 The past few weeks have seen an intensification of Israeli attacks on Palestinians. On the one hand, Israeli forces and Jewish settlers have attacked the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem time and again. On the other hand, Israel has bombed Gaza at least twice in the past few days. These attacks have reminded many of the same time last year when Israel escalated pressure during the month of Ramadan, culminating in the brutal 11-day bombing of Gaza. How do we understand the latest attacks by Israel on Gaza and the Al-Aqsa Mosque? Rania Khalik of breakthrough news explains. The Israeli provocations with the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as well as the recent bombing of Gaza are completely explosive. I mean, it's as if they want a repeat of what happened last year. And of course, this goes back to what's happening in Al-Aqsa. Israeli forces recently attacked worshipers, arresting hundreds. They've injured nearly 200 people, at least so far, severely injured others. And this is obviously just the Israeli police I'm talking about. You also have ongoing provocations around the Mosque by Israeli Jewish settlers. So these provocations have two elements to them. First is the Israeli police presence that has increased around Israel-Palestine as a way to punish Palestinians and as they would say deter them after the last couple of months where we've seen Palestinians attack and actually kill Israelis. And then the second element here is, of course, the ongoing effort to colonize Jerusalem. And I'll get back to that. But basically, what's important to understand is the capacity and energy of Palestinians to defy the Israelis, which really seems limitless. It's been one long in Tifada since 1987, you could say. I mean, the Americans and the Israelis, they created this dictatorship in the Palestinian Authority to suppress the Palestinians, but it's utterly failed. They jailed them in Gaza and in this open air prison. That's failed. So whether they have to use rockets or knives or songs, every new generation of Palestinians finds a way to rise up. So that's one thing that's happening is Palestinians are pushing back against this ongoing constant settler colonialism of their land. And then, of course, also you have the Naftali Bennett administration, which thought that they could deal with these things in a different way than the Netanyahu. They thought they could pursue what they thought was this kind of economic piece by offering the Palestinians economic incentives, but not political incentives. So they gave them a bit more, as they put it, concessions on urban planning and construction and family reunification. And they also increased the budget allocation for Palestinian citizens of Israel. And it was the first time also a Palestinian Israeli party on the joint list, right, was a member of the ruling coalition and the ruling coalition actually will collapse if they leave and they're threatening to leave. So they also allowed more construction materials into Gaza. They did slightly expand the areas where Gazans could fish. Benny Gantz was actually the architect of this. His theory was to let them have something to lose. That's how the Israelis view it or the Israelis on that end view it. But the Palestinians aren't struggling to be like middle class. They're struggling to be free and have sovereignty, which is why this isn't working. Of course, the Israelis don't realize or understand that. So anyways, like I said, there are two ways of looking at it in both perspectives have to be understood at once. There's this permanent reason for the conflict, this persistence of a settler colonialist state, crushing the aspirations and dignity and freedom and future of the indigenous people of Palestine. So we should never need to ask why Palestinians might be violently rebelling against their oppressor. That's obvious. And then there's the specific cause of an incident. In this case, and I'm talking about Al-Aqsa, it was anticipated that because the Jewish and Muslim holidays are falling at the same time, it would lead to tensions, which is exactly what happened last year. Extremist Jews went up to Al-Aqsa, provoked the Palestinians. While at the same time, Palestinians taking part in the Ramadan tradition, where they stay in the mosque all night, pushed back by throwing stones and molotovs at the heavy police presence that was surrounding them at the mosque. And of course, the Israeli police went crazy. And where Gaza comes into this is, of course, Hamas is in charge of Gaza. And Hamas has been making threats over the issue of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which again, is what happened last year. Hamas got involved and basically fired rockets that went all the way to Jerusalem and in solidarity with the people at Al-Aqsa who were being persecuted by the Israelis. And so there's a good chance that Gaza will get involved in this conflict that's happened last year. And like I mentioned, this particular Israeli administration had been seeking to avoid this escalation surprisingly. But internal politics in Israel make things difficult because Naftali Bennett has an extremist Jewish constituency that they can't alienate. And that's what brings us to the issue of Al-Aqsa, which of course is the third holiest site in Islam, but also religious extremist Jews revered as well as being the site of what they call the Temple Mount. The Zionist movement, this is where the issue of colonization comes in. The Zionist movement has used this view of the Temple Mount, the rebuilding of the third Jewish temple over the ashes of Al-Aqsa to push a settler-colonialist project with the goal of making Jerusalem the capital of their Jewish state, but in order to do that, they have to remove the Palestinians. And just like to give a bit of background on that, you know, the Palestinians were