Ramin Mazaheri
Press TV, Paris
Global condemnation appears certain to follow France’s new ban on all pro-Palestinian protests.
Thousands of activists turned out in Paris anyway to stand up for besieged Gaza, and were met with the typical brutality which has made French police infamous. Ramin Mazaheri has more from Paris.
Iraqis in the capital Baghdad poured into the iconic Tahrir roundabout in large numbers on Friday to show their support for the Palestinians amid the Zionist Israeli regime aggression.
Similar rallies are reported to have been going on in Bahrain, Jordan and other nations in the region and across the world.
People in Jordan are reported to have rallied towards occupied Palestine in their cars.
Iranians are also scheduled to hold massive rallies nationwide on Friday to show their backing.
The Yemenis in huge numbers also filled the capital San’a’s and Sa’dah streets to denounce the Zionist regime’s killing of Palestinians and also show their support for the Al-Aqsa Storm operation.
The resistance group Hamas launched a successful operation dubbed “Al-Aqsa Storm”, killing more than 1,100 Zionist regime’s soldiers and settlers, followed by a war on Gaza’s civilians by the regime.
According to the Palestinian health official figures more than 1,537 Palestinians have been martyred, and 6,612 have been wounded in Israeli indiscriminate attacks so far.
This item is being updated…
The Israeli regime has ordered the residents of Gaza City to evacuate the area within 24 hours, in what is viewed as a precursor of a ground invasion by the occupying entity after suffering a serious setback by the Palestinian resistance groups over the past few days.
In a statement released on Friday, Israel’s military called on all people living north of the Gaza Strip, which amount to more than one million, to relocate south within 24 hours as the regime deploys tanks and heavy armaments near the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military claimed it would operate “significantly” in Gaza City in the coming days and civilians would only be able to return when another announcement was made.
“Now is a time for war,” said Israel’s minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant as the regime’s warplanes continue pounding Gaza for the seventh consecutive day in relentless attacks that have claimed the lives of at least 1,500 Palestinians, including some 500 children and 280 women.
The inhumane attacks have already displaced more than 420,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations.
‘Devastating humanitarian consequences’
The United Nations said it considered it impossible for such a movement of people to take place “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said it relocated its central operations center and international staff to Gaza’s south to continue its humanitarian operations and support its staff and Palestinian refugees.
Hamas said the Gaza relocation warning was “fake propaganda” and urged citizens not to fall for it, also calling on Palestinians to rise up on Friday and march to the al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied Old City of al-Quds in protest at Israel’s bombardment of the coastal area since the retaliatory strikes by the resistance groups at the weekend.
Israel started its onslaught on Saturday after Hamas-led resistance groups launched multi-pronged Operation al-Aqsa Storm, the largest military operation against the occupying regime in decades.
Since then, the resistance groups have fired more than 5,000 rockets in retaliatory strikes at the occupied territories, leaving more than 1,300 settlers and troops dead and three times as many injured.
The Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, is under years-long siege by the Israeli regime.
Palestinian population in Gaza being ‘wiped off’
Reacting to the ongoing Israeli onslaught, the UN rapporteur for Palestine said a significant part of Gaza’s population is being “wiped off,” as the blockaded city continues to face intense Israeli strikes and shelling.
“What’s happening is that a significant part of the Palestinian population in Gaza is being wiped off. Not differently from what has happened before in … but with increased ferocity,” Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said in press statements on Thursday.
Albanese also commented on a decision by Israel earlier this week to cut off Gaza’s supply of water, electricity, food, and other basic facilities, underlining that starving a besieged population and depriving them of essentials was a war crime.
“If it’s intentional and, in the context of a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population, it also constitutes a crime against humanity,” she added.
Albanese highlighted the overwhelmed state of hospitals in Gaza still functioning under the Israeli bombardment, saying that they had reached maximum capacity.
“There are patients sharing the same bed, patients lying on the ground, and there are no medicines,” she said, adding that there is “no possibility of anything entering Gaza,” as the area is “under total siege.”
Describing the situation as catastrophic, she said there were people on the ground in the city, running with dead or wounded in their arms, trying to find shelter, of which there is none in the city.
“Every rule of international humanitarian law had been broken” throughout the Israeli aggression, Albanese underlined.
