Middle East Press On: Hamas, Israeli Vision, US-Iran War, Bab El-Mandeb, Gaza, Palestinian Elections, AIPAC, Israel Aid Vote, New Age Islam's Selection, 22 July 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
22 July 2026
Why shouldn't Hamas disarm under Israeli vision?
Unanswered questions behind prolonged US-Iran war
Bab el-Mandeb and the coming age of chokepoint warfare
The road to normalising colonial expansion in Gaza
Palestinian elections offer real chance for renewal
‘Go F* Yourselves’: Democrats Defy AIPAC after Historic Israel Aid Vote
From Metaphor to Testimony: How Gaza Wrote Itself during the War
On the Impact of Climate Change on Indigenous in Palestine and Around the Globe
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Why shouldn't Hamas disarm under Israeli vision?
by Ahmed Asmar
Jul 21, 2026
With each new round of cease-fire negotiations regarding ending the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, an Israeli-created dilemma emerges that transcends the technical details of the agreements on the table. At its core, this dilemma touches on the very nature of Palestinian decision-making. Any observer or follower to the course of the negotiations would notice how the issue of Palestinian resistance weapons becomes one of the most prominent obstacles to reaching a deal, pushing to question it: why doesn’t the Hamas simply decide to relinquish the resistance weapons to end the war and alleviate the immense humanitarian suffering in Gaza, and to prevent Israel from using it as a pretext to resume its deadly and destructive attacks on Gaza?
This question may appear logical and gives an impression that all terms of the cease-fire agreement and phases were fully implemented by Israel, and only this particular issue remains unsolved. But this is clearly untrue, as Israel didn’t commit to any of its cease-fire terms as it continues its daily violations and attacks against Gaza, killing more than one thousand Palestinians since Oct.11, 2025, the day of signing the cease-fire.
Moreover, this logic is also built upon a deeply flawed assumption that Hamas alone possesses the authority to make such a decision, and that its refusal to do so is a sign of intransigence or political procrastination. This assumption, however, is not only inaccurate and it plays directly into a broader Israeli strategy that extends far beyond the narrow goal of disarmament. The Israeli demand to disarm Hamas is not about security. It is about the complete subjugation of the Palestinian people and the systematic liquidation of their national cause.
Israeli meaning of disarmament
The international discourse surrounding Hamas's weapons has been carefully framed by Israeli and Western rhetoric as a simple equation: "Give up your arms, and peace will follow." This framing positions Hamas as the sole obstacle to stability and paints any refusal to disarm as a rejection of peace. It is a disingenuous narrative that conveniently ignores the reality of the occupation and relieves it of any responsibility toward implementing its obligations under the cease-fire, and diverts attention from addressing the core problem, which is the occupation and daily violations against the Palestinian people and territory.
What Israel demands is not merely the dismantling of a military wing. It demands the dismantling of the very concept of Palestinian resistance to occupation, a right protected under international law. The demand to disarm Hamas is a demand to render the Palestinian people defenseless in the face of ongoing daily aggression. It is a demand to transform Palestinians into a submissive population that accepts the occupation as an unchangeable fact. In this sense, the disarmament of Hamas is not a prelude to peace; it is a prelude to the complete subjugation of the Palestinian people.
By framing this equation on the issue of disarmament, Israel seeks a strategic trap for the Palestinians, leaving them with two options, both of which would significantly contribute to liquidating the Palestinian cause.
Option one: Hamas agrees to disarm. In this scenario, the movement's political and military authority would be effectively destroyed, robbing the Palestinian cause of its most powerful and widely supported resistance component. Hamas would be portrayed as having surrendered, both to its own people and to the wider Arab and Muslim world. More importantly, with Hamas neutered, Israel and its allies would find it significantly easier to impose a new, unilateral political order on Gaza and the West Bank.
Option two: Hamas refuses to disarm in the way Israel seeks to do so, and is subsequently branded as the obstructionist party. In this scenario, Israel would claim it maintains the right to fight against Hamas and would embark on a demonization campaign against the Palestinian resistance, using complicit international media, especially the pro-Israel Western media, to incite more against the Palestinians. And worse than that, Hamas will be portrayed as being more interested in its military agenda than in the welfare of the Palestinian people in Gaza. All this happens while the Israeli attacks continue, the blockade tightens, the Palestinian suffering deepens, and the goal of "breaking the spirit" of the Palestinian people inches closer to reality.
Not Hamas' decision
The underlying premise of the disarmament demand is that Hamas holds absolute and unilateral authority to decide the fate of the Palestinian right to resistance that extends over more than 70 years of struggle and confrontation of the occupation. This premise is as dangerous as it is false. The issue of Palestinian arms has never been a matter of a single Palestinian party. It is a foundational principle that protects the national identity, a symbol of survival, and the legacy of tens of thousands of martyred patriots who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the national cause.
When Palestinian negotiators discuss the future of Gaza, the security management of the postwar period, including the issue of the resistance weapons, they are touching on the very spine of the Palestinian national project for liberation. These are not matters that can be decided by a single faction, regardless of its size, influence or role in the resistance. They are, by definition, national issues that require a broad national consensus.
While Hamas’s leadership gave decisions on certain issues, such as the prisoner exchange and the cease-fire with Israel, it put the issue of the arms of the resistance on the table of national dialogue with most of the Palestinian groups, and came collectively with approaches and ideas on how to deal with the arms in a way that doesn’t appear as relinquishing such a scared right of resistance, including storing or freezing the heavy arms under the supervision of neutral parties, but not under the Israeli parameters, which are to serve its expansionist agenda and kill the Palestinian national spirit.
Asking right questions
The question should never be: "Why won't Hamas disarm?" The correct question, the question that Israel and the international community refuse to ask, is: "Why is a nation being asked to surrender its right to self-defense without receiving a single guarantee of its freedom?"
