Palestinians fight for their lives and their stolen lands

[Anthea]

Israeli blocking aid
shipments to Gaza

Despite a ceasefire, food supplies in Gaza remain inadequate, with aid groups warning of famine conditions and blocked crossings limiting essential nutrition access

Forty-one organizations working on the ground in Gaza have urged Israel to honor its obligations under the ceasefire and international law, allowing humanitarian aid to reach those in need, Oxfam reported.

Since the ceasefire went into force, Israeli authorities have repeatedly blocked shipments of essential assistance, while a new, restrictive INGO registration process has further delayed urgent relief operations, Oxfam said in a joint letter with 40 other organizations, including Médecins Sans Frontières and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

17 INGOs denied entry

Between 10 and 21 October 2025, 17 international NGOs had critical shipments, including water, food, medical supplies, tents, and other essentials, denied entry into Gaza, the letter detailed. Nearly 94% of all rejections targeted INGOs, with three-quarters citing that the organizations were “not authorized” to deliver aid, even for groups with long-standing registration approved by both Palestinian and Israeli authorities.

The repeated denials, according to the letter, suggest a continued politicization of aid, contravening both the letter and spirit of the ceasefire. Supplies are prepared, staff are ready, and the only barrier is access.

"Israeli authorities must respect international humanitarian law and the ceasefire agreement," the organizations said.

99 INGOs aid delivery requests rejected

From 10–21 October, 99 aid delivery requests by INGOs were rejected, alongside six requests from UN agencies. Denied aid included food, blankets, tents, hygiene kits, medical supplies, and children’s clothing, all items that should be freely allowed under the ceasefire, the letter added.

Almost $50 million in essential goods - food, medical supplies, hygiene items, and shelter materials - remain stockpiled at crossings and warehouses, unable to reach those in need, it stressed.

It further warned that with winter approaching, many Palestinians face freezing conditions in makeshift shelters without heating, clean water, or sanitation facilities. Without immediate, unrestricted access, preventable deaths will rise.

Restrictions put coordination at risk

According to the joint letter, Israeli restrictions not only deprive Palestinians of lifesaving aid but also undermine the coordination of Gaza’s response system, which depends on cooperation among local organizations, national institutions, UN agencies, and international NGOs.

"The restrictions are depriving Palestinians from lifesaving aid and undermining coordination of the response system in Gaza which relies on collaboration between local organizations, national institutions, UN agencies and international NGOs," Oxfam said in the joint letter with 40 other organizations, including Médecins Sans Frontières and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

"Humanitarian access is a legal obligation under international law, not a concession of the ceasefire. The ceasefire must ensure a lasting end to hostilities and guarantee the free, safe, principled and sustained flow of aid in line with Palestinians rights to safety, dignity, and self-determination. Anything less risks turning relief into yet another broken promise. Israel’s new registration system must be rescinded to allow aid to move freely, unimpeded and unrestricted," it added.

Food supplies fail to meet the nutritional needs

Describing how food supplies into Gaza remain insufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the population, Bahaa Zaqout, Director of External Relations at the Palestinian NGO PARC, described the situation to Reuters as "catastrophic" during a video briefing from Deir el-Balah. "Even two weeks after the ceasefire began, the crisis continues," he said.

With some areas of the besieged enclave already experiencing famine conditions, Zaqout noted to the news agency that while commercial trucks have been allowed to bring in items such as biscuits, chocolate, and soda, essential items like seeds and olives remain restricted. "These do not respond to the minimum nutritional values required for children, women, and the most vulnerable groups," he stressed.

Even when fruits and vegetables are available, their high prices make them inaccessible to most families. A kilogram of tomatoes now sells for 15 shekels (approximately $4.50), compared to just one shekel before the war.

COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for overseeing aid into Gaza, did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Limited crossings block full aid delivery

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) stated that while the volume of aid entering Gaza has increased, it remains far below the required 2,000 tons per day. Only two crossings are currently operational, and none are open to the famine-stricken northern areas.

The ceasefire agreement, brokered by US President Donald Trump, promised the delivery of "full aid" into Gaza. Yet Oxfam's Bushra Khalili told Reuters, "We expected Gaza to be flooded with aid the moment the ceasefire began, but that's not what we're seeing."

While limited quantities of aid are entering the enclave, aid groups argue that the nutritional crisis in Gaza will persist unless restrictions are eased and crossings fully opened. The gap between pledged humanitarian support and reality on the ground continues to widen, leaving millions at risk.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... -nutrition

[Anthea]

Israel’s Digital Iron Dome:
Weaponizing the web against Palestine

Israel’s Digital Iron Dome campaign uses coordinated messaging and algorithmic tools to suppress pro-Palestine voices online, raising concerns over propaganda and digital censorship

Israel has long invested in shaping its image online, but its latest initiative, the Digital Iron Dome, represents a new level of sophistication in information warfare. Marketed as a “civilian defense initiative,” the platform (lp.digitalirondome.com) invites users worldwide to join a “digital army” tasked with countering what it describes as “disinformation” and “defending Israel online.”

A closer look, however, reveals a different reality. The initiative functions less as a neutral fact-checking tool and more as a coordinated influence operation. Users are encouraged to register and access pre-scripted posts, hashtags, and visual content optimized for viral sharing across X, Instagram, and TikTok. By centralizing narrative control in this way, the platform effectively outsources public diplomacy to civilians while framing entity-aligned messaging as grassroots activism.

The platform’s design mirrors modern marketing technology, with embedded tracking scripts and analytics monitoring engagement in real time. The Digital Iron Dome turns seemingly spontaneous online support into a highly engineered content amplification system aimed at shaping global perceptions of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and countering criticism through algorithmic dominance.

Claims vs. reality

The Digital Iron Dome markets itself as a “24/7 digital defense system” and “the world’s first pro-Israel influence engine,” claiming to monitor the web for anti-“Israel” narratives, produce “fact-based” countercontent, and place targeted ads alongside material it deems "biased" or "antisemitic". Its landing page cites impressive metrics - “300M+ targeted ads delivered” and “200K+ websites reached" and solicits donations.

Questions about transparency and actual scope:

Advocacy over journalism: The platform functions more like an advertising campaign than a newsroom, blending campaign branding and donation solicitation with AI-driven narrative detection claims.

Unverified metrics: Reach and engagement numbers are presented without a third-party audit, leaving scale unconfirmed.

Financial opacity: While donations are solicited via PayPal, there is no clear legal structure, charity registration, or financial reporting.

Limited founder transparency: The founders’ professional backgrounds are only partially documented, and potential conflicts of interest remain unclear.

Marketing masks technology claims: References to AI-driven monitoring and ad injection resemble product marketing rather than verifiable functionality.

Coordinated outreach: Multiple domains and social media promotion suggest systematic campaign efforts, though claims of ad placement on mainstream sites require independent verification.

Iron Dome exploits bias to silence Palestinian voices online

AI Engineer and the head of AI Department in a consultation company, Ali Hadi Zeineddine, speaking to Al Mayadeen English, warned that focusing solely on the technical mechanics of the Digital Iron Dome risks obscuring a much deeper issue.

“Discussing the technical aspects of the Digital Iron Dome,” he noted, “may lead to misleading conclusions, especially when filtered through Western slogans of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of speech.’"

"The real story lies not in its code, but in the unequal terrain of the digital battlefield where it operates,” he asserted.

In an age where frontlines are increasingly digital, Zeineddine argues that the Digital Iron Dome enters a space already distorted by entrenched inequalities, from algorithmic bias to economic exclusion and platform moderation practices that disproportionately silence Palestinian voices. “These imbalances don’t just create opportunities for such campaigns, they amplify them," he explained.

