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    Palestine

    Hamas surprise attack out of Gaza stuns Israel and leaves hundreds dead in fighting, retaliation

    By Lessons in MutualismNo Comments9 Mins Read

    JERUSALEM (AP) — Backed by a barrage of rockets, Hamas militants stormed from the blockaded Gaza Strip into nearby Israeli towns, killing dozens and abducting others in an unprecedented surprise attack during a major Jewish holiday Saturday. A stunned Israel launched airstrikes in Gaza, with its prime minister saying the country is now at war with Hamas and vowing to inflict an “unprecedented price.”

    JERUSALEM (AP) — Backed by a barrage of rockets, Hamas militants stormed from the blockaded Gaza Strip into nearby Israeli towns, killing dozens and abducting others in an unprecedented surprise attack during a major Jewish holiday Saturday. A stunned Israel launched airstrikes in Gaza, with its prime minister saying the country is now at war with Hamas and vowing to inflict an “unprecedented price.”

    In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the Gaza border. In some places they gunned down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.

    Gunbattles continued well after nightfall, and militants held hostages in standoffs in two towns. Militants occupied a police station in a third town, where Israeli forces struggled until Sunday morning to finally reclaim the building.

    Before daybreak Sunday, militants fired more rockets from Gaza, hitting a hospital in the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon. The hospital sustained damage, said senior hospital official Tal Bergman. Video provided by Barzilai Medical Center showed a large hole punched into a wall and chunks of debris scattered on the ground of what appeared to an empty rooms and a hallway. There was no report of casualties.

    Israeli media, citing rescue service officials, said at least 250 people were killed and 1,500 wounded in Saturday’s attack, making it the deadliest in Israel in decades. At least 232 people in the Gaza Strip were killed and 1,700 wounded in Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Hamas fighters took an unknown number of civilians and soldiers captive into Gaza.

    The conflict threatened to escalate with Israel’s vows of retaliation. Previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers brought widespread death and destruction in Gaza and days of rocket fire on Israeli towns. The situation is potentially more volatile now, with Israel’s far-right government stung by the security breach and with Palestinians in despair over a never-ending occupation in the West Bank and suffocating blockade of Gaza.

    In a televised address Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who earlier declared Israel to be at war, said the military will use all of its strength to destroy Hamas’ capabilities. But he warned, “This war will take time. It will be difficult.”

    “All the places that Hamas hides in, operates from, we will turn them into ruins,” he added. “Get out of there now,” he told Gaza residents, who have no way to leave the tiny, overcrowded Mediterranean territory of 2.3 million people.

    Early Sunday, the Israeli military issued warnings in Arabic to residents of communities near the border with Israel to leave their homes and move to areas deeper inside the tiny enclave. In previous Israel-Hamas fighting on Gaza soil, the Gaza communities near the border were hit particularly hard, both by artillery fire and at times by ground incursions.

    Gaza’s residents have endured a border blockade, enforced to varying degrees by Israel and Egypt, since Hamas militants seized control in 2007. Civilians are trapped and particularly vulnerable during wars and bouts of fighting.

    Israeli airstrikes in Gaza intensified after nightfall, flattening residential buildings in giant explosions, including a 14-story tower that held dozens of apartments as well as Hamas offices in central Gaza City. Israeli forces fired a warning just before.

    Around 3 a.m., a loudspeaker atop a mosque in Gaza City blared a stark warning to residents of nearby apartment buildings: Evacuate immediately. Just minutes later, an Israeli airstrike reduced one nearby five-story building to ashes.

    After one Israeli strike, a Hamas rocket barrage hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a nearby suburb. Throughout the day, Hamas fired more than 3,500 rockets, the Israeli military said.

    The strength, sophistication and timing of the Saturday morning attack shocked Israelis. Hamas fighters used explosives to break through the border fence enclosing Gaza, then crossed with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and speed boats on the coast.

    In some towns, civilians’ bodies lay where they had encountered advancing gunmen. At least nine people gunned down at a bus shelter in the town of Sderot were laid out on stretchers on the street, their bags still on the curb nearby. One woman, screaming, embraced the body of a family member sprawled under a sheet next to a toppled motorcycle.

    In amateur video, hundreds of terrified young people who had been dancing at a rave fled for their lives after Hamas militants entered the area and began firing at them. Israeli media said dozens of people were killed.

