Conflict

Huge US arms package for Taiwan includes HIMARS rocket systems, howitzer artillery, antitank missiles, and drones.

The United States has approved $11.1bn in arms sales to Taiwan, one of Washington’s largest-ever weapons packages for the self-ruled island, which Beijing has promised to unify with mainland China.

The US State Department announced the deal late on Wednesday during a nationally televised address by President Donald Trump.

Weapons in the proposed sale include 82 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and 420 Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS – worth more than $4bn – defence systems that are similar to what the US had been providing Ukraine to defend against Russian aerial attacks.

The deal also includes 60 self-propelled howitzer artillery systems and related equipment worth more than $4bn and drones valued at more than $1bn.

Other sales in the package include military software valued at more than $1bn, Javelin and TOW missiles worth more than $700m, helicopter spare parts worth $96m and refurbishment kits for Harpoon missiles worth $91m.

In a series of separate statements announcing details of the weapons deal, the Pentagon said the sales served US national, economic and security interests by supporting Taiwan’s continuing efforts to modernise its armed forces and to maintain a “credible defensive capability”.

Taiwan’s defence ministry and presidential office welcomed the news while China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Reuters news agency.

Washington’s huge sale of arms to Taiwan will likely infuriate China, which claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control.

“The United States continues to assist Taiwan in maintaining sufficient self-defence capabilities and in rapidly building strong deterrent power,” Taiwan’s defence ministry said in a statement.

Taiwan presidential office spokesperson Karen Kuo said Taiwan would continue to reform its defence sector and “strengthen whole-of-society defence resilience” to “demonstrate our determination to defend ourselves, and safeguard peace through strength”.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday that it opposed efforts by the US Congress to pass bills “related to Taiwan and firmly opposes any form of military contact between the US and Taiwan”.

“We urge the US to abide by the one China principle and the provisions of the three Sino-US joint communiques : Stop ‘arming Taiwan’, stop reviewing relevant bills, and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs,” the office’s spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said in a statement.

Zhu said Taiwan’s political leaders were pursuing “independence”, and were “willing to let external forces turn the island into a ‘war porcupine’,” which could result in the population becoming “cannon fodder” and “slaughtered at will, which is despicable”.

Taiwan’s President William Lai Ching-te last month announced a $40bn supplementary defence budget, to run from 2026 to 2033, saying there was “no room for compromise on national security”.

Winter storms are worsening conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza, as aid agencies warn that Israeli restrictions are preventing lifesaving shelter assistance from reaching people across the besieged enclave.

The United Nations has said it has tents, blankets and other essential supplies ready to enter Gaza, but that Israeli authorities continue to block or restrict access through border crossings.

In Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, the roof of a war-damaged family home collapsed during the storm, rescue workers said on Wednesday. Six Palestinians, including two children, were pulled alive from the rubble.

It comes after Gaza’s Ministry of Health said a two-week-old Palestinian infant froze to death, highlighting the risks faced by young and elderly people living in inadequate shelters.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the storms had damaged or destroyed shelters and personal belongings across the territory.

“The disruption has affected approximately 30,000 children across Gaza. Urgent repairs are needed to ensure these activities can resume without delay,” Farhan Haq said.

The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza added in a statement that “what we are experiencing now in the Gaza Strip is a true humanitarian catastrophe”.

Ceasefire talks and aid access

The worsening humanitarian situation comes as Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani held talks in Washington, DC, with United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio on efforts to stabilise the tenuous ceasefire in Gaza.

According to Qatari officials, the talks focused on Qatar’s role as a mediator, the urgent need for aid to enter Gaza, and moving negotiations towards the second stage of a US-backed plan to end Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington, said Sheikh Mohammed stressed that humanitarian assistance must be allowed into Gaza “unconditionally”.

“He said aid has to be taken into Gaza unconditionally, clearly making reference to the fact that a number of aid agencies have said that Israel is blocking the access to aid for millions of people in Gaza,” Fisher said.

The Qatari prime minister also discussed the possibility of an international stabilisation force to be deployed in Gaza after the war, saying such a force should act impartially.

“There has been a lot of talk in the US over the past couple of weeks about how this force would work towards the disarmament of Hamas,” Fisher said.

Sheikh Mohammed also called for swift progress towards the second phase of the ceasefire agreement.

“He said that stage two of the ceasefire deal has to be moved to pretty quickly,” Fisher said, adding that US officials were hoping to announce early in the new year which countries would contribute troops to a stabilisation force.

Israeli attacks continue

Meanwhile, violence continued in Gaza despite the ceasefire, with at least 11 Palestinians wounded in Israeli attacks in central Gaza City, according to medical sources.

The Israeli army said it is investigating after a mortar shell fired near Gaza’s so-called yellow line “missed its target”.

Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza reported Israeli artillery shelling east of the southern city of Khan Younis. Medical sources said Israeli gunfire also wounded two people in the Tuffah neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City.

In the occupied West Bank, where Israeli military and settler attacks have escalated in recent days, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli troops shot and wounded a man in his 20s in the foot in Qalqilya. He was taken to hospital and is reported to be in stable condition.

Since October 2023, at least 70,668 Palestinians have been killed and 171,152 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities. In Israel, 1,139 people were killed during the Hamas-led October 7 attack, and more than 200 others were taken captive.

Trump is also set to preview his 2026 priorities during Oval Office ‘address to the nation’.

Yemen’s separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) is trying to create facts on the ground with its recent advances in the country’s eastern governorates of Hadramout and al-Mahra.

Its military push this month highlights that Yemen’s conflict – ongoing for more than a decade – cannot be reduced to one simply between the internationally recognised government and the Houthis. Instead, an overlapping map of influence is evident on the ground with de facto authorities competing over security, resources and representation.

At the heart of these changes is the STC, backed by a regional power, which now stands as the most powerful actor in Yemen’s south and parts of its east at a time when the government’s ability to impose unified administration over the whole country is distant and the economy is suffering.

In this context comes what the Yemeni government has said is the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) decision to suspend activities in the country. While the IMF has not publicly commented on the topic, President Rashad al-Alimi, the head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, warned on Sunday that the decision was a “wake-up call” and an early signal of the cost of the STC’s security and military escalation in Hadramout and al-Mahra.