Israel's demand to disarm Hamas is an old demand dressed in new clothes. It is the same demand of liquidation, submission and surrender. The weapons of the resistance are not the cause of the conflict; they are a symptom of the occupation. As long as the occupation exists, the right to resist exists. As long as the Palestinian people are denied their fundamental rights, their right to return, right to self-determination, and right to live in a sovereign state, they will continue to resist. The question of disarmament is not a security issue. It is a question of national survival.
The day Palestinian arms are laid down will not be the day Israel feels secure. It will be the day the Palestinian people have achieved their freedom. Until that day, the demand to disarm will remain precisely what it has always been: a demand for surrender, not a demand for peace.
More than that, the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance wouldn’t be only liquidating the Palestinian national cause, but would be a red flag to the entire region, as expansionist Israel would be emboldened to move to disarm others, including countries, until it put the entire region under its hegemony.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/why-shouldnt-hamas-disarm-under-israeli-vision
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Unanswered questions behind prolonged US-Iran war
by Orhan Sali
Jul 21, 2026
In the autumn of 1938, Europe did not want another war.
The wounds of World War I were still fresh. Political leaders believed diplomacy could prevent another catastrophe, while public opinion embraced the idea of "peace at any cost." When the Munich Agreement was signed, many believed Europe had escaped a devastating conflict.
Not everyone shared that optimism. British statesman Winston Churchill issued a warning that would become one of history's most enduring political quotations: "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war."
A year later, Europe was engulfed in the most destructive war in human history.
Today, the world once again stands at a critical crossroads. The escalating tensions in the Middle East, intensifying rivalry among major powers, competition over energy corridors, and growing military deployments inevitably evoke memories of the international atmosphere of the late 1930s. History never repeats itself exactly, but the strategic calculations of great powers often follow familiar patterns.
Looking at the developments surrounding Iran, one question naturally arises: Was Washington's repeated call for a cease-fire genuinely intended to stop the war? Or was it merely the opening move in preparing for a longer and far more comprehensive confrontation?
In the early days of the conflict, U.S. President Donald Trump's primary objective appeared to be ending the fighting quickly, keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, and preventing major disruptions to global energy markets.
Today, however, the picture looks very different.
Statements coming from both Washington and Tehran now share a common theme: both sides insist they are prepared for a prolonged confrontation.
So what changed?
Does the changing rhetoric indicate that the objectives of the war have changed as well? Or were the calls for a cease-fire, from the very beginning, a strategic effort to buy time?
There are no definitive answers to the questions today. Nevertheless, developments on the ground present several possibilities worth considering.
One possibility is that Washington initially expected a rapid outcome but revised its strategy after discovering that Iran proved far more resilient than anticipated. Iran has demonstrated that its military capabilities, vast geography, mountainous terrain, large population and defense infrastructure developed under decades of sanctions make it a country against which conventional military operations are unlikely to produce quick results.
The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan have also shown that the United States has become increasingly reluctant to pursue large-scale ground invasions. Against that backdrop, it is conceivable that Washington has shifted toward a long-term strategy of attrition, combining economic, political, and military pressure over an extended period.
If that is the case, the cease-fire initiative takes on a different meaning.
Tehran may have concluded that the U.S. was not seeking peace in the first place and that the diplomatic process was designed only to create an opportunity to complete military preparations for the next phase of the conflict.
Moreover, from Iran's perspective, the issue may not simply be the U.S.'s current military strikes but the possibility of a long-term strategy aimed at weakening or even fragmenting the country.
Another striking development concerns the Strait of Hormuz.
During the opening phase of the conflict, even modest increases in oil prices generated significant concern in Washington. The Trump administration repeatedly emphasized that any prolonged disruption to shipping through Hormuz would be unacceptable for the global economy.
Today, those urgent warnings appear far less prominent, which inevitably raises new questions.
Has Washington become willing to tolerate a prolonged risk to the Strait of Hormuz? If so, what gives the U.S. that confidence?
At present, no alternative energy corridor exists that can fully replace Hormuz. A substantial share of Gulf oil exports still passes through this narrow waterway, while existing pipeline alternatives remain limited in capacity. It is therefore difficult to assume that Washington would simply rely on current alternatives.
Perhaps the strategic calculation has changed. Perhaps the objective is no longer to control Iran as a whole but instead to establish an internationally supervised security zone around the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding areas. Such a scenario could significantly strengthen Washington's position regarding global energy security.
For Israel, however, the equation is different.
Even if the Strait of Hormuz were secured, Iran would continue to exist as a regional power. From Israel's perspective, the perceived threats posed by Iran's ballistic missile capabilities and nuclear ambitions would remain. This makes Israel's relative silence in recent weeks particularly noteworthy.
Political figures and security officials who previously advocated stronger military action against Iran have become noticeably more restrained. Does this silence suggest that Washington and Tel Aviv have reached an undisclosed understanding behind closed doors? Or is Israel simply waiting for the next phase of an American strategy already set in motion?
Another fundamental question follows.
With whom would the United States conduct such a prolonged campaign?
Financial support from the Gulf states alone would almost certainly be insufficient.
What would be required is sustained intelligence sharing, integrated air defense, logistics, naval capabilities and uninterrupted access to regional military bases. While the Gulf states possess significant resources, carrying the burden of a prolonged campaign against a country as large and capable as Iran would be an extraordinary challenge. Under such circumstances, it appears more plausible that Washington would seek a multilayered coalition involving Britain, European allies and regional security partners.
Yet, beyond all these scenarios, one fundamental reality should not be overlooked.
Iran is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan.
With a population approaching 90 million, an expansive geography, an extensive missile arsenal, and a broad network of regional partners and proxy forces, Iran is not a country where quick military victories can be expected. For that reason, the prospect of a prolonged conflict now appears considerably stronger than it did in the opening days of the war.
History also reminds us that long wars rarely inflict costs only on the battlefield. They reshape economies, diplomacy, regional stability and societies alike. This is precisely why Türkiye's position deserves particular attention.
From the outset, Ankara has opposed the opening of new fronts in the region, consistently advocated keeping diplomatic channels open, and emphasized that energy security is essential for global stability. Türkiye's central argument has been that military projects aimed at regime change have already produced devastating long-term consequences in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
What the region needs today is neither new occupations nor new geopolitical partition plans. It needs a sustainable diplomatic framework that addresses the legitimate security concerns of all regional actors.
Ultimately, one question remains.
Is the real objective merely to limit Iran's military capabilities? Or are we witnessing the opening chapter of a much broader strategy designed to reshape the political and energy landscape of the Middle East for decades to come?
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/unanswered-questions-behind-prolonged-us-iran-war
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Bab el-Mandeb and the coming age of chokepoint warfare
July 21, 2026
by Kurniawan Arif MaspulThe waters of the Bab el-Mandeb are running red with the blood of a failing international order. For the first time in modern history, two of the world’s most vital maritime chokepoints—the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb—are under simultaneous, sustained assault. This is not merely a crisis; this is the unravelling of the post-war maritime consensus, and the world is watching with paralysis as a new form of warfare exposes the hollow core of our strategic doctrines.
Consider the mathematics of catastrophe. Before the conflict, roughly 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products passed through the Strait of Hormuz each day—equivalent to one-fifth of global consumption. The Bab el-Mandeb carried another 9.3 million barrels per day in 2023. Today, the Houthi blockade threatens to sever Saudi Arabia’s last remaining alternative pathway—its Red Sea lifeline through Yanbu—just as Hormuz has been rendered all but impassable.
The cumulative effect? A potential 15 to 17 per cent of the world’s oil supply strangled at the source. The International Energy Agency now estimates that cumulative oil supply losses from Middle East producers have exceeded 1.3 billion barrels. North Sea Dated crude reached an all-time high of $144 per barrel—more than double its pre-war levels.
This crisis is a palimpsest of history’s darkest maritime chapters. The Tanker War of the 1980s saw Iran and Iraq attack merchant vessels for years, culminating in Operation Earnest Will—the largest naval convoy operation since World War II. But that conflict, for all its brutality, remained within the state-versus-state framework. Today’s adversary is something far more insidious: a non-state actor, armed by Tehran, operating from the rugged highlands of Yemen, exploiting every ambiguity in international law with surgical precision.
The Houthis have weaponised legal opacity itself, transforming the law of blockade—rooted in the 1856 Declaration of Paris and the San Remo Manual—into a juridical ghost that haunts every naval commander’s decision. When a non-state actor declares a blockade, the entire architecture of maritime law trembles. Who enforces? Who attributes? Who retaliates without triggering an escalatory spiral that consumes the region?
Saudi Arabia’s strategic vulnerability is a tragedy written in pipeline steel. The East-West Petroline, built in the 1980s as a hedge against Hormuz closure, now runs at full capacity—7 million barrels per day—pumping crude across 1,200 kilometres of desert to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. This is not a strategy; this is a single point of failure stretched across a kingdom.
The pipeline snakes through territory vulnerable to Iranian missile strikes, Houthi drone attacks, and internal sabotage. Its pumping stations are exposed; its terminal at Yanbu is a sitting duck. The kingdom has been diverting more than 70 per cent of its crude exports to Yanbu since Hormuz was effectively shut.
Yet even this desperate gambit now hangs by a thread.
The Houthis have signalled they are prepared “to expand the confrontation from Yemen’s territory into the Red Sea maritime domain,” in the words of Chatham House’s Neil Quilliam. This is not a blockade; this is an execution.
The doctrinal paradox at the heart of this crisis is devastatingly simple: modern militaries are expected to operate inside a battlespace shaped by proxy actors who weaponise legal ambiguity and intelligence opacity. Every strike risks breaching international humanitarian law; every delay risks operational failure; every intelligence assessment becomes a probabilistic gamble rather than a definitive guide.
The US has now carried out ten consecutive nights of strikes against Iran, targeting command centres, missile facilities, and maritime capabilities. Iran retaliates by striking US allies—Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan. Two American service members killed in Jordan; a third missing. The escalatory trap is sprung: each round of strikes generates pressure for the next, with no clear political path to de-escalation.”At some point,” warns former US diplomat Alan Eyre, “a ladder goes in only one direction.”
And yet, the international community dithers.
Meanwhile, the Houthis’ chief backer, Iran, continues to exploit the legal vacuum, providing material support while maintaining just enough operational distance to evade attribution under the International Law Commission’s “effective control” test. This is the alchemy of proxy warfare: transforming state responsibility into a legal mirage that dissolves upon contact with evidence.
The long-arc implications are terrifying. If both chokepoints remain unstable for a protracted period, we will witness a structural metamorphosis of global trade. Shipping routes will shift southward around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks and millions in cost. Insurance markets will redraw war risk zones, making the Red Sea and Persian Gulf virtually uninsurable. The Suez Canal’s strategic importance will diminish, weakening Egypt’s geopolitical leverage.
And in the vacuum left by a distracted Washington, China will fill the void, accelerating the militarisation of the Belt and Road maritime routes. The global commons will fragment into spheres of contested control, a maritime equivalent of the interwar period before a new hegemon imposes a fragile stability.
This is the moment for strategic clarity. The Houthi blockade is not an act of resistance; it is an act of war against the global economy, enabled by Tehran and executed with Iranian missiles and Iranian training. The Saudi-led coalition has vowed to respond with force. It must. But force alone will not suffice. The international community must recognise that the old legal frameworks are obsolete.
