Ron Hughes

Israel has been expanding its control of Gaza via a constantly-expanding, mostly-invisible, ‘Yellow Line’ – a demarcation line set out in the Israeli-US ‘peace plan’ of 2025. Palestinians can mainly only guess at where it lies, aside from some yellow cement blocks which are periodically moved still further into Gaza, to claim more land. Palestinians report being fired upon by Israeli forces even if nowhere near where the Yellow Line might be. This is reminiscent of the Israeli ‘Buffer Zone’ imposed inside the Gaza Strip in the 90s and widened in the 2000s, expanding from 50 meters to 300 meters to much further. It was imposed in the name of “security” but was, in reality, another landgrab device. Having accompanied Palestinian farmers for years when I lived in Gaza, I’m acutely aware of how Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition on any – elderly to child – Palestinian civilians, whether near what Israel deemed off limits, or hundreds of meters or even a kilometer away. We routinely came under this fire, bullets whizzing close by our heads and bodies, Israel  maiming or killing Palestinians who were simply trying to work their farmland. TRT World noted in a July 27 article that since October, “the so-called Yellow Line has expanded from covering roughly half of Gaza to nearly 65 percent of the territory by June, and more than 23 kilometers of berms have gone up alongside it.” Many Palestinians report being told suddenly one morning to move west as the Israeli occupying forces shift the Yellow Line still further. While the Yellow Line theoretically marks the limits of Israel’s ‘temporary’ occupation, it is clear that Israeli forces never intend to withdraw. Instead, Israeli leaders speak of “encouraging emigration” of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. This is code-speak for making conditions so unlivable that they are forced out of the Strip – in other words, ethnic cleansing. On August 19, Israel killed ten Palestinians in central Gaza. On August 18, an Israeli strike near the sea in Gaza City killed six Palestinians, including a child, and wounded ten more. The slaughtering hasn’t stopped since the ‘ceasefire’, but major media reporting on it has. Nearly every day there are reports from Gaza of Palestinians killed or maimed by Israel, ceasefire be damned. On top of which, Israel continues its decades-old policy of gunning down Palestinian fishers, ensuring they cannot access the sea for food. ...Israel is now actively working to ensure a true death toll cannot be counted, literally removing the evidence of unaccounted-for bodies under the rubble. Euro-Med reported on August 3 that Israel has removed or crushed an estimated 10 million tonnes of rubble from Gaza, “before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites. This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble. These sites need careful examination and thorough criminal investigation before any intervention that might change or erase their features.”... swentr.site/news/644453-isra…

The Iranians need to put their anger aside and become pragmatic, or we will never reach a deal!