Al-Alimi stressed that Yemen’s economic circumstances – the country is the poorest in the region and has suffered immensely during the war – cannot withstand any new tensions. He added that the security instability in eastern Yemen would immediately affect the distribution of salaries, fuel and services and international donor confidence.

The solution, according to al-Alimi, is for the withdrawal of forces who have arrived in Hadramout and al-Mahra from outside the two governorates, calling it a necessary step to contain tensions and restore a path of trust with the international community.

But that economic warning cannot be understood in isolation from the shift in power in eastern Yemen, where competition for influence has become a direct factor in generating tension that leaves donors wary.

A new balance of power

The STC is clear that its goal is ultimately the secession of the territories in Yemen – its south and east – that formerly made up the country of South Yemen before unification in 1990.

It is opposed to the Houthis, who control Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and much of Yemen’s populous northwest, and the STC’s leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, has a seat on the government’s Presidential Leadership Council, officially as one of its vice chairmen.

The STC and government forces have previously fought, most notably in 2018 and 2019, in Aden and its surrounding governorates.

Its current expansion eastwards, focused on government forces and those affiliated with them, is part of that ongoing division in the anti-Houthi camp but one that redraws the balance of power within it, turning resource-rich Hadramout and al-Mahra into a multiparty arena of competition.

There are three concurrent trends that are emerging as a result: the expansion of STC forces with regional support, a desire by local and tribal forces – independent of the STC – to solidify their presence and the clearly limited tools the government has to confront its rivals.

The result is the further fragmentation of the state on three interconnected levels.

Politically, there is fragmentation within the same anti-Houthi camp with multiple decision-making centres. The government and regional actors are finding it more difficult to unify security and administrative policies, and the idea of a single “chain of command” controlling territory under anti-Houthi control has been eroded.

Geographically, new lines of contact have now been formed. Whereas lines of control were previously between the Houthis and government forces, they are now between Houthi and STC forces as well as grey areas contested by local and tribal forces and multiple military groups.

And then there is fragmentation on the representative level with mounting disputes over who actually speaks for the south and Hadramout and the practical decline of the concept of a single state as a sovereign framework for managing resources and institutions.

In Hadramout and al-Mahra, the fragmentation is particularly sensitive as both governorates include important border crossings with Saudi Arabia and Oman and also have a long coastline with routes tied to trade, smuggling and irregular migration.

Any imbalance here does not remain local; it quickly spills over into the region.

Economy hostage to security

The IMF’s suspension of activities carries not only financial implications but also a political reading that the security and institutional environments no longer provide sufficient conditions for sustaining support programmes.

The Yemeni state relies heavily on its own limited resources and fragile external support, so any disruption in resource areas, ports or supply routes translates into immediate pressure on livelihoods.

The latest military developments increase pressure on the exchange rate and the government’s ability to meet its financial obligations and widen the trust gap between society and the state, prompting non-institutional alternatives based on levies and loyalties.

And it will shrink the room for the government to manoeuvre, meaning the government has to take into account the cost of any escalation because any military move increases an economic bill that it cannot pay and drains what remains of the government’s ability to manage services.

Now that the impression has taken root that Yemen has turned into “islands of influence”, some external actors may be inclined to deal directly with de facto local authorities at the expense of the government, weakening the political centre rather than helping it to strengthen.

That is why the latest developments are so important if not existential to the government and al-Alimi. His call for the withdrawal of outside forces from Hadramout and al-Mahra is part of an attempt to stop the deterioration of trust in Yemen and to present the government once again as capable of controlling the other parties in the anti-Houthi camp if reasonable political and economic conditions are provided.

Houthis gain while rivals stay divided

The Houthis, who overthrew the government in Sanaa in a coup in 2014, have benefitted from the developments in Hadramout and al-Mahra even without being directly involved.

Every struggle for influence in areas outside the group’s control gives it clear gains, including the disintegration of the front opposing it and its rivals being preoccupied by internal conflicts rather than by the Houthis themselves.

In the anti-Houthi camp, the notion of a united front recedes every time a military confrontation between its components takes place, and the discussion shifts from confronting the Houthis to disputes over power and resources within the same camp.

The divisions within the anti-Houthi camp and the regional dimension to them also allow the Houthis to reinforce their narrative that their rivals are working within competing foreign agendas, as opposed to the Houthis, who portray themselves as independent actors able to carry out their own decisions.

Moreover, the recent conflict and its consequences ultimately improve the Houthis’ negotiating position now that the other side is even more fragmented and weak. The Houthis will enter any upcoming settlement from a more cohesive organisational and administrative position, raising the ceiling of their conditions.

The Houthis may have their own economic and social tensions, but divisions among their enemies give them extra time to sustain the war economy and their instruments of control over it and over the people they rule.

Rising risks, domestic and regional

The current course of events in Yemen elevates a number of overlapping risks.

Domestically, there is the possibility of front lines turning into actual borders between adjacent entities, the expansion of security vacuums and declining prospects for producing a unifying social contract.

Regionally, there could be an expansion of the areas considered lawless along the borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman, increasing the risks of smuggling and leading to higher costs for managing border security.

Internationally, the growing need for global powers to communicate with multiple parties in Yemen prolongs the crisis and increases the chances that the conflict is internationalised through competition over ports, resources and shipping routes.

However, the picture painted does not mean there will be a decisive victory for any side and instead makes a mosaic of authorities, all needing external sponsorship, more likely. Inevitably, that will weaken the prospect of establishing a stable state.

A way out?

Lowering tensions by making partial deals on redeployments of forces is not enough. Instead, the path forward needs a broader approach based on three interlinked pillars.

First, the national project needs to be redefined by drafting a vision of the state that guarantees fair partnership for all the regions of Yemen within a viable federal framework and redefines the political centre as a guarantor of rights and services.

Second, security must be based on a model of local forces under a national umbrella. In Hadramout and al-Mahra, this should be done by building professional local forces within a clear national and legal framework with practical arrangements for withdrawing outside forces and ensuring that security decision-making in state institutions is uniform.

