of popular legitimacy,” he said.
The Syrian civil war began in 2011, displaced about half of the country’s population and sent millions of refugees seeking safety in neighboring countries like Turkey and Lebanon, and beyond to Europe. It has been largely stagnant for years, but on Wednesday, fighters from an array of armed opposition factions launched the surprise offensive against the government in the northwestern province of Aleppo.
The scenes that have unfolded over the past three days — in videos and images shared by the rebels and Syrian media — are eerily reminiscent of the early stages of the civil war. This time around, as before, rebels claimed to have captured a series of towns, neighborhoods, military bases and weaponry, while issuing calls for government soldiers to defect and join their ranks.
The last major escalation in the civil war was in early 2020, when Russian-backed Syrian forces launched a widespread offensive against rebels in opposition-dominated Idlib province, capturing several towns and cities.
That fighting ended in a cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey, which has supported the opposition since the early days of the war.
The anti-government fighters managed on Friday to breach five neighborhoods in the western part of the city of Aleppo after detonating two car bombs targeting government soldiers, according to the rebels and the Observatory. The monitoring group did not provide further details on the car bombings, and it was not immediately clear whether there were casualties.
Three days of fierce clashes have killed more than 250 combatants on both sides, including more than 140 from rebel groups and 87 government soldiers and Iran-backed fighters, according to the Observatory.
The rebels posted a map on the Telegram messaging app along with evacuation warnings to civilians in the city of Aleppo, urging people to move to eastern neighborhoods “for your safety.”
Syrian state media claimed that government forces had repelled the rebel advance and inflicted heavy losses on the other side. The rebels did not immediately respond to the claim, which could not be independently confirmed.
The White Helmets, a first-responder organization based in opposition-held areas of Syria, reported numerous civilians had been killed or injured in the government airstrikes on Friday.
The rebels come from an array of armed opposition factions, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was once linked with the terror group Al Qaeda but publicly broke ties with it years ago. Turkish-backed rebel groups are also taking part.
Though the Syrian civil war has been mostly been frozen for years, clashes along front lines have continued to break out periodically and opposition-held areas are regularly hit by government airstrikes.
Rebels said the goal of their assault is to try to stop airstrikes on opposition-held areas by government forces and their allies.
In a video statement announcing the offensive, Lt. Col. Hassan Abdulghany, military commander of the opposition’s operations room, said the decision to launch the attack was forced on the opposition forces.
“It is an obligation to defend our people and their land,” he said. “It has become clear to everyone that the regime militias and their allies, including the Iranian mercenaries, have declared an open war on the Syrian people.”
Iran has backed the Syrian government throughout the war, sending advisers and commanders of its powerful Revolutionary Guards force to bases and front lines, along with allied militias with thousands of fighters.
Muhammad Haj Kadour contributed reporting.
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4) Israel Warns Residents on Both Sides of Lebanon Border to Stay Away
The cease-fire appeared to largely be holding, but it was unclear when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and tens of thousands of Israelis could return to their homes near the border.
By Liam Stack and Euan Ward, Nov. 29, 2024
Liam Stack reported from Tel Aviv, and Euan Ward from Beirut, Lebanon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-ceasefire-hezbollah.html
Damage in a neighborhood of Tyre, Lebanon, as residents continued to return to their homes on Friday. Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The Israeli military issued new warnings to residents on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border on Friday, telling them not to return to their homes, as the fragile U.S.-brokered cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to largely hold despite another Israeli strike in southern Lebanon.
The military released a list of more than 60 towns in southern Lebanon that it said remained off-limits to civilians, including large centers like Bint Jbeil, Marjeyoun and Naqoura, the home of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country. The country’s hard-hit south has been the focal point of the war.
The Israeli military “does not intend to target you and therefore you are prohibited at this stage from returning to your homes,” said Avichay Adraee, a military spokesman, in a statement posted online directed at residents of the towns. “Anyone who moves south of this line puts himself in danger.”
It is not clear when hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese will be able to return to their homes in the south. Under the cease-fire agreement that took effect on Wednesday, Israeli forces will gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon over 60 days.
In his first address since the truce, Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s leader, argued that the war with Israel, lasting almost 14 months, had been a victory for the Iran-backed militia — a difficult proposition given the blows Hezbollah sustained, including the assassination of its previous chief, Hassan Nasrallah.
“We are looking at a great victory,” Mr. Qassem said in a televised speech from an undisclosed location. “We are victorious because we prevented the enemy from destroying Hezbollah, and because we prevented him from quashing the resistance or critically weakening it.”
But his statements were unlikely persuade many Lebanese. In exchange for the truce, Hezbollah gave up on its original goal in the war, to force Israel to end its campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. And in addition to Hezbollah’s own losses, the Israeli campaign against it demolished entire communities.