Mounting evidence supports his concerns. Independent investigations have shown that major platforms, including those owned by Meta, Facebook, and Instagram, apply double standards to content relating to Palestine.

A report by the Middle East Institute revealed that Meta had quietly lowered the certainty threshold required to remove Arabic or Palestinian content from 80% to as low as 25%. In effect, Palestinian posts are far more likely to be taken down or shadow-banned with minimal justification. Human Rights Watch also documented over 1,050 incidents of peaceful pro-Palestine content being removed or suppressed on Meta platforms during October and November 2023, of which 1,049 were in support of Palestine, and only one favored “Israel.”

“In today’s conflicts, algorithms and ad policies have replaced tanks and trenches,” Zeineddine stressed. “When platform moderation already disfavors Palestinian voices, projects like the Digital Iron Dome don’t create imbalance; they exploit one.”

Weaponization of algorithmic asymmetry

Economic exclusion further compounds this digital marginalization. A Wired investigation spotlighted the case of Bilal Tamimi, a content creator from the occupied West Bank whose viral videos on YouTube have amassed millions of views. Yet, despite his reach, Tamimi remains barred from monetization through the YouTube Partner Program, not because of content violations, but because “the program is not available in [his] current location, Palestine.” This systemic restriction denies Palestinian creators not only potential income but also algorithmic reach, reducing the visibility of their narratives before they can even enter the global conversation.

Zeineddine stressed that what is unfolding is more than a clash of perspectives. “What we’re witnessing isn’t merely a battle of narratives,” he said. “It’s the weaponization of algorithmic asymmetry. The very systems designed to ensure fairness, moderation rules, monetization access, and ad transparency are reinforcing geopolitical hierarchies online.”

“When Palestinian creators are excluded from monetization programs or flagged for benign content,” he added, “they’re not just denied income, they’re denied visibility. You cannot challenge disinformation when you’re structurally silenced.”

In such a landscape, the Digital Iron Dome thrives not due to technological innovation, Zeineddine contended, but because it is designed to exploit an already tilted playing field. “The Digital Iron Dome does not succeed because it’s more advanced; it succeeds because the digital game is already rigged in its favor. Without meaningful transparency, parity, and accountability from the platforms themselves, this imbalance will remain the invisible architecture of modern information warfare.”

His conclusion is clear: the future of digital freedom and of global narrative equity hinges not only on dismantling influence operations, but also on confronting and reforming the systems that allow them to flourish in the first place.
Limits of the Digital Iron Dome

In a similar vein, Dr. Hassan Younes, a university professor and consultant, told Al Mayadeen English that after October 7, the digital space became more than a platform for news; it became a frontline.

In response, Israel and its allies deployed a highly organized narrative machine: coordinated talking points, PR campaigns, bot networks, sudden surges in “security justification” rhetoric, and attempts to flood timelines with distraction content.

Analysts dubbed this a digital “Iron Dome”, not designed to intercept rockets but to intercept sympathy, neutralize outrage, and sow doubt about what people were seeing.

“You cannot hide starvation. You cannot algorithmically blur the image of a mother holding her child under the rubble,” Dr. Younes explained

“You cannot label every voice ‘extremist’ when millions say the same thing: this is not self-defense, it is mass punishment.” Influence engines, he warned, can distort timelines, amplify one narrative, and bury alternative perspectives. Yet, in this instance, they could not fully succeed.

These operations contributed to polarization and narrative suppression by design, seeking to isolate voices and make anger seem like a minority opinion. But the opposite occurred: millions aligned organically around a clear message, enough. Even those previously neutral began questioning why “context” is demanded from the oppressed but never from the occupier. “Israel” lost moral credibility online as well as on the ground.

Human voice refuses to be formatted

Attempts to control the narrative, shadow-banned posts, removed videos, and algorithmic friction triggered by words like “Gaza", “occupation", and “Palestine” were circumvented by users. People misspelled words to bypass AI filters, coordinated captions, and redistributed content through smaller accounts. What was meant to be silenced became a trending narrative, a form of digital civil disobedience driven by ordinary users, not institutions.

Do influence campaigns still matter? Absolutely. They can delay outrage, shape political responses, and sanitize the language of international discourse. They can reframe genocide as a “conflict” or forced famine as a “humanitarian logistics issue.”

Yet Dr. Younes highlighted a boundary: data manipulation cannot withstand stark reality. Live images of children under attack cannot be spun into comforting narratives.

This moment accentuates the need for transparency. When states or political actors provide talking points, monitor engagement, and mobilize users through dashboards and data, the process is no longer organic; it is manufactured consent. Citizens deserve to know who is speaking to them and why.

The events following October 7 proved a simple truth: distribution can be automated, but humanity cannot. The digital Iron Dome attempted to contain the story, and it failed because the people refused to look away. In an age dominated by AI, the most potent technology remains the human voice that refuses to be formatted.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/tec ... gainst-pal

[Anthea]

Israel's post-ceasefire demolitions

Hamas warns that ongoing Israeli bombardment of eastern Gaza violates the ceasefire, urging mediators to pressure Israel to end attacks, lift the siege, and reopen the Rafah crossing

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Hamas has reiterated that the ongoing demolitions and bombardment of homes and residential neighborhoods in Gaza, particularly its east, constitute a violation of the ceasefire agreement reached earlier this month.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Hamas called on mediators to pressure the Israeli entity to halt its breaches, from daily killings to the ongoing siege and restriction of aid, as well as the closure of the Rafah crossing.

Earlier today, Al Mayadeen's correspondent reported that Israeli military vehicles blew up residential buildings east of Khan Younis in the south, while in the central area, a Palestinian man was shot and injured near the Bureij refugee camp amid heavy gunfire.

In the north, Israeli troops destroyed several homes east of Gaza City's Shuja'iyya neighborhood and bulldozed large sections of the Beit Lahia cemetery, where civil defense teams have since begun retrieving dozens of bodies.

Israeli naval forces also opened fire toward Gaza's coast and detained three fishermen after damaging their equipment.

Death toll on the rise

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 19 martyrs arrived at hospitals in the past 48 hours, including four killed by direct Israeli targeting and 15 whose bodies were recovered, along with seven injured.

According to official figures, the death toll from "Israel's" aggression has risen to 68,519, with 170,382 injured since October 7, 2023. Since the ceasefire was declared on October 11, 2025, Gaza has recorded 93 martyrs, 324 injuries, and 464 bodies recovered.

The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate despite international pledges of reconstruction. UN satellite analysis earlier this month revealed that 83% of Gaza City's structures have been destroyed, with over 81,000 homes damaged.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said thousands of Palestinians remain displaced and "sleeping out in the open amid severe shortages of food and shelter."

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... ate-agreem

[Anthea]

Israel Conducted Targeted Strike
in Central Gaza

The Israeli military said on Saturday that its forces conducted a “targeted strike” in central Gaza, in what marks a breach of the US-brokered ceasefire currently in place between Israel and Palestinian factions

Witnesses told Reuters that a drone struck a car, setting it on fire. Local medics said four people were wounded, though there were no immediate reports of fatalities.

Separately, witnesses reported that Israeli tanks shelled eastern areas of Gaza City, the enclave’s largest urban center. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those reports.

The strike comes amid a US-backed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in effect more than two years after the war in Gaza began. Despite the truce, both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violations.

Meanwhile, several Israeli media outlets reported that Israel has, in a policy reversal, allowed Egyptian officials to enter the Gaza Strip to assist in locating the bodies of hostages taken during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hamas has pledged to return all remaining hostages abducted in the attack. However, the remains of 18 captives are still believed to be inside Gaza.