Third, an economic deal is necessary to restore trust by concluding a transparent agreement on managing resources in the governorates that produce them, the fair distribution of revenues and the linking of international support to an implementable reform plan with a clear commitment to protecting sovereign facilities under central management.

In the absence of these steps, Yemen will continue towards a gradual model of disintegration from the peripheries in which the most cohesive armed entities advance and contested margins expand.

If that continues, the economy will be the first victim of fragmentation, making conditions even more difficult for millions of Yemenis.

And the governance crisis will eventually turn into a prolonged stability crisis, the repercussions of which will be difficult to contain locally and perhaps even regionally.

Saeed Thabit is the Al Jazeera Media Network’s bureau chief for Yemen

Israeli authorities are engaged in multiple major efforts, including building settlements and pursuing annexation, to ensure there will be no Palestinian state in the future.

Israeli authorities are expected to advance plans to build 9,000 new housing units in an illegal settlement on the site of the abandoned Qalandiya airport in occupied East Jerusalem, in another attempt to cut off Palestinian lands from each other and block any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state ever emerging.

The so-called Atarot neighbourhood in northern East Jerusalem, reminiscent of the E1 plan to undermine Palestinian statehood, is to be discussed and have its outlines approved on Wednesday by the District Planning and Building Committee, according to Israeli group Peace Now.

The advocacy group said the new settlement is envisioned to be built within a densely populated Palestinian urban area, stretching from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and Kafr Aqab in the north through the Qalandiya refugee camp, ar-Ram, Beit Hanina and Bir Nabala.

It would build an Israeli enclave in an area where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in close proximity, with the aim of blocking development in a key area and further damaging the likelihood of a sovereign Palestinian state being established.

“This is a destructive plan that, if implemented, would prevent any possibility of connecting East Jerusalem with the surrounding Palestinian area and would, in practice, prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Peace Now said.

Translation: The massacre government is working to establish a new ultra-Orthodox mega-settlement across the Green Line north of Jerusalem. The new political attack called ‘Atarot’ is planned to be built in the heart of the Palestinian state that will be established alongside Israel. This involves 9,000 housing units that Israel will have to evacuate. Isn’t it a shame?

The organisation said the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seizing every moment to bury chances for a future of peace and compromise.

“Especially now, when it is clear to everyone that the ideas of ‘managing the conflict’ and ‘decisive victory’ have led to a security disaster for Israel, we must act to resolve the conflict.”

The plan’s advancements date back to early 2020, when Israel’s Housing Ministry sent it to the Jerusalem municipality to prepare it for approval. It completed the bureaucratic preparation process within months, but faced objections from the Environmental Protection and Health ministries, according to Peace Now, which said the administration of United States President Barack Obama had also opposed it.

It would need further government consideration and approval before being given legal effect and moving towards tender processes to select construction contractors.

Most of the plan area is designated as “state land” by Israeli authorities, meaning they would not have to seek permission from Palestinian landowners.

Israel has been quickly advancing with several major projects to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian territory and pursuing annexation of the occupied West Bank, alongside its genocidal war on Gaza that started in October 2023 and has now killed more than 70,000 people.

The E1 plan, which would see the construction of thousands of illegal Israeli homes in the occupied West Bank, is hailed by Israeli officials despite international condemnation.

Israel’s security cabinet last week signed off on plans to formalise 19 illegal settlements across the West Bank.

Demolitions and widespread arrests

Israeli forces continue to launch raids across the occupied West Bank and support violent settlers in attacking Palestinian lands while issuing permits to demolish Palestinian homes.

Israeli authorities began carrying out demolition operations Wednesday morning in the town of Biddu, located northwest of occupied East Jerusalem, under the pretext that the Palestinian buildings lacked permits.

In the central part of the West Bank, settlers, who have been rampaging with impunity often backed by the Israeli military, burned Palestinian vehicles and wrote racist slogans in the village of Ein Yabrud in Ramallah on Wednesday.

Several Palestinians were also arrested during raids across the West Bank, including in Nablus.

Local authorities said the Israeli military plans to demolish 25 residential buildings in the Nur Shams refugee camp this week.

Rescuers save six Palestinians, including two children, in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp after family home collapses.

These are the key developments from day 1,392 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, December 17:

Fighting

• Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital and warned people to stay in shelters late on Tuesday night as air defences worked to repel a Russian attack.
• Russian forces launched a “massive” drone attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region, targeting energy infrastructure and causing electricity blackouts, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said on Telegram late on Tuesday night.
• Power outages were also reported in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Energy Mykola Kolisnyk said.
• A Russian attack on electrical substations and other energy infrastructure left 280,000 households in Ukraine’s Odesa region without power, Governor Oleh Kiper wrote on Telegram.
• Electricity was later restored to 220,000 homes, Kiper said, but extensive work was still needed to repair damaged networks.

• The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is currently receiving electricity through only one of two external power lines, the facility’s Russian management said, after the other line was disconnected due to military activity.

• Russian forces shot down 180 Ukrainian drones in one day, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
• The ambassador-at-large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rodion Miroshnik, told TASS that Ukrainian attacks had killed 14 Russian civilians and injured nearly 70, including in the Russian-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine, over the past week.

Ceasefire talks

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz shared details about a potential European-led multinational force being considered as part of discussions on security guarantees for Ukraine.
• “We would secure a demilitarised zone between the warring parties and, to be very specific, we would also act against corresponding Russian incursions and attacks,” Merz told ZDF public television, adding that the talks “we’re not there yet”.

Regional security

• Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden said in a joint statement on Tuesday that “Russia is the most significant, direct and long-term threat to our security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area”.
• After the Eastern Flank Summit in Helsinki, Finland, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the grouping of European countries discussed an “anti-drone wall” that would require “billions in expenditure here”.
• Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defence said that it ended the deployment to Poland of its Patriot systems and soldiers from its Air and Missile Defence Task Force, after the mission concluded as planned.
• UK Secretary of State for Defence John Healey said the United Kingdom is spending 600 million pounds (more than $800 million) to buy “thousands of air defence systems, missiles, and automated turrets to shoot down drones” for Ukraine, during a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told the same meeting that Germany would “transfer a significant number of AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles” to Ukraine next year.