‘Nobody wants to live in Sinai tents’
Palestinians in Gaza have called on Egyptian authorities to use the Rafah crossing to allow essential aid and resources to flow into Gaza, particularly after electricity and water were cut by Israeli authorities on Monday.
The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza – the only gateway in and out of the besieged area – was targeted by three separate Israeli strikes earlier this week.
“Hospitals are in a very, very bad situation. Electricity and water plants in Gaza [have] stopped,” said Omar Shaban, a Gaza-based analyst and founder of PalThink for Strategic Studies.
The calls by Palestinians were just limited to the delivery of humanitarian aids as they had rejected to move to Egypt and a buffer zone in the Sinai Peninsula after the Israeli regime had floated the idea of constructing illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip following a potential ground invasion.
“Palestinians are aware of this idea of some Israelis, to push Gaza into Sinai. They will not do it, they will not accept it,” said Shaban, stressing that the idea was raised during previous Israeli wars on Gaza and yet “people did not leave Gaza to Sinai.”
“They are not stupid. They don’t want to repeat the second Nakba,” Shaban added, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the creation of the illegal entity in 1948.
Muhammad Shehada, a journalist and rights activist from Gaza, stressed that people in Gaza have no desire to leave despite the Israeli blockade and living through five brutal wars since 2008.
“Nobody in Gaza wants to live as a refugee in tents in the Sinai Desert,” he said. “That’s basically the plan of the Israeli far-right.”
A United Nations special rapporteur has slammed the European Union’s unwavering support for Israel in its aggression on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and its double standards regarding Palestine and Ukraine.
Speaking to Middle East Eye, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said “Political action is lacking and double standards tarnish the values and the rule of law principle upon which our international order is premised.”
Albanese made the remarks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed the EU’s unwavering support for Israel in recent days, saying that “Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come. The European Union stands with Israel.”
After von der Leyen’s tweet, Israel has intensified its strikes on Gaza and cut off fuel, water, energy, and food supplies to the coastal strip, which is home to over two million Palestinians and has already been suffering under a 16-year-old Israeli blockade.
Von der Leyen’s recent remarks drew widespread criticism, especially after her previous comments on Russia’s alleged targeting of such utilities.
Last year, Von der Leyen said Russian “attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes.”
“Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity, and heating with winter coming – these are acts of pure terror,” she said back then.
The UN rapporteur urged Von der Leyen on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to make the “same declaration” she did against Russia towards the Israeli offensive on Gaza.
“If not, people could think that European institutions do not value the protection of Palestinian children, women and men as much as that of Ukrainians,” said Albanese.
Albanese said it was important to make such a statement because it meant “giving full meaning to the universality of human rights and equality of all human beings, to enable Israelis and Palestinians to live in dignity and freedom.”
“I do not understand the lack of commensurate empathy with the Palestinian people, as well as the lack of accountability for Israel’s protracted occupation and crimes perpetrated for over 56 years,” Albanese said.
While Tel Aviv was backed by its staunch Western allies, the US and the EU, over the past week, the reaction among Latin American leaders was more varied.
The most vocal commentator among Latin American leaders has been Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, who took to X to decry Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza, widely sharing photos and footage of Palestinian victims. In his tweets, Petro also likened the Israeli military to Nazis.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government stressed that the escalating tensions “is the result of the inability of the Palestinian people to find a space in international law to assert their historical rights”.
In Bolivia, former President Evo Morales reiterated his support for Palestine and broke with the leftist government’s more diplomatic statement.
“The statement from the Bolivian Foreign Ministry does not reflect the feeling of solidarity of the Bolivian people towards Palestine. The Bolivian people will always condemn the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories,” Morales, who is once again running for office, said on X.
On Saturday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched the al-Aqsa Storm operation against Israel in response to the occupying regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The military operation killed around 1,300 Israeli forces, and injured thousands more. Nearly 150 others were also captured by the resistance forces.
Meanwhile, the Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza killed more than 1,500 people, nearly half of whom were children and women, and injured over 6,600 others.
Iraqis in the capital Baghdad poured into the iconic Tahrir roundabout in large numbers on Friday to show their support for the Palestinians amid the Zionist Israeli regime aggression.
Similar rallies are reported to have been going on in Bahrain, Jordan and other nations in the region and across the world.
People in Jordan are reported to have rallied towards occupied Palestine in their cars.
Iranians are also scheduled to hold massive rallies nationwide on Friday to show their backing.