Adding to jitters over the fate of the truce, the Israeli military said on Friday that it had carried out another airstrike in southern Lebanon, targeting what it said was a mobile rocket platform belonging to Hezbollah. A day earlier, the military said it had struck a rocket storage facility in the country’s south.
Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported on Friday that the Israeli military was enforcing restrictions on returning to towns in the border area with gunfire and shelling. It said Israeli tanks had shelled a building in the town of Burj al-Moulouk in southern Lebanon, and were also seen moving into the town of Khiam, where earlier in the week the news agency said two journalists were injured by Israeli fire.
The Israeli military declined to comment on those reports. Photos of tanks near Khiam, which were verified by The Times, circulated on social media on Friday.
In a video aired by Lebanese broadcasters on Friday, a man on a dirt road in Khiam says he and others with him have received “permission” from U.N. peacekeeping forces and the Lebanese military.
Seconds later there are several bursts of gunfire. “They shot at us,” the man says as he runs for cover. It was not clear if there were any injuries. The Times verified the video and determined that it was taken next to Khiam’s cemetery.
The Lebanese military has also warned civilians about returning to southern border towns, and a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon said it did not have authority to grant permission to be in that area. It was the latest indication that the cease-fire agreement and military directives have led to confusion among Lebanese about where they can and cannot go.
The Israeli military also released a more general warning to residents of border towns in Israel, which had been the target of Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks for months, telling them the area, evacuated by tens of thousands of residents, remained under a “general closure.” It warned that it could have to intercept aerial munitions, and so the risk of shrapnel falling into evacuated towns could not be ruled out.
One of the Lebanese towns that Israel labeled as off-limits on Friday was Ain Ebel, a Christian village near the border. Rakan Ashkar Diab, a father of two, fled the town for Beirut in October but decided to return on Friday despite the warnings.
He passed destroyed houses along the way, he said, but arrived to find his own home still standing. He said he would not bring his family back yet because of the Israeli warnings, but he hoped to have them home in time for Christmas.
“We are waiting to see how the situation unfolds,” said Mr. Diab. “It’s still a bit fragile, the cease-fire.”
Israel stepped up its airstrikes in Lebanon in September and then launched a ground invasion, after almost a year of near-daily Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel, which Hezbollah said was an act of solidarity with Hamas, its ally in Gaza.
The result has been devastating for both Lebanon and Hezbollah, a militant group that is the country’s most powerful political player and military force. It has been the deadliest conflict in Lebanon since the country’s 15-year civil war ended in 1990, and has forced roughly a quarter of the population from their homes. The fighting has killed about 3,800 Lebanese and 100 Israelis, according to their governments.
Under the cease-fire agreement that went into effect at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, both sides will observe a 60-day truce while Israel gradually withdraws and Hezbollah moves its fighters north of the Litani River, which runs somewhat parallel with the border with Israel.
That will create a sort of buffer zone to be policed by a U.N. peacekeeping force and Lebanon’s military, neither of which have been combatants in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
But the agreement does not say when civilians will be permitted to return to their homes. On Wednesday, tens of thousands in Lebanon began to go back to ruined communities in the Dahiya area outside Beirut and in the country’s south and east.
A similar cease-fire deal that ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 was never fully enforced.
Ori Gordin, the commanding officer of the Israeli military’s northern command, told Israeli troops in southern Lebanon that it was now their job to “enable and enforce” the cease-fire.
“We will enforce it aggressively,” said Mr. Gordin, in a video of the remarks released on Friday by the military. “We do not intend to let Hezbollah return to these areas.”
At the same time, the war between Israel and Hamas continues. A gunman attacked an Israeli bus near a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday. Hamas identified the attacker as a member of its military wing and said he had been killed.
The attack wounded several people, three of them seriously, according to Israel’s emergency service. The Israeli military said four of its soldiers were lightly wounded, and that it had “neutralized” the shooter.
Reporting was contributed by Aaron Boxerman, Hwaida Saad, Malachy Browne and Dayana Iwaza.
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5) Former Defense Minister Accuses Israel of Committing War Crimes in Gaza
The comments by Moshe Yaalon were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said that they would hurt the country and help its enemies.
By Adam RasgonLiam Stack and Natan Odenheimer, Reporting from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Dec. 1, 2024
Moshe Yaalon, in Tel Aviv in 2019. Credit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A former Israeli defense minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, a rare critique from a member of the security establishment at a time of war.
The comments by Moshe Yaalon came amid mounting criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza. They were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, saying that they would hurt the country and help its enemies.
Mr. Yaalon served as the Israeli military’s chief of staff during the second intifada and as Mr. Netanyahu’s defense minister during the 2014 war in Gaza, the longest conflict between Israel and Hamas before the current war. But he broke with Mr. Netanyahu in 2016 and has since become a critic of the Israeli leader.
At an event on Saturday, Mr. Yaalon denounced Mr. Netanyahu’s government for its actions in Gaza.
