February 14, 2024. Captives and fugitives in a rat-trap.

Images keep coming up from the darkness of the Gaza tunnels.

 The man in flip-flops, and pajamas, is supposed to be the leader of the military quintette, fleeing in one of the tunnels, with his wife, his brother, and three kids.

They speak of psychological warfare, of belittling the man, in his colleagues' eyes, in Gazans' eyes, and in his own eyes.
Getting closer to "The End" ?

No progress whatsoever in the talks about the release of hostages.

We have entered another warped dimension of time yet.

No news of the captives - but one and a half million people in Gaza are captives as well, and what will they come home to, "in the end" ?

"We call on everyone, especially the Hamas movement, to quickly complete the hostage deal so that we can protect our people and remove all obstacles." President Abbas, WAFA Palestinian News Agency.

"The Security Council (...) Demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address medical needs of all hostages;" U.N. Security Council Resolution 2720, §7, December 22,  2023

February 15, 2024. 144 Words for Common Sense.

NOBEL CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF HOSTAGES AND FOR A DURABLE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

Because we are human beings, and human beings are not bargaining chips,

Because we are horrified by the carnages and pogroms of October 7 in the name of « armed resistance »,

We express our ultimate and universal condemnation concerning all acts of bloody savagery allegedly for the sake of a « war of liberation ». No political or religous speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman, the kidnapping of elderly people in their home.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages detained in Gaza. Prisoners of war can be exchanged. Abducted civilians are not prisoners of war.

Gaza civilians also are hostages in this horrendous chaos.

For a durable cessation of hostilities, we support a permanent end to all attack tunnels and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

Weighing each sentence, each word.

The bottom line is We Are Human Beings. Not to be treated as bargaining chips.

Horrified at the matrix of October 7. Refuse, refute its alibis.

Pointing to a possible light at the end of the tunnel(s) : suppress the tunnels.

All the "massive invasion tunnels" (in John Spencer's words) and the sequestration tunnels.

Therefore demilitarize the Gaza Strip. Wishful thinking ? The West Bank is demilitarized.

The radical Islamic groups alone pursue the nightmarish vision of an endless war, for the sake of ideology.

Go for a demilitarized Palestinian state, in Ramallah and Gaza.

 

February 16, 2024. Fog of War and Angst.

The author of this chronicle counts ten good friends presently displaced as refugees in the Rafah sector - the main one an English teacher in university, who loves everything from John Donne to Bernard Shaw and beyond - and a dozen good friends in Israel - one an Arabic teacher, another the translator of Martin Luther King into Hebrew, a third one a fervent reader of our little red book, The Spirit of Luther King.

All of them are either of military age, or the fathers of children who are of military age.

Sadly, my friends are so overpressured that our connection has been lost for a long, endless time.

And I keep fearing that, some fateful day, one of Nathan's sons could kill one of Masoud's sons in Gaza, or vice-versa.

The only message I got from Rafah in a couple of weeks was "Will get back soon. I hope"...

 

February 17, 2024.  ["The world really let me feel it stays silent... People need to know"]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/freed-hostage-aviva-siegel-recounts-hamass-sexual-abuse-violence-toward-captives/

The world really let me feel it stays silent, and I have a feeling that they have missed the history lesson of the Holocaust, in allowing something like this to happen 

Aviva Siegel, kidnapped in Kfar Aza on October 7, with her husband Keith still detained.

Recalling her grandmother’s silence about her experiences during the Holocaust, Aviva Siegel said that she had resolved not to be quiet about her ordeal.

 February 18, 2024. "We must not let despair infect us"  Roald Hoffmann

Two messages from my dear symetrical friends, Masoud, the English teacher, in Gaza, and Nathan, the Arabic teacher, in Israel. Masoud, via Whatsapp, texts that three of them in his family, displaced in Rafah, have been diagnosed with pneumonia, and he himself has had to contend with a severe bout of flu. Feeling helpless due to a general shortage of medicine. He says they were happy to get the little sum I could send them (500 €) to buy food, blankets, mattresses.

Nathan, in his message, mentions the "helplessness and despair reigning over here". As I was evoking my scheduled trip to the South, from Zikim, Sderot, to Be'eri, Nir Oz, and Kholit, I am not sure if he was thinking of the South in particular, or of Israel at large. We're all subjected to waves of distress and pain, wherever we now live. And yet, there is a deep feeling of fortitude and "fate" somehow, or trust rather. Not of the "we shall overcome" type, but of a trusting feeling, yes.
I trust that we shall survive this period, all together, and that we shall be stronger, and more aware than we were.

I see light at the end of the tunnels.

This darkness's got to give.

February 19, 2024. This darkness's got to give.

