Orientul Mijlociu

On December 6, 2023, Lebanese Hizbullah’s Al-Ahed News released an exclusive interview with Hamas national relations official Ali Barakah.[1] In the interview, Barakah asserted that Hamas is “doing well” against the Israeli counterattack and that it is fighting in accordance with its predetermined “defensive plan” of action. He also said that Hamas continues to aim to free all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention and will use Israeli hostages to that end.

Attributing a role for Syrian refugees in fostering a positive chapter in the beleaguered Türkiye-U.S. relationship may seem like a stretch, but the Türkiye Compact proposed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) leads one to think otherwise.

Radical attitudes
According to Hamas, it is the religious duty of Muslims to attack Jews. Compromises and agreements as a way to solve the Palestinian issue are expressly rejected and replaced by armed struggle. Hamas first used a suicide bombing in April 1993, five months before PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinians administration in the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho. On the first morning after the agreement was signed, a Hamas bomber tried to blow up a police station in Gaza. This was followed by three more suicide attacks. In the fifth attack in October 1993, an attack was carried out on the headquarters of the Israeli army in the West Bank.

The government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea for at least the past five years.

[T]he Turkish media continues to falsely and repeatedly to claim that “152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey”. These islands historically and legally… belong to Greece.

Unless and until a ceasefire comes into effect, the Gaza war’s destabilising impact is set to spread further across the Middle East – to say nothing about the horrifying situation inside the besieged enclave.

At this point, more than seven weeks after Hamas launched its unprecedented incursion into southern Israel, it is increasingly important for the various parties directly and indirectly involved in the war to begin considering key questions about the “day after” and focus on Gaza’s future.

Following is the October 2023 installment of “ISIS Redux: The Central Syria Insurgency,” a monthly chronicle of attacks by the terrorist group ISIS in central Syria.

ISIS carried out at least 19 confirmed attacks in October in the Homs, Hama, Raqqa, and Deir Ez Zor governorates. These attacks killed at least nine pro-Assad regime soldiers and wounded at least three more. There were also six high quality* attacks during October, all of which occurred in eastern Homs. ISIS activity in central Syria increased in October, reaching levels similar to those in August, although with fewer confirmed deaths. As in September, ISIS maintained an aggressive posture this month. At least 12 of October’s 17 confirmed attacks were carried out using small arms or heavy weapons, and often involved attempted or successful assaults on regime positions. Only one attack this month involved a mine or improvised explosive device (IED).

The record is clear: Iran uses murder as a weapon of statecraft — and it does so, in part, via its commercial aviation sector, which Tehran has suborned to its goals of exporting revolution and sowing chaos.

Iran arms Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, who threaten to open a second front with Israel on the Lebanon border; it supplies drones to Russia, which deploys them against Ukrainian civilians; it props up the murderous Maduro regime in Venezuela, trying to turn that country into its forward operating base in the Americas. The common denominator in each of these endeavors? Iran’s commercial aviation sector.

Since October 7, the Israeli authorities have greatly reinforced their instruments of repression, as a form of vengeance for the Hamas attacks.

Since October 7, Israel has declared war on Gaza, killing more than 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 6,150 children, and destroying civilian infrastructure that could sustain life in the future. However, Israel has also been mounting a silent war on Palestinians in the West Bank and within the 1948 borders, to repress and contain them, quell any expressions of collective Palestinian identity, and make the occupied Palestinian territories unlivable for Palestinians.

An open letter to President Biden from MSF-USA executive director Avril Benoît

Dear President Biden,

I am writing to you on behalf of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), our staff, and our patients to urgently request that the United States call for an immediate and sustained ceasefire in Gaza. MSF has delivered medical aid in many high-intensity conflicts over more than 50 years, yet rarely have we encountered such a catastrophic combination of escalating humanitarian and medical needs, ravaged infrastructure, and intentionally limited humanitarian access. We urge you to use your influence to secure an end to the widespread and indiscriminate attacks against civilians, forced displacement, and siege of Gaza. Vital humanitarian aid must be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip at scale.

Latest Developments

Two terror tunnels shafts in the West Bank were uncovered during an overnight operation in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on December 6. Terror tunnels are used by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and to a limited degree by Hezbollah in Lebanon, but their use in the West Bank is a relatively new development. During the operation, the IDF detained 10 Palestinian terrorists and found three bomb-making labs. The IDF also confiscated illegal weapons. During the operation, clashes took place with Palestinian gunmen, injuring one IDF soldier.