A storm is brewing in the Middle East

The Middle East effectively is sitting on a powder keg with two unhinged barbarians in Tel Aviv and Washington DC at the helm ready to lit the fire at any given moment.

When Gaza ceasefire came into effect a story was publicised about its conception. Israeli outlets reported and subsequently Western propaganda rags propagated that Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff made a call to Netanyahu from Doha on a Friday, telling the Israeli prime minister that he would see him the next day to receive his nod for the ceasefire deal. Netanyahu told Witkoff that he couldn’t meet him on a Saturday since it would be the day of Shabbat. Witkoff, the story went, told Netanyahu “in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him.” It’s the same Witkoff who described listening to Netanyahu’s litany of lies and threats to anti-genocide Americans last year in Congress as a “spiritual” experience. Nevertheless, the deal was ultimately signed on January 15 and the ceasefire came into effect from January 19, a day before Trump’s inauguration.

The story never made sense. The Israelis were finding it hard to contain the Palestinian resistance, taking more severe losses in the first two weeks of January than they had done in any two weeks during their 15 months of genocidal onslaught of Gaza. There was a crisis in their ranks with soldiers refusing to return to the areas they had supposedly cleared only for the Palestinian fighters to come back and rig them with explosives. There was a recruitment crisis. Their tanks were getting smoked left, right, and centre, too fast to be replaced. Just like in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah men wouldn’t cede the Israelis any significant territory and which forced them to call for a ceasefire to take a breather, the Palestinian fighters had bled them profusely and a few more months of savage barbarism wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Israel needed a break.

This was always the more plausible reading of the ceasefire.

The fast unfolding events since the ceasefire corroborate this reading. Trump has practically written the Israelis a blank check for restarting the bombardment of Gaza whenever they want. He threatened opening the gates of hell after Hamas suspended the release of Israeli prisoners to force the Zionist state into complying with the terms of the deal. Trump repeated his openness to Israel resuming the Gaza bombardment when he declared after Hamas released four bodies last Thursday, “This is a vicious group of people, and Israel’s going to have to decide what they’re doing.”

He is certainly giving the Zionists all the weapons they would need to incinerate what little remains of Gaza. A shipment of 1,800 heavy MK-84 bombs, each weighing one ton, which were held up by the Biden administration in a performative gesture, arrived in Israel on February 16. On March 1, the US blessed Israel with a further $3 billion worth of arms, bypassing a normal congressional review. The deal included “the sale of more than 35,500 MK 84 and BLU-117 bombs and 4,000 Predator warheads worth $2.04 billion.” Mildly put, that’s staggering firepower.

West Bank

The ceasefire in Gaza was accompanied with an escalation of Israeli barbarism in the West Bank. More than 40,000 people have been displaced from various refugee camps in the northern West Bank with Jenin, Tulkarem,and Tubas among the worst hit areas. Entire camps have been emptied of their inhabitants as the Jewish supremacist leadership in Israel accelerates towards declaring sovereignty over all of the West Bank.

To add further to the escalatory moves, the Zionist regime has limited the numbers of worshippers allowed inside Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan. It’s a thick red line for the Palestinian resistance factions and they have issued statements decrying the move. (The Al-Aqsa Flood operation was named so for a reason.)

Lebanon

Despite a ceasefire with Hezbollah being in place from November 27 and an extended deadline for the Israeli troops to withdraw from the Lebanese territories extended until February 18, the Zionists still maintain a presence in several parts of southern Lebanon. They continue to drop bombs at will, killing civilians and destroying infrastructure. Their drones survey from the skies above Beirut.

As an estimated 1.4 million people attended the funeral of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and his short-lived successor-designate Hashem Safieddine in Beirut on February 23, the Israelis flew fighter jets over the gathering to scare the mourners. More egregiously, the outgoing Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi has revealed that the Zionist leadership mused about attacking the funeral procession. There’s no barbarism beyond the pale for a Zionist mind.

Syria

In a statement of unparalleled hubris, Netanyahu recently announced that he won’t allow the Syrian army south of Damascus. That’s a huge chunk of land that encompasses the governorates of Quneitra, Daraa, and Suwayda.

Soon after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the Israelis swiftly occupied all of the Golan Heights and have announced intentions to hold it “for eternity”. It has gone on to occupy significant parts of Syrian territory right up to the outskirts of Damascus and has been rapidly building military outposts inside sovereign Syria. By the end of last month, Israel had already built six military points in Quneitra and two more were in the works after clearing vast forest lands. Just tonight, the Israeli war ministry has announced plans to send troops to Jaramana — a city mere 10 kilometres from Damascus — on the pretext of defending the Druze community from the self-appointed new Syrian rulers, who appear too busy stoking sectarian strife to defend the country. The latest Israeli move fits perfectly with its long-held plan to break Syria along sectarian lines and reduce it to a powerless rump state consumed in unending civil wars.

Further, the Zionist state has been carrying out relentless airstrikes in various parts of southern Syria on one pretext or another.

Yemen

On February 28, CBS News reported that “Trump has rolled back constraints on American commanders to authorize airstrikes and special operation raids outside conventional battlefields, broadening the range of people who can be targeted, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the policy shift.”

As to who this policy change could be used to target, the CBS News article laid it out quite clearly, “The Islamist armed group Al-Shabaab in Somalia and the Houthis in Yemen were discussed as potential targets, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the meeting.”

Back in December last year, Israeli war minister Israel Katz was upfront about his intention to target the Ansarallah leadership, “Just as we took care of [Yayha] Sinwar in Gaza, [Ismail] Haniyeh in Tehran and Nasrallah in Beirut, we will deal with the heads of the Houthis in Sana’a or anywhere in Yemen”. Yemen was the only state that abided by the genocide convention and attempted to stop the barbaric Israeli assault on Gaza, first by blockading the genocidal state and later by directly attacking it. For its heroic efforts, the genocidal axis of the US, UK, and Israel relentlessly attacked the impoverished country, which is still reeling under the effects of nearly a decade-long war waged against it by Saudi Arabia and the UAE with support from the US and the UK.

In cahoots with the Israelis, American war hawks like Joe Wilson have been busy manufacturing consent for attacking Yemeni leadership for daring to oppose the genocide of besieged fellow Arabs.

All these developments in the geopolitical hotbed of the Middle East are taking place at the same time that the United States is all but wrapping up its proxy war on the Ukrainian front. After a very public defenestration of Zelenskiyy, the three-year effort to bleed Russia to the last Ukrainian appears to be on its last legs. It means the United States can now focus its attention solely on the Middle Eastern front without the Ukrainian encumbrance. Other than sending copious weapons to Israel, the US has also been flexing its own muscles in the region, for example, it has been flying B52 bombers in the Middle Eastern airspace.

The Israelis have indicated they have no interest in continuing with the Gaza ceasefire. The first of the three-phase ceasefire deal came to an end today and the second phase of the deal should have ideally come into effect. This phase would have seen the Israelis begin to withdraw troops from Gaza entirely, paving the way for more rounds of prisoner exchange and ultimately to the reconstruction of Gaza in the third phase. Instead, the Israelis have proposed prolonging the first phase by another six weeks with the aim of retrieving their remaining prisoners of war in Gaza before resuming bombardment of the besieged enclave.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer has explicitly stated that “Israel is not committed to the three-stage plan of the Biden administration, even if it signed it.” American promises aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.

Trump, who recently shared an utterly deranged video showing the future of Gaza as some sort of Dubai on steroids replete with golden Trump statues for the faithful to pay obeisance to, has certainly given all the indication the Israelis need that he won’t be coming in their way should they proceed with another round of barbarism.

All these developments in the Middle East point towards a sizable escalation, which will engulf huge swathes of land and millions of people. There’s every possibility that the Israeli and American war hawks will try to finally enact their long-held wet dream of attacking Iran, which, likely as a deterrence tactic, has been busy giving a sneak peak into its underground military compounds.

The Middle East effectively is sitting on a powder keg with two unhinged barbarians in Tel Aviv and Washington DC at the helm ready to lit the fire at any given moment and no one to stop them. All bets are off.

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