A new maritime order is now an operational necessity—a “Chokepoint Transit Regime” codifying the right of collective self-defence against non-state maritime aggression. The creation of a standing naval force, with pre-authorised rules of engagement. The establishment of a permanent insurance pool, underwritten by a consortium of trading nations. These are not ambitions; they are the minimum requirements of survival.
Either the international legal architecture evolves to meet the reality of hybrid warfare, or its collapse becomes the next strategic shock—rendered obsolete by adversaries who have already moved beyond its reach.
The stakes could not be higher. The Houthis have declared “an eye for an eye” against Saudi Arabia. But if the world responds with a blink, the consequences will be measured in hunger, in inflation, in the collapse of developing economies, and in the permanent reordering of global power.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260721-bab-el-mandeb-and-the-coming-age-of-chokepoint-warfare/
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The road to normalising colonial expansion in Gaza
July 21, 2026
by Ramona Wadi
Normalising genocide was a way to normalise colonial expansion in Gaza. Only three weeks after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed plans for three Israeli settlements, the Nachala settler group organised a march last Sunday, in which settlers and ministers, including Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Economy Minister Nir Barakat and other Likud politicians, marched to a closed military zone, bypassing the Israeli military’s roadblocks to reach the border with Gaza. The call was for rebuilding the former settlements of Elei Sinai, Dugit and Nisanit which were evacuated in 2005 under the Disengagement Plan by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz is pushing for the establishment of three Nahal outposts in Gaza, which historically have proved to be the precursor to colonial expansion.
Both Ben Gvir and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi advocated for Jewish settlement in Gaza. Ben Gvir reiterated the so-called voluntary emigration scheme to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza, while Karhi described settling in Gaza as “a meaningful picture of victory.”
A colonial victory, however, is violent. Since before the 1948 Nakba, Zionist settler-colonialism has been replete with various forms of violence and dispossession. Throughout the decades, settler-colonial expansion across Palestine cannot be considered as anything other than an ongoing act of violence. Israeli settler narratives, therefore, remain violent, as there is history to tie to the expressed rhetoric. The genocide in Gaza is one example of recent violent colonial history.
Another fact that cannot be omitted is that the international community took too long to call out Israel’s genocide, and it will now take too long to oppose colonial expansion in Gaza. When it is too late to speak out, the international community will issue a condemnation.
The Israeli military has also confirmed it is building a physical barrier in Gaza along the Yellow Line, “to prevent infiltration and protect Israeli troops and Israeli communities near Gaza.” Palestinians are already prevented from accessing the entirety of Gaza, which means that anything that is being constructed is being done with colonial expansion in mind, rather than rebuilding Gaza as the Board of Peace likes to remind and lament about.
As Palestinians were butchered during the genocide, the international community refused to question Israel’s intent. The settler march organised by Nachala should raise many questions in the context of all the different strands of forced displacement employed against Palestinians in Gaza. This was not just a protest march – it was an affirmation that already has proposed plans awaiting the Israeli government’s approval. As elections approach, colonial expansion will play a major role since Israel was founded upon settlement and expansion on Palestinian land. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s silence regarding settlements is not opposition; it simply means that for now, biding his time is a better game.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260721-the-road-to-normalising-colonial-expansion-in-gaza/
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Palestinian elections offer real chance for renewal
Daoud Kuttab
July 21, 2026
This month’s Palestinian presidential decree setting a date for legislative elections — Nov. 28 — raises a fundamental question: should we see the glass as being half-empty or as half-full? Legislative elections offer a serious opportunity for reform and for injecting new blood into a Palestinian political system that has grown old without delivering liberation and independence.
At the same time, skepticism is understandable. Some see the decree as an attempt to engineer election outcomes to protect the interests of those in power. The decision to separate legislative and presidential elections may also be viewed as a mechanism to prevent parties that would challenge the current leadership from rising. This recalls what happened in 2006, when Hamas won amid a fragmented national vote, especially among the factions within Fatah. In that context, preserving the presidency could be presented as a safeguard.
Meanwhile, the requirement that candidates accept in writing the commitments made by the Palestine Liberation Organization is often discussed as a means to exclude Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Others argue that lowering the parliamentary threshold to 1 percent will fragment the vote and increase the presence of candidates linked to families and clans rather than political parties and movements.
All these observations may contain elements of truth but none of them should be decisive for those who genuinely want change. If Palestinians want reform, they must stop treating the electoral process as a matter of dispute only and instead treat it as an opportunity that demands political work.
The claim that the PLO approval requirement is an international, or even an Israeli, condition is not entirely new either. In practice, elections held since 1993 have taken place under the umbrella of the Declaration of Principles between the PLO and the state of Israel, in which it has always been clear that the PLO holds the highest power over the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has participated in elections under this reality, aware that the elections proceed through arrangements signed by the PLO chairman and that the PLO is recognized as the supreme Palestinian authority.
If Hamas previously accepted this structure while participating, it faces a choice today: either repeat the same approach and participate under the decree or remain outside the decision-making process, as happened in April’s municipal elections, in which Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine did not participate, with limited exception. The PFLP’s participation in Beit Jala took place under an “independent” label.
As for the modest 1 percent threshold, it may indeed produce a fragmented parliament. But the deeper issue is not fragmentation; it is the absence, until now, of serious political programs capable of addressing Palestinian anger, dissatisfaction and the widespread feeling that self-interest has often replaced the national interest.
If Palestinians want to influence decision-making today, they should not waste time complaining or hesitating. They should form electoral blocs to participate in parliament, develop realistic, implementable programs, and build coalitions around the aspirations of the Palestinian people. This also requires an honest search for new figures, including those who are not compromised by past corruption or failures and who are ready to do the hard work of follow-up and oversight.
