Sameera Casmod | sameerac@radioislam.co.za
29 July 2024 | 14:43 SAST
3-minute read

Israel immediately blamed the Majdal Shams attack on Hezbollah, prompting Palestinian commentators to argue that Israel is using the attack as a false excuse to intensify attacks on Lebanon.

Hezbollah has since denied responsibility for the attack on the Syrian Druze town in occupied Golan Heights in which 12 children were killed while playing soccer on Saturday evening.

Evidence indicates that the attack was resultant of an Israeli Iron Dome interceptor that went off track.

“It’s absolutely jarring to see the Israeli’s somehow now discover sympathy for children when 12 children that have been killed in this incident when they are responsible for the murder of more than 16 000 children in the Gaza Strip,” Moulana Ebrahim Moosa said on this week’s segment of the Palestine Report.

Following this incident, Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided to postpone the departure of 150 sick and injured children from Gaza who were due to go for treatment to the United Arab Emirates, which is indicative of “an all-out Israeli attack on the children of Gaza, using any pretext to continue the crimes against the children of Gaza,” Moulana Moosa said.

Although Israel has illegally occupied the area since 1967, the international community recognises Majdal Shams, a predominantly Druze town in the southern foothills of Mount Hermon, as part of Syria. Reports indicate that the Druze community summarily turned Israeli ministers and officials away when they arrived to take photographs after the attack.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan said yesterday that Turkey might intervene in Israel’s war on Gaza as it had done in the past in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh and Libya.

In 2020, Turkey provided military support to Azerbaijan during a dispute with Armenia. In the same period, the country also lent its support for a Government of National Accord in Libya in the 2014-2020 Libyan civil war.

Erdogan said during a meeting of his ruling AK Party in Rize, “We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them.”

Moulana Moosa said that Erdogan’s words echo a move towards positive action from the Muslim world, and specifically from Turkey, to lend aid to Palestine.

In Abu Dhabi, a clandestine meeting between officials from Israel, the United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was held last week to discuss plans for post-war Gaza.

The discussions were held under the auspices of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UAE, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and was attended by Israeli ministers and White House co-ordinator for the Middle East, Brett Mc Gurk.

A day before the meeting took place, Lana Nusseibeh, an Emirati diplomat, wrote an article in the Financial Times calling for the establishment of a temporary international mission in Gaza that will lay the groundwork for governance and pave the way for reuniting Gaza and the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.

The meeting in Abu Dhabi is said to be calling for the creation of a national committee of Palestinian leaders and business figures who will administer Gaza once the war ends. While it will purportedly have representatives from different Palestinian factions, Moulana Moosa noted the prominence of Mohammad Dahlan as potential kingpin of these plans for Gaza.

“Mohammed Dahlan, previously of the Palestinian Authority, fomented a lot of trouble in Gaza with the help of the Americans, [and] was then ejected from Gaza by Hamas. And now the UAE, together with Egypt and Jordan, are pressurising Mahmoud Abbas to accept Mohammed Dahlan as the kingpin of their future plan for Gaza,” Moulana Moosa said.

Hamas voiced concerns that the plan is intended to serve Israel’s war objectives through political deception and a conspiracy by Arab and Palestinian parties.

“It is a means by the Israelis to achieve the military objectives in another way that they haven’t been able to achieve through more than 10 months of war.”

Listen to the Palestine Report on Sabaahul Muslim with Moulana Habib Bobat.