Feb 2024 – Page 17

Israel pushes ceasefire deal while threatening Rafah attack- Hamas positive but demands permanent Ceasefire-

from thefreeonline 1 Feb, 2024 – 22.00 GMT Home World News

Gaza still being blitzed. Rafah attack threatened as new Ceasefire reportedly imminent.. 2 Feb 2024 -22.00 GMT

Hundreds of thousands of now homeless and trapped Palestinians now face the Israeli Genocide War machine as it approaches the Rafah border 2/2/24

Qatari negotiators are awaiting a final response from Hamas officials, who have seemingly welcomed part of the plan. Netanyahu continues to declare there is no possible deal. Israel tries to force acceptance by preparing a mass attack on Rafah border area.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are sheltering in Rafah, mainly cold and hungry in makeshift tents and public buildings.

Hamas says it’s studying Gaza cease-fire proposal, but appears to rule out some key provisions .. The plan moves in 3 stages and does not include the key Palestinian demand of a permanent ceasefire.

Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, said the group remains committed to its initial demands for a permanent cease-fire. Hamdan also said the group seeks the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners being held for acts related to the conflict with Israel, including those serving life sentences. He mentioned two by name, including Marwan Barghouti, a popular Palestinian uprising leader seen as a unifying figure.
Video Duration 01 minutes 43 seconds

The ceasefire plan was hashed out in Paris over the weekend, with Qatari and Egyptian diplomats mediating between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. Delegations from West Jerusalem and Gaza left the French capital promising to study the proposal and negotiate further this week, and by Thursday evening, a deal was apparently within reach.

Women march for a deal to release Israeli hostages held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, February 1, 2024. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

“Israel agreed to the ceasefire proposal and we have initial positive confirmation from Hamas,” a spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said on Thursday evening, according to Al Jazeera. “We are awaiting their response,” the spokesman added.

The proposed ceasefire would be implemented in three stages, according to a Hamas statement shared with Reuters earlier this week. The first phase would see fighting stop for 40 days as Hamas hands over the female civilians, children, and elderly people it is still holding captive. During this time, large-scale deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza would resume.

Injured Palestinian children are brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital

Israel’s war on Gaza live: 11,500 children killed in enclave so far. UNICEF says about 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or have been separated from their families during the conflict. by Federica Marsi

The following stages would see Hamas turn over captive Israeli soldiers and the bodies of Israeli troops, in exchange for further aid deliveries and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

“Military operations on both sides will stop during the three stages,” the militants said, adding that the number of Palestinian prisoners freed would be open to negotiation.

The proposal falls short of the full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza that Hamas initially demanded. As a step toward ending the war, however, it also threatens Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to keep fighting until Israel achieves “total victory” over the militants, as he has promised on multiple occasions.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has reported that Israel’s siege of the al-Amal Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis has continued for an 11th day.

While hardliners within Netanyahu’s cabinet have pressed him to reject any deal they view as too lenient towards Hamas, Israel has faced international condemnation over its conduct in Gaza, and two of the Jewish state’s most stalwart backers – the US and UK – suggested this week that they could soon recognize an independent Palestinian state.

Israeli forces must withdraw fast

Such an outcome would be a political disaster for Netanyahu, who angered Washington and London last month when he outright rejected a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict with the Palestinians.

Israeli forces pound Gaza amid Hamas studies ceasefire proposal 1 day ago

11,500 Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza

FREEDOM NOW for approx. 10,000 Palestinian hostages jailed by Israel without charges.

from thefreeonline on 2nd Feb 2024 by Middle East Monitor/ and Wikipedia

The Ceasefire Deal may free 100’s of Palestinian hostages for the last Israelis held in Gaza. But Israel jails 1000’s more without charges.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said the Israeli occupation refuses to disclose any information about detainees taken from Gaza, Quds Press reported.

Israel is incarcerating approx. 10,000 Palestinian hostages (prisoners without charges).