    Among the dead was Col. Jonathan Steinberg, a senior officer who commanded the Israeli military’s Nahal Brigade, a prominent infantry unit.

    The shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, said the assault was in response to the 16-year blockade of Gaza, Israeli raids inside West Bank cities over the past year, violence at Al Aqsa — the disputed Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount — increasing attacks by settlers on Palestinians and the growth of settlements.

    “Enough is enough,” Deif, who does not appear in public, said in the recorded message. He said the attack was only the start of what he called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” and called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight.

    The Hamas incursion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, aiming to take back Israeli-occupied territories.

    Comparisons to one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history sharpened criticism of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza. Political commentators lambasted the government and military over its failure to anticipate what appeared to be a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and coordination.

    Asked by reporters how Hamas had managed to catch the army off guard, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, replied, “That’s a good question.”

    The abduction of Israeli civilians and soldiers also raised a particularly thorny issue for Israel, which has a history of making heavily lopsided exchanges to bring captive Israelis home. Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians in its prisons. Hecht confirmed that “substantial” number of Israelis were abducted Saturday.

    Associated Press photos showed an elderly Israeli woman being brought into Gaza on a golf cart by Hamas gunmen and another woman squeezed between two fighters on a motorcycle. AP journalists saw four people taken from the kibbutz of Kfar Azza, including two women.

    In Gaza, a black jeep pulled to a stop and, when the rear door opened, a young Israeli woman stumbled out, bleeding from the head and with her hands tied behind her back. A man waving a gun in the air grabbed her by the hair and pushed her into the vehicle’s back seat. Israeli TV reported that workers from Thailand and the Philippines were also among the captives.

    Netanyahu vowed that Hamas “will pay an unprecedented price.” A major question now was whether Israel will launch a ground assault into Gaza, a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties.

    Israel’s military was bringing four divisions of troops as well as tanks to the Gaza border, joining 31 battalions already in the area, the spokesman Hagari said.

    In Gaza, much of the population was thrown into darkness after nightfall as electrical supplies from Israel — which supplies almost all the territories’ power — were cut off. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel would stop supplying electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza.

    Hamas said it had planned for a potentially long fight. “We are prepared for all options, including all-out war,” the deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri, told Al-Jazeera TV. “We are ready to do whatever is necessary for the dignity and freedom of our people.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden said from the White House that he had spoken with Netanyahu to say the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.”

    Saudi Arabia, which has been in talks with the U.S. about normalizing relations with Israel, called on both sides to exercise restraint. The kingdom said it had repeatedly warned about the danger of “the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation (and) the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.”

    Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group congratulated Hamas, praising the attack as a response to “Israeli crimes.” The group said its command in Lebanon was in contact with Hamas about the operation.

    The attack comes at a time of historic division within Israel over Netanyahu’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary. Mass protests over the plan have sent hundreds of thousands of Israeli demonstrators into the streets and prompted hundreds of military reservists to avoid volunteer duty — turmoil that has raised fears over the military’s battlefield readiness.

    It also comes at a time of mounting tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, with the peace process effectively dead for years. Over the past year, Israel’s far-right government has ramped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settler violence has displaced hundreds of Palestinians there and tensions have flared around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

    Palestinians demonstrated in towns and cities around the West Bank on Saturday night. Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire killed five there, but gave few details.

    ___

    Adwan reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Wafaa Shurafa in Gaza City and Isabel DeBre and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

    The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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    Formal diplomatic relations between Nigeria and China turn 50 today (February 10, 2021). Ahead of the 50th anniversary, in January, state councillor and Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, was in Nigeria, his first stop on a tour of five African countries. In a joint meeting with Nigerian foreign affairs minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, and the media on January 5, Yi highlighted Nigeria’s major strategic partnership with China and called for a fresh start in Sino-Nigerian relations following the 50th anniversary. Finally, he reiterated that mutual respect, mutual trust, and mutual support will continue to frame Sino-Nigerian relations on the path to prosperity.