Reparations

• The leaders of 34 European countries signed an agreement in The Hague to create an International Claims Commission for Ukraine to seek compensation for hundreds of billions of dollars in damage from Russian attacks.
• “Every Russian war crime must have consequences for those who committed them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said before signing the agreement.
• “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia. It will really have to be paid by Russia,” Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs  David van Weel said.

A Canadian lawmaker who was denied entry to the occupied West Bank, alongside fellow politicians and civil society leaders, has dismissed Israel’s claims that the delegation posed a threat to public safety.

Jenny Kwan, a Canadian MP with the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP), questioned whether Canada’s recognition of an independent Palestinian state earlier this year contributed to Israel’s decision to block the group.

“How is it that members of parliament are a public safety concern?” she said in an interview with Al Jazeera. “How is it that civil society organisations who are doing humanitarian work… [are] a security concern?”

Kwan and five other MPs were among 30 Canadian delegates denied entry to the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday after Israel deemed them a risk to public safety.

The delegation, organised by nonprofit group The Canadian-Muslim Vote, was turned back to Jordan at the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge crossing, which connects Jordan with the West Bank and is controlled by Israel on the Palestinian side, after an hours-long security check.

Kwan said another female MP in the group was “manhandled” by Israeli border agents while attempting to keep an eye on a delegate who was being taken for additional interrogation.

“She was shoved – not once, not twice, but multiple times – by border agents there,” Kwan said. “A member of parliament was handled in that way – If you were just an everyday person, what else could have happened?”

The delegates had been expected to meet with Palestinian community members to discuss daily realities in the West Bank, where residents have faced a surge in Israeli military and settler violence.

They were also planning to meet with Jewish families affected by the conflict, said Kwan, who described the three-day trip as a fact-finding mission.

“I reject the notion that that is a public safety concern,” she said of the delegation’s mission.

Lack of information

Global Affairs Canada, the country’s Foreign Ministry, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s questions about the incident.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said on Tuesday afternoon that the ministry was in contact with the delegation and had “expressed Canada’s objections regarding the mistreatment of these Canadians while attempting to cross”.

The Israeli military did not respond to Al Jazeera’s repeated requests for comment.

In a statement to Canada’s public broadcaster CBC News, the Israeli military agency that oversees affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory, COGAT, said the Canadian delegates were turned back because they arrived “without prior coordination”.

COGAT also said the group’s members were “denied for security reasons”.

But the delegates said they had applied for, and received, Israel Electronic Travel Authorization permits before they reached the crossing. Kwan also said the Canadian government informed Israel ahead of time of the delegation’s plans.

“I’m not quite sure exactly what kind of coordination is required,” Kwan told Al Jazeera.

“We followed every step that we’re supposed to follow, so I’m not quite sure exactly what they mean or what they’re referring to.”

Canada-Israel ties

Canada, a longstanding supporter of Israel, faced the ire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after it joined several European allies in recognising an independent Palestinian state in September.

“Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats,” Netanyahu said in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

The recognition came after months of mass protests in Canada and other Western countries demanding an end to Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 people since October 2023.

Rights advocates also called for action to stem a surge in deadly Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Against that backdrop, members of the Canadian delegation questioned whether their entry refusal was part of an Israeli effort to prevent people from witnessing what is happening on the ground in the Palestinian territory.

“‘What are they trying to hide?’ is the question that comes to mind,” Fawad Kalsi, the CEO of the relief group Penny Appeal Canada and one of the delegates, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

Kwan, the Canadian MP, raised a similar question, saying, “If people cannot witness” what is happening on the ground in the West Bank, “then misinformation and disinformation will continue”.

She added that she also saw foreign doctors being turned back to Jordan at the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge crossing as they tried to bring medicine and baby formula into the West Bank.

“If we as members of parliament could face denial of entry,” she said, “imagine what is going on on the ground with other people, and the difficulties that they face, that we do not know about.”

In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview recorded in October with Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines documentary programme, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tells correspondent Hind Hassan that strikes by Israel and the United States in June caused “serious damage” to Iran’s nuclear facilities but insists its nuclear programme will continue.

“Technology cannot be eliminated by bombing,” he says, arguing that Iran’s scientific knowledge remains intact.

As Iran remains locked in a standoff with the US and refuses to renew negotiations while zero uranium enrichment demands remain in place, Araghchi says European snapback sanctions have undermined future cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Iran would reconsider how it cooperates in the future.

Despite emphasising that “diplomacy is our priority,” the foreign minister insists that Iran is prepared to fight back if it is attacked again. Araghchi maintains that while Tehran has “never trusted the United States as an honest negotiating partner”, Iran remains prepared to engage diplomatically if both sides respect each other’s rights and pursue mutual interests based on equality.

A new wave of Israeli policies is changing the reality and boundaries on the ground in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli government has approved the formalisation of 19 so-called settlement outposts as independent settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is the third wave of such formalisations this year by the government, which considers settlement expansion and annexation a top priority. During an earlier ceremony of formalisation, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “We are advancing de facto sovereignty on the ground to prevent any possibility of establishing an Arab state in [the West Bank].”

Settlement outposts, which are illegal under international law, are set up by a small group of settlers without prior government authorisation. This does not mean that the settlers, who are often more ideological and violent, do not enjoy government protection. Israeli human rights organisations say that settlers in these so-called outposts enjoy protection, electricity and other services from the Israeli army. The formalisation opens the door to additional government funds, infrastructure and expansion.

Many of the settlement outposts formalised in this latest decision are concentrated in the northeastern part of the West Bank, an area that traditionally has had very little settlement activity. They also include the formalisation of two outposts evacuated in 2005 by the government of Israeli then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

While these government decisions may seem bureaucratic, they are in fact strategic in nature. They support the more ideological and often more violent settlers entrenching their presence and taking over yet more Palestinian land, and becoming more brazen in their attacks against Palestinians, which are unprecedented in scope and effect.