These groups must also be prepared to work with others to develop a serious, moderate and applicable national strategy. The Palestinian and Arab public is tired of empty slogans, unattainable goals and promises that cannot be translated into action on the ground.
The upcoming elections also offer an important opportunity for the youth. The minimum age for candidacy has been lowered to 23, opening a political space that should be filled by Palestinians — especially young men and women — who are willing to participate and to build logical and reasonable projects, programs and plans.
There are, of course, enormous challenges to holding elections in Gaza and Jerusalem. After decades of being governed through competing national and Islamist factions, Palestinians in Gaza are eager to participate. The municipal elections in Deir Al-Balah in April may provide an indicator of genuine desire, even as Israeli occupation authorities sought to block the Central Elections Commission’s ballot boxes — instead, locally made election boxes did the job.
In Jerusalem, Palestinians urgently need mechanisms that help generate a new local leadership whose primary focus is the steadfastness of the city, not merely the repetition of national slogans.
Given that Israeli elections will be held a month before the Palestinian legislative vote, the occupation may try to disrupt or obstruct the process. Still, the Central Elections Commission surely has creative solutions, including technological ones, to respond to attempts at interference and preserve the integrity of the vote.
Some will argue that the decree itself is negative. Perhaps there are elements that deserve criticism, clarification or reform. Yet Palestinians must also ask what would replace the opportunity if participation is rejected. The national interest does not wait and people do not have the luxury of staying outside the arena while others remain organized and ready.
Yes, the glass may be half-empty. Palestinians should fill it with young, aware, honest and visionary leadership, including imprisoned leaders who must play a role in the next phase. The only way to move from frustration to change is to participate, organize and demand accountability through elections that reflect real programs and real commitment.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2651794
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‘Go F* Yourselves’: Democrats Defy AIPAC after Historic Israel Aid Vote
July 22, 2026
Historic Shift
A lobbying strategy that helped make the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) one of the most influential forces in Democratic primaries is showing signs of weakening, according to a Huffington Post report examining last week’s House vote on military aid to Israel.
According to the report, AIPAC’s campaign of spending tens of millions of dollars to defend unconditional US military support for Israel has become less effective as Democratic lawmakers increasingly distance themselves from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The turning point came during last week’s House vote on a symbolic amendment introduced by Republican Representative Thomas Massie that sought to end the annual $3.3 billion in US military aid provided to Israel under the 2016 memorandum of understanding.
Although the amendment ultimately failed, it secured support from 103 Democrats, while another 10 voted “present,” meaning a majority of the Democratic caucus either backed the proposal or declined to oppose it.
Among those voting “present” was Representative Sarah Elfreth of Maryland, whose successful 2024 primary campaign benefited from approximately $4 million in spending by an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC—more than twice what her own campaign raised.
Explaining her vote, Elfreth described the Republican-sponsored amendment as politically motivated but added that “the current dynamics of our allyship are not sustainable for the region and our nation.”
According to the report, at least 21 Democrats who had previously received AIPAC financial support nevertheless voted in favor of ending military aid.
Breaking with AIPAC
Representative Pat Ryan of New York openly acknowledged that his vote would likely end his relationship with AIPAC.
“I expect groups like AIPAC will not support me in my future elections and frankly, I don’t want their support,” Ryan wrote following the vote, adding:
“Hardline stances that refuse to stand up to a corrupt and increasingly dangerous Netanyahu regime have no place in our politics.”
The report says AIPAC subsequently suspended fundraising support for Democratic lawmakers who backed the amendment.
‘Only Toxic Influence’
Former Representative Tom Malinowski, who lost a Democratic primary after an AIPAC affiliate spent more than $2 million opposing him, argued that the lobbying group has become politically counterproductive.
“If AIPAC cares about saving the US-Israel relationship, the best thing it could do right now is to disband,” he told Huffington Post. “It has only toxic influence.”
Malinowski, who supports continued military aid with conditions, said AIPAC informed him that it preferred progressive candidates to lawmakers advocating conditional support.
“The message to mainstream Democrats was that we will destroy you if you don’t blindly and unconditionally support whatever positions we take,” he said.
“I think most Democrats… responded to that by saying, ‘Well, then you can go f*** yourselves.'”
A Growing Liability
According to Democratic operatives cited by Huffington Post, AIPAC’s reputation among Democratic primary voters has deteriorated sharply.
The report says campaign advisers increasingly view endorsements or financial backing from AIPAC as a political liability rather than an advantage.
One adviser to a prospective 2028 Democratic presidential candidate said candidates now worry that voters will associate them with wealthy conservative donors who finance AIPAC’s affiliated United Democracy Project.
“If someone is receiving a lot of support from AIPAC, it makes it harder to campaign with them,” the adviser said.
Another Democratic pollster argued that AIPAC’s heavy campaign spending is producing the opposite of its intended effect.
“Every dollar they spend makes their long-term problem worse,” the pollster said. “It reinforces the idea that Democrats who are pro-Israel are only doing it for the money.”
Continued Spending
Despite those concerns, the report says AIPAC continues to spend heavily in Democratic primaries.
The organization has invested nearly $20 million supporting Representative Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Senate race and more than $1.4 million backing Representative Wesley Bell in Missouri.
Meanwhile, even longstanding supporters of Israel have voiced growing concern over the direction of Israeli policy.
Former Chicago Mayor and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently warned that Israel was becoming “a pariah nation” because of the war in Gaza.
AIPAC defended its opposition to the amendment, saying the vote “sends a dangerous signal to both our allies and our enemies around the world.”
Massie, however, described the outcome as a watershed moment.