    NIGERIA-CHINA RELATIONS: TEPID ORIGINS
    Numerous scholars have discussed the dynamics of Sino-Nigerian relations. For example, political science professor, Steven Jackson, measures the temperature of Sino-Nigerian relations from the 1970s from the Nigerian civil war,  China’s economic expansion, to Nigeria’s democratic venture and the contemporary politics of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In Jackson’s analysis, Sino-Nigerian relations began and maintained a tepidness from 1971 and for a long time after that, the Nigerian and Chinese governments found themselves on the opposite sides of the political tussles between the global powers. For example, at the beginning of the relationship, while Russia supported the Nigerian government’s war efforts against Biafra, China leaned towards supporting anti-colonial struggles in opposition of Russia and the United States and engaging in the Non-Aligned Movement. Senior research fellow at the Centre for China Studies in Abuja, Joseph Golwa, on the other hand, traces Sino-Nigerian relations through the Bandung conference of 1955, the strategic partnership that developed from 1971 onwards, and Nigeria’s membership in the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the BRI. According to this perspective, Sino-Nigerian relations have been warm, centred on four characteristics, which Golwa identifies in the historical and contemporary development of the relationship as friendship, partnership, brotherliness and togetherness.
    THE NEXT STAGE OF NIGERIA-CHINA RELATIONS: KEY LESSONS
    Notwithstanding the temperature of the diplomatic relationship, Sino-Nigerian relations have had great implications for Nigerians over the past 50 years. The following, however, are some lessons Nigeria needs to urgently consider as it moves into the next stage of Sino-Nigerian relations: First, person-to-person relations between Nigeria and China have not been harnessed. For many decades, China has pushed a message of mutualism and friendship in its relationship with Nigeria and other African countries. While this move sounds great on paper and among high-level diplomatic exchanges, the reality on the ground is different. Large-scale historical and contemporary anti-Blackness,  racial profiling by the Public Security Bureau, and most recently, heavy-handed pandemic control measures that target Africans, among other numerous problems indicate a deep-rooted problem that hinders China’s narrative of ‘friendship’ and shows that Nigerians and Africans, in general, are still not welcome in China. Sino-Africa scholar, Kun Huang attributes the persistent anti-Blackness in China to racial-nationalism, Chinese ideologies of sex and gender, and the biopolitics of disease prevention. Anti-Blackness is the ultimate barrier to cultural and person-to-person exchanges in Sino-Nigerian relations. It is also a factor that destabilizes the mutual trust and respect that China pushes in its high-level Sino-African diplomacy. Nevertheless, for Sino-Nigerian relations to grow to the next level, person-to-person relations and cultural exchanges must be harnessed. Nigeria did not take a tough stance on the racism Nigerians face in China in the past; however, the outcry during the pandemic forced the government to take some steps. Political scientist,  Abdul- Gafar Oshodi, has explained as such, in addition to calling on the Chinese government to address its discriminatory pandemic control measures, we need calls for more concrete measures—including educating Chinese citizens about how racism impedes Sino-Nigerian relations and South-South solidarity—to ensure that anti-Black racism against Nigerians and other African migrants in China is curtailed. Beyond high-level diplomacy, initiatives that trickle down to the person-to-person level, including greater cultural and education exchanges between China and Nigeria should be ramped up. Nigeria must open a path for cultural and educational exchanges to happen in Nigeria as well. Additionally, instead of blaming only counter-narratives from the West, it would be more useful and impactful for the Chinese government to take a clear stance against racism and reform the policies that feed discrimination and racism against Africans in China. Denying anti-Black racism will do more harm than good in the long run because it maintains a superficial camaraderie in high-level diplomatic interactions and emboldens racism at the local level. In his January meeting with Onyeama, Yi admitted that people-to-people and cultural exchanges between Nigeria and China are still areas with huge and untapped potential. As of 2019, Nigeria had the highest number of African students studying in China; there were 6,800 Nigerian students in various fields many of whom receive scholarships from the Chinese government. Abuja also hosted the Spring Festival Temple Fair. However, these exchanges have not been enough to impact the widespread afro-phobic rhetoric on Chinese social media and at the height of the pandemic. This indicates that the problem is deeper than it appears but also that there is still a lot of potential that cultural and people-to-people exchanges can achieve. There needs to be an assessment of the current impact of person-to-person exchanges to see what has worked and what should be improved. What happened to the Nigerian students that have studied and graduated from Chinese universities prior to 2019? What are they doing now? What were their experiences in China and what can those experiences tell us about how to improve person-to-person relations in Sino-African exchanges? How has access to a Chinese education impacted networks between young Chinese and African people? Will there be Chinese exchanges to Nigeria as well? What are the commonalities that Chinese and Nigerian people share? These questions need to be considered and explored going forward. Both Nigeria and China need to tap into the knowledge of the Nigerian diaspora in China and Chinese diaspora in Nigeria to understand how to utilize person-to-person and cultural exchanges for a more equal and mutually beneficial relationship. 