The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem estimates that settler attacks against Palestinians have forcibly displaced 44 communities across the West Bank in the past two years. These arson attacks, vandalism, physical assault and deadly shootings are done under the protection of Israeli soldiers. During these settler attacks, 34 Palestinians were killed, including three children. None of the perpetrators has been brought to justice. In fact, policing of these groups has dropped under the direction of Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler himself.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently sounded the alarm about Israel’s record-breaking expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the unprecedented levels of state-backed settler violence. In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Guterres reminded states that all settlements are illegal under international law. He also warned that they erode Palestinian rights recognised under this law, including to a state of their own.

In September, United States President Donald Trump said he “will not allow” Israel to annex the West Bank, without offering details of what actions he would take to prevent such a move.

But Israel is undeterred. The government continues to pursue its agenda of land grab, territorial expansion and annexation by a myriad of measures that fragment, dispossess and isolate Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and continues its genocidal violence in Gaza.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank for nearly a year. The Israeli army continues to occupy Nur Shams, Tulkarem and Jenin refugee camps and ban residents from returning. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have demolished and damaged 1,460 buildings in those camps, according to a preliminary UN estimate. This huge, destructive campaign has changed the geography of the camps and plunged more families into economic and social despair.

This is the state hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank find themselves in because of Israeli restrictions, home demolitions and land grabs. The Israeli army has set up close to 1,000 gates across the West Bank, turning communities into open-air prisons. This has a direct and devastating effect on the social fabric, economy and vitality of these communities, which live on land that is grabbed from under them to execute the expansion of illegal settlements, roads and so-called buffer zones around them.

According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Israeli practices and policies over the past two years have cost the Palestinian people 69 years of development. The organisation recently reported that the Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) has shrunk to 2010 levels. This is visible most starkly in Gaza, but it is palpable in the West Bank as well.

The results of these policies and this reality are Palestinians leaving their homes and Israel expanding. During the summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a local news station he was on a “historic and spiritual mission”, in reference to the vision of the Greater Israel that he said he was “very” attached to.

When armed soldiers in the small West African nation of Benin appeared on national television on December 7 to announce they had seized power in a coup, it felt to many across the region like another episode of the ongoing coup crisis that has seen several governments toppled since 2020.

But the scenes played out differently this time.

Amid reports of gunfire and civilians scampering to safety in the economic capital, Cotonou, Beninese and others across the region waited with bated breath as conflicting intelligence emerged. The small group of putschists, on the one hand, declared victory, but Benin’s forces and government officials said the plot had failed.

By evening, the situation was clear – Benin’s government was still standing. President Patrice Talon and loyalist forces in the army had managed to hold control, thanks to help from the country’s bigger neighbours, particularly its eastern ally and regional power, Nigeria.

While Talon now enjoys victory as the president who could not be unseated, the spotlight is also on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The regional bloc rallied to save the day in Benin after their seeming resignation in the face of the crises rocking the region, including just last month, when the military took power in Guinea-Bissau.

This time, though, after much criticism and embarrassment, ECOWAS was ready to push back against the narrative of it being an ineffective bloc by baring its teeth and biting, political analyst Ryan Cummings told Al Jazeera.

“It wanted to remind the region that it does have the power to intervene when the context allows,” Cummings said. “At some point, there needed to be a line drawn in the sand [and] what was at stake was West Africa’s most stable sovereign country falling.”

Is a new ECOWAS on the horizon?

Benin’s military victory was an astonishing turnaround for an ECOWAS that has been cast as a dead weight in the region since 2020, when a coup in Mali spurred an astonishing series of military takeovers across the region in quick succession.

Between 2020 and 2025, nine coup attempts toppled five democratic governments and two military ones. The latest successful coup, in Guinea-Bissau, happened on November 28. Bissau-Guineans had voted in the presidential election some days before and were waiting for the results to be announced when the military seized the national television station, detained incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, and announced a new military leader.

ECOWAS, whose high-level delegation was in Bissau to monitor the electoral process when the coup happened, appeared on the back foot, unable to do much more than issue condemnatory statements. Those statements sounded similar to those it issued after the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea. The bloc appeared a far cry from the institution that, between 1990 and 2003, successfully intervened to stop the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later in the Ivory Coast. The last ECOWAS military intervention, in 2017, halted Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s attempt to overturn the election results.

Indeed, ECOWAS’s success in its heyday hinged on the health of its members. Nigeria, arguably ECOWAS’s backbone, whose troops led the interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has been mired in insecurity and economic crises of its own lately. In July 2023, when Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the ECOWAS chair, he threatened to invade Niger after the coup there.

It was disastrous timing. Faced with livelihood-eroding inflation and incessant attacks by armed groups at home, Nigerians were some of the loudest voices resisting an invasion. Many believed Tinubu, sworn in just months earlier, had misplaced his priorities. By the time ECOWAS had finished debating what to do weeks later, the military government in Niger had consolidated support throughout the armed forces and Nigeriens themselves had decided they wanted to back the military. ECOWAS and Tinubu backed off, defeated.

Niger left the alliance altogether in January this year, forming the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with fellow military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso. All three share cultural and geographic affinities, but are also linked by their collective dislike for France, the former colonial power, which they blame for interfering in their countries. Even as they battle rampaging armed groups like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the three governments have cut ties with French forces formerly stationed there and welcomed Russian fighters whose effectiveness, security experts say, fluctuates.

But Benin was different, and ECOWAS appeared wide awake. Aside from the fact that it was one coup too far, Cummings said, the country’s proximity to Nigeria, and two grave mistakes the putschists made, gave ECOWAS a fighting chance.

The first mistake was that the rebels had failed to take Talon hostage, as is the modus operandi with putschists in the region. That allowed the president to directly send an SOS to his counterparts following the first failed attacks on the presidential palace at dawn.

The second mistake was perhaps even graver.

“Not all the armed forces were on board,” Cummings said, noting that the small group of about 100 rebel soldiers had likely assumed other units would fall in line but had underestimated how loyal other factions were to the president. That was a miscalculation in a country where military rule ended in 1990 and where 73 percent of Beninese believe that democracy is better than any other form of government, according to poll site Afrobarometer. Many take particular pride in their country being hailed as the region’s most stable democracy.