“Public opinion is changing,” he said. “It is being reflected here in Washington, D.C., and… the AIPAC grip, at least on one party, has been severely diminished.”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/go-f-yourselves-democrats-defy-aipac-after-historic-israel-aid-vote/
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From Metaphor to Testimony: How Gaza Wrote Itself during the War
July 21, 2026
By Hani al-Salmy
War is never a passing event in the history of literature. It is a decisive moment that reshapes the writer’s relationship with language and compels the text to rediscover itself. In Gaza, writers did not observe the war from a distance. They lived it: carrying water, waiting in bread lines, fleeing their homes, and writing beneath the pale light of mobile phones in overcrowded shelters.
For this reason, the literature emerging from Gaza during this period cannot be read as a continuation of what preceded it. It represents a profound transformation that has touched vocabulary, rhythm, imagery, imagination, and even the visual architecture of the text. Writing has shifted from contemplating the world to bearing witness to it.
This study examines four Palestinian literary voices from Gaza—Jabr Jamil Shaath, Mohammed Al-Salmy, Alaa Abu Jahjouh, and Hashem Shalloulah—to explore how each confronted the war in his own way, and how the war reshaped his language without stripping it of its creative identity.
Jabr Jamil Shaath: When the Distance Between Metaphor and Blood Shatters
Palestinian poet, critic, and researcher Jabr Jamil Shaath (born in Khan Yunis in 1966) occupies a distinguished place in contemporary Palestinian literature. Over several decades, he has enriched Arabic letters with works such as A B, White Sins, As If I Were Myself, A Stray Biography, The Third Bank, For the First She-Wolf on the Road, and the critical study Through the Door of Appreciation.
Readers of Shaath’s pre-war writings immediately recognize his engagement with metaphor as both a cognitive and aesthetic instrument. Myth, symbolism, and historical allusions formed the foundations of his poetry, while everyday reality underwent a process of artistic refinement before entering the text.
Before the War: The Eloquence of Distance
In collections such as For the First She-Wolf on the Road and A Stray Biography, Shaath’s poetry was marked by contemplation and craftsmanship. The recurring figure of the wolf functioned as an existential metaphor for solitude and the poetic self. Likewise, in A B, language itself became a sacred structure capable of mending the fractures of the self.
His poetry possessed a measured internal rhythm. Place—whether Khan Younis, Gaza, or Jaffa—was never merely geographical. It dissolved into a poetic landscape and became a metaphor for homeland and the elusive possibility of salvation.
After the War: The Fall of Symbolic Masks
When war descended upon Gaza, the distance between poet and subject collapsed. Shaath found himself confronting displacement, loss, and the daily struggle for survival.
This direct collision with catastrophe transformed his language. Symbols became testimony. The she-wolf ceased to be an abstract poetic presence and assumed the shape of real death stalking the displaced. A Stray Biography became less a metaphorical journey than a record of forced movement across Gaza’s devastated geography.
His wartime vocabulary grew sharper and more exposed, stripped of ornamental excess. He wrote of rubble, friends transformed into names on lists of the dead, and the labor of survival in a voice that merged poet and diarist.
This transformation extended to rhythm and form. The calm cadence of his earlier collections fractured into a tense and unsettled music echoing bombardment and drones. Even the visual arrangement of the poem became fragmented, mirroring a self suspended between survival and extinction.
Yet Shaath preserved the essence of his creative project. He transformed the ordinary realities of war into a new poetics rooted in earth, blood, and ash. The war may have taken his contemplative stillness, but it granted him a collective voice. Where he once wrote, “As if I were myself,” he now writes as witness and surviving trace of Gaza itself.
Mohammed al-Salmy: From the Imagination of Memory to the Reality of the Tent
In the literary experience of Palestinian novelist and short story writer Mohammed Al-Salmy, the war appears as an existential earthquake that redefined both the meaning of writing and its ethical function. Al-Salmy, author of The Second Paradise and The Ebony’s Breath, belongs to a generation that regards literature as a space for celebrating humanity and everyday life.
Before the War: The Imagination of Waiting
Mohammed Al-Salmy’s pre-war language was characterized by luminous simplicity. His characters inhabited worlds spacious enough to accommodate dreams, waiting, and questions of life, death, and exile.
In works such as The Second Paradise, a quiet music emerged from ordinary details. A cup of coffee, a window, and the stories of grandparents became central elements of his narrative world. His scenes unfolded patiently, allowing readers to inhabit the transformations of his characters.
After the War: The Semiotics of Survival
With the outbreak of war, writing ceased to be an aesthetic exercise and became an act of survival.
The vocabulary of dreams receded, replaced by words charged with the pain of the present. Homes gave way to tents. Windows disappeared, and the water container became a horizon of expectation. Even a loaf of bread was transformed into a tragic protagonist.
Imagination itself contracted in favor of testimony. There was little room for fiction before a reality more brutal than fiction itself. His sentences grew shorter and denser, as though the pen feared interruption by another shell or displacement order.
The measured visuality of his earlier work gave way to swift and cinematic images: a father carrying water across great distances, a child searching for his shadow among tents, a bride postponing her wedding while waiting for a ceasefire.
War transported Al-Salmy’s project from writing the human being as a literary concept to portraying humanity as flesh and blood struggling against extinction. His contributions to Writing Behind the Fire reveal a rare documentary authenticity that unites the sensitivity of the artist with the resilience of the witness.
Alaa Abu Jahjouh: Archiving Catastrophe Through the Fleeting Image
Palestinian writer Alaa Abu Jahjouh, author of A Moon and a Dark Body and The Sea and the Hill as Witnesses, is among the most prominent contemporary Palestinian storytellers. His literary project is distinguished by its devotion to the short story and flash fiction, as well as by an economy of language and an unwavering attention to marginal details.