The ceasefire, announced earlier this month following weeks of negotiations involving US President Donald Trump, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, has largely halted fighting after months of devastating war that killed tens of thousands and displaced much of Gaza’s population.

https://www.basnews.com/en/babat/897675

[Anthea]

Israel killed 40 Palestinian children
in West Bank since January

Israel has intensified its violent campaign across the occupied West Bank, killing dozens of children, expanding settlements, and empowering settlers amid legislative moves toward formal annexation

The UN noted that Israeli aggression has also targeted the education sector, documenting more than 90 incidents involving schools that disrupted learning for over 12,000 students between July and September. Many of these incidents involved military raids near schools and settler attacks that forced the temporary closure of classrooms.

During the ongoing olive harvest season, the UN documented at least 86 settler assaults targeting 50 Palestinian villages across the West Bank since October 1. These attacks, often carried out under the protection of Israeli forces, included vandalizing trees, assaulting farmers, and blocking access to agricultural lands.

Escalating Violence and Annexation Drive

The assault comes amid a surge in settler and IOF violence across the occupied West Bank, coinciding with both the olive harvest season and the advancement of legislation in the Israeli Knesset to impose Israeli "sovereignty" over large parts of the territory.

Observers note that since the announcement of the Gaza ceasefire plan, the occupation has escalated its repression in the West Bank, granting settlers free rein to attack Palestinian communities while simultaneously pursuing de jure annexation of Palestinian land.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settlers carried out 71 attacks on Palestinians between October 7 and 13, half of them targeting farmers during the harvest. The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission reported 158 attacks on olive harvesters this month alone, including violent assaults, crop theft, and the vandalism of trees. In total, settlers have uprooted or damaged nearly 49,000 olive trees in the past two years.

The Commission further documented over 7,000 settler assaults on Palestinians and their property during the same period, resulting in 33 deaths and the forcible displacement of 33 Bedouin communities. Meanwhile, the United Nations has recorded 757 settler attacks in 2025 alone, with a UN spokesperson for Secretary-General António Guterres condemning the violence as occurring in "an environment defined by a near-total lack of accountability."

Defiance, Annexation, Erasure

Since the war on Gaza began two years ago, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, injured over 10,000, and arrested more than 20,000, including 1,600 children, according to Palestinian authorities. Overnight raids, arbitrary detentions, and land seizures have intensified in towns such as al-Khalil, al-Bireh, and Burqa, while new military checkpoints and settlement outposts tighten the occupation’s grip over the territory.

At the political level, the Israeli Knesset passed a preliminary bill on October 22 to apply "sovereignty" over the West Bank, alongside another measure to annex the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim near occupied al-Quds. Israeli ministers hailed the votes as "historic," calling for full control over "Judea and Samaria," despite international condemnation and US warnings.

In July, the International Court of Justice ruled that "Israel’s" occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal under international law and demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds. Yet occupation authorities continue to defy the ruling, entrenching their colonial presence through systematic settlement expansion, land theft, and daily assaults, policies aimed at erasing Palestinian existence on their own land.

A Reuters report, citing Palestinian and UN officials, confirmed that Israeli settlers have intensified their attacks on Palestinian farmers during the harvest, with no measures taken by the occupation authorities to stop the violence. Since the first week of October alone, no fewer than 158 settler assaults have been recorded throughout the West Bank.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... nk-since-j

The co-called war started a great many years ago with attacks on Palestinians by Jews as they stole Palestinian land

[Anthea]

What is the Israeli strategy in Gaza?

Robert Inlakesh argues that Israel, with US backing, is using the ceasefire to advance a longer-term strategy in Gaza: fragment the enclave, empower proxy collaborators behind a partial occupation line, strangle civilian life in Hamas-administered areas, and prepare to resume full-scale force if those aims fail

In order to understand the Israeli-US agenda underlying the so-called “peace plan” set forth by US President Donald Trump, it is important to examine the objectives of the Zionist regime and then assess how these aims might be realized. Such an analysis helps reveal what the future may hold and whether the fragile ceasefire is likely to endure.

On October 19, the Gaza ceasefire appeared to have collapsed after the Zionist regime launched over 100 airstrikes, dropping at least 153 tonnes of explosives across the besieged coastal enclave, and killing around 44 civilians. Even Israeli media outlets reported that the ceasefire had broken down and that the war had re-started, before the situation calmed down by the next day.

Initially, the Israeli establishment claimed that two of its soldiers had been killed by Palestinian fighters in an ambush involving RPGs and automatic weapons, asserting that its subsequent attacks were merely a response to this incident—one that Hamas categorically denied any involvement in.

Yet, it wasn’t long until American, Palestinian and even Israeli reporters began to reveal the truth. In reality, while Israeli soldiers, alongside settlers contracted for demolition work, were violating the ceasefire by destroying Palestinian infrastructure, they accidentally drove over an unexploded ordnance. The consistency of reports from multiple sources lent credibility to this account, yet the Zionist military quickly imposed a publication ban on the incident, before later partially admitting to what had truly occurred

This meant that the Israelis had, in essence, killed their own soldiers by violating the ceasefire and sending their forces to destroy infrastructure within what was effectively an active minefield, then blaming the Palestinians as a pretext to kill more civilians. Up until that point, the Israelis had already committed at least 80 ceasefire violations and killed more than 100 innocent people.

From day one of the ceasefire, the Israelis had also adopted a strategy of outsourcing the Gaza front’s combat operations to three ISIS-linked proxy militias - each stationed in different areas behind the Israeli imposed ‘Yellow Line’ – instead of engaging Hamas directly. The Zionist regime began pursuing a policy of using these proxy forces to carry out assassinations and ambushes against prominent figures and members of Gaza’s security apparatus.

The Israeli strategy, backed by the United States – according to anonymous sources who spoke to Axios – is to begin using reconstruction funds, to build structures behind the Yellow Line, which represents around 54-58% of Gaza’s territory where the occupation refuses to withdraw and works alongside its proxies to control the enclave. At the same time, the Israelis sought to strangle the civilian population living in areas under the Hamas-led civil authority, while offering them the alternative of living under the joint Israeli-collaborator occupation.

This strategy has already begun to crumble, as many of the families which the Zionist Entity sought to co-opt have sided with the resistance and rejected the collaborators in the midst. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Resistance continues to pursue these collaborator death squads and prosecutes them for their various crimes, including acts like murder and aid theft.

Like other similar strategies proposed by the Israeli regime and greenlit by their subservient American backers, this one is likely to fail under pressure and does not make logical sense given the realities on the ground and the fact that the Zionist proxies have no popular support.

So, then, what do the US-Israeli alliance have in store? It is quite simple, they are seeking to achieve some of their goals under the guise of a ceasefire, which they only partially respect by allowing in limited aid supplies and killing less people than they did prior to the so-called “peace deal”.

Similarly, in Southern Lebanon, the Israelis hatched a scheme after the ceasefire was imposed to seize control of more territory than they managed to capture during the war, all while committing daily ceasefire violations. carefully calibrated to stop short of triggering a return to an all-out war.

If they fail to achieve their aims through limited military measures and aggressive maneuvers dressed up as diplomacy, they will resort to full-scale force, because “peace” is not an option.

In order to understand this line of thinking, you first must conclude that the Israelis have pursued their policies up until this point as a means of collapsing the regional resistance against them, eliminating each and every threat posed to their rule.

To the Zionist regime, there is a perceived imperative to produce an “answer to the Gaza question”, a formulation that, in their view, amounts to the elimination of the people of Gaza: an ethnic cleansing campaign and genocide accompanied by the destruction of the entire territory’s infrastructure. This is not only the objective of the Israeli leadership, but a project implicating Israeli society as a whole, a national project of elimination.