“There was division within the army, and that was the window of opportunity that allowed ECOWAS to deploy because there wasn’t going to be a case of ‘If we deploy, we will be targeted by the army’. I dare say that if there were no countercoup, there was no way ECOWAS would have gotten involved because it would have been a conventional war,” Cummings added.

Quickly reading the room, Benin’s neighbours reacted swiftly. For the first time in nearly a decade, the bloc deployed its standby ground forces from Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. Abuja authorised air attacks on rebel soldiers who were effectively cornered in a military base in Cotonou and at the national TV building, but who were putting up a last-ditch attempt at resistance. France also supported the mission by providing intelligence. By nightfall, the rebels had been completely dislodged by Nigerian jets. The battle for Cotonou was over.

At least 14 people have since been arrested. Several casualties were reported on both sides, with one civilian, the wife of a high-ranking officer marked for assassination, among the dead. On Wednesday, Beninese authorities revealed that the coup leader, Colonel Pascal Tigri, was hiding in neighbouring Togo.

At stake for ECOWAS was the risk of losing yet another member, possibly to the landlocked AES, said Kabiru Adamu, founder of Abuja-based Beacon Security intelligence firm. “I am 90 percent sure Benin would have joined the AES because they desperately need a littoral state,” he said, referring to Benin’s Cotonou port, which would have expanded AES export capabilities.

Nigeria could also not afford a military government mismanaging the deteriorating security situation in northern Benin, as has been witnessed in the AES countries, Cummings said. Armed group JNIM launched its first attack on Nigerian soil in October, adding to Abuja’s pressures as it continues to face Boko Haram in the northeast and armed bandit groups in the northwest. Abuja has also come under diplomatic fire from the US, which falsely alleges a “Christian genocide” in the country.

“We know that this insecurity is the stick with which Tinubu is being beaten, and we already know his nose is bloodied,” Cummings said.

Revelling in the glory of the Benin mission last Sunday, Tinubu praised Nigeria’s forces in a statement, saying the “Nigerian armed forces stood gallantly as a defender and protector of constitutional order”. A group of Nigerian governors also hailed the president’s action, and said it reinforced Nigeria’s regional power status and would deter further coup plotters.

Not yet out of the woods

If there is a perception that ECOWAS has reawakened and future putschists will be discouraged, the reality may not be so positive, analysts say. The bloc still has much to do before it can be taken seriously again, particularly in upholding democracy and calling out sham elections before governments become vulnerable to mass uprisings or coups, Beacon Security’s Adamu said.

In Benin, for example, ECOWAS did not react as President Talon, in power since 2016, grew increasingly autocratic, barring opposition groups in two previous presidential elections. His government has again barred the main opposition challenger, Renaud Agbodjo, from elections scheduled for next April, while Talon’s pick, former finance minister Romuald Wadagni, is the obvious favourite.

“It’s clear that the elections have been engineered already,” Adamu said. “In the entire subregion, it’s difficult to point to any single country where the rule of law has not been jettisoned and where the voice of the people is heard without fear.”

ECOWAS, Adamu added, needs to proactively re-educate member states on democratic principles, hold them accountable when there are lapses, as in the Benin case, and then intervene when threats emerge.

The bloc appears to be taking heed. On December 9, two days after the failed Benin coup, ECOWAS declared a state of emergency.

“Events of the last few weeks have shown the imperative of serious introspection on the future of our democracy and the urgent need to invest in the security of our community,” Omar Touray, ECOWAS Commission president, said at a meeting in the Abuja headquarters. Touray cited situations that constitute coup risks, such as the erosion of electoral integrity and mounting geopolitical tensions, as the bloc splits along foreign influences. Currently, ECOWAS member states have stayed close to Western allies like France, while the AES is firmly pro-Russia.

Another challenge the bloc faces is managing potential fallout with the AES states amid France’s increasing closeness with Abuja. As Paris faces hostility in Francophone West Africa, it has drawn closer to Nigeria, where it does not have the same negative colonial reputation, and which it perceives as useful for protecting French business interests in the region, Cummings said. At the same time, ECOWAS is still hoping to woo the three rogue ex-members back into its fold, and countries like Ghana have already established bilateral ties with the military governments.

“The challenge with that is that the AES would see the intervention [in Benin] as an act not from ECOWAS itself but something engineered by France,” Adamu said. Seeing France instigating an intervention which could have benefitted AES reinforces their earlier complaints that Paris pokes its nose into the region’s affairs, and could push them further away, he said.

“So now we have a situation where they feel like France did it, and the sad thing is that we haven’t seen ECOWAS dispel that notion, so the ECOWAS standby force has [re]started on a contentious step,” Adamu added.

New Delhi, India – A newly released Bollywood spy thriller is winning praise and raising eyebrows in equal measure in India and Pakistan, over its retelling of bitter tensions between the South Asian neighbours.

Sunk in a sepia tone, Dhurandhar, which was released in cinemas last week, is a 3.5-hour-long cross-border political spy drama that takes cinemagoers on a violent and bloody journey through a world of gangsters and intelligence agents set against the backdrop of India-Pakistan tensions. It comes just months after hostilities broke out between the two countries in May, following a rebel attack on a popular tourist spot in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, which India blamed Pakistan for. Islamabad has denied role in the attack.

Since the partition of India to create Pakistan in 1947, the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought four wars, three of them over the disputed region of Kashmir.

The film stars the popular actor Ranveer Singh, who plays an Indian spy who infiltrates networks of “gangsters and terrorists” in Karachi, Pakistan. Critics of the film argue that its storyline is laced with ultra-nationalist political tropes and that it misrepresents history, an emerging trend in Bollywood, they say.

What is the latest Bollywood blockbuster about?

Directed by Aditya Dhar, the film dramatises a covert chapter from the annals of Indian intelligence. The narrative centres on a high-stakes, cross-border mission carried out by India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), and focuses on one operative who conducts operations on enemy soil to neutralise threats to Indian national security.

