Sudan Crisis – The northeastern African nation is on the brink of collapsing as high fighting continues between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). 

The ongoing collision has affected more than 1 billion people, killed hundreds, and turned Khartoum’s capital into a war zone. The civilians are migrating to the neighboring countries of Chad, Libya, Ethiopia, and Egypt to shelter and protect their lives. 

Under solidarity, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces agreed to allow civilians to leave the war zone. Moreover, they also agreed to allow humanitarian aid to enter and process the relief operations for the injured.  

But what led Sudan to the catastrophic war today? Here’s an explainer:

What made Sudan’s Capitol a War Zone? 

Sudanese people have struggled to establish a democracy after decades under the one-person rule.

Omar al Bashir came into power in the late 1980s after a brutal military coup. He became the country’s president, ruled for 30 years before the populace erupted, and sought his resignation.

Omar al Bashir resigned after the former military coup, and the Sudanese Army took over Sudan. But people didn’t want them to rule or be in charge of Sudan either. So after immense pressure from the protestors, activists, and demonstrators, the Army agreed to share powers. 

The Army led by Abdel Fattah AL-Burhan agreed to share powers with different political groups in the transitional government. It was intended to oversee the shift to a democratic system. However, the people of Sudan’s’ fortune have some time else in their destiny. After two years, the Army removed the new prime minister and seized power again. 

With the Army in power, the people of Sudan seemed trapped and in limbo. With no clear path or trajectory to rule the country, the armed force and political group representatives have been in ongoing talks to make the transition happen again. However, the transition process held up due to underlying revelry between the Army and the Rapid Support Force that became the Second Army. 

Also Read: Threat To Famine In South Sudan

The Friends that Become Enemies 

The effective leader of the country AL-Burhan, and the leader of RSF, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, were friends initially. For years both were on the same stage and joined hands after the war in Darfur (2003 civil war). Hemedti led a militia at the time known as Janjaweed; they were used by Al-bushir’s (the former president of Sudan) Army. 

The Janjaweed help the Al-bushier army fight rebels in the Darfur region and protect the upper echelon of the Army and senior commanders. However, they were accused of war crimes in Darfur, and AL-Bashir was charged with committing genocide in 2013. Hence, in 2013 Hemedti led the militia to rebrand themselves as the Rapid Support Forces and worked with the Army on different missions.  

Moreover, al-Burhan and Hemedti joined hands and planned to overthrow Omar al-Bashir, the country’s longtime leader, in 2019. 

Besides, they planned a revolution in October 2021, upending the tenuous transition to civilian administration that had been initiated.

Gen Dagalo has said, in a series of tweets, that Gen Burhan’s government were “radical Islamists” and that he and the RSF were “fighting for the people of Sudan to ensure the democratic progress for which they have so long yearned.”

Though the friendship does not last for long, and Gen Dagalo, aka Hemedti, force becomes more powerful. During the pro-democracy protest against Al-Bashir, the RSF force and Army were accused of killing hundreds of people. 

In the tweets, Hemedti stated: “The international community must take action now and intervene against the crimes of Sudanese General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, a radical Islamist who is bombing civilians from the air. His Army is waging a brutal campaign against innocent people, bombing them with MiGs.”

Also Read: The Egyptian Army in Sudan… What are the Reasons?

The War of Power in the Sudan Crisis

Since the killing during the pro-democracy protest, the Hemedti force has acted more independently and grown powerfully. Hemedti forces were able to establish vast investments in the resources within the country and outside, too, especially in gold trading. 

So that brings us to the current Sudan crisis with the realization of the rapid growth of Hemedti force supremacies over Sudan. And expressive political ambition of Hemedti, Gen Al-Burhan led the Army and proposed integrating the Hemedti force into Sudan’s Army. 

However, both heads were unable to agree on the timeline. The Army initially proposed two years of integration, while RSF wanted ten years. 

It is unclear who started the fight, but on April 15, both sides began swapping accusations that they had attacked each other’s bases in Khartoum. 