October 7, 2023, represented a major blow to the Zionist project, one that collapsed the illusion of its military superiority and shook its ideology to the core. So, it has since pursued a project to teach its adversaries a lesson and to destroy the ability of regional actors to resist them. Gaza is a statement, rise up against us, and we will pulverize you

To a certain extent, this strategy has so far succeeded to deter any Arab population from rising up. Immediately after October 7, the Jordanians and Egyptians, for example, had started to join mass demonstrations, attempted to breach the border, and clashed with regime forces. Yet the daily scenes of devastation in Gaza, along with the propaganda pushed by the Arab Regimes, crushed their pride, determination, and willingness to continue resisting, at least for now.

The regional resistance, however, remained undeterred, which is why the US-Israeli alliance now seeks to destroy it, or at least to weaken it so severely that it no longer poses a significant threat.

If the Israelis experience another October 7-style military defeat that includes the penetration of its defensive lines, this will represent a decisive, even mortal, blow to the project, and the Zionist regime is well aware of that.

What occurred on October 7 irrevocably transformed the regime and set in motion a series of irreversible changes. Senior Zionist leaders now view current events in stark binary terms: either the re-birth of “Israel” or its gradual demise. If the former is achieved, the regime would secure de-facto control over the region and bury its security issues; if it fails to eliminate Gaza, to break the Lebanese resistance, and to sufficiently weaken Iran, it will be one step away from a crushing defeat.

In the Zionist regime’s thinking, now is a historic opportunity to exterminate all those who resist it, eliminate Gaza entirely, and impose uncontested dominance over the region. Although it has so far failed to achieve these goals, it perceives any inability to secure a “total defeat” as an existential threat to its own survival. Therefore, if Israel does not accomplish during the ceasefire what it set out to do, it is likely to pursue those objectives through renewed military action, with Lebanon and Iran expected to become the principal fronts in the future.

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles ... gy-in-gaza

[Anthea]

World’s first AI-driven
genocide in Gaza, exposed

Microsoft’s collaboration with Israeli occupation forces raises concerns over the use of cloud technology in surveillance and warfare amid the genocide in Gaza

Microsoft is facing mounting criticism over its controversial complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, with charges that its technologies have enabled surveillance, targeted assassinations, and repression of Palestinians. Critics say the company has played a central role in what some are calling the world’s first AI-driven genocide.

The charges, detailed in a report by MintPress News journalist Alan MacLeod, include the use of Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure for surveillance and so-called “kill lists", the employment of former Israeli intelligence operatives, and internal suppression of employees opposed to the company's ties with the Israeli occupation forces.

As The Associated Press reported, “among US tech firms, Microsoft has had an especially close relationship with the Israeli military,” a connection that deepened after October 7, 2023.

Following that date, the Israeli occupation's use of Microsoft Azure surged more than 200-fold. By July 2024, data stored on Microsoft servers, derived from surveillance cameras, drones, checkpoints, biometric scans, and phone intercepts, had reached 13.6 petabytes, equivalent to 23,000 years of audio or seven trillion pages of text.

Yossi Sariel, head of Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s elite surveillance division, reportedly pitched Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in 2021 to build a segregated section of Azure for intelligence processing. The system is now reportedly connected to "Israel’s" AI-driven weapons programs. Sariel described the goal as one to “track everyone, all of the time,” using big data to monitor “a million calls an hour” in Palestine and flag targets for potential elimination.

Turning code into carnage

According to the MintPress investigation, Unit 8200 has used Azure to generate AI-assisted kill lists, scoring individuals based on proximity to known or suspected Hamas members. Once a digital threshold is crossed, individuals are added to targeting lists, often with little to no human oversight.

“Almost no one in the [Occupied] Territories is ‘clean,’ in terms of what intelligence has on them,” a former officer told MintPress.

The data have reportedly also been used to justify post-factum arrests, with innocuous statements or social media posts reframed to suggest affiliations with armed groups. One source described the system as a vast reservoir of kompromat, used to coerce Palestinians into collaboration or silence.

A senior Israeli officer referred to the cloud system as “a weapon in every sense of the word,” though others within the military expressed concern about strategic vulnerabilities due to overdependence on Microsoft technologies.

Microsoft’s response and internal dissent

Microsoft has officially denied any knowledge or involvement in unlawful surveillance, claiming, “At no time during this engagement or since that time has Microsoft been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cell phone conversations using Microsoft’s services.”

However, leaked internal reports suggest that Microsoft engineers were aware of the nature of the data being processed. One internal source remarked, “Technically, they’re not supposed to be told exactly what it is, but you don’t have to be a genius to figure it out.”

Hundreds of former Unit 8200 operatives reportedly now work for Microsoft, including in senior engineering roles.

Paul Biggar, founder of the activist group Tech For Palestine, stated, “Microsoft says that it can’t figure out if their customers are committing crimes against humanity… while at the same time Microsoft employees are working alongside uniformed IDF. Absurd!”

Deep-rooted alliance

Microsoft has had operations in Israel since 1989, establishing a research and development center in Herzliya in 1991. Since then, it has cultivated deep relationships with Israeli tech firms, the military, and agencies, including the Israeli Prison Service. As of 2024, Microsoft reportedly holds more than 600 active military contracts in Israel.

Former CEO Steve Ballmer once described the company as “as much an Israeli company as an American company.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed similar sentiments, calling the partnership “a marriage made in heaven.”

Suppressing dissent

Internally, employees organized under the banner No Azure for Apartheid have demanded that Microsoft:

Cancel all Azure contracts with "Israel";
Disclose its ties to Israeli national security bodies;
Publicly call for a ceasefire;
Protect whistleblowers from retaliation.

In response, Microsoft has fired staff for activism, blocked internal messages containing words like "Gaza" or "genocide", and limited access to pro-Palestine content.

Internationally, Microsoft has also been accused of interfering in accountability efforts. According to MintPress, the company reportedly blocked access to its platforms for International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan during preliminary investigations into Israeli officials.

A legacy of complicity

Observers have drawn comparisons between Microsoft’s role in Gaza and IBM’s infamous collaboration with Nazi Germany. Critics argue that Microsoft has become deeply embedded in "Israel’s" surveillance and military apparatus, a position that may have lasting ethical and legal consequences.

As MacLeod’s report concludes, Microsoft’s technology has helped fuel a campaign that many are calling the first AI-powered genocide in history, one that raises urgent questions about corporate responsibility, digital warfare, and human rights in the age of artificial intelligence.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/tec ... de--in-gaz

[Anthea]

What is the Israeli strategy in Gaza?

Robert Inlakesh argues that Israel, with US backing, is using the ceasefire to advance a longer-term strategy in Gaza: fragment the enclave, empower proxy collaborators behind a partial occupation line, strangle civilian life in Hamas-administered areas, and prepare to resume full-scale force if those aims fail

In order to understand the Israeli-US agenda underlying the so-called “peace plan” set forth by US President Donald Trump, it is important to examine the objectives of the Zionist regime and then assess how these aims might be realized. Such an analysis helps reveal what the future may hold and whether the fragile ceasefire is likely to endure.

On October 19, the Gaza ceasefire appeared to have collapsed after the Zionist regime launched over 100 airstrikes, dropping at least 153 tonnes of explosives across the besieged coastal enclave, and killing around 44 civilians. Even Israeli media outlets reported that the ceasefire had broken down and that the war had re-started, before the situation calmed down by the next day.

Initially, the Israeli establishment claimed that two of its soldiers had been killed by Palestinian fighters in an ambush involving RPGs and automatic weapons, asserting that its subsequent attacks were merely a response to this incident—one that Hamas categorically denied any involvement in.

Yet, it wasn’t long until American, Palestinian and even Israeli reporters began to reveal the truth. In reality, while Israeli soldiers, alongside settlers contracted for demolition work, were violating the ceasefire by destroying Palestinian infrastructure, they accidentally drove over an unexploded ordnance. The consistency of reports from multiple sources lent credibility to this account, yet the Zionist military quickly imposed a publication ban on the incident, before later partially admitting to what had truly occurred.