“The path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse — look at the northern strip,” he said. He also said Israel was being pulled in the direction of building settlements in Gaza, a notion that is supported by far-right politicians in Mr. Netanyahu’s government.
When the interviewer at the event asked Mr. Yaalon to clarify whether he thought Israel was on the way to carrying out ethnic cleansing, he responded: “Why on the way? What’s happening there? What’s happening there?”
“There’s no Beit Lahia. There’s no Beit Hanoun. They’re now operating in Jabaliya. They’re basically cleaning the territory of Arabs,” he said, referring to towns and cities in northern Gaza where a renewed Israeli offensive against the militant group Hamas has caused extensive damage in recent months. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began in response to the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023.
Mr. Yaalon doubled down on his accusations on Sunday, saying on public radio that Mr. Netanyahu’s government was exposing Israeli commanders to lawsuits at the International Criminal Court and was putting their lives at risk.
“I’m speaking in the name of IDF commanders who are operating in the northern strip,” Mr. Yaalon told the Reshet Bet radio station. “They reached out to me expressing fear about what’s happening there.”
He later said, in an apparent reference to the government: “At the end of the day, they’re perpetrating war crimes” — while making clear that his issue was not with the soldiers themselves.
The Israeli military declined to comment on Mr. Yaalon’s accusations, which came 10 days after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office has rejected the accusations against the men in the warrants, calling them “absurd and false” and accusing the court of being motivated by antisemitism.
Mr. Yaalon’s comments were condemned by Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, of which Mr. Yaalon is a former member.
“Yaalon already lost his way a long time ago,” said the party. “His defamatory words are a prize for the International Criminal Court and the haters of Israel camp. Israel is fighting back against a murderous terrorist group that carried out mass slaughter.”
Mr. Gallant said on Sunday that Mr. Yaalon’s statements were “a lie that aids our enemy and harms Israel.”
The Israeli military “acted according to the highest standards that can be applied in the complex and difficult war that was imposed on us,” Mr. Gallant said in a post on social media. “The instructions and commands were always given in accordance with the law.”
Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said Mr. Yaalon “crossed all the red lines.” while Tally Gotliv, a firebrand Likud lawmaker, called him “worse than our biggest enemies.”
Israel has called on Palestinians from the northernmost reaches of Gaza to evacuate on several occasions since the war began last fall, including in the first week of the conflict and again in October. Tens of thousands of people have heeded those warnings and fled, but many are believed to have remained in the area, either because they cannot or do not want to leave.
Mr. Yaalon’s statements were striking because they come at a time in which Israelis from across the political spectrum have united in their opposition to the I.C.C.’s issuing of the warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant.
They were also unusual because Israelis and their leaders — like people in many countries — tend to rally around the troops during a time of war. Criticism by former Israeli officials of the war has tended to focus on strategy or whether to agree a cease-fire with Hamas, not the military’s conduct veering into potential war crimes.
Of four former senior Israeli security officials contacted by The Times on Sunday, only one agreed to comment.
Ami Ayalon, the former director of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency who has criticized Mr. Netanyahu in the past, said he wasn’t sure whether Israel’s actions in Gaza met the legal definition of “ethnic cleansing.” But he described the Israeli government’s policy directives for the military as “immoral and unjust,” saying they could expose commanders and soldiers to prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
In recent months, aid organizations and world leaders, including President Biden, have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in North Gaza. During that time, Israel has allowed little humanitarian aid to enter. Last month, Israel banned imports of commercial goods, saying that Hamas was benefiting from their sale. North Gaza is the northernmost of Gaza’s five governorates.
Israeli officials have said that Palestinians from North Gaza will be able to return to their homes after the war. Mr. Netanyahu has dismissed the idea of building settlements in Gaza, but hard-line members of his right-wing coalition have advocated for it.
Some Israelis worry that Mr. Netanyahu’s indecision about plans for post-war Gaza could result in a long-term occupation of the enclave, leaving open the possibility for right-wing members of the coalition to advance their ambitions to build settlements.
Some Palestinians from Gaza also took note of Mr. Yaalon’s comments.
Akram Atallah, a Palestinian columnist originally from Jabaliya, said he considered Mr. Yaalon’s remarks to be “extremely important.”
“This remark strengthens the Palestinian narrative of what is happening in Gaza,” he said. “And it isn’t coming from an Arab official or a sympathetic member of the international community. It’s coming from someone who was a general at the top of the Israeli system.”
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6) Fighting Rages in Syria as Rebels Advance
Forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad have captured the Aleppo airport and are attacking the western city of Hama, according to local officials and a Britain-based war monitor.
By Muhammad Haj Kadour and Vivian Yee, Dec. 1, 2024
Muhammad Haj Kadour reported from Aleppo and Hama Province in Syria, and Vivian Yee from Cairo.