The film features a heavyweight ensemble cast led by Singh, who plays the gritty field agent tasked with dismantling a “terror” network from the inside. He is pitted against a formidable antagonist played by Sanjay Dutt, representing the Pakistani establishment, and gangsters such as one portrayed by Akshaye Khanna, while actors including R Madhavan portray key intelligence officers and strategists who orchestrate complex geopolitical manoeuvering from New Delhi.

Structurally, the screenplay follows a classic cat-and-mouse trajectory.

Beneath its high-octane set pieces, the film has sparked an angry debate among critics and audiences over the interpretation of historical events and some key figures.

Why is the film so controversial in Pakistan?

Despite the longstanding geopolitical tensions between the two countries, India’s Bollywood films remain popular in Pakistan.

Depicting Pakistan as the ultimate enemy of India has been a popular theme retold for years, in different ways, especially in Bollywood’s spy thrillers, however. In this case, the portrayal of Pakistan’s major coastal city, Karachi, and particularly one of its oldest and most densely populated neighbourhoods, Lyari, has drawn strong criticism.

“The representation in the film is completely based on fantasy. It doesn’t look like Karachi. 
It does not represent the city accurately at all,” Nida Kirmani, an associate professor of sociology at Lahore University of Management Sciences, told Al Jazeera.

Kirmani, who has produced a documentary on the impact of gang violence in Lyari of her own, said that like other megacities in the world, “Karachi had periods of violence that have been particularly intense.”

However, “reducing the city to violence is one of the major problems in the film, along with the fact the film gets everything about Karachi – from its infrastructure, culture, and language – wrong”, she added.

Meanwhile, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has taken legal action in a Karachi court alleging the unauthorised use of images of the late former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, and protesting against the film’s portrayal of the party’s leaders as supporters of “terrorists”.

Critics, including Kirmani, say the film also bizarrely casts gangs from Lyari into geopolitical tensions with India, when they have only ever operated locally.

Kirmani said the makers of the movie have cherry-picked historical figures and used them completely out of context, “trying to frame them within this very Indian nationalistic narrative”.

Mayank Shekhar, a film critic based in Mumbai, pointed out that the film “has been performed, written, directed by those who haven’t ever stepped foot in Karachi, and perhaps never will”.

“So, never mind this dust bowl for a city that, by and large, seems wholly bereft of a single modern building, and looks mostly bombed-out, between multiple ghettos,” Shekhar said.

He added that this is also in line with how Hollywood “shows the brown Third World in action with a certain sepia tone, like with Extraction, set in Dhaka, Bangladesh”.

How has the film been received in India?

Dhurandhar has been a huge commercial success in India and among the Indian diaspora. However, it has not escaped criticism entirely.

The family of a decorated Indian Army officer, Major Mohit Sharma, filed a petition in Delhi High Court to stop the release of the film, which, they claim, has exploited his life and work without their consent.

The makers of the film deny this and claim it is entirely a work of fiction.

Nonetheless, the film’s storyline is accompanied by real-time intercepted audio recordings of attacks on Indian soil and news footage, film critics and analysts say.

Is this an emerging pattern in Bollywood films?

Shekhar told Al Jazeera that focusing on a deliberately loud, seemingly over-the-top, hyper-masculine hero’s journey is not a new genre in Bollywood. “There’s a tendency to intellectualise the trend, as we did with the ‘angry young man’ movies of the 1970s,” he said, referring to the formative years of Bollywood.

In recent years, mainstream production houses in India have, however, favoured storylines that portray minorities in negative light and align with the policies of the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Kirmani told Al Jazeera that this frequently means “reducing Muslims across India’s borders and within as ‘terrorists’, which further marginalises Muslims in India culturally”.

“Unfortunately, people gravitate towards these kinds of hypernationalistic narratives, and the director is cashing in on this,” she told Al Jazeera.

Modi himself lavished praise on a recent film called Article 370, for what he said was its “correct information” about the removal of the constitutional provision that granted special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019. Critics, however, called the film “propaganda” and said the film had distorted facts.

Another Bollywood film Kerala Story released in 2023 was accused of falsifying facts. Prime Minister Modi praised the film, but critics said it tried to vilify Muslims and demonise the southern Kerala state known for its progressive politics.

In the case of Dhurandhar, some critics have faced online harassment.

One review by The Hollywood Reporter’s India YouTube channel, by critic Anupama Chopra, was taken down after outrage from fans of the film.

Went looking for Anupama Chopra’s Dhurandhar review? It’s gone. The Hollywood Reporter India quietly made the video private.

For context, The Hollywood Reporter India was launched by RPSG Lifestyle Media, part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which also owns Saregama –…

— newslaundry (@newslaundry) December 9, 2025

India’s Film Critics Guild has condemned “coordinated abuse, personal attacks on individual critics, and organised attempts to discredit their professional integrity”, in a statement.

“More concerningly, there have been attempts to tamper with existing reviews, influence editorial positions, and persuade publications to alter or dilute their stance,” the group noted.

Three US soldiers have been killed in an attack in Syria’s central city of Palmyra.

It is the first known deadly attack on US forces since former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was deposed last year. Washington has accused the ISIL (ISIS) group of carrying out the assault.

The government in Damascus has expanded its ties with Washington and joined a coalition to fight the ISIL group.

But how much of a security challenge is ISIL in Syria?

Will the US now reinforce its military presence? What risks could that pose?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Colin Clarke – executive director of The Soufan Center

Dareen Khalifa – senior adviser at the International Crisis Group

Orwa Ajjoub – PhD candidate in global politics, focusing on armed groups in Syria

Authorities in Gaza have warned that stormy weather could spur more war-damaged buildings to collapse and heavy rains are making it more difficult to recover bodies still under the rubble.

Authorities sounded the alarm on Monday, three days after two buildings collapsed in Gaza, killing at least 12 people, during winter rains that have also washed away and flooded the tents of displaced Palestinians and led to deaths from exposure.