This meant that the Israelis had, in essence, killed their own soldiers by violating the ceasefire and sending their forces to destroy infrastructure within what was effectively an active minefield, then blaming the Palestinians as a pretext to kill more civilians. Up until that point, the Israelis had already committed at least 80 ceasefire violations and killed more than 100 innocent people.

From day one of the ceasefire, the Israelis had also adopted a strategy of outsourcing the Gaza front’s combat operations to three ISIS-linked proxy militias - each stationed in different areas behind the Israeli imposed ‘Yellow Line’ – instead of engaging Hamas directly. The Zionist regime began pursuing a policy of using these proxy forces to carry out assassinations and ambushes against prominent figures and members of Gaza’s security apparatus.

The Israeli strategy, backed by the United States – according to anonymous sources who spoke to Axios – is to begin using reconstruction funds, to build structures behind the Yellow Line, which represents around 54-58% of Gaza’s territory where the occupation refuses to withdraw and works alongside its proxies to control the enclave. At the same time, the Israelis sought to strangle the civilian population living in areas under the Hamas-led civil authority, while offering them the alternative of living under the joint Israeli-collaborator occupation

This strategy has already begun to crumble, as many of the families which the Zionist Entity sought to co-opt have sided with the resistance and rejected the collaborators in the midst. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Resistance continues to pursue these collaborator death squads and prosecutes them for their various crimes, including acts like murder and aid theft.

Like other similar strategies proposed by the Israeli regime and greenlit by their subservient American backers, this one is likely to fail under pressure and does not make logical sense given the realities on the ground and the fact that the Zionist proxies have no popular support.

So, then, what do the US-Israeli alliance have in store? It is quite simple, they are seeking to achieve some of their goals under the guise of a ceasefire, which they only partially respect by allowing in limited aid supplies and killing less people than they did prior to the so-called “peace deal”.

Similarly, in Southern Lebanon, the Israelis hatched a scheme after the ceasefire was imposed to seize control of more territory than they managed to capture during the war, all while committing daily ceasefire violations. carefully calibrated to stop short of triggering a return to an all-out war.

If they fail to achieve their aims through limited military measures and aggressive maneuvers dressed up as diplomacy, they will resort to full-scale force, because “peace” is not an option.

In order to understand this line of thinking, you first must conclude that the Israelis have pursued their policies up until this point as a means of collapsing the regional resistance against them, eliminating each and every threat posed to their rule.

To the Zionist regime, there is a perceived imperative to produce an “answer to the Gaza question”, a formulation that, in their view, amounts to the elimination of the people of Gaza: an ethnic cleansing campaign and genocide accompanied by the destruction of the entire territory’s infrastructure. This is not only the objective of the Israeli leadership, but a project implicating Israeli society as a whole, a national project of elimination.

October 7, 2023, represented a major blow to the Zionist project, one that collapsed the illusion of its military superiority and shook its ideology to the core. So, it has since pursued a project to teach its adversaries a lesson and to destroy the ability of regional actors to resist them. Gaza is a statement, rise up against us, and we will pulverize you.

To a certain extent, this strategy has so far succeeded to deter any Arab population from rising up. Immediately after October 7, the Jordanians and Egyptians, for example, had started to join mass demonstrations, attempted to breach the border, and clashed with regime forces. Yet the daily scenes of devastation in Gaza, along with the propaganda pushed by the Arab Regimes, crushed their pride, determination, and willingness to continue resisting, at least for now.

The regional resistance, however, remained undeterred, which is why the US-Israeli alliance now seeks to destroy it, or at least to weaken it so severely that it no longer poses a significant threat.

If the Israelis experience another October 7-style military defeat that includes the penetration of its defensive lines, this will represent a decisive, even mortal, blow to the project, and the Zionist regime is well aware of that.

What occurred on October 7 irrevocably transformed the regime and set in motion a series of irreversible changes. Senior Zionist leaders now view current events in stark binary terms: either the re-birth of “Israel” or its gradual demise. If the former is achieved, the regime would secure de-facto control over the region and bury its security issues; if it fails to eliminate Gaza, to break the Lebanese resistance, and to sufficiently weaken Iran, it will be one step away from a crushing defeat.

In the Zionist regime’s thinking, now is a historic opportunity to exterminate all those who resist it, eliminate Gaza entirely, and impose uncontested dominance over the region. Although it has so far failed to achieve these goals, it perceives any inability to secure a “total defeat” as an existential threat to its own survival. Therefore, if "Israel" does not accomplish during the ceasefire what it set out to do, it is likely to pursue those objectives through renewed military action, with Lebanon and Iran expected to become the principal fronts in the future.

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles ... gy-in-gaza

[Anthea]

Western journalists have case to answer for

Western journalists know they have a case to answer for their betrayal of Gaza, and it frightens them

Samuel Geddes exposes Western journalists’ fear of accountability for their complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide, highlighted by the silencing of veteran reporter Christopher Hedges for confronting their moral and professional collapse.

Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and former Middle East Bureau chief for The New York Times, Christopher Hedges, this week delivered the Edward Said memorial lecture in Australia. He had also been invited to address the country’s national “Press Club” in which he was to highlight the overwhelming moral failures of Western establishment media outlets, chiefly by amplifying Israeli propaganda and undermining the credibility of journalists in Gaza, most of whom Israel has subsequently killed in its decimation of the territory’s population.

It shouldn’t really have come as a surprise then, when the Press Club rescinded its invitation to Hedges on the grounds of “balancing out” its programming. Whether or not the withdrawal was directly influenced by Israeli pressure, the collective media aristocracy of the country would hardly have looked forward to the prospect of an actual, decorated reporter scathingly indicting them to their faces on their systematic malpractice and dereliction of duty that has contributed to perhaps the definitive atrocity of the 21st century.

Stalwart ABC journalist David Marr came out to defend “The Club” in a radio interview with a furious Chris Hedges. Rather than seek to engage with the content of what his speech would have been, Marr set about using his training as a barrister to ambush the real journalist in the room, smearing the sponsorship of his tour by a Palestine advocacy group as a “fundamental breaking of the rules,” according to his definition of journalism.

Beneath the sniveling pettiness and affected outrage of his attacks on Hedges, lurked a palpable sense of indignation that anyone, least of all a decorated journalist, would attack his “club” of establishment approved media personalities for having not done their job, to the point of betraying those Gazans practicing journalism in its purest form.

Marr, whose career is not particularly distinguished by international reporting, much less from a warzone, attempted to impugn Hedges’ authority on Gaza (where he lived for seven years) by pointing out that he hadn’t been in the territory since 2005 and hence his lack of recent experience there might not have measured up to the Club’s exacting standards.

The substance, to the degree there was any to Marr’s arguments, was that those organizations, Sky News, CNN and Reuters, by privileging Israeli talking points about the victims of their attacks, was merely standard due journalistic diligence of including "Israel’s" “perspective” in the interests of balance.

Hedges immediately and rightfully fired back that the job of a journalist is to tell the truth, not to balance it out with lies. "Israel’s" excuses and misdirection do, of course, merit being referred to, but not in a way that explicitly lends them credibility, by literally headlining the report.

What Marr evidently did not seem to understand was that Hedges is not saying that Western journalists manipulate or distort the truth. It is that they systematically amplify Israeli narratives which they know to be false, in a way that drowns out the truth of the story. This creates a false equivalence between Palestinian and Israeli “narratives.” It is precisely this mixing in of lies with truth that allowed "Israel" to get away with killing almost all professional reporters working in Gaza, along with untold numbers of other civilians.