Sickening video of Shiri Bibas pushed and shoved by half a dozen young men in Yan Khunis, in October, from a cctv. They cover her from head to toe with some sort of blanket, and she's staggering, holding her infants in her arms, taken to some other cell.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-finds-video-of-bibas-family-in-gaza-very-concerned-for-mother-youngest-hostages/

Is this about "resistance" ? Shame on the men and leaders who have organized all of this. Shame on any who'd "justify".

February 20, 2024. " I, personally, have totally had it with this 'war' and the whole discourse around it. "  Nathanael

Warfare diminishes a human being’s capacity for understanding, in depth. It always comes crawling on you through a heavy fog, the famed « fog of war », in which you cannot discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal.

The first victim of war, with truth, is trust. 

 "Sometimes it is only when faced with the sheer scale of human suffering that the importance of permanent peace is brought home"     Prince William of Wales

February 21, 2024. Conditions of possibility...

War drumming twists and deeply deforms our perception of reality.

Late 2023, the "general" assessment was that this war would be over by the end of January 2024. Then, different voices spoke of years to come. We're getting near the official toll of 30,000 Gazans killed. Around 70,000 injured.

The release of the hundred hostages still detained remains the "end-game" priority, but does any group in particular of hostage holders have the actual power to locate them all, and deliver ?

February 22, 2024. Looking for the suki.

 My friends in Rafah suffer from hunger, cold, flu and pneumonia. My other friends in Israel suffer from despair and helplessness. In Rafah, despair and helplessness are so standard that people somehow wade and float through them.

Back to these lines by Gary Snyder :

"It's necessary to look at all the angles and slip in from whatever side.

 In Japanese kendo, wooden sword fighting practice, they say that this is looking for the suki - the opening.

 The opening is where you get your chance."

Look at it from all the angles. It doesn't matter which side you slip in through.

Keep looking for the opening, until it's coming.

 

February 23, 2024. War dwindling down, they say.

A Paris summit coming fast for a "hostage deal". Little info available.

If the deal is sealed, there may be no further "operation" in Rafah.

A deal is clearly in everyone's interest. But do they have control of all the hostages in Gaza ?

How many will be "missing" in the final count. 

Next week this time I'll be in Sderot, and Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz. Unlikely that I might go to Rafah...

 

February 24, 2024. Good news from Paris.

In Paris the negotiators have reached an outline for a hostages-for-truce deal.

an “outline of an agreement” was reached by the Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari representatives for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza war    

“We have a basis on which to build a plan and the negotiations.”

 What do people want ? an end to war : an end to all military presence in the Gaza Strip.

There is no other sense to "end the war". No more Tsahal, no more militias, no more Apaches, no more RPGs. No more tanks, no more attack and sequestration tunnels. The release of all hostages still detained. The release of all the inhabitants of Gaza and the Gaza Envelope who all are hostages of warfare.

 

February 25, 2024. Gazans and Israelis likewise are hostages of warfare.

 There was a time, prior to October 7, 2024, when people could enjoy the beauty of sunrises and sunsets, over the woods, over the fields, or over the sea.

But there was the Red Code and the shrill of sirens every time militias would launch a rocket or a mortar shell, indiscriminately, at Israeli civilians. There were also incendiary balloons and kites that would set crops on fire when the wind blew from the West. There also was the buzzing of drones in the Gaza sky, some of them ready to hit any target, and kill. There was the roar of Apaches rushing, with their missiles. And that was all the children on both sides of the fence had known since their birth. The constant stress and trauma of alerts and ingrained fear. Terror.

Then came October 7, triggered by the underground leaders in Gaza. Murdering helpless civilians en masse, torturing, raping, burning alive, kidnapping men and women in their eighties, infants... And they have the nerve to call it "resistance" ?

I can imagine what destruction bombers and tanks have inflicted to the Gaza that I know. It fills me with awe and horror.

Thirty thousand people killed in five months, over half of them women and teenagers, children.
For this boundless madness to cease, is there another possibility than a demilitarized state from Jenin to Rafah ?

Again, the terrorists of the IRA and those of the ETA have had their farewell to arms, without achieving any of their alleged goals. For we all agree they used terror, against British and Spanish civilians. They were terrorists, weren't they.

What would make the Hamas and Jihad terrorists any different ?

February 26, 2024. A new uprising flaring in Gaza.

"This is an uprising of the hungry," one protester says into the camera, as shooting from Hamas guns at protesters are heard in the background. "These are hungry people, people with sick children... broken people, people sleeping in sewage, enduring extremely hard lives, people unable to find rest day or night." 

"Hamas fires on the starving, those in their own homes. Isn’t it a pity? We don't want this war We seek peace, we want our children to go to school," 

'You are the one killing us, Sinwar!': Gazans increase their protests against Hamas

 

February 27, 2024. Situation in the North "volatile".

"This may be a time of events of Biblical proportions, except that there is no hero of Biblical proportions."

Gilad Sharon, YNet News, https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1vi6zq3a

 

February 28, 2024. Fly tomorrow.