The resistance group Hamas launched a successful operation dubbed “Al-Aqsa Storm”, killing more than 1,100 Zionist regime’s soldiers and settlers, followed by a war on Gaza’s civilians by the regime.
According to the Palestinian health official figures more than 1,537 Palestinians have been martyred, and 6,612 have been wounded in Israeli indiscriminate attacks so far.
This item is being updated…
The top Iranian diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian arrived in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon as his second stop on a regional tour that has already taken him to Iraq.
He met with Lebanon’s Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati for talks on Friday morning.
The regional tour by the Iranian foreign minister is taking place as the Zionist Israeli regime is conducting savage bombardment of Gaza Strip after the successful Hamas-launched Al-Aqsa Storm operation on Saturday. The regime’s ground invasion on the besieged enclave looms.
This item is being updated…
Over 1,500 Palestinians martyred in Zionist regime airstrikes: Gaza health ministry
The Health Ministry in Gaza announced on Thursday that at least 1,537 Palestinians, including 500 children, and 276 women have been killed in six days of incessant Israeli bombardment of the blockaded territory.
More than 6,612 Palestinians have also been wounded in the bombardment.
The regime’s latest air raids claimed at least two dozen lives in the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Thursday.
Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have also been displaced as a result of the regime’s relentless and indiscriminate attacks.
The Zionist regime’s war on Gaza came shortly after Gaza’s resistance movements launched their biggest operation against the usurping regime in years in response to its decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Codenamed the al-Aqsa Storm Operation, the campaign killed at least 1,000 Israeli forces and settlers and injured thousands more. Nearly 150 others were also captured by the resistance forces.
Amir-Abdollahian said, “We extend our most heartfelt congratulations to the Palestinian people for their resistance and victory in the al-Aqsa Storm Operation.”
“Iran will strongly continue its support for the resistance,” the top diplomat asserted.
This item is being updated…
“Some European officials asked me if there were any chances that new fronts might open up against the Zionist regime?” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Thursday in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, his second stop on a regional tour that has already taken him to Iraq.
“I told them as far as the Zionists keep up their war crimes, there exists every prospect that other resistance movements [may enter the war],” he added, according to the Press TV website.
As many as 1,537 Palestinians have died and 6,612 others been injured since Saturday, when the Israeli regime launched the war against the coastal sliver.
Amir-Abdollahian has started the tour as means of talking with ranking officials in the destination countries about the developments that have been unfolding in the region, especially the Israeli regime’s crimes against Gaza.
The military campaign has seen the regime leveling entire districts and featured its use of banned white phosphorous munitions against densely-populated neighborhoods.
“We are in Beirut to announce with a loud voice that, along with [other] Muslim countries and governments, we do not brook the Zionist regime’s crimes against the people of Gaza.” Amir-Abdollahian said.
He called Israel’s displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians as part of the warfare, and its concomitant enforcement of an all-out siege on Gaza, “an organized war crime” on the part of the occupying regime.
“Continuation of these war crimes will be followed by other reactions on other axes, for which the Zionist regime and its supporters would be responsible,” he added.
On Sunday, the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah said the group’s “guns and rockets” were with Palestinian fighters.
And on Tuesday, Iraq’s anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah threatened to target American bases in the Arab country and the entire region if the United States intervened in the ongoing fighting between the Palestinian fighters and the Israeli regime.
The war came shortly after Gaza’s resistance movements initiated their biggest operation against Israel in years in response to the occupying regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Codenamed the al-Aqsa Storm Operation, the campaign killed at least 1,000 Israeli forces and settlers and injured thousands more. Nearly 150 others were also captured by the resistance forces.
Amir-Abdollahian said, “We extend our most heartfelt congratulations to the Palestinian people for their resistance and victory in the al-Aqsa Storm Operation.”
“Iran will strongly continue its support for the resistance,” the top diplomat asserted.
MNA
The unpreparedness of the Israeli regime’s intelligence agencies caused more than a thousand Zionists to be killed and nearly 150 others captured by the Resistance forces in a matter few hours in the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation launched by Palestinian resistance.
A journalist has said that the Israeli intelligence services would argue that Hamas was training for something that it would never dare to do. He added that that was bad prediction and out of arrogance. Hamas instead launched an incredibly complicated and sophisticated attack from air, land and sea.