While culpability is by no means exclusive to the Western mainstream press, it is unquestionably responsible for curating a global media discourse that manufactures the kind of doubt and hesitation that has permitted a livestreamed genocide to be perpetrated with full state complicity without consequence.

Perhaps the only valuable insight to be drawn from Marr’s affected and clearly unsuccessful attempt to pillory a journalist worth the title is that leading Western career journalists are, on some level, aware of their complicity. Like the endlessly weaponized accusations of anti-Semitism against opponents of the Israeli regime, it is not borne out of real anger but of a desperate attempt to intimidate those speaking the truth into silence.

There will inevitably come a point at which countless individuals and institutions in Western societies will be called to answer for their conduct during this genocide. That realization seems only now to be tentatively dawning on them.

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles ... r-for-thei

[Anthea]

IOF violates Gaza ceasefire
with new attacks on Khan Younis

Israeli occupation forces shelled areas in Khan Younis and Gaza City, killing at least three Palestinians in the latest breach of the Gaza ceasefire agreement

Al Mayadeen's correspondent in the Gaza Strip reported that the Israeli occupation carried out artillery shelling and opened heavy fire from helicopters east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, marking a new breach of the ceasefire agreement.

Eyewitnesses confirmed the use of live ammunition and shelling in residential areas, as explosions were heard across the eastern districts of the city.

Medical sources reported that a young man was martyred after the occupation bombed his home in the Musbah neighborhood of Abasan al-Kabira, east of Khan Younis.

Another young man succumbed to wounds sustained earlier in an Israeli airstrike targeting a tent sheltering displaced civilians in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis.

In a separate incident, the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City confirmed the martyrdom of a citizen and the injury of his brother by occupation bullets in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood, east of the city, bringing the death toll to three.

Occupation forces demolish homes amid ceasefire breach

The Israeli occupation's military also conducted demolition operations targeting homes east of Gaza City and Khan Younis. Massive explosions were also reported as houses were destroyed. In parallel, Israeli warships opened fire off the coast of Gaza City, escalating the violations.

These repeated Israeli ceasefire violations in Gaza come amid ongoing air raids and artillery bombardments across various areas of the Gaza Strip. In addition to the military escalation, "Israel" continues to violate the humanitarian aspects of the agreement, exacerbating conditions for displaced civilians and limiting the flow of aid.

The occupation's actions have resulted in dozens of martyrs and injuries in recent days, as the ceasefire agreement continues to be systematically undermined.

Israeli forces committed a massacre two days ago that claimed the lives of more than 100 Palestinians. Medical sources in hospitals across the Gaza Strip reported early on Wednesday that dozens of children were killed. The attacks targeted the homes and tents of displaced Palestinians in multiple areas of the Strip.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... han-younis

[Anthea]

Israel orders seizure of more Palestinian land

The Israeli occupation has issued a military order to seize 5,856 dunams of land in the town of Anata, located northeast of the city, the Governorate of occupied Al-Quds announced on Friday

According to the governorate, the confiscation document specifies that the land will be used for military purposes by the Israeli occupation forces. The move is part of a broader pattern of land appropriation and settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories.

This comes only one day after Israel approved the construction of 1,300 new illegal settlement units in the Gush Etzion bloc, south of occupied East Al-Quds, in what marks another major escalation in illegal settlement expansion across the occupied West Bank.

According to Israeli media outlet Channel 14, the decision was unanimously approved earlier this week by the Special Planning and Building Committee overseeing the Gush Etzion settlements, targeting the Har HaRusim neighborhood, located near the Alon Shvut settlement, southwest of occupied East al-Quds.

The plan includes not only housing but also the construction of schools, public facilities, parks, and a major commercial center aimed at serving neighboring settlements. The Gush Etzion Regional Council hailed the move as a response to increasing settler demand in the area.

The announcement comes just days after US President Donald Trump dismissed concerns about Israel's West Bank actions, stating, "Don’t worry about the West Bank. Israel’s not going to do anything with the West Bank," during an October 24 press briefing.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... ata--al-qu

[Anthea]

Israeli forces raid West Bank towns
amid surge in settler attacks

Israeli forces stormed al-Mughayir and Nablus towns, injuring civilians as settler assaults reached their highest level in 12 years, UN agencies report

Israeli occupation forces on Saturday stormed the town of al-Mughayir, northeast of Ramallah, firing large quantities of tear gas, which caused several cases of suffocation among Palestinian residents.

In Beit Furik, east of Nablus, the occupation forces also targeted local residents with live bullets and tear gas canisters during a raid on the town.

Meanwhile, three Palestinian women were injured after being assaulted by settlers in the town of Tell, south of Nablus, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that October was the most violent month for settler attacks in the occupied West Bank in 12 years

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 126 settler assaults were recorded across 70 towns in the West Bank last month, resulting in the destruction of more than 4,000 olive trees and seedlings.

Settlers attack olive harvesters

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported a significant surge in settler violence during this year’s olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank, the highest recorded in the past five years.

According to the report, 126 settler attacks were documented across 70 towns, resulting in the vandalism of over 4,000 olive trees and saplings. These attacks have impacted the livelihoods of numerous Palestinian families who depend on the olive harvest as a vital economic and cultural activity.

OCHA noted that settlers from newly established barriers have placed restrictions on Palestinians attempting to reach their olive groves.

In just one week, 60 separate attacks were recorded, highlighting the intensity of the aggression. These incidents included physical assaults, damage to property, and obstruction of access to agricultural lands.

At least 17 Palestinians were injured in settler-led assaults during the past week alone, while 19 vehicles were vandalized. In a recent incident east of Qalqilya, settlers attacked olive harvesters, injuring two people.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... settler-at

[Anthea]

2018 REPORT:

Remembering Israel’s 2008 War on Gaza

What: Israel waged a three-week military offensive against the Gaza Strip, killing almost 1,400 Palestinians and wounding thousands more

Where: The Gaza Strip

When: 27 Dec 2008 – 18 Jan 2009

What happened?

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched a massive military offensive against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Strip had been placed under an Israeli-led siege a year earlier, subjecting the 360 square-kilometre-enclave to a land, air and sea blockade.

Codenamed Operation Cast Lead, this offensive began at 11am on a Saturday morning, with Israeli Air Force jets firing on targets across the territory. Ynet reported at the time that “80 jets, warplanes and helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of targets [during] the initial strike.” Among the targets were the small fishing port and the main police compound in Gaza City.

Aerial campaign

Throughout the first week of the assault, Israel relied on aerial attacks to pound Gaza. A report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights for the week 24–31 December 2008 (cited in the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, sometimes known as the Goldstone Report) found that Israel “launched at least 300 air and sea strikes against the Gaza Strip. These strikes targeted 37 houses; 67 security and training sites; 20 workshops; 25 public and private institutions; seven mosques; and three educational institutions.”

Police stations in particular came under deliberate attack across the Strip. The “Arafat City” police headquarters in Gaza City, as well as three other stations, were attacked within the first few minutes of the assault on 27 December. The UN report states that, over the course of Israel’s military operations, 248 members of the Gaza police force were killed, which means that more than one out of every six fatalities was a police officer.

Israel’s Defence Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, claimed that there were three objectives for launching the offensive: “Dealing Hamas [which, since winning the 2006 Palestinian elections, had governed the Gaza Strip] a forceful blow; fundamentally changing the situation in Gaza; and bringing the rocket attacks against Israeli citizens to a halt.” Barak ordered a “special situation on the home front” for all Israeli communities within a 13-mile radius of the nominal border of the coastal enclave, which was quickly expanded to include the southern Israeli cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon.

Israel also drafted around 6,700 army reservists, in case it decided to widen the operation. Given that the assault was launched during election season, all contenders halted their campaigns in a show of support for then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had also launched a war on Lebanon just two years earlier.