Rebel forces advanced in Syria on Sunday amid fierce fighting, capturing the airport of the major city of Aleppo and attacking the outskirts of the western city of Hama, according to local officials and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Government troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were trying to repel them, they said.
The rebels had captured much of Aleppo a day earlier in a surprise offensive. They now control a broad swath of land across the provinces of Hama, Idlib and Aleppo, in the west and northwest of Syria, according to information from local officials and the Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor.
The New York Times also observed rebels in control of parts of Hama Province as well as neighborhoods in the east of the city of Aleppo and parts of the countryside beyond it that government forces had held only days earlier.
Government troops were battling to defend the city of Hama from being overrun, according to the Observatory. Syrian government warplanes were also bombing territory that was now held by the rebels, causing civilian casualties, the monitor said.
It said that government forces were receiving support from Russian fighter jets, which were striking targets across the countryside near Hama and Idlib Province.
Russia, which is allied with Mr. al-Assad, has repeatedly come to his aid since early in the civil war that broke out in 2011, after protests over Mr. al-Assad’s autocratic rule drew a swift and bloody military crackdown. Mr. al-Assad has also counted on military and political support from Iran.
The rebel alliance is led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was once linked with Al Qaeda but publicly broke with the terrorist group years ago. Turkish-backed rebel groups have also joined in.
The Biden administration said on Saturday that it was closely monitoring the situation in Syria. “The United States has nothing to do with this offensive,” a National Security Council spokesman, Sean Savett, said in a statement, calling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham “a designated terrorist organization.”
“The United States, together with its partners and allies, urge de-escalation, protection of civilians and minority groups, and a serious and credible political process that can end this civil war once and for all,” Mr. Savett said.
A Syrian government statement said that Mr. al-Assad had spoken to the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Iraq on Saturday, vowing that Syria would “defeat the terrorists, regardless of the intensity of their attacks.” Syrian officials routinely refer to rebels as terrorists.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, referred to the situation in Syria in Parliament on Sunday, saying that “Islamic countries must intervene to prevent America and Israel from exploiting the internal conflicts of countries and prevent the continuation of these crises.”
And the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he was heading to Damascus on Sunday. Ali Moujani, an Iranian diplomat, said on X that the foreign minister was making the trip in a show of support for the Syrian government.
The Syrian military said in a statement on Saturday that its operation to push back the rebels was “successfully” progressing and that it would soon initiate a counterattack. It tried to discredit reports about rebel advances, saying that the armed groups were spreading “false news” to “undermine the morale of our people and our brave army.”
Across the territory that had flipped back to the rebels, people could be seen tearing up Syrian government flags and pictures of Mr. al-Assad, including fighters and former Aleppo residents who were returning to their homes for the first time in years. Photos taken in Aleppo also showed the toppling of a statue that had apparently depicted Bassel al-Assad, the president’s elder brother.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Rania Khaled from Cairo and Leily Nikounazar from Brussels.
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7) 80 Years After Killings, Senegal Wants the Facts From France
The mass slaying of West African soldiers by colonial forces at the end of World War II in Senegal remains shrouded in secrecy. But Senegal’s new government won’t abide the mystery.
By Elian Peltier and Saikou Jammeh, Reporting from Thiaroye, Senegal, Dec. 1, 2024
In 1944, French colonial forces massacred West African soldiers who had returned from France after fighting in World War II, said the teacher, Aminata Diedhiou.
Their school, in the town of Thiaroye, stands near the site of the killings.
Why did the French massacre them, one student asked. How were they killed, wondered another.
“I want to know more,” said Amy Sall, 16.
So does Senegal.
Ahead of the 80th anniversary of what is known as the Thiaroye Massacre, Senegal’s government has pressured France to fully explain one of the most sinister episodes of its colonial rule in Africa.
And Senegal won’t let it go, the latest signal sent by an African government that the relationship with the former colonizer is up for reconsideration.
After President Emmanuel Macron of France last week referred to the events as a “massacre” in a letter addressed to his Senegalese counterpart — the first French president to ever to describe it as such — President Bassirou Diomaye Faye had a blunt answer.
“That is not enough,” Mr. Faye said in an interview with Le Monde. “We still don’t know how many people were killed nor why, how and where they were buried.”
The calls for reparations echo campaigns demanding truth and justice for colonial-era crimes committed across the continent. In the former French colonies of West and Central Africa, where several governments have curtailed ties with France in recent years, few incidents resonate as much as the memory of Thiaroye.
“Thiaroye could be the foundation for a Pan-African consciousness shared by all African countries who have lost citizens in the tragedy,” said Mamadou Diouf, a Senegalese historian and director of Columbia University’s Institute for African Studies.
Mr. Diouf, who was appointed by the Senegalese government this summer to lead a research committee on Thiaroye, called Senegal’s new attitude “indicative of a breakaway, a strong assertion of sovereignty.”