Before the War: The Poetics of the Margins
Before the war, Abu Jahjouh’s stories granted time the generosity to unfold naturally. Characters evolved with calm deliberation, while place retained its ability to generate stories and shape lives.
His language possessed a subtle lyricism. Artistic imagery served the text without overwhelming it, creating a delicate balance between narrative progression and aesthetic contemplation.
After the War: The Architecture of a Fragmented Archive
War shattered this stable relationship between narrative and time. There was no longer space to follow the destinies of characters. In wartime stories, a character could disappear between one sentence and the next.
The text became an attempt to preserve the fleeting moment before it vanished beneath rubble.
Consequently, Abu Jahjouh’s writing acquired an acute visual quality closely aligned with documentary cinema. The house is no longer a shelter for secrets but a heap of debris. Likewise, the sea has ceased to be a romantic backdrop and become a silent witness to absence.
His sentences have grown shorter and more direct. Ornamental language has retreated in favor of concentrated suggestion and sudden narrative impact.
In Abu Jahjouh’s wartime writings, the image has triumphed over the story in its conventional sense. His texts have become a visual and psychological archive of the Gazan human being in a moment of fracture and resilience. A house key, a torn doll, or a missing child’s shoe acquire historical significance equal to that of major political events.
Hashem Shalloulah: Engineering Ruin and Composing the Surviving Note Beneath the Rubble
Palestinian poet Hashem Shalloulah, author of Glimmers for a Broken Fax Machine and The Wolf Eats Whoever Notices First, is among the most distinctive poetic voices of his generation. Closely associated with modern poetry, he has embraced paradox and dark irony as ways of interpreting the world.
Before the War: The Poetry of Everyday Detail
Before the war, Shalloulah transformed overlooked objects into moments of poetic wonder. Through condensed language and unexpected images, he elevated the ordinary into the extraordinary.
His poems possessed a cohesive internal rhythm sustained not by traditional meter but by the music of words themselves. Equally notable was his tendency to humanize inanimate objects, granting them voices with which to protest the monotony of existence.
The Earthquake: How War Reshaped the Text
With the outbreak of war, Shalloulah’s harmonious rhythm was subjected to an existential test.
The fractured geography of Gaza left its imprint upon the geography of the text. His poetry became more anxious; sentences broke apart as though struggling for breath between airstrikes.
This transformation extended to his entire linguistic landscape. The fluidity of his language gave way to a new roughness befitting lived reality. His poetry abandoned distant metaphors and clung instead to earth, blood, and dust: a tent trembling in the wind, a window hanging without its wall, a street stripped of its name, a text message stranded on a dead network.
Symbolism ceased to function as aesthetic adornment and became testimony. Yet Shalloulah refused to reduce poetry to slogans or lamentation.
Restoring Meaning Through Music
His poems became instruments for understanding surrounding madness and restoring human meaning beneath the ruins.
The most profound transformation in his recent writings lies in the nature of his internal music. That music has become more fragile and austere, closer to the sound of human lament. During the war, his poetry has assumed the character of a relentless search for a surviving note beneath the rubble—a note that refuses death and insists on bearing witness to its age.
When Writing Becomes the Memory of Place
War in Gaza was not merely a subject that entered these texts; it was a force that reshaped the writer’s relationship with language and the self. Jabr Jamil Shaath moved metaphor into testimony; Mohammed Al-Salmy reconstructed loss from the memory of home to the reality of the tent; Alaa Abu Jahjouh transformed fleeting details into a visual archive of absence; and Hashem Shalloulah searched for a poetic note capable of surviving beneath the rubble.
What unites these experiences is that Gaza is no longer merely a place where events unfold; it has become a living being that writes itself through the voices of its people. The besieged city has recovered its existence through words, poems, and stories. Writing has become an act of resistance against disappearance and an attempt to preserve human memory.
The literature of Gaza in wartime does not ask readers only to witness destruction; it invites them to listen to the human being who remains within that destruction. Behind every text lies a vanished home, a lost face, and a postponed dream, but also an enduring affirmation that humanity can leave a trace even in its darkest moments.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/from-metaphor-to-testimony-how-gaza-wrote-itself-during-the-war/
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On the Impact of Climate Change on Indigenous in Palestine and Around the Globe
July 21, 2026
By Benay Blend
“The devastation in Gaza is not only genocide but also ecocide,” Hamza Hamouchene writes, an action that he defines as “the deliberate destruction of an entire social and ecological fabric.”
In this view, settler-colonial violence inevitably results in environmental harm; thus, Hamouchene argues that the movement for climate justice must be linked to the liberation of Palestine, and I would add the freedom of all Indigenous people.
“In addition to humanitarian and political crises” generated by many years of “Israel’s” siege, Gaza is also highly susceptible to climate change. More frequent and increased cold snaps in the winter, along with heavy rains and flooding, make life even more unbearable for displaced Palestinians who are now living in makeshift tents.
“Public health crises and increased vulnerability due to the worsening impacts of climate change are silent but deadly consequences of the war,” Farah Al Hattab explains.
For example, the Middle East and North Africa are warming nearly twice as fast as the global average. Gaza, already vulnerable to climate change, could face much worse conditions. Projections indicate that temperatures might rise by 4 degrees centigrade by the end of the century, aggravating already erratic rainfall, heatwaves, and drought.
Not only has the assault on Gaza been asymmetrical in terms of deaths and destruction imposed by “Israel,” it has resulted in the increased release of CO2e, an action that is partly responsible for climate change.
According to Nina Lakhani, climate justice reporter for the Guardian, Hamas bunker fuel and rockets accounted for 3000 tons of CO2e, as of May 2025, the equivalent of 0.2% of total conflict emissions. On the other hand, 50% were generated by the manufacture and use of weapons, tanks, and other artillery by the “Israeli” military (IOF), as per a previous Guardian study.