Escalation and ground invasion

On the eighth day of the war – 3 January 2009 — Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza. Israeli infantry entered the enclave from the north, supported by artillery fire and fighter jets. The Palestinians in Gaza, it must be remembered, have no artillery or other heavy weapons, no tanks, no air force and no navy. They faced the full might of one of the world’s strongest and best equipped armed forces.

The UN report details how Israel tried to cut the Strip in two – bisecting the territory from Karni (Al-Muntar) Crossing in the east, through Al-Nuseirat south of Gaza City, to the coast – before focusing troops in the north. For a further five days the northern towns of Al-Atatra and Beit Lahia came under heavy attack, with the UN report detailing “[Israel’s] alleged use of human shields, the alleged widespread mistreatment of civilians, including detentions, and transfers of large numbers to Israeli prisons in unlawful circumstances.”

Israel’s use of chemical weapons

In the later stages of the war, reports began to surface claiming that Israel had used white phosphorous — a chemical which creates a smokescreen for offensives but which causes severe burns and organ failure — during its attack on the people of Gaza.

Israel initially denied these reports, but investigations by several human rights organisations documented evidence to the contrary. A 2009 Amnesty International report found that “Israeli forces made extensive use of white phosphorus, often launched from 155mm artillery shells, in residential areas, causing death and injuries to civilians.” Among the targets were the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) headquarters and Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City; an UNRWA primary school in Beit Lahia, north of Jabalia; and numerous residential areas.

Amnesty explained that:

“White phosphorus is extremely dangerous for humans as it causes deep burns through muscle and down to the bone, continuing to burn until deprived of oxygen. It can contaminate other parts of the body, or even people treating the injuries, poisoning and irreparably damaging internal organs.”

The rights organisation added: “Although using white phosphorus as an obscurant is not forbidden under international humanitarian law, air-bursting white phosphorus artillery shells over densely populated areas of Gaza violated the requirement to take necessary precautions to protect civilians.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) agreed with Amnesty’s assessment, claiming that the manner in which Israel used the chemical could constitute a war crime. HRW’s “Rain of Fire” report argued that while “white phosphorus munitions did not kill the most civilians in Gaza […] their use in densely populated neighbourhoods […] violated international humanitarian law (the laws of war), which requires taking all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm and prohibits indiscriminate attacks.”

Ceasefire

On 8 January 2009, the UN Security Council approved resolution 1860 calling for a ceasefire in the Strip by a 14-0 margin. The United States abstained in the vote. The resolution called for an “immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.” It condemned “all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism”, calling for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment.”

Both Israel and Hamas declared the resolution invalid. The war continued for another 10 days, only coming to a close after a brutal 22 days. “The ferocity of the attack was unprecedented in the more than six-decade-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians,” the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) observed.

According to figures from Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, 1,390 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead. Among those killed were 344 minors and 110 women. B’Tselem estimates that 759 of those killed in Gaza were Palestinians who did not take part in hostilities, and yet were still killed by Israeli forces.

What happened next?

Donald Macintyre, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Independent, said in his book Gaza: Preparing for Dawn that following Operation Cast Lead, “It was impossible to ascribe ‘victory’ to either side.” He argued that Israel’s “bellicose pre-war talk of ‘crushing’ or ‘removing’ Hamas” proved to be “little more” than talk, while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s claim of victory was “at least as hollow”.

Gaza, however, has never recovered from the 2008 war. While acknowledging that its economy was already being strangled by the siege, the UN report found that Israel’s military operation “destroyed a substantial part of the Gaza Strip’s economic infrastructure and its capacity to support decent livelihoods for families.”

The figures speak for themselves: 700 businesses were damaged or destroyed, with direct losses totalling approximately $140 million; the agricultural sector suffered direct losses worth $170 million; and over 3,354 houses were completely destroyed, with a further 11,112 partially damaged, according to figures from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). A separate UN report estimated the cost of Gaza’s losses and damage at $1.1 billion

In the years since, Israel’s siege of the Strip has prevented the reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed during its 2008 offensive. To add insult to injury, Gaza has also since been the target of two more wars at the hands of Israel:

The 2012 war, dubbed Operation Pillar of Defence,

The 2014 war, dubbed Operation Protective Edge.

Almost 4,000 Palestinians were killed during these three offensives. Today, 54 per cent of Gaza’s almost 2 million-strong population is unemployed, while 53 per cent live under the poverty line in what has been described as one of the worst humanitarian situations in the world.

A decade later, Israel continues to shirk responsibility for its actions. Earlier this month, an Israeli court ruled against Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who lost three of his daughters during an Israeli air strike on his home in Jabalia, in the north of the Strip. Abuelaish’s story was made famous after he discovered that his children — 13-year-old Bessan, 15-year-old Mayar and 20-year-old Aya – had been killed while he was speaking to an Israeli TV channel; his suffering was broadcast live across the country and later shared widely around the world. Despite Abuelaish’s grief and the international attention his story received, the court still ruled that Israel bore no responsibility for the girls’ deaths, instead calling it an “unfortunate side effect” of the war.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181 ... r-on-gaza/

[Anthea]

One of the best teaching tools to convey succinctly what has happened to the Palestinian people

This postcard-size Loss of Land map card (sometimes called “Shrinking Palestine”)

[Anthea]

Does UK's recognition of Palestine
atone for Balfour's sins?

On the Balfour anniversary, Al Mayadeen English traces how Britain’s 1917 pledge set the institutional foundations for dispossession, Gaza’s 2025 genocide and ongoing settlement expansion

The Balfour Declaration and its legacy

In November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a terse letter to Lord Rothschild promising that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

This became the Balfour Declaration, formally issued on November 2, 1917. It pledged British support for Zionist aims, while adding a caveat that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

The declaration was made without consultation of Palestine’s Arabs, over 90% of the population, and contradicted earlier wartime British commitments to Arab independence, the result of the Hussein–McMahon correspondence and French interests under the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

In practical terms, it set the stage for the British Mandate in Palestine and encouraged increased Jewish immigration. Indeed, under the Mandate, Britain actively facilitated Jewish settlement, raising the Jewish share of Palestine’s overall population from ~9% in 1922 to over 27% by 1935, often at the expense of Palestinians.

Britain’s motives were complex. Historians note that the declaration aimed to rally Jewish support, especially in the United States and Russia, for the Allied war effort, and to plant a pro-British community along the approaches to the Suez Canal. Some analysts also argue that British policymakers saw Zionism as a colonial outlet: by promising Jews a homeland in Palestine, Britain could simultaneously appease Zionist pressure at home and project imperial influence in the Middle East.

Whatever the rationale, the declaration effectively sidelined the majority Palestinian population. As Edward Said observed, it was “made by a European power… about a non-European territory… in flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority.”

For Palestinians, the Balfour Declaration is remembered as a profound betrayal, a colonial pledge that not only foreshadowed the Nakba of 1948, but also laid the legal and political foundations for the genocide witnessed in Gaza and the relentless settler expansionism that grips the occupied West Bank.

Britain’s pledge to protect the rights of Palestine’s existing non-Jewish population was largely disregarded once the Mandate began. While the Balfour Declaration stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities,” British policies soon favored the establishment of a “Jewish national home.”

In 1939, the White Paper attempted to limit Jewish immigration and restrict land sales in response to Arab opposition, angering Zionist leaders who viewed it as a breach of Britain’s promise. However, the outbreak of World War II and the eventual founding of Israel in 1948 overtook these policies, rendering them largely irrelevant.

By then, Palestine’s Arabs had been left without a state or meaningful self-determination, solidifying the injustice seeded in 1917. Decades later, Palestinians note that the Declaration offered a land where the natives made up more than 90% of the population, while Palestinians themselves were neither consulted nor given full political rights.