    NIGERIA-CHINA: THE NEED FOR A NEW STRATEGY
    Nigeria needs skill transfer, new technologies and industries. One of the objectives of China’s South–South-focused cooperation with Africa through FOCAC is to balance out the inequalities in Sino-African relations through skill transfers and knowledge sharing. China’s bilateral trade with Nigeria has increased since 2002, as has the number of Chinese corporations in Nigeria. China also agreed to offer thousands of Nigerian engineers scholarships to study in China in order to improve their knowledge, among other initiatives. However, the level of skill and technology transfer is negligible and there is a growing scepticism about whether China intends to really transfer high technological know-how to Nigerians. According to professor of international studies,  Ebere Adigbuo, ‘China is only prepared to launch Nigeria’s satellite to the orbit after paying some fees. The scientists remain Chinese working in China. The scientific template is Chinese…’ Frank Iroegbu, Rong Du, Batool Hira, Paul Iroegbu, and Tungom Chia identified corruption, failure to use local materials, and poor commitment of Chinese firms in employing and upgrading the skills of Nigerians cheaply as the barriers to effective skill and technological transfer between China and Nigeria. On the other hand, Yunnan Chen’s research holds that though Nigeria attracts many small and medium-sized Chinese investments in manufacturing, the potential for technology that will lead to industrialization and development of industrial clusters and local supply chains is still low. Chen identifies the main obstacles as poor infrastructure, weak local supply chains, low linkages of Chinese firms to local Nigerian firms, lack of accurate data tracking Chinese investments, as well as political and exchange rate unpredictability. Chen notes a few cases of skill transfer, particularly in the furniture sector and found instances of informal local staff within some Chinese firms, as well as high levels of local employment ratios. Nevertheless, aside from machinery operation, there was low knowledge transfer and the number of Nigerian workers in managerial positions were low. Nigeria must be more strategic about making the most out of Chinese technological know-how; there is room for more Chinese companies to have their manufacturing in Nigeria. Nigeria has a role to play in encouraging these companies to make products locally because it will increase employment and potentially reduce the cost of finished goods. Adigbuo suggests that locating special economic zones closer to industrial and knowledge centres is a way to promote technology transfer between Nigeria and China. In 2018, China imported goods worth $1.79 billion from Nigeria, representing only 0.11 per cent of its imports. This means China must increase its level of manufactured imports from Nigeria to truly reflect the promises made to Africans through FOCAC. In Yi’s January meeting with Onyeama, the Chinese foreign minister stated that China plans on increasing its importation of Nigerian products and invited Nigeria to actively participate in the China International Import Expo.
    NIGERIA-CHINA: THE BIGGER PICTURE
    Nigeria needs to see the bigger picture. Historically, Nigeria has played one of the most significant regional and continent-wide roles in diplomacy in Africa. How does this role fit within Nigeria’s engagement with China? What is Nigeria’s end goal in its relationship with China and how can that goal espouse wider pan-African and South-South interests? Beyond bilateral relations with China, Nigeria should engage with China from a regional and continental scope to protect Nigerian and African interests and to check China’s influence on the continent. China has a strategy for Africa that is applied differently to different African countries to achieve China’s goals and protect China’s interests. On the other hand, instead of working in silos to achieve national goals alone, regional and continent-wide approaches to China need to be developed. Africa has a problem of not seeing the bigger picture and not working strategically as a bloc and this is why the strategy of ‘divide and conquer’ and colonization has worked here. China’s diplomacy hypes ideals of mutualism, equality and respect; however, China’s influence and investments continue to overshadow Sino-Nigerian and Sino-African relations. Nigeria remains indebted to China, while cheap Chinese products continue to overwhelm Nigeria’s local industries. Nigeria’s high dependence on China means that Nigeria will remain limited in how much initiative it can take in Sino-Nigerian relations. As a new stage of Sino-Nigerian relations begins this month, more than a celebration of 50 years of relations, Nigeria needs to deeply reflect on how to balance out the asymmetries in the relationship

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