Microsoft fires 2 workers over protest against company ties to Israel
A Microsoft spokesperson says the workers were terminated following “serious breaches of company policies and our code of conduct” after they took part in a sit-in at the office of the firm’s president protesting against the organisation’s ties to Israel.
Anna Hattle and Riki Fameli received voicemails informing them that they were fired, the protest group No Azure for Apartheid said in a statement.
They were among seven protesters who were arrested on Tuesday after occupying the office of company President Brad Smith. The other five were former Microsoft workers and people from outside the company.
“We are here because Microsoft continues to provide Israel with the tools it needs to commit genocide while gaslighting and misdirecting its own workers about this reality,” Hattle said in a statement on Wednesday.
No Azure for Apartheid, whose name references Microsoft’s Azure software, has demanded that the company cut its ties to Israel and pay reparations to Palestinians.
A joint media investigation has said an Israeli military surveillance agency was making use of Azure software to store countless recordings of mobile phone calls made by Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Trump-led meeting on Gaza suggests growing ‘awareness’ about need for political solution
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump presided over a policy meeting on Israel’s war in Gaza and post-war plans for the coastal enclave. Academic Lorenzo Kamel told Al Jazeera that the meeting suggested a “political awareness” that there was no military solution for a “political problem”.
However, he noted that “little” had changed in terms of the flow of weapons, imposition of sanctions or embargoes amid Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.
Moreover, Kamel, a professor of international history at the University of Turin, said while the meeting was about Gaza, it was also about the implications for the wider region as a whole.
“What starts in Gaza does not remain in Gaza,” he noted. “So, for instance, a large part of Lebanon is set to receive a similar fate as Gaza,” he added, pointing out that Trump and Israeli PM Netanyahu were using the “narratives” of destroying Hezbollah for “the mass destruction of a large part of Lebanon”.
Israeli public unsupportive of government plans to seize Gaza City
Former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas says Israelis are “not supportive” of the continuation of the war in Gaza and remain “sceptical” about the government’s claim of wanting to achieve a “total victory” over Hamas.
“Most importantly, they [Israeli public] have very strong doubts and reservations about the idea of launching another military operation that begins with the encircling of Gaza City and will inevitably end up with the occupation of Gaza City,” Pinkas told Al Jazeera.
“The public is not supportive of the government… This is expressed in multiple polls in the last two or three weeks; there is almost 70 percent support in the Israeli public to end the war,” he added.
With international pressure on the government to end the war, the former diplomat explained that the government is in “denial” as it verges on a “pariah state”.
“[The government] is relying entirely on the whims of [US] President Donald Trump… It is within Trump’s power to stop the war with one phone call,” Pinkas said.