After the start of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, the number of Palestinians held in administrative detention (hostages) rose from 1,319 to 2,070 between 1 October and 1 November.^[95][96][97] AT THIS RATE OF ARRESTS ISRAEL HAD AT LEAST 4000 PALESTINIAN HOSTAGES BY THE END OF JANUARY 2024.

In November 2023, in exchange for the 240 hostages taken on Hamas’ October 7th attack,^[66][67] Israel proposed release of 300 prisoners, most of them women and children.

^68] But over two-thirds of these prisoners had not been formally convicted of any crime or charged with any crime.^[68]We don’t have official figures but if this ratio of prisoners held without charge is generalised Israel has AT LEAST 6,000 MORE PALESTINIAN HOSTAGES, BRINGING THE TOTAL TO 10,000 APPROX.

Palestinians, holding banners and photos of their relatives, gather to stage a demonstration on demanding release of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in front of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) building in Ramallah, West Bank on January 02, 2024 [İssam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said the Israeli occupation refuses to disclose any information about detainees taken from Gaza, Quds Press reported.

The root of Israeli racist apartheid is a 3000 year old biblical assertion that Jews are God’s chosen race, as well as other scripture, taken out of context but repeatedly quoted on TV by Netanyahu, in which God urges Jews to massacre another local tribe.

Images from Gaza circulating on social media Thursday showed a mass detention by the Israeli military of men who were made to strip to their underwear, kneel on the street, wear blindfolds, and pack into the cargo bed of a military vehicle.

Israeli soldiers torture Palestinian detainees – Middle East Monitor Viral footage shows Israeli occupation soldiers beating naked Palestinians in the West Bank

In a statement issued yesterday, the rights group said the Israeli occupation is carrying out “the crime of enforced disappearance” against Gaza detainees, following a number of military orders and laws specifically enacted for them.

The Israeli Knesset has recently ratified regulations depriving “Gaza detainees” of meeting with a lawyer for another four months.

Images from Gaza show Palestinian men being rounded up from shelters, stripped to their underwear and made to wait in the cold while naked and blindfolded. They are later seen being taken away on trucks to undisclosed locations.

It is not clear how many boys and men were disappeared, but some reports have put the figure as high as 700. They are said to have been taken from shelter schools in northern Gaza where thousands of displaced civilians were forced to take shelter as a result of the bombing and destruction of their neighbourhoods and homes.

Those who have been released bear signs of torture, exhaustion and malnourishment.

To all this we should add that Israeli apartheid laws are extremely repressive and thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned for obviously tiny, ridiculous or invented crimes.

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For western media, Israel’s genocidal massacre of Gaza is not ‘deadly’. How the West promotes Israeli racism

by DES FREEDMAN at Declassified Media

Right across the Anglo-American mainstream media, the killing of Palestinians is seen as normal. It’s only Israeli lives that matter.

Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in Gaza on 22 January. Mainstream media outlets around the world reacted in unison: that this was the “deadliest day” for Israel since 7 October.

But on the same day, barely mentioned, Israeli forces killed almost 200 Palestinians in Gaza including at least 65 people in Khan Younis alone.

This exact phrase the “deadliest day” was used to mourn Israeli deaths while ignoring mass murder of Palestinians on the same day in headlines on 23 January carried by news agencies such as Reuters and AFP, and major broadcasters including the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC and ITV News. the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, Daily Telegraph, the Sun, Jerusalem Post, Guardian, London’s Evening Standard, Financial Times, Independent and Yahoo News….etc……….. for full article see HERE Declassified Media

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Israel accepts ceasefire deal – Al Jazeera- Hamas now ‘meeting with positive view’-

from thefreeonline 1 Feb, 2024 – 22.00 GMT Home World News

Gaza still being blitzed as new Ceasefire reportedly takes hold.. 2 Feb 2024 -22.00 GMT

Qatari negotiators are awaiting a final response from Hamas officials, who have seemingly welcomed the plan.