Slowly, they control the presidential palace, the airport, and the state TV channel. The RSF has no aircraft but a heavy army force with 10,000 men and anti-aircraft weapons. The Army has air power. They have been hitting the RSF residential areas bases in the capitol. 

Both forces are fighting brutally and keep damaging the country’s resources alongside the life of millions of people. There have been plenty of calls to stop the war and take the talk to the table from Sudan’s neighbors. Additionally, despite the efforts of the African Union, the UN, the US, the UK, and the EU, there is no sign of backing up from either side. 

The South Sudanese foreign minister was forced to mediate the war and reach a ceasefire agreement, but violations continued unabated. The two sides say they agreed to hold the talk, but they have repeatedly heard from the Army that conditions are set for these talks. 

However, mass migration is escalating in Sudan with the acceleration in the humanitarian situation. The situation is already out of control; it’s now for big cats to intervene. The UN should take strict action and protect the rights of the people of Sudan. 

Read Next: The Saudi-Iran Deal and its Implications

Palestinians experienced the bloodiest and most brutal year of all time in 2022. They witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of settlers, settlement expansion, martyrs, and confiscation of lands, especially in Jerusalem. The occupation’s relentless endeavours aim at uprooting the Palestinians in Jerusalem by controlling more Palestinian lands. They try to impose facts on the ground by building and expanding settlements and legitimizing building settlements, especially in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is like no other city in Palestine. Israel’s ideology puts more greed in Jerusalem than any other city in Palestine. The focus on Jerusalem pictures a conflict between two histories, two geographies and two very different identities. It includes the Palestinian Arab native and the trespassing zionist. Accordingly, Israel’s ideology directs at eliminating the cultural landmarks of the capital or the Holy City. In addition, it aims to fake history aimed at reshaping the city with its exclusive Jewish output. They make it after erasing the Arab historical identity and its expression of Christian and Islamic diversity. Consequently, taking into consideration all intense practices to uproot the Palestinians in Jerusalem. 

Geographical and Demographical Judaization

Israel’s Jewdization ideology plan started its first steps in Jerusalem by initially cutting off Jerusalem from its perimeter. Their point was isolating Arab Jerusalemites from their civil, national and administrative institutions and from any activity that would maintain their interdependence. Their first planned step was initiating a vast campaign to isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, politically, geographically, economically, socially and demographically. They also erected the apartheid wall around the Holy City as well as settlement belts around it entirely. Israel also constructed and strengthened settlements in the heart of Arab neighbourhoods and the Old Town in  Jerusalem.
Read more on this: Israel is Hiding Crucial Demographic Facts About Palestinians

Land Confiscation

Moreover, Since Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has begun confiscating lands inside Jerusalem, and other Palestinian cities until it expanded to the ghetto of the Old Town which Arabs inhabited and had no trace of Jews. Land confiscation expanded until it reached the Mughrabi neighbourhood, Beit Safafa village, Beit Jala, al-Nabi Ya ‘qub, and Sheikh Jarrah area lands. Land confiscation has been happening and still happening until this day under Israel’s false pretexts. Israel has also promulgated legislation and laws prohibiting construction in large areas covering various areas of the city. In addition, they have announced other areas as “green areas” for no building. 

To this day, The Israeli occupation exploits the classification of Palestinian lands according to the Oslo Accord (a, b and c) to tighten control over Palestinians, especially in areas classified as (c) under its full control over security, planning and construction. Israel’s occupation directly exploits 76% of the total area classified as (c); 63% of which regional colonial councils control. Equally important, the areas confiscated for military bases and military training sites represent about 18% of the West Bank area, as well as the apartheid wall and expansion that isolated more than 10% of the West Bank area. 

Shamelessly, Israel’s military forces forcibly expel Palestinian citizens from their homes, inhabit them by Jewish settlers arriving from abroad, and transfer Palestinian properties to the settlers. For example, Sheikh Jarrah’s neighbourhood has been suffering from this issue. In 2008, the occupation authorities forcibly expelled the first Palestinian families from the neighbourhood and were repatriated by Jews. They expelled the Al-Ghawi family by force of arms from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. To date, 28 Palestinian homes remain threatened with expulsion and transfer of their homes to settlers. 