War on Gaza 2025: Devastation and displacement

Nearly a century later, Balfour's infamous legacy remains alive in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has produced catastrophic death and destruction. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Israeli occupation forces have killed over 67,000 Palestinians and wounded about 169,000 between October 7, 2023, and early October 2025. This includes roughly 19,000 children killed and 42,000 wounded.

The vast majority of the population, roughly 90% of Gaza’s 2.2 million people, have been forcibly displaced at least once, most driven by Israel’s relentless bombing and siege. Human Rights Watch reports Israeli authorities have executed a policy of mass “forced displacement” and destruction of civilian homes, likely amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In effect, Israel’s military campaign has rendered Gaza unlivable: power, water, sanitation, and health services are almost entirely destroyed, and famine conditions have been declared by humanitarian agencies.

In the words of UN agencies and aid workers, Gaza is enduring a “man-made humanitarian catastrophe.”

British recognition of Palestine: Political theatre?

Amid Gaza’s ruin, Britain has moved to “revive hope” by recognizing a Palestinian state.

On 21 September 2025, Prime Minister Keir Starmer formally declared that the UK now “recognises the State of Palestine.”

The announcement, coming in the heat of the genocide in Gaza, fulfills a Labor manifesto promise and follows intense pressure from within the party. Starmer cited a moral imperative: the “man-made humanitarian crisis in Gaza reaches new depths,” describing the “starvation and devastation” as “utterly intolerable.” He noted that the UK had recognized Israel 75 years prior, and said joining “over 150 countries” in recognizing Palestine signaled that Israelis and Palestinians “deserve a better future.”

Yet, the recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borderlines does not atone for London's sins.

The territorial landscape of Palestine changed dramatically between the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the 1949 Armistice Agreements. While the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 181 had allocated 56% of Mandatory Palestine to a proposed "Jewish state" and 42% to an Arab state, the outcome of the 1948 War left Israel in control of roughly 78% of the land west of the Jordan River, which is now recognized as the 1967 borders.

The remaining 22%, split between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, is either completely devastated and besieged or under direct Israeli occupation and control.

It took a full-fledged genocide for Britain to recognize the Palestinian state, however, on the borders established by the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.

The territories Israel occupied at the time included major coastal cities, vast agricultural land, and key port access to both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, along with vital freshwater resources such as the Sea of Galilee and parts of the Jordan River basin, fertile valleys like Jezreel and Hula, and access to mineral-rich zones near the Dead Sea. These assets provided not only economic and agricultural advantage but also long-term strategic depth and control over critical trade and water routes.

Now, Britain recognizes a fragmented Palestinian state, stripped of its natural resources, deprived of most of its land, and divided by expanding Israeli occupation zones, while taking no meaningful action to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank despite international condemnation.

Finance Minister Smotrich retorted that “the mandate is over” and insisted Israel must solidify “sovereignty over the homeland of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria.”

Within Britain, analysts noted that recognition was “deeply symbolic” and primarily a foreign-policy realignment for Starmer. Indeed, The Guardian observer wrote that by itself the gesture “will not change anything on the ground in Gaza.”

Expansion of illegal settlements

While Gaza reels under bombardment, Israel continues to expand settlements and tighten occupation in the West Bank and beyond. The current governing coalition has accelerated settlement construction at a record pace. A recent Reuters analysis notes that since 2023, the number of West Bank settlement housing units approved for construction exceeds the previous nine years combined. In 2025 alone, approvals were nearly double the 2020 level.

A UN Human Rights Council report similarly concluded that settlement growth is now “ever-increasing.” Every such expansion, from new outposts to dense housing in al-Quds, digs Israel’s control deeper into Palestinian land, undermining any contiguous Palestinian state.

Israeli checkpoints, barriers, and bypass roads lace through the West Bank, isolating Palestinian cities and farmland. UN data show 850 separate restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank as of early 2025, up from 565 before the war in Gaza. New settler roads and outposts commonly cut off Palestinian villages or confine them to enclaves. International law considers all settlements illegal, yet Israel defies this with complete impunity.

Belfour's implications traversed Palestine, affecting Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon with direct Israeli occupations at different stages. In the south Lebanon, Israeli forces occupy the Shebaa Farms, a 39 km² area that Lebanon, in addition to several points across the line of withdrawal, now known as the “five points.”

In Syria, Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967 and formally annexed it in 1981. Though the international community rejects this annexation, UNSC Resolution 497, Israel continued to expand its reach following the fall of the Assad regime, occupying key outposts in Mount Hermon and Quneitra. Re-entering parts of the adjacent demilitarized zone inside Syria, citing security concerns, Israel now controls an additional 370 to over 500 km² of Syrian territory.

Balfour as colonial strategy: Redirecting Zionism

Historians often interpret the Balfour Declaration as not just a pro-Zionist statement, but as a calculated colonial maneuver. By offering Jews a homeland in Ottoman Palestine, Britain aimed to “rally Jewish opinion” in support of the Allies and create a new base of influence in the Middle East. British leaders hoped that granting Zionists their nationalist aspirations elsewhere would ease Zionist agitation at home.

In this view, Balfour implicitly asked Zionists to focus their ambitions on Palestine rather than lobbying London, effectively exporting a domestic pressure group abroad. Before the declaration, Zionist leaders lobbied London for relief for persecuted European Jews, alternative refuge options, Jewish military participation, and concrete guarantees for immigration, land, and infrastructure.

Zionist leaders like Chaim Weizmann were eager to enlist Britain’s help in Palestine, while Lloyd George and others saw strategic value in a Jewish presence near the Suez Canal.

The result was to shift the question of Jewish national aspirations from British streets to the Levant. Over time, Britain’s initial promise became an anchor for further imperial rule. The mandate, endorsed by the League of Nations in 1922, made the Zionist project official.

Accountability and reparations

Today, calls for accountability and reparations have grown louder. In September 2025, a coalition of Palestinians and lawyers submitted a 900-page petition demanding Britain acknowledge “serial international law violations” from 1917–1948 and make amends.

The petitioners argue that Britain’s “unlawful legacy,” from the Balfour Declaration to brutal suppression of Arab revolts, still “reverberates” today. The campaign group "Britain Owes Palestine" is demanding an official apology, reparations, and a reckoning comparable to Britain’s own post-colonial apologies, such as its apology for the 1948 Batang Kali massacre.

Yet British officials have so far rejected legal liability. Downing Street claims that times and laws have changed since 1917. An official spokesman told journalists that Britain recognized "Israel’s" right to exist in 1948 and has since supported many UN resolutions, but that “what happened in 1917 was in the context of the First World War” and is “not directly comparable” to today.

If 1917-level standards don’t apply, then what of modern international law?

Conclusion: History and the way forward

The Balfour Declaration began as a colonial promise that disregarded the native majority of Palestine. Now, 108 years later, the issues it set in motion remain unresolved. In 2025, as Gaza endures its darkest chapter since 1948, the ripples of 1917 continue to shape lives.

Its contemporary implications are seen in Gaza’s rubble, in refugee camps across West Asia, and in diplomatic rows from London to the United Nations. For Palestinians, every discussion of “statehood” or “two states” must confront the words of 1917 and the legacy of colonialism they represent.

Yet acknowledgment, whether a parliamentary resolution, a statement of recognition, or a formal apology, cannot substitute for concrete change.

If anniversary observances are to mean anything beyond rhetoric, they must be paired with action: an immediate halt to policies that perpetuate dispossession, credible mechanisms to protect civilians and deliver justice, and serious international pressure to restore Palestinian political rights, including full consideration of restitution, reparations, and durable political remedies.

Until those measures are taken, the Balfour Declaration will remain not only a page in a history book but an active cause of British and colonial injustice that successive generations continue to inherit.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... our-s-sins