Israeli women demand their government strike a deal to free hostages held in Gaza by Hamas in Tel Aviv, Israel, February 1, 2024 © AP / Oded Balilty

Qatar says Hamas has given ‘initial positive confirmation’

Israel has agreed to a ceasefire proposal that would halt its war with Hamas, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday, citing the Qatari Foreign Ministry. Hamas has reportedly given the plan a “positive” response.

Women march for a deal to release Israeli hostages held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, February 1, 2024. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

The proposed ceasefire will be implemented in three stages, according to a Hamas statement shared with Reuters earlier this week. The first phase would see fighting stop for 40 days as Hamas hands over the female civilians, children, and elderly people it is still holding captive. During this time, large-scale deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza would resume.

“Military operations on both sides will stop during the three stages,” the militants said, adding that the number of Palestinian prisoners freed would be open to negotiation.

Israeli forces must withdraw fast

Israeli forces pound Gaza, Hamas studies ceasefire proposal1 day ago

Biden said will bomb Iran assets as it’s ‘GUILTY’ of three US deaths for “supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”

from thefreeonline By Finian Cunningham at Strategic Culture February 1, 2024

Biden’s comments Make a Clear Case for US/UK guilt in Gaza genocide – and logically gives Russia’s Right to Retaliate over IL-76 Shoot-Down

Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops.

By the same logic Biden admits the US is ‘GUILTY’ of murdering 27,000 people in Gaza because it supplied the weapons, and killing the Ukrainian POWS with a gifted Patriot missile 3 days ago…. and millions more in previous wars.

Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed.

Iran nowadays is a close partner in BRICS of Russia, India and China, and has strong support of the entire non-western world in demanding a halt to the butchery of Palestinians in Gaza. It also claims to have developed unstoppable hypersonic missiles capable of destroying US warships and aircraft carriers.

Still US politicians and media are hysterically raging that ‘WEAK and COWARDLY’ Biden is ‘BETRAYING AMERICA’ by not immediately blitzing Iran and its 87 million innocent people.

It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack.

Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.

By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.

Ukrainian Naval Drones Destroyed Russian Missile Corvette Ivanovets

According to unofficial reports, the crew managed to evacuate, avoiding casualties.

from thefreeonline on 1st Feb 2024 from SouthFront

The Russian Black Sea fleet lost the missile corvette Ivanovets as a result of the night attack of unmanned boats near the coast of the Crimean peninsula. The Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of Ukraine claimed the destruction of the warship and supported the report with footage of the attack.

The operation was reportedly carried out by the special unit “Group 13” of the GUR with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the United24 platform.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not comment on the incident.

Russian military sources revealed details of the attack. In total, 9 unmanned boats were reportedly launched from the Danube River in the Odessa region. The crew of the Russian Ivanovets took the battle near the Lake Donuzlav. At least four boats were reportedly destroyed by Russian fire.

The footage shows that after the first drone exploded right next to the vessel, inflicting heavy damage, the crew did not stop fighting and fought till the last to save the corvette.

In total, three drones reportedly hit the vessel. As a result of the strikes, the missiles on board of the corvette exploded and Ivanovets sunk.

According to unofficial reports, the crew managed to evacuate, avoiding casualties.

Putin inaugurates two fourth generation nuclear submarines 11 Dec, 2023

The missile corvette Ivanovets was built in 1989. It is armed with supersonic low-altitude anti-ship cruise missiles “Mosquito”. The cost of the warship is estimated at about $ 60 million.

The attack of naval drones is the latest in a series of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes over the past two days. LINK

At the beginning of the war Turkey invoked the Montreux treaty forbidding naval shops passing in and out of the Black Sea in wartime. NATO and Russia now cannot get in or out which favours Russia as NATO has a huge fleet. Turkey’s move, in this case, undoubtedly made the war less dangerous and may have prevented a third world war.

Although several Russian ships have been destroyed in the war probably more new ones have been commissioned. However Ukraine is being supplied with advanced NATO naval drones, and missiles, sabotage specialists and detailed information on Russian movements by NATO AWACS planes and satellites.