Demolishing “Unauthorized Construction”

In order to build homes in East Jerusalem and Area C, Palestinians must apply for a permit from the Israeli authorities, who control these areas. The vast majority of demolition orders are issued because a home or structure has been built without an Israeli permit. Every year Israel demolishes hundreds of Palestinian homes under the pretext of what Zionists call illegal construction in East Jerusalem (unauthorized construction).

Zionist authorities impose doubled penalties on Jerusalemites such as high financial fines reaching tens of thousands of shekels, actual imprisonment, and instructions requiring Jerusalemites to prove ownership of their land by highlighting the land registry. They would also oblige Palestinians to obtain the consent of their neighbours including the Mukhtar of the village or the village chief. Generally, demolition orders are based on false pretexts that Israel considers demolishing their homes itself or even making the situation harder by issuing self-demolition for the Palestinians.

Residence, Mariage, and family reunion

In order to maintain its grip over Jerusalem, Israel took racist Judaizing uprooting practices for the Palestinians in Jerusalem. They included the withdrawal of Jerusalemites’ identities, based on a series of racist regulations, laws and judgments. This policy abolished the residence right of Palestinians living in Jerusalem, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and outside Palestine. In that case, when the families of the banned Palestinians from entering Jerusalem apply for permission to visit them, they grant them an exit permit without returning, nonetheless.

Israel has also applied a compulsory approach to students studying outside Jerusalem. It requires them to renew their identity cards in a manner that disrupts their studying. The right of residence is revoked for those who spend seven years outside Jerusalem for the sake of education. Israel can, under its laws, easily deprive any Palestinian of residence in the city. Internal staff shall apply these instructions automatically without referring to any other reference.

Apart from this, Israel prohibits Palestinians from marrying or reuniting with their spouses from the West Bank and Gaza. As racial discrimination reflects the demographic conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Consequently, all these tyrannical practices serve the interest of Israel to forcibly uproot the Palestinians in Jerusalem.
For more: Israel Has No Right to Exist if Palestine Has No Right to Exist

General view

Psychological warfare is Israel’s best-known ideology for uprooting Palestinians to clamp down on Palestinians compelling them to leave their lands.  Palestinians will never forget Israel’s true face. They will never forget the execution of the veteran journalist Shirin Abu Akleh. They will never forget the illegal assassinations, willful injuries, arbitrary arrests, torture and other ill-treatment, persecutions and collective punishments against Palestinians, including many children. violence has always been a key feature of Israel. Palestinians will never forget. And they will never forgive.

Farha is a Jordanian movie directed by Darin Sallam depicting the Israeli-Palestinian ethnic cleansing setting at al-Nakba 1948 or the catastrophe. It is the most brutal coming-of-age movie about a 14-year-old Palestinian girl called Farha living in a Palestinian village. She dreams of attending school and pursuing an education with her best friend Farida in the city while other girls are excited about their friends’ marriages. Nevertheless, things went as unexpectedly; the Israeli gangs barbarically attacked the village, committing massacres against the Palestinian villagers. While waiting for her father to return, she watches through a small hole in the wall as Israeli soldiers execute a family including two young children and a baby. This brutal scene makes Israel backlashes against Netflix over the Jordanian Film Farha.

Sallam has said that the movie is based on the true story of a friend of her mother, who lived years later as a refugee in the Al Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria and recalled her experience as a young girl during the Nakba. Sallam describes the film as a means of helping process a painful memory of that time. The 15-minute scene has angered Israeli officials and the pro-Israelis as well.

Israel is Furious

The film has caused Israel deep chagrin regarding the 15-minute scene. Several Israeli officials blasted the portrayal of the 1948 Nakba in the movie. “It is crazy for Netflix to release a movie that aims to incite hatred and make false excuses against Israeli soldiers,” Avigdor Lieberman said. He stated that the Israeli soldiers would not allow anyone to damage their reputation. Lieberman said that the film is provocative and full of lies against Israeli soldiers. Furthermore, Lieberman revoked state funding to a theatre in Tel Aviv’s suburb of Jaffa that screened the film, with the “goal of preventing the screening of this shocking film or other similar ones in the future.

