Maurice Saade

[Al Modon - المدن @almodononline]

كبير اقتصاديي الفاو لـِ "المدن": صدمة غذائية تضرب لبنان
جاد هاني

https://t.co/8VKfEKsdkf
@FAOLebanon

[FAO in Lebanon @FAOLebanon]

📢News Release: #Lebanon Between December 2024 and March 2025, approximately 1.65 million are likely to experience high levels of acute #FoodInsecurity

Full news release: https://t.co/9jZBD11PQH

Read more: https://t.co/O5YLYH1qRF

[FAO Director-General QU Dongyu @FAODG]

Famine is imminent in Gaza. An immediate humanitarian ceasefire is imperative to alleviate civilian suffering and enable the crucial delivery of essential resources for resuming food production. Peace is a prerequisite for food security & the #RightToFood is a basic human right.

[Abier @abierkhatib]

I’ve been crying since morning nonstop till I saw this message from Alexei Sayle, a British Jewish comedian.

He restored me.

The best #Christmas message you will hear in these dark days

#Gaza

[Philippe Lazzarini @UNLazzarini]

In my 35 years of work in complex emergencies, I never have expected to write such a letter, predicting the killing of my staff & the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfill #Gaza

[Canada au Liban @canadaliban]

Félicitations à @FAOLebanon et au ministère de l'agriculture @MoaLebanon pour la signature de l'accord de projet ✍️. 🇨🇦 soutient l'agriculture au 🇱🇧 pour améliorer la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle.

[Maurice Saade @MSaade]

@ThreeJacques @JoeMaristela @Jerusalem_Post The last Swede who was appointed UN negotiator between Israelis and Palestinians was Folke Bernadotte. He was assassinated by the Israelis in 1948. Folke Bernadotte https://t.co/0iiV4lpuOw

[Quds News Network @QudsNen]

Casualties among innocent civilians in an Israeli airstrike targeting a school housing displaced people in Bureij refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip.

#GazaGenocide #CeasefireInGazaNOW

[Megaphone @megaphone_news]

أدلى الطبيب الجرّاح #غسان_أبوستة بشهادته عمّا رآه في #غزة، بعد مغادرته القطاع أمس الأحد. قصد أبو ستّة القطاع المحاصر فور بدء #العدوان_الإسرائيلي، وواكب معالجة المُصابين في عدّة مستشفيات، أبرزها #مستشفى_الشفاء والمعمداني.

كان أبو ستّة بين الأطبّاء الذين نجوا من #مجزرة_المعمداني، في 17 تشرين الأوّل، وبين الذين غادروا الشفاء قبل مداهمته واحتلاله من قبل القوات الإسرائيلية الأسبوع الماضي.

اليوم، خرجت جميع مستشفيات شمال غزّة عن الخدمة، بينما تحاول باقي المستشفيات تأمين الح��ّ الأدنى من التطبيب، نتيجة الحصار وانقطاع الوقود.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Another masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades.

Again I believe that his words are so important and so rare among Western leaders today, that I decided to translate it in full (the bold parts are emphasis Villepin himself made when speaking):

"The Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu, failed on October 7th and failed doubly. Firstly, in its ability to ensure the protection of the Israeli people by allowing massacres that are an abomination to occur. He bears direct responsibility for what happened. And his second failure is having encouraged a policy of occupation and colonization, which continues at this moment in the West Bank and constitutes another threat to Israel if a second front in the West Bank were to open.

Force does not ensure the security of a people! This is what all Israelis must understand today. And what is important is that since October 7th, the Israeli government's choice has been to escalate the use of force. You know, neither force nor vengeance ensures peace and security. What ensures peace and security is justice! And justice is not being served today.

The rationale of the Israeli government for the bombings happening today is flawed, and the whole international community can see it. The principle is: "we target terrorists, and unfortunately, there are also civilian populations," what is euphemistically called in military language "collateral damage." It must be understood that this collateral damage is not accidental. That is to say, it is perfectly predictable and fully accepted.

[Host: "But once again, the responsibility is not solely Israeli."]

But once more, let's stop asking about responsibility; let's look at the reality of what's happening on the ground! Assigning fault, allow me to tell you, we will leave to historians. What we want is to stop this violence, to stop these massacres. Israel is putting itself in danger, even more today, with this type of warfare and these types of strikes.

We are essentially dealing with a policy of vengeance from the Netanyahu government. Israel has the right to self-defense, but self-defense does not give an indiscriminate right to kill civilian populations. When you target an ambulance, you can always imagine that there was a terrorist in one of the ambulances, or not. But the result is that there are children, women who die. Every child, every woman killed, that's more terrorists. Therefore, Israel's objective, what Israel achieves, is exactly the opposite of what they wish. So, it is essential today to change this logic and return to a strategy that is sound.

