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Opinion

By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, April 11, 2024

Israel today is at a strategic point in its war in Gaza, and there is every indication that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to choose the wrong path — and take the Biden administration along for a very dangerous and troubling ride. It is so dangerous and troubling that Israel’s best option, when all is said and done, might be to leave a rump Hamas leadership in power in Gaza. Yes, you read that right.

To understand why, let’s look back a bit. I argued in October that Israel was making a terrible mistake by rushing headlong into invading Gaza, the way America did in Afghanistan after 9/11. I thought Israel should have focused first on getting back its hostages, delegitimizing Hamas for its murderous and rapacious Oct. 7 rampage, and going after Hamas’s leadership in a targeted way — more Munich, less Dresden. That is, a military response akin to how Israel tracked down the killers of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and not how the U.S. turned Dresden into a pile of rubble in World War II.

But I understood that many Israelis felt they had a moral and strategic right and necessity to go into Gaza and remove Hamas “once and for all.” In which case, I argued, Israel would need three things — time, legitimacy, and military and other resources from the U.S. The reason: The ambitious goal of wiping out Hamas could not be completed quickly (if at all); the military operation would end up killing innocent civilians, given how Hamas had tunneled under them; and it would leave a security and government vacuum in Gaza that would have to be filled by the non-Hamas Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which would have to be upgraded and transformed to take on that task.

Continue reading “Israel: Cease-Fire, Get Hostages, Leave Gaza, Rethink Everything”

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Strikes by the Israeli Defense Forces, like the one that destroyed this Rafah mosque, have contributed to a death toll of more than 26,000 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run government. Photo: Reuters Staff

By Sean Frankling, Published in Anglican Journal, March 1, 2024

Dr. Suhaila Tarazi is the director of North Gaza’s Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which is owned and operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and is a partner of the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF), the Anglican Church of Canada and the Canadian Companions of Jerusalem. Since the war between Israel and Hamas began Oct. 7, the hospital has continued to serve the people of North Gaza, and at times has been the only hospital still functioning there. It has carried on amid tragedy and disruption; an October explosion in the hospital’s courtyard killed and injured about 500 people who had taken shelter there, and in December, the hospital was raided by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), who detained most of the hospital’s staff for questioning.

On Jan. 17, with the conflict dragging on, supplies running low and injured Palestinians continuing to pour in, the Anglican Journal spoke with Tarazi about life at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital during the war and its outlook for the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How are things at the hospital right now? What’s the current situation?

In Gaza, it is a catastrophic situation in general and also at all hospitals since Oct. 7. The bombardment is unbearable. Up till now we have more than 30,000 killed people. Seventy per cent of them are children and women. Plus the total of injured is about 61,000 up until today. [Editor’s note: As this article was being posted online, Gaza’s health agency estimated almost 30,000 people had been killed in the fighting and almost 70,000 had been injured.] And the other problem is displaced people; nearly 80 per cent or 85 per cent of the population now are displaced. They are forced to move from Northern Gaza into the south and they are practicing a very difficult, inhuman life there.

And people, even nowadays, are going through another war: not only the bombardment from air and sea and land—also now they are facing acute food insecurity and a risk of famine is coming very soon. And this situation reflects directly to the work of Ahli Arab Hospital.

Ahli Arab Hospital is a Christian hospital; our aim [is] just to serve, to serve all people without any discrimination. And this is the mission of our Christianity. Unfortunately the hospital passed through two catastrophic situations, the first one on the 17th of October, where because of a bombardment directly into the hospital, 500 children and women were either injured or dead. And that was for us really a very major event

Would that have been the explosion in the courtyard?

Yes, exactly. And when you are among those children and trying to relieve their anxiety and fear and then after two hours somebody phones you and says they are all dead, it’s really something breaking all hearts. Breaking all hearts.

Continue reading “Anglican-owned hospital endures ‘catastrophic situation’ in GazaTemplate Draft Practice”