A 15-Second Blood Bath
On the morning of Dec. 1, 1944, French colonial forces gathered hundreds of West African men temporarily stationed at a garrison in Thiaroye, on the outskirts of Dakar, the then-capital of French West Africa.
It was supposed to be their last stop before home: Hailing from a dozen African colonies, the men had fought for France in the war, been detained in Nazi-run camps for years, and were now awaiting financial compensation for years of service.
The money wasn’t coming.
As tensions escalated between French and West African soldiers who had once been brothers in arms, French officers vowed to “bring back order,” according to a French military report written a day before the killings.
They brought machine guns to Thiaroye, two battalions, a tank and other military vehicles to “show so much superiority that the mutineers don’t think about resisting,” the report read.
Around 9:30 a.m., they fired more than 500 rounds of ammunition within 15 seconds, according to archives consulted by Martin Mourre, a French historian.
The first official death toll mentioned 35 West African deaths — an “indispensable surgical operation,” an act of self-defense against armed and aggressive men, claimed the French officer in charge, in a report written days later.
But historians from France and Senegal say the real death toll is likely closer to 400, and that the West African soldiers were not armed.
They argue that discrepancies in military reports and the preparedness of French troops pointed to a premeditated massacre. The lack of information around the identities of the victims and the whereabouts of their remains, are other signs that France tried to cover up a crime, they say.
“Hiding documents was a part of the imperial policy,” Mr. Diouf said. “We have the French version. We need to write our own narrative.”
Keeping ‘Thiaroye’ Alive
While much remains undisclosed about the events of 1944, Thiaroye has permeated Senegal’s public psyche in plays, poems and hip-hop songs. “Camp de Thiaroye,” released in 1988 by the filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, is a classic of Senegalese cinema.
Now, Senegal’s new pro-sovereignty government is making it a political issue.
Dozens of billboards commemorating the 80th anniversary of the massacre have been displayed along Dakar’s main avenues. In Thiaroye this past week, construction workers were renovating a military cemetery, which will be the site of the official commemoration ceremony.
At the middle school where Ms. Diedhiou gathered students, commemorations are held every year: Senegalese soldiers raise the country’s flag in the middle of the playground, surrounded by students donning uniforms similar to those worn in 1944.
“We are happy to pay tribute,” Awa Samateh, 17, said as she sat with half a dozen schoolmates under an orange tree between two lessons. “But it pains us because the white men killed them for no good reason.”
The school was built on the site of the military camp where the West African soldiers were slain. Ms. Diedhiou said she was haunted by the possibility of teaching close to where the victims may have been buried.
The nearby military cemetery contains 35 graves, the official death toll. But many in Senegal suspect that they are empty.
“These graves are a joke,” said Biram Senghor, whose father, Mbap, was killed in 1944. At 86, Mr. Senghor said he had little hope that he would ever learn the whereabouts of his father’s remains.
A Taboo No More
The economic, cultural and political ties between Senegal and France have run deep since Senegal’s independence in 1960.
For the sake of preserving those ties, Senegalese presidents never confronted France about the atrocities committed in Thiaroye, according to historians and intellectuals from both countries.
“Previous governments thought they had to beg France to commemorate,” said Boubacar Boris Diop, a writer and intellectual who has written a play on Thiaroye. “It is changing now.”
France has long maintained that it had given access to all its archives on the killings, but cracks in that assertion have begun to appear. For the 70th anniversary of the killings in 2014, then-President François Hollande said the death toll was more likely 70 — double the toll France had previously acknowledged, but still far below historians’ estimates.
“France isn’t itself when it looks away from events that may have tarnished its image,” Mr. Hollande said.
Last month, Senegalese archivists working for Mr. Diouf’s research group traveled to France to examine all of the archives that could contain information about the killings.
“We will be able to come up with some information that will allow people to ask for reparations,” Mr. Diouf said.
Only truth, President Faye said in his interview with Le Monde, will help Senegal and France move toward a partnership “ridden of painful remnants.” He also called on hundreds of French troops still present in Senegal to leave. In another blow to France’s already-waning military influence in Africa, the government of Chad ended a longstanding defense partnership between the two countries last month.
Mr. Senghor, who was 6 years old in 1944, is still waiting for the financial compensation that France owes his deceased father for his service in France.
Mr. Macron said he wouldn’t travel to Senegal for the commemorations. Whether France will heed Senegal’s requests is also unclear.
While France has under Mr. Macron’s leadership returned looted artworks and acknowledged crimes committed in Algeria and Rwanda, acknowledging responsibility for the Thiaroye killings could fuel calls for reparations in other former colonies.
But, Mr. Senghor said, “If the French want to get well with Africans, they must apologize and pay.”
Babacar Fall contributed reporting from Thiaroye, and Aurelien Breeden from Paris.
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8) A Warning From a California Marine Heat Wave
An extreme heat wave off California’s coast seemed like an anomaly 10 years ago. But as the ocean warms, the catastrophe may be a glimpse of the future.
By Delger Erdenesanaa, Photographs by Ian C. Bates, Dec. 1, 2024
This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.
Jan Roletto, a NOAA research ecologist, measured a dead bird on Rodeo Beach
A decade ago, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific shot up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal. A high pressure system parked over the ocean, and winds that churn cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths to the surface died down. Stagnant, warm water spread across the Northeast Pacific, in a marine heat wave that lasted for three years.
Under the surface, the food web broke down and ecosystems convulsed, at first unseen to humans on shore. But soon, clues washed up.
Dead Cassin’s auklets — small, dark gray seabirds — piled up on West Coast beaches. The auklets were followed by common murres, a slightly bigger black-and-white seabird. The carcasses were knee-deep in places, impossible to miss.
Researchers are still untangling the threads of what happened, and they caution against drawing universal conclusions from a single regional event. But the Blob fundamentally changed many scientists’ understanding of what climate change could do to life in the ocean; 10 years later, the disaster is one of our richest sources of information on what happens to marine life as the temperature rises.
And it is more relevant than ever. Last year, multiple “super-marine heat waves” blanketed parts of the ocean. Averaged together, global sea surface temperatures broke records, often by wide margins, for months in 2023 and 2024. As the climate warms, scientists expect extreme marine heat waves to become more frequent.
The Blob “was a window into what we might see in the future,” said Julia Parrish, a marine ecologist at the University of Washington who runs the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, a network of volunteers who survey beaches from Northern California to Alaska.
In a study published last year, Dr. Parrish and her colleagues estimate that the Blob eventually killed millions of seabirds, in waves of starvation.
More recently, researchers undertook a thorough post-mortem of the Blob in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, off the California coast.
The sanctuary is one of 17 pockets of U.S. waters protected to varying degrees from development and industry. They are becoming test beds for ways people can try and help marine life — and the human livelihoods that depend on the ocean — adapt to climate change.
This summer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a “condition report” for the Greater Farallones, along with an accompanying climate vulnerability assessment that reveals just how shocking the Blob was for scientists.
A decade ago, marine heat waves were not a phenomenon sanctuary scientists were fully aware of, said Danielle Lipski, a NOAA ecologist who oversaw the condition report.
The foundation species that creates habitat for everything else in the Greater Farallones is bull kelp, a seaweed that grows from the seafloor to the surface in dense forests. Before the Blob, Ms. Lipski and her colleagues hadn’t thought bull kelp would be particularly vulnerable to climate change.
By the time the Blob dissipated, more than 90 percent of Northern California’s kelp forests were gone.
Historically, kelp has had booms and busts, Ms. Lipski said. “We just thought that’s the pattern for kelp — it’ll recover,” she said. “And it hasn’t.”
Kelp is eaten by sea urchins, which are eaten by sea stars. During the Blob, a deadly disease spread among sea stars, causing urchin populations to explode. Urchins devoured the kelp, leaving behind a much more barren seascape to this day.
“Back in 2014, I think there was this feeling amongst our experts that relative to land ecosystems, the ocean is really resilient,” said Sara Hutto, the climate change coordinator for the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank sanctuaries.
Ms. Hutto oversaw the new climate vulnerability assessment, in which scientists revised their scores for 17 species and six types of habitat to reflect more vulnerability than previously thought.
“We have no precedent for the rate of change that we’re seeing,” she said.
Life in the Greater Farallones, named for a group of forbidding rocky islands 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco, is ruled by upwelling. Wind mixes layers of the ocean and brings nutrients to the surface, feeding phytoplankton, which in turn feed a rich food web around them. The Greater Farallones are part of a much larger upwelling zone along the West Coast called the California Current Ecosystem.
This ecosystem is so productive that whales, turtles and seabirds migrate thousands of miles to eat there, Ms. Lipski said, from Central America, Hawaii, Indonesia and as far away as New Zealand.
When the Blob struck, far fewer nutrients reached the sea surface where phytoplankton live, and the bottom fell out of the food web. Krill and forage fish populations — the small fish that bigger animals eat — dwindled. Sea stars wasted away. Harmful algae bloomed, spreading toxic domoic acid through the valuable Dungeness crab fishery. Like the auklets and murres, seals and gray whales also starved.
During the Blob, the Greater Farallones actually fared better than other parts of the ocean in a way — some upwelling persisted, in a narrow band close to shore. But that meant animals that couldn’t find food elsewhere flocked to this small area, in a phenomenon called habitat compression. This proved deadly for whales, which found themselves crossing busy shipping lanes, where they were struck by vessels, and fishing grounds where they got tangled in gear.
Although the immediate catastrophe of the Blob ended, hints of chronic change are everywhere.
On a Sunday at the beginning of October, the temperature in San Francisco surpassed 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of people crowded the city’s beaches, either enjoying or trying to find relief from the unseasonable heat.
Just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, the normally choppy waters in the Gulf of the Farallones were still. Common murres — the survivors of the Blob — bobbed on the surface in groups of two and three.
A whale-watching boat passed 30 humpback whales in eight hours. Most were close to shore, a sign of continued habitat compression.
Conspicuously absent from the water were fishing boats.
October is normally the tail end of salmon season, and a busy time on the waterfront. But the next morning, Monday, Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco was quiet.
“It’s kind of a ghost town,” said Sarah Bates, a local salmon boat captain, who has seen the past two seasons canceled because of drought.
Ms. Bates holds one of two spots for commercial fishermen on the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary’s advisory council, and appreciates the scientific research done in the sanctuary.
Marine sanctuaries are rare slices of ocean where people carefully watch what’s happening underneath the surface, and as a result scientists can catch the signal of climate change sooner, said Zachary Cannizzo, NOAA’s climate coordinator for marine protected areas nationwide.
In hindsight, Ms. Bates views the Blob differently.
At the time, she said, “it didn’t feel like it was the new normal, it just felt like it was an anomaly.”
But now, she continued, “it’s becoming clear that was just sort of the leading edge of changing ocean patterns.”
This change affects multiple fisheries. California’s crab fishing season has been delayed year after year, first to avoid toxic domoic acid from harmful algal blooms and now to avoid entanglements with whales.
Richard Ogg, a crab boat captain based in the small town of Bodega Bay, holds the other spot on the Greater Farallones council.
“We see current changes, we see color changes, we know temperatures are different, we see species shift,” Mr. Ogg said.
He wants fishermen to be able to convey these observations from the water to scientists, to help model and predict the future of the marine ecosystem. (One early example is the Habitat Compression Index, a tool recently developed by NOAA scientists to predict humpback whale movements months in advance based on sea surface temperatures.)
Everyone who studies and works in this region of the ocean — the scientists, the volunteers, the whale watch crews, the fishermen — is grappling in their own ways with the upheaval of the recent past and the uncertain future.
Rebecca Johnson, who directs the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the California Academy of Sciences, explained the value of getting as many people as possible to pool their observations of the changing environment.
Dr. Johnson helped create Snapshot Cal Coast, a program that recruits hundreds of Californians each June to document the species they see along the coast. This year, the effort yielded a rare sighting of a sunflower sea star — a critically endangered species that all but disappeared during the Blob.
More data from more people and places means better-informed decisions on conservation measures and fisheries management, Dr. Johnson said. And the people contributing this data become better connected to their environment.
Like Anne Kelley, a retired French lecturer and longtime bird watcher recruited to join Beach Watch, a sister program to the University of Washington’s that is run by NOAA.
Ms. Kelley walks her assigned beaches each month, tallying every living and dead thing.
It’s normal to come across occasional carcasses, she said. What wasn’t normal was finding scores of dead seabirds at once — as she did during the Blob. In her dozen years of meticulously bearing witness to changes along the coast, Ms. Kelley said, “the die-offs are the things that you really remember.”
For the past decade, restoration efforts in the Greater Farallones have focused on controlling the purple urchin population. Some bull kelp has come back, but slowly. Scientists are now trying to speed up recovery by planting lab-grown kelp within the sanctuary, in hopes that these individuals will reseed larger forests.
The caretakers of this pioneering kelp showed off their handiwork recently at the Bodega Marine Laboratory, an isolated facility perched on a cliff over the ocean, an hour and a half north of San Francisco. About 30 long, brownish-green strands of seaweed tumbled in concrete tanks of water outside, glinting in the sun.
Julieta Gómez and Rachael Karm entered graduate school in 2020 at Sonoma State University. During school, they harvested bull kelp on body boards from the few remnant patches in the region, and began painstaking experiments to coax the kelp to grow under artificial conditions. Today, Ms. Gómez is a kelp restoration specialist at the Greater Farallones Association, and Ms. Karm works for her former adviser at Sonoma State.
They have a clear affection for their charges, which represent so much loss — and now hope — for the region’s changing ecosystem.
This year was a turning point for their project, with the first successful out-planting taking place in July. They hope to get the sanctuary’s bull kelp population back to a stable point where minimal intervention is needed. But the two young scientists, who began their careers in a post-Blob world, recognize there will be challenges ahead.
“Together we can just continue chipping away at these different questions and hopefully build something that is successful, is resilient to further climate change,” Ms. Karm said. “Because that’s something that’s huge. If temperatures are just going to continue warming, what are we going to do?”
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9) Saudi Arabia Leads Pushback Against Global Plastic Treaty
Delegates from more than 170 countries are working to salvage a treaty that would tackle the growing problem of plastic pollution.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, Nov. 30, 2024
An oil processing plant in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter. Credit...Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A week after Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, was accused of being a “wrecking ball” jeopardizing global climate talks, Saudi officials are leading an effort to block a United Nations deal to tackle plastic pollution, negotiators said.
