World roundup: November 6 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Ethiopia, Germany, and elsewhere

Without belaboring the point I, like I suspect many of you, feel spent today. I mention this not to ask for sympathy but simply to say that if tonight’s newsletter feels a bit more tired than usual, that’s because it is reflecting its author. Thanks as always for reading.

TODAY IN HISTORY

November 6, 1865: The CSS Shenandoah surrenders in Liverpool, almost six months after Confederate General Joseph Johnston’s surrender at Bennett Place, North Carolina, had ended the US Civil War. The Shenandoah circumnavigated the globe, having set out from England in October 1864 with a mission to disrupt Union commerce. It sailed through the Indian Ocean to Australia, then spent some time attacking US whaling vessels in the North Pacific before planning an attack on San Francisco and then aborting it when its captain, James Waddell, learned of the war’s end. He opted to return to Liverpool and surrender there due to concerns that his crew would be treated as pirates by the US government.

November 6, 1975: The Moroccan government organizes the “Green March” to demand a Spanish withdrawal from that country’s Western Sahara colony. Some 350,000 people, accompanied by 20,000 soldiers, entered the territory carrying Moroccan flags and copies of the Quran. The Spanish government, trying to prepare for the imminent death of longtime dictator Francisco Franco, responded to the march by opening up negotiations about the future of Western Sahara. The status of the territory remains disputed between the claims of the Moroccan monarchy and the Sahrawi independence movement known as Polisario.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Donald Trump’s election threatens to supercharge Israel’s massacre in Gaza, and if that happens I suspect a number of US political commentators will try to lay full blame for that massacre at his feet. So it’s important to keep in mind that the massacre was already well under way before last night:

There are three layers of siege in the Gaza Strip today. Firstly, the whole Gaza Strip is under siege — nothing comes or goes without the Israeli military approval. Another siege is laid on the northern Gaza Strip, north of Wadi Gaza – including Gaza City, refugee camps and nearby communities. And yet another, tighter siege within the northern sector, around the towns of Jabalya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. “A siege within a siege within a siege,” one UN source called it.

Some 75,000-90,000 civilians remained in the area, unable or unwilling to leave, despite Israeli military demands to move south. “Many families there are stuck with sick or elderly people, or children with special needs who have no choice but to stay behind,” says [United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Gaza director Georgios] Petropoulos. “When asked why they are staying behind, they reply, ‘Right, local houses are not intact, but near Rafah people sleep under plastic sheets.’”

“We prefer to die in Jabalya than to live in tents and be humiliated,” one local resident explained to Haaretz. “We agonized over our children and whether we’d better split, but we will stay together and die honorably. Also, who says they won’t bomb or shoot us the moment we leave? There is no safe place in Gaza, all talk of safe passage or humanitarian area is false. People outside the Gaza Strip do not really understand how dangerous it is to move from one place to the other here.”

According to Israeli journalist Amichai Stein, the Israeli military (IDF) announced on Tuesday that “The division of the northern Gaza Strip into two parts has been completed, and we [are] getting closer to the complete evacuation of the northern part from civilians and terrorists: ‘This time there is no intention to allow the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes and that humanitarian aid will regularly enter the southern Gaza Strip—since there are no more civilians left north of Gaza City’.”

That last bit is of course not true, but it’s a fundamental part of the “Generals’ Plan” that the IDF gives people in these areas a certain amount of time to evacuate, and anyone who stays beyond that point is deemed by default to be an enemy combatant. If you’re uncomfortable calling it “genocide,” then at least give “ethnic cleansing” a try. And this is on Joe Biden’s watch.

In other items: