Rights Reporter

Tag: israel

  • United States abandons plan to disarm Hamas. What’s happening in Gaza?

    United States abandons plan to disarm Hamas. What’s happening in Gaza?

    According to Israeli TV Channel 13, the United States would be willing to give up on disarming Hamas in order to begin rebuilding Gaza immediately.

    According to an Israeli security source, since the White House is having difficulty obtaining commitments from third countries to participate in the disarmament of Hamas, it has begun to seek “temporary solutions, which are currently unacceptable to Israel”.

    “This temporary situation is the worst possible,” said a senior Israeli source. ‘Hamas has grown stronger in recent weeks, since the end of the war’.

    In short, there are currently no countries that have committed to deploying their own troops to Gaza with the mission of disarming Hamas. The excuse is that it requires the approval of the UN Security Council.

    For this reason, the Trump administration is insisting that the UN Security Council approve a draft on Monday that includes the entire 20-point peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump, a plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also approved in September at a joint press conference with the president, although to be honest it seemed like ‘coerced approval’.

    According to a Rights Reporter source working in the intelligence sector, there are no Arab or Western countries willing to send troops to Gaza with the task of disarming Hamas, but only with the task of overseeing the distribution of humanitarian aid and reconstruction. “They know that committing to disarming Hamas also means committing to fighting”.

    In many ways, this situation is very similar to that in Lebanon, where Hezbollah refuses to disarm and no one is willing to support the Lebanese army in the “forced disarmament” of Hezbollah.

    A second Israeli internal intelligence source told Rights Reporter that the only ones ready to enter Gaza with an “apparent commitment to disarm Hamas” are the Turks, who are already in Egypt waiting to enter in the Strip. But Turkey is the same country that considers Hamas a resistance force and has repeatedly made serious threats against Israel. ‘There are currently about 5,000 Turkish soldiers in Egypt, apparently engineers and logisticians, but more likely special forces, at least for the most part. There is no other explanation for the shortage of transport vehicles they brought with them from Turkey’. Washington has already made it known that it has no objection to a “Turkish commitment”. Jerusalem is firmly opposed.

    For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that Russia has also prepared its own draft proposal for Gaza, to be presented to the UN Security Council on Monday. Without going into details, it is an unworkable proposal, but it will serve as an excuse for Moscow to veto the American proposal.

    Our source tells us: “Russia has every interest in the conflicts in the Middle East continuing. The more Israel fights, the more the United States sends weapons to the Jewish state. The more weapons they send to Jerusalem, the less they send to Kiev and its European allies”.

  • Why should Israel trust Ahmed al-Sharaa?

    Why should Israel trust Ahmed al-Sharaa?

    In an interview with the Washington Post, Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses various issues, from his relationship with the United States and Russia to negotiations with Israel for its “withdrawal” from Syria.

    This is precisely what we need to focus on. Ahmed al-Sharaa argues that “Israel’s advances in Syria are not driven by security concerns, but by its expansionist ambitions.”

    Al-Sharaa claims that Syria and Israel are engaged in “direct talks” and that Syria’s demands, which are also supported by the United States, are basically that Israel withdraw to its positions prior to December 8, 2024, and that southern Syria not be demilitarized.

    “Talking about demilitarizing an entire region will be difficult, because if there were chaos, who would protect it? If this demilitarized zone were used by some parties as a launching pad to attack Israel, who would take responsibility for that?” says al-Sharaa.

    Well, what are Israel’s legitimate concerns?

    • Can a person really go from being a cutthroat jihadist to a moderate politician overnight? Is this the truth or is it the greatest dissimulation (Taqiyya) of all time?
    • Returning the occupied land to Israel means giving up a fundamental buffer zone, or better still, a security zone aimed at preventing another October 7 and any attacks from Syrian territory. Leaving this task to al-Sharaa’s men is not even contemplated in the deepest corners of Israeli minds.
    • Israel’s demand to demilitarize the entire south of Syria should also be seen in this context. Ahmed al-Sharaa disagrees, but the risk of a Turkish contingent being positioned in that area is too great to be underestimated.
    • The Syrian leader is clearly a man of Erdogan, that is, a man of the Muslim Brotherhood, just like Hamas. Can Israel allow a person with this pedigree to position his armed men on the border with Israel?

    Al-Sharaa tells the Washington Post: “The United States is with us in these negotiations and many international parties support our position on this issue. Today we discovered that Mr. Trump also supports our position and will exert pressure as quickly as possible to reach a solution.”

    Who will Trump put pressure on? Israel? Isn’t it enough that he saved Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran? Now he also wants to make Erdogan happy by allowing him to realize (directly or indirectly) his dream of attacking the Jewish state?

    Israel can do without relations with Ahmed al-Sharaa just as it has done without relations with Bashar al-Assad. It is up to the Syrian leader to prove with facts that he is not hostile to the Jewish state. So far, he has done the opposite by attacking Kurds and Druze, close allies of Israel and hostile to Erdogan.

    So, can Israel trust Ahmed al-Sharaa? I would say no.