Hostages, everything must be done to secure their release. But let's not forget: the Palestinian people are also taken hostage, by Hamas and by Israel. And Hamas, we all know, cares little for the Palestinian people. So telling Hamas: "we will not lift the siege, we will not have a humanitarian truce until the hostages are released," is a dialogue of the deaf.

Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war to do everything so that the political solution does not come to the table. And this is where the international community, Europe, the United States, must tell Benjamin Netanyahu that this war is not acceptable. It is not acceptable because it leads us directly [to escalation] - because we can see it well, from Hamas we will move to Iran, from Iran we will move to other targets, and we then enter into the logic of a clash of civilizations. When Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu says that on one side there is the people of light and on the other the people of darkness, we can see the kind of spiral we are getting into.

All the wars that have been going on for the past twenty years are wars that begin and do not end. These are frozen conflicts. We know how to start a war; we do not know how to end it. And Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu could control Gaza, it would change nothing. There will continue to be terrorist attacks, Israelis will continue to live in fear. We must get out of this. The second reason why this is yesterday's war is that the war against terrorism has never been won anywhere. Force is not the answer, once again. Vengeance is not the answer. The answer is justice, and that is what all the peoples of the world, all those who today watch what is happening, call for justice.

Today the direction we must follow is to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from continuing his suicidal logic that will make Israel a besieged state. They can besiege Gaza, but they will be besieged. And do not think that tomorrow we will again have a pacified discourse with Saudi Arabia, with the Arab states that will normalize the situation: no! The wounds of history are awakening.

Israel's interest is to have a responsible state at its side. And this responsible state, let's stop splitting hairs, must clearly be the West Bank, all of the West Bank. It must be Gaza, with access between the two territories, and East Jerusalem. The problem, and this is the whole point of Benjamin Netanyahu's escalation, is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not want it. And the policy of separation must be dignified. That is, it must confer to the Palestinians a state where they can live, a viable state, a true state, which can build itself and which will be all the more at peace...

[Host: "Does that mean that the settlements in the West Bank have to be removed?"]

Well, when we left Algeria, there were a million French who left Algeria. Today there are 500,000 Israelis colonizing the West Bank, and there are 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

[Host: "They must leave the West Bank?"]

Yes. Yes, that is history, that is responsibility, that is the price! I tell you solemnly, it is the price of security for Israel! And all those who today consider that it will never be enough are pursuing the worst policy."

Credit to @caissesdegreve who took these extracts from the original interview which can be found here: https://t.co/hRuGw6CbuA

[PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 @OnlinePalEng]

Do you condemn the Palestinian resistance?

Here is a worthy-to-watch video.

[B'Tselem בצלם بتسي��م @btselem]

Forcible transfer must be stopped!
https://t.co/TIsFP0jWqk

[Ghassan Abu Sitta, Chair of Conflict Medicine AUB @GhassanAbuSitt1]

The Israelis killed 3648 children. Can you imagine any other country doing that AND getting away with it.
Israel's war on Palestinian children

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

A horrifying and blood-chilling compilation of clips and verified quotes from the current Israeli civil and military leadership calling for the levelling of Gaza and/or the extermination of its "human animals." After seeing this, no one should believe any PR spin about "doing all that they can to avoid civilian casualties," "precision bombing" or worse still "the most moral army in the world." A significant proportion of Netanyahu's generals and ministers clearly want to wipe out the people of Gaza, or to ethnically cleanse them and drive them into the Sinai desert. Here is the evidence in their own words, recoded live on television.

[Jim Muir @MuirJim]

The horrors didn't begin on 7 October.

[Monika Borgmann @MonikaBorgmann]

One of the best interviews and analysis I have seen...

[Ghassan Abu Sitta, Chair of Conflict Medicine AUB @GhassanAbuSitt1]

First 2 cases of the day. A 2 year old boy needing reconstruction of his foot and an 8 year old girl needing a partial amputation of her foot. My soul aches.

[FAO Director-General QU Dongyu @FAODG]

Worried about @FAO colleagues in Gaza & their families, especially after loss of contact. They are at the heart of FAO’s efforts to address food security & assist the most vulnerable in the area & beyond. Peace is a prerequisite for food security & #RightToFood is a human right.

[UNRWA @UNRWA]

⬇️@UNLazzarini message to our staff in📍#Gaza

I am constantly hoping that this hell on earth will soon come to an end and that you and your families are safe.

You are the face of humanity during one of its darkest hours.
https://t.co/ZLH3hmtTeH