Al-Aqsa Storm showed how vulnerable the Zionist military is to an offensive operation. This vulnerability is an issue that has been repeatedly warned by Zionists in recent years.
Zionist newspapers say that Netanyahu’s strategy regarding Iran’s nuclear program has also completely failed, and Tel Aviv’s relations with the United States are tense as never before. Without the US, which is considered a very important ally for the Israeli regime, it is unlikely that the regime can last even a day.
Jordan and Palestinian resistance
Jordan is one of the most important countries in the region for the Zionist regime. Since the founding of the fake Zionist regime in Palestine and the formation of a new political geography and the constantly changing political factions among the countries of the region, not only has Jordan’s importance in this puzzle never decreased, but because of the position it had either in endangering or preserving the regime’s existence, received more attention from the regime and its backers, i.e. Western powers, especially the United States. Due to the fact that among the 4 neighbors of the usurping regime, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, Jordan has the longest shared border with it and practically covers the entire eastern part of the regime, strategically speaking, it has the most important position in the stability or instability of the regime given the threats that pose to it from the eastern side.
One of the main sources of threat is the presence of more than 4 million Palestinians in Jordan, a potential threat that has made Jordan to be called silent Palestine.
One of the most important and strategic areas of the region is on the west bank of the Jordan Rift Valley, which extends from Lake Tiberias in the north to the Dead Sea. Israel occupies a part of it located between the Dead Sea and the West Bank. The importance of the Jordan Valley is that it is a warm and fertile natural area that can be exploited for agriculture throughout the year and is located above the most important water basin in Palestine. The Al Ghawr, region of the Jordan Valley is one third of the area of the West Bank and more than 56,000 citizens live there, including in the city of Jericho. This population includes 2% of the total population of Palestinian residents in the West Bank. This area is one of Jordan’s occupied areas, and in recent years, Jordan has sought to reclaim it after the end of its lease clause to Tel Aviv in the Wadi Araba peace treaty in 1993.
The geography of the border between Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territories gives the Palestinians and other Arabs living in Jordan a great opportunity for creating insecurity and sending weapons to the West Bank. It was for fear of that possibility that the Zionist regime sealed off that border are shorty just one hour after the Al-Aqsa Storm was launched on Saturday.
MNA
Iran has said that fighting against the Israeli regime, which has brought the Gaza Strip under a hugely deadly and destructive war, may expand to new fronts.
“Some European officials asked me if there were any chances that new fronts might open up against the Zionist regime?” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Thursday in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, his second stop on a regional tour that has already taken him to Iraq.
“I told them as far as the Zionists keep up their war crimes, there exists every prospect that other resistance movements [may enter the war],” he added.
As many as 1,537 Palestinians have died and 6,612 others been injured since Saturday, when the Israeli regime launched the war against the coastal sliver.
Amir-Abdollahian has started the tour as means of talking with ranking officials in the destination countries about the developments that have been unfolding in the region, especially the Israeli regime’s crimes against Gaza.
The military campaign has seen the regime leveling entire districts and featured its use of banned white phosphorous munitions against densely-populated neighborhoods.
“We are in Beirut to announce with a loud voice that, along with [other] Muslim countries and governments, we do not brook the Zionist regime’s crimes against the people of Gaza.” Amir-Abdollahian said.
He called Israel’s displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians as part of the warfare, and its concomitant enforcement of an all-out siege on Gaza, “an organized war crime” on the part of the occupying regime.
“Continuation of these war crimes will be followed by other reactions on other axes, for which the Zionist regime and its supporters would be responsible,” he added.
On Sunday, the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah said the group’s “guns and rockets” were with Palestinian fighters.
And on Tuesday, Iraq’s anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah threatened to target American bases in the Arab country and the entire region if the United States intervened in the ongoing fighting between the Palestinian fighters and the Israeli regime.
The war came shortly after Gaza’s resistance movements initiated their biggest operation against Israel in years in response to the occupying regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Codenamed the al-Aqsa Storm Operation, the campaign killed at least 1,000 Israeli forces and settlers and injured thousands more. Nearly 150 others were also captured by the resistance forces.
Amir-Abdollahian said, “We extend our most heartfelt congratulations to the Palestinian people for their resistance and victory in the al-Aqsa Storm Operation.”
“Iran will strongly continue its support for the resistance,” the top diplomat asserted.