What happens in Gaza doesn’t stay in Gaza, as the research found. Almost 30% of greenhouse gases generated between October 7, 2023 and January 2025 came from the US sending 50,000 tons of weapons and other military supplies to “Israel,” mostly on cargo planes and ships originating in Europe.
Another 20% came from “Israeli” aircraft reconnaissance and bombing missions, tanks and fuel from other military lorries, along with CO2 generated by manufacturing and exploding the bombs and weapons.
Finally, more than 40% of the total emissions stemmed from an estimated 70,000 aid trucks, which the United Nations (UN) condemned as grossly inadequate for meeting the needs of 2.2 million displaced and starving Palestinians.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I live, we can feel the impact of climate change on a daily basis, thus linking us to the ecocide in Gaza, a fact made clearer by New Mexico’s war economy, which is based on weapons research and testing.
My area is facing a rapidly warming and drought-ridden climate, characterized by record-breaking temperatures and the drying of the Middle Rio Grande River, forcing the city to rely solely on groundwater that could very well run out in the future.
Albuquerque also faces an additional 43 days of fire weather per year, thus putting the area increasingly at risk while also resulting in diminished air quality due to blowing dust and smoke from surrounding fires.
While nowhere near the environmental and human toll experienced by the Palestinians in Gaza, the genocide and ecocide that “Israel” is waging there has consequences for Indigenous people far beyond its borders.
In Canada, thousands of Indigenous residents have been displaced, not by deliberate genocide, as is the case in Gaza, but rather because of wildfires which have intensified partly due to climate change, caused in part by that very military campaign in Gaza.
Echoing displacement of much of the Gaza population, entire First Nations communities in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ontario have been evacuated, homes destroyed, and nearly 1600 displaced, illustrating the disproportionate impact fast-moving fires have on remote Indigenous communities in the region.
Among the hardest-hit Native communities is Namagoosisagagun (Collins) First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. There, a fast-moving fire destroyed much of the community in less than an hour as flames jumped past a fire break, causing residents to flee by boat with very little of their belongings.
In response, Indigenous leaders have called for a more proactive approach. Specifically, they are advocating for greater investment in year-round community resilience, Indigenous-led emergency management, and the extension of “traditional stewardship practices” that have cared for the forests for millennia.
As smoke from the fires blanketed the US capital along with other neighboring states, President Trump laid blame on the Carney government for failing to remove excess timber and brush that fuels fires like northern Ontario is experiencing now.
Nevertheless, health and climate officials claim that climate change is the more likely culprit, in particular a record-breaking heat wave that is rolling across North America.
In reality, the Trump administration has proved to be no friend of the environment. In a Fact Sheet dated January 28, 2026, Amnesty International expanded on five key ways that Trump has acted to escalate environmental devastation in the coming years.
In brief, he has withdrawn the US from global climate bodies; fostered a disinformation campaign against credible climate change science; used “bullying and coercive measures” to promote policies friendly to oil corporations; weakened domestic regulations and defunded climate science; and restricted civic space, which shuts down climate activism.
In New Mexico, the Trump administration has moved to overturn a federal drilling ban near Chaco Canyon, a site widely regarded as sacred space by Indigenous tribes across the region.
According to Judith LeBlanc, executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance, the Trump administration is mandated to consult with impacted tribes “whose origin stories, traditional foods and medicine, and cultural artifacts live within Chaco Canyon.”
In much the same way that “Israel” has intentionally destroyed cultural landmarks in the Gaza Strip, the Department of the Interior is now threatening to destroy “one of the most culturally significant Indigenous landscapes in the United States.”
Abby Martin’s Earth’s Greatest Enemy (2026), a documentary co-directed with her husband Mark Prysner, sums up the links between the United States’ global empire, its dependence on a massive military/industrial complex, and consequent increased climate change that has repercussions across the globe.
The film opens with shots of tents that are housing the homeless in an unnamed American city. As city workers arrive with caterpillars to destroy the makeshift housing, that scene is juxtaposed with “Israel’s” destruction of Gaza, leaving the viewer to make connections between militarism, capitalism, and the US Empire.
As Martin moves on, it becomes clear that all three are linked to climate change, as she deems the US military to be earth’s greatest polluter. This analysis leaves little room for individual responsibility—shorter showers, switching from gas to electric stoves—all fit too neatly into an individualistic, capitalist framework rather than a communal effort to replace the current system with another.
While the film shows many scenes of destruction—Gaza, for example—its strength lies in naming the many ways that the military’s tentacles stretch across the world.
For example, there are 1000 US military bases around the globe, all relying on military vehicles and air power to fill their needs. Suppliers of these items are responsible for indirect emissions, toxic waste dumps, and so on. NATO controls a larger web of militarism, existing as a guaranteed market for US weapons and ensuring that member nations increase their military spending in the future.
As expected, Indigenous populations are the most polluted populations on the planet. To its credit, the film not only shows the devastation wreaked by the US military on these people; it also highlights how the Indigenous are using the Land Back movement to fight back against pollution of their lands.
From the fight to end US bases in Okinawa to Cop City in Atlanta to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, there is a slender thread that is held together by the US military, whose tentacles control the world.
The film ends with shots of Gaza, a population that Martin says has experienced the most devastating ecocide of our generation, its consequences to be felt by everyone on earth.
As Martin notes, the fight against the war machine and the movement to save the planet are the same struggle. Thus, as the late revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani said: “Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the world revolution.”
Through grassroots organizing and speaking the truth, concludes Abby Martin, we can halt the machine in its nebulous tracks.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/on-the-impact-of-climate-change-on-indigenous-in-palestine-and-around-the-globe/
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