Delegates from more than 170 nations have been engaged in tense negotiations in Busan, South Korea, to draft a global plastic treaty that addresses the growing problem of plastic waste.
Saudi Arabia, Russia and other producers of petroleum, which is used to make most of the world’s plastic, have pushed back against measures that would address plastic pollution by placing curbs on excessive plastic production. The Saudis and their allies have also said they oppose any treaty that would start to list and phase out chemicals present in plastic that are thought to be harmful to health.
In closed-door negotiations late Saturday, Saudi Arabia, along with other nations, was pushing to delete entire paragraphs from the treaty text on who should finance the costs of implementing the agreement, according to a delegate with direct knowledge of the proceedings.
Saudi delegates had argued in their submissions to the negotiations that tackling supply “penalizes industries without addressing the actual issue of plastic pollution.”
Delegates and observers have said that throughout the talks, the Saudis have insisted on unanimity for every decision and have raised frequent objections over procedure, slowing down progress.
When a Brazilian delegate who coleads a critical subgroup suggested that negotiators hold informal discussions over lunch to make up for lost time, for example, the Saudi delegate insisted that the Brazilian did not have a mandate to call for lunchtime talks, according to multiple people with knowledge of the exchange.
The Saudi delegation did not respond to requests for comment.
The slow pace has prompted rare public rebukes by delegates in Busan, where negotiations are in the final stretch. The U.N.-led talks, which kicked off in 2022, are scheduled to end on Sunday.
“We have seen countries trying to delay negotiation. This is unacceptable,” José Ramón Reyes López, a delegate for the Dominican Republic, said at a midweek session.
Mauricio Cabrera Leal, Colombia’s vice minister of environment, said a number of parties were delaying discussions. They are “leading us down a path which will not enable us to reach constructive agreement,” he said.
Neither Mr. Leal nor Mr. López specified which countries. Still, delegates aligned with the Saudis quickly responded.
Salman Alajmi, a delegate from Kuwait, said they had “gathered here in good faith” and were “fully committed” to an ambitious plastic treaty. But he said members of his bloc were “the ones being labeled as the blockers of the process when it is evidently the other way around.”
“We shouldn’t sacrifice the inclusiveness and the durability and the soundness of this agreement, just because we are pressed for time,” said Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz, a delegate from Saudi Arabia.
The fight over the future of plastics comes at a time when crude oil demand is expected to peak and then slow as the rise of electric cars starts to reduce demand for fuel. That makes plastics, which are derived from petroleum, an increasingly critical industry for oil-exporting nations.
As the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia is especially sensitive to that transition. The kingdom’s Vision 2030, an overarching plan to diversify its economy beyond crude oil, positions petrochemicals as a promising growth industry. In its annual report, Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, lists “increased concerns regarding the safe use of chemicals and plastics and their potential impact on the environment” and the “restrictive regulations” those concerns may spur as risks to its business.
According to a U.N. attendees list, two members of the Saudi delegation are employees of the kingdom’s Oil Demand Sustainability Program, which was set up to stimulate oil demand amid an energy transition.
“They clearly have a strategy to prevent global progress on anything that would threaten their capacity to continue extracting fossil fuels,” said David Azoulay, director of environmental health at the Center for International Environmental Law.
A broad coalition of nations has stood firm on plastic production cuts, even in the face of opposition from petroleum producers, as well as the return of an oil-friendly Trump administration in the United States.
More than 100 nations have now signed onto a proposal to set a global target to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers — the building blocks of plastic. They say that to solve plastic pollution, the world needs to make less plastic, and they have emphasized that the talks have a mandate to address plastic’s full cycle, from production to disposal.
They point to the nearly half a billion tons of plastic the world produces each year, and the fact that only an estimated 9 percent of plastic waste generated globally is recycled. Researchers have estimated that one garbage truck’s worth of plastic enters the ocean every minute.
In announcing the proposal, Juan Carlos Monterrey, the head of the delegation for Panama, urged nations “that have not moved a centimeter” to cross the bridge to an agreement.
The coalition seeking to set limits on plastic production now includes fossil fuel-producing nations like Canada and Norway. It has been led by developing nations, particularly Rwanda, which in 2008 became one of the first countries in the world to ban single-use plastic bags and bottles. The United States has not signed on.
In a bid to break the stalemate, the chairman of the talks, Luis Vayas Valdivieso of Ecuador, released an updated treaty text on Friday. It still offered a binary choice: a global target to reduce plastic production, or no production curbs at all.
As delegates faced down the final hours, some raised the possibility that the talks would be suspended until a later date. Others were tentatively exploring moving the negotiations outside of a U.N. forum and away from oil-producing nations, one observer said. A third potential outcome would be a compromise that did little to address plastic pollution, they said.
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