cleansed from West Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed in 1948 during the Nakba. But East Jerusalem is still very Palestinian and it's home to the Al-Aqsa mosque. So Israel has been attempting to Judaize, what they call Judaization, Judaize East Jerusalem by evicting Palestinian families and acting these home demolitions that are by the way ongoing and subsidizing this extremist religious Jewish movement of Jews to take their place. And this was the dynamic, of course, behind the removal of Palestinian families that Sheikh Jarrah last year, which received worldwide attention ahead of the war that Israel launched on Gaza. So this is the background, the Jewish settlers basically are Israel's shock troops in Judaizing or removing Palestinians. And the ideology that moves them is like I mentioned, taking over the Al-Aqsa mosque, demolishing it, building in its place this third Jewish temple, which in their view would bring about the end times. So they often stage these provocations by storming the mosque. And then the Israeli police will guard them while closing it off to Palestinians, which is what's been happening. This is like a cycle that happens. It's what's been happening now during Ramadan, which makes it so much more explosive. And so while the Israeli populace doesn't necessarily agree with the religious theology behind the settler movement in Jerusalem, they do support the movement as being some sort of Jewish rights cause. So therefore, this has the support of the government, even those who consider themselves secular, but especially those who have a extremist religious constituency like Naftali Bennett. So that's why even if the Naftali Bennett administration isn't interested in necessarily having an escalation right now, at the end of the day, it's politics. And they do have this extremist constituency to bow down to as well as with the recent spate of attacks against Israelis, sort of using this area of al-Aqsa as a way to put their foot down and impose or kind of like impose what they call deterrence against Palestinians by shooting at a bunch of worshipers to punish them for any attack that happens anywhere, which we also saw happen in Janine a few times recently where the Israeli occupation forces would invade Janine because one person from there had stabbed an Israeli or shot an Israeli somewhere. So this is the situation we're in right now. It's incredibly explosive and we could in the coming weeks, if it continues on this path without any de-escalation, we could see another war on Gaza. These attacks also take place amid rapidly changing global and regional configurations due to the Ukraine war. Are any of these factors influencing the Israeli offensive? What is the regional response to these kinds of provocative acts? You know, I don't know if this issue that's sort of, I think, a little bit more local to what's happening in the Israeli political scene towards Palestinians, which I mentioned is like an ongoing thing, is necessarily related to what's happening regionally in the sense that whether there's escalation, for example, between Israel and Iran or more normalization between Israel and the Saudis, the colonization of Palestine is going to continue. What would make it a regional issue is, you know, the issue of al-Aqsa itself does when Israel launches these provocations, it does cause tensions between the Israelis and the Jordanians, and it makes it more difficult for the sort of client regimes in the Gulf states to justify their normalization schemes with Israel because it very much upsets Muslims around the region when they see the Israelis like shooting at Muslims during Ramadan at the third hurley of site in Islam. So on, you know, in that sense, it could make Israel's normalization schemes more difficult. And of course, whenever Israel launches its provocations against the Palestinians, the rest of the resistance access across the region becomes, you know, it provokes them as well, it provokes Hezbollah, it provokes the Iranians, and even it started to provoke the popular mobilization forces in Iraq, which are, you know, which since last year especially have become increasingly angry on behalf of the Palestinians about Israel's provocations because they see this attack on al-Aqsa as an attack on Arabs and Muslims across the region because it's such a symbol for them. So in that sense, when Israel does attack al-Aqsa and does, you know, you have these settlers provoking Palestinians during Ramadan, it does have the potential to light a fire across the region that could lead to more conflicts than just one in Gaza. Because Israel, of course, is fighting, you know, its war on multiple fronts, not just against the Palestinians, but against Lebanon, against Syria. So all of these kind of become one regional war when you look at it that way. That said, I think the world's attention is so consumed by what's happening in the war in Ukraine, particularly the Western world's attention and the Western sort of hegemonic media's attention that despite how serious and grave the current Israeli escalation is, it's receiving almost no attention. And in fact, you know, the irony here is that the vast majority of people who are cheering for the Western countries to arm the Ukrainians against the Russian invaders, against the Russian occupiers, are the same people who are 100% supportive of arming the Israeli occupier to continue to subjugate the Palestinians. So it actually, you know, I hope we don't see a war, of course, against Gaza, another devastating war. But if that does happen, it will really highlight the level of hypocrisy that exists because the vast majority, like I mentioned, the vast majority of people who are chanting for resistance in Ukraine and, you know, sending money to go fund to send weapons to Ukraine will be the first people to justify Israel's assault on Gaza.