The campaign also included downvoting of the film’s ratings online and a social media campaign. It calls on people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. “After more than two years of subscription, I have decided to cancel it due to Netflix’s support for the anti-Israeli film.” one streamer said. “Netflix supports such a shocking and unrealistic scene that is not in line with Israeli and Jewish morality at all. I cannot subscribe to a site that has endorsed such a shocking scene in which [Israeli] soldiers are portrayed as vile as murderers without heart and without any humanity,” another subscriber added.

What is actually “Crazy” is their reaction toward the Film. They do not want people to see it, through all means, and under any circumstances. Consequently, Palestinians’ right to process their suffering through art is being denied unfairly by shutting down screenings of this film.

Palestinian Right to Process Pain through Art

Israel has tightly orchestrated and controlled its own narrative of its birth. Before the military opened its archives of the 1948 war, it issued a policy forbidding the release of any documents. These documents include detailing the forced deportation of Palestinians; any human rights violations, including war crimes, committed by Israeli forces. They also included anything that might “harm the [Israeli Defense Forces]’s image” or expose it as “devoid of moral standards.”

This is neither the first nor the last time that movies depict Palestinians’ suffering through art. Many masterpiece works were made previously including Al-Taghriba Al-Filistinia, The Tower, Inch’Allah, and most notably “Tantura”. Yet, this is almost the first time to air a Palestinian movie on a global platform like Netflix to go trending. We cannot deny that the more the situation complicates, the more the film spreads, affecting prevailing the truth and exposing the heinous crimes of the Israeli thoughtless soldiers.

The movie represents a quantum leap in the artistic field regarding the Palestinian cause. Ironically, from a tiny hole in the wall, the movie exposed Israel to its heinous massacres in 1948, causing chagrin and anger in Israel. The massacre in the movie is nothing compared to what happens nowadays, especially in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. On the same day Israel denied and condemned streaming the film by Netflix, they brutally shot dead the Palestinian youth Ammar Mufleh at point blank. How sarcastic!
see more on this/Israel is hiding crucial demographic facts about Palestinian

Truth is Unsilenced

It is also a story that Palestinians have never stopped telling. Yet, there is something unique about hearing it from the perpetrators themselves. “The Palestinians know the story. They’ve been talking about it, and the world has heard from them, but the world believes the Israeli side a lot of the time, and Israelis do not admit to this story,” said Schwarz. “This is a story of Israel looking the other way.” “We robbed them of their history,” he said. “We not only ethnically cleansed them, took them out, denied their return, but we also robbed them of the true story. Schwars added, “We robbed them of the right to remember, and that is terrible.”

Most importantly, In “Tantura,” a movie named after a Palestinian prosperous fishing village near Haifa that was wiped off the map during the Nakba, Schwarz sets out to investigate the massacre of an unknown number of villagers that was carried out just a week after the establishment of the Israeli state. Releasing Tantura, especially these days while the Palestinian cause is taking over the scene in Qatar World Cup 2022 as well as the Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an official mandate to form a new Israeli government, is precarious for Israel’s image, consequently.
See more/ Israel Has No Right to Exist if Palestine Has No Right to Exist

Schwarz says that people were killed in different ways and different places in the village. It took about two weeks to bury them. There are testimonies of bodies that have not been buried for 8 to 10 days. In a dehumanizing language, over 90-year-old Israeli soldiers confess to committing heinous massacres in Tantura. Actions cannot be reversed but the evidence is present. For more on this click here.

Farha is currently streaming on Netflix

Despite Israel’s backlashes on Netflix over Farha, it is now available to millions of people to watch on Netflix with a rate of 8.6. Despite attempts to shut down its production, there is a solid case to deepen hatred over terrible events that happened. The film should stand as an acknowledgement of the other side of a historic story about the creation of Israel. A brutal story that people have ignored or denied for too long. You can support the truth by watching the movie, rating it, and sharing the truth even with a trembling voice. Eventually, the truth will prevail.