The Electronic Intifada Podcast 18 July 2024
Israel attacked five schools in Gaza in eight days, massacring dozens of Palestinians. In the so-called “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi, one Israeli attack on Saturday killed 90 people and injured hundreds more, as Tel Aviv’s army carried out atrocities in every part of the Gaza Strip.
As seemingly interminable negotiations to end the genocidal war drag on – facing obstacle after obstacle placed by Israel and its American sponsors – the resistance continues to erode Israel’s military power.
In the beginning of the livestream, associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman covered the latest headlines in a brief news report on the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
West Bank
Since 7 October, Israel’s military has intensified its raids into occupied West Bank cities, towns and refugee camps. These attacks have wrought widespread devastation, severely damaging electricity networks, water and sewage infrastructure, uprooting roads and destroying homes.
Israel has killed more than 550 Palestinians in the West Bank alone since that date, while seizing more Palestinian land for colonization and moving to consolidate its effective annexation of the West Bank.
We were joined by writer and Birzeit University lecturer Abdaljawad Omar to talk about the situation in the West Bank and the resistance across Palestine.
Reacting to Israel’s massacre in al-Mawasi on Saturday, the Palestinian Authority presidency issued a statement effectively blaming Hamas for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“The presidency sees that by escaping national unity, and providing free pretexts to the occupation state, the Hamas movement is a partner in bearing legal, moral and political responsibility for the continuation of the Israeli war of genocide in Gaza Strip,” PA leader Mahmoud Abbass wrote in a statement.
Omar reacted to the news, saying there is a “kind of ideological fight that is happening within Palestinian society, and in which the PA has become an integral part.”
The Palestinian Authority “is trying to echo Israeli psychological warfare,” Omar said, “by attempting to kind of de-link the Palestinian society overall from its resistance, and serving through this severance, serving Israeli war aims, which is to defeat the resistance and render Gaza unlivable.”
The successes of multiple factions of Palestinian resistance forces on the ground in Gaza are agitating the collaborationist body in Ramallah, Omar suggested.
“This elite has extreme anxiety over Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the recent resistance groups in Gaza, coming out with significant strategic results from this war,” Omar said.
Meanwhile, at any other time in Palestinian history, the resistance to Israel’s lethal military raids and colonial encroachments in the occupied West Bank could have earned the title of a third intifada – were they not now overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza.
“I would agree in terms of trying to describe that there is an intifada, but I would confine it geographically to the north of the West Bank,” Omar said.
“There’s a reason why these areas became a hotbed of resistance, unlike other parts of the West Bank, whether it’s Hebron or Bethlehem or Ramallah, for that matter,” he added.
Later in the conversation, he attributes this to a “living memory” – previous battles against Israeli settler-colonialism – that “plays a role in defining the formation of resistance in the contemporary condition.”
Omar spoke about a recent piece he wrote titled, The question of Hamas and the Left, published in Mondoweiss in May.
In it, he criticizes the Western left’s tendency to claim solidarity with Palestinians while dismissing or rejecting Hamas as the foremost fighting group of the armed resistance in Gaza.
“Hamas is not practicing anything new that the leftists didn’t practice in Palestine as well. And much of the left is also aligned with Hamas,” Omar said.
Battlefield report
Contributing editor Jon Elmer then provided an update on all the latest news from the resistance in Gaza.
Elmer started from the southernmost region, demonstrating how the Israeli army has been trying to take over the Philadelphi Corridor that separates Egypt from the Gaza Strip.
“What goes along with the invasion of Rafah is this starvation policy,” Elmer said, as he showed a graph showing the decrease in aid trucks going into the Strip.
“And so we see the Israelis using starvation and the massacre of civilians to try to achieve what they cannot achieve on the battlefield.”
Elmer presents an operation by Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in which fighters hand-deliver a weapon to disable a tank.
Rafah battalions “are taking the lead in hand-delivering these weapons,” Elmer said.
“It’s unbelievable courage.”
Elmer provided an update on the battles in Shujaiya, in eastern Gaza City, as well as the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of the city.
Elmer showcases a “legendary” operation by Palestinian fighters ambushing Israeli forces on the upper floors of a building, highlighting “the lack of spatial awareness for the Israeli military.”
At the end of the livestream, the team discussed Israel’s shortage of tanks and ammunition, as well as headlines about tens of thousands of businesses closing in Israel. The group also discussed how the UK Labour Party will not be dropping its objection to the International Criminal Court’s case arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
These are just some of the many topics we cover on The Electronic Intifada livestream. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Add new comment