Cataluña ha entrado en “quiebra hídrica” por la sequía. Y ya sabe cuánto le va a costar: 2.400 millones de euros

de thefreeonline 1 de Ferero 2024 por Stigmatis

Para 202 municipios de la región de Barcelona y Girona empieza el verano más largo que se recuerda.

Por Javier Jiménez Piscinas vacías, campos de fútbol sin regar, mucha agua reciclada y grifos con presión reducida. La mañana del 1 de febrero más de seis millones de personas se van a levantar en “emergencia por sequía”.

La Cataluña interior, en quiebra hídrica. A nivel hídrico, Cataluña son dos mundos distintos. Buena parte de ella (y muy especialmente amplias regiones de Lleida y Tarragona) se nutren del Ebro.

Un Ebro que, pese a los problemas de los últimos años, sigue siendo el río más caudaloso del país. Por poner un ejemplo, el pantano aragonés de Menquineza, aguas arriba, está al 80% de capacidad.

Han reaparecido una iglesia y pueblos que se quedaron abajo del agua al hacer el pantano.

El otro mundo son las cuencas interiores, lo que se conoce como sistema Ter-Llobregat. .

Los pantanos que abastecen al área de Barcelona y Girona están al 16,3% de su capacidad.

Esta semana, sin ir más lejos, los embalses del sistema acaban de cruzar el umbral de alerta y tienen, en total, menos de 99,89 hectómetros cúbicos acumulados.

El calentamiento global pisa el acelerador, ¿qué podemos esperar?

Pero las soluciones que hay encima de la mesa son temporales, limitadas y logísiticamente complejas. El ejemplo más evidente es el plan de la Generalitat para llevar cientos de miles de litros de agua desde Tarragona y Marsella al área metropolitana de Barcelona: es un parche en un sistema que ha dejado de funcionar.

Parches, parches y más parches. Tras 39 meses consecutivos de sequía meteorológica y más de dos años de temperaturas récords, la situación es crítica y no solo por la falta de agua, también por falta de infraestructuras.

“Empezar a pensar cen cómo reciclar cada gota — indefinidamente”. Lo reconocía el propio David Mascort, el consejero de Acción Climática, Alimentación y Agenda rural: “los barcos no van a resolver el problema de la sequía, solo son una solución para proveer agua a infraestructuras críticas en casos extremos”.

ver también.. El retrato global de la sequía aporta datos de una emergencia planetaria sin precedentes

Y es que en un contexto en el que el Mediterráneo se calienta un 20% más rápido que la media mundial y la sequía se ha vuelto estructural, se necesitan un plan de enorme envergadura para asegurar que el Ter-Llobregat y sus seis millones de habitantes puede sobrevivir a la falta de lluvia.

Y eso vale dinero. 2.400 millones de euros según los planes de la Generalitat en los próximos tres años para conseguir que, de aquí al final de la década, lo que no cae del cielo pueda suplirse a base de reservas subterráneas, agua reciclada y desalinización.

No es un reto fácil. Y todas las propuestas piden ladrillo, cemento, despilfarro, beneficios para el elite, y más agresiónes contre el medio ambiente, el clima y el territorio.

Para dimensionarlo, basta con tener en cuenta que Barcelona ya cuenta con una de las plantas de desalinización más grandes del país. Una con capacidad para producir 53 piscinas olímpicas de agua potable al día (la mitad de las necesidades diarias de la ciudad).

Pues bien, el Govern catalán tendrá que ampliar otra de sus plantas y construir una tercera. Y pese a todo, no será suficiente.

Un mundo nuevo para el que no estamos preparados. Han sido diez años sorprendentemente duros para el sistema hídrico de todo el país: cada año es peor que el anterior y eso está provocando daños enormes en nuestra economía, en nuestra salud y en nuestra sociedad.

Pero lo peor no es eso, lo peor es que muchos administraciones aún no ven el problema…………