A ceasefire has been in effect since October 10 after two years of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, but humanitarian agencies said Israel is letting very little aid into the enclave, where nearly the entire population has been displaced.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abou Azzoum said despite a shortage of equipment and fuel and the weather conditions in the enclave, Palestinian Civil Defence teams retrieved the bodies of 20 people on Monday.

The bodies were recovered from a multistorey building bombed in December 2023 where about 60 people, including 30 children, were believed to be sheltering.

Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal called on the international community to provide mobile homes and caravans for displaced Palestinians rather than tents.

“If people are not protected today, we will witness more victims, more killing of people, children, women, entire families inside these buildings,” he said.

Father mourns children killed in building collapse

Mohammad Nassar and his family were living in a six-storey building that was badly damaged by Israeli strikes earlier in the war and collapsed in heavy rain on Friday.

His family had struggled to find alternative accommodation and had been flooded out while living in a tent during a previous bout of bad weather. Nassar went out to buy some necessities on Friday and returned to a scene of carnage as rescue workers struggled to pull bodies from the rubble.

“I saw my son’s hand sticking out from under the ground. It was the scene that affected me the most. My son under the ground and we are unable to get him out,” Nassar said. His son, 15, died as did a daughter, aged 18.

Exposure warning

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Monday that more aid must be allowed into Gaza without delay to prevent putting more displaced families at serious risk.

“With heavy rain and cold brought in by Storm Byron [late last week], people in the Gaza Strip are freezing to death,” UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini posted on X.

“The waterlogged ruins where they are sheltering are collapsing, causing even more exposure to cold,” he added.

Lazzarini said UNRWA has supplies that have waited for months to enter Gaza that he said would cover the needs of hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s more than two million people.

UN and Palestinian officials said at least 300,000 new tents are urgently needed for the roughly 1.5 million people still displaced. Most existing shelters are worn out or made of thin plastic and cloth sheeting.

Gaza authorities, meanwhile, were still digging to recover about 9,000 bodies they estimated remain buried in rubble from Israeli bombing during the war, but the lack of machinery is slowing down the process, spokesman Ismail al-Thawabta said.

Azzoum reported that Civil Defence teams said they require a surge in heavy machinery to expedite the work.

“They are saying that they are still in need, initially, for 40 excavators and bulldozers in order to achieve some slight progress in the whole process on the ground,” Azzoum said, reporting from Gaza City.

Israel’s continuing ban on the entry of heavy machinery into the Gaza Strip is a violation of the ceasefire, he added.

Earlier on Sunday, Hamas said Israel’s continuing violations of the ceasefire risk jeopardising the agreement and progress towards the next stage of United States President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.

Since the ceasefire began, Israel has continued to strike Gaza on a daily basis, carrying out nearly 800 attacks and killing nearly 400 people, according to authorities in Gaza, while blocking the free flow of humanitarian aid.

“There is no real sense of safety nor protection for families,” Azzoum said of the ongoing violations.

On December 3, Israel announced that the Rafah border crossing with Egypt would reopen “in the coming days”, allowing Palestinians to leave Gaza for the first time in months. The statement was, of course, framed as a humanitarian gesture that would allow those in urgent need to travel for medical care, education or family reunification to leave.

However, Israel’s announcement was met almost immediately with Egypt’s denial, followed by a firm rejection from several Arab and Muslim states.

To the rest of the world, this response may seem cruel. It may seem like Arab states want to forcibly keep in Gaza Palestinians desperate to evacuate to safety. This fits right into the Israeli narrative that neighbouring Arab countries are responsible for Palestinian suffering because they would not “let them in”.

This is a falsehood that has unfortunately made its way into Western media, even though it is easily disproved.

Let us be clear: No, Arab states are not keeping us against our will in Gaza, and neither is Hamas.

They want to make sure that when and if some of us evacuate temporarily, we are able to come back. We want the same – a guarantee of return. Yet, Israel refuses to grant it; it made clear in its December 3 announcement that the Rafah crossing would be open only one way – for Palestinians to leave.

So this was clearly a move meant to jump-start forced displacement of the Palestinian population from their homeland.

For Palestinians, this is not a new reality but part of a long and deliberate pattern. Since its inception, the Israeli state has focused on the dispossession, erasure, and forced displacement of the Palestinians. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and were not allowed to return. My 88-year-old grandfather was among them. He still keeps the Tabu (land registry document) for the dunams of land he owns in his village of Barqa, 37km (23 miles) north of Gaza, where we are still not allowed to return.

In 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza, it forbade Palestinians who were studying or working abroad from returning to their homes. In the occupied West Bank, where colonisation has not stopped for the past 58 years, Palestinians are regularly expelled from their homes and lands.

In the past two years alone, Israel has seized approximately 55,000 dunams of Palestinian land, displacing more than 2,800 Palestinians. In Jerusalem, Palestinians whose families had lived in the holy city for centuries risk losing their residency there if they cannot prove it is their “centre of life”. In the past 25 years, more than 10,000 Palestinian residencies have been revoked.

Since October 2023, Israel has repeatedly attempted to engineer forced mass displacement in Gaza – dividing the Strip into isolated zones separated by military corridors and “safe” axes and launching successive operations to push residents of the north towards the south. Each wave of mass bombing carried the same underlying objective: to uproot the people of Gaza from their homes and push them towards the border with Egypt. The most recent push occurred just before the latest ceasefire took effect.

According to Diaa Rashwan, chairman of the Egyptian State Information Service, Cairo rejected Israel’s proposal because it was an attempt to shun its commitments outlined in the second phase of the ceasefire. That phase requires Israel to withdraw from Gaza, support the reconstruction process, allow the Strip to be administered by a Palestinian committee, and facilitate the deployment of a security force to stabilise the situation. By announcing Rafah’s reopening, Israel sought to bypass these obligations and redirect the political conversation towards depopulation rather than reconstruction and recovery.

That Israel wants to create the conditions to make our expulsion inevitable is clear from other policies as well. It continues to bombard the Strip, killing hundreds of civilians and terrorising hundreds of thousands.

It continues to prevent adequate amounts of food and medicines from getting in. It is allowing no reconstruction materials or temporary housing. It is doing everything to maximise the suffering of the Palestinian people.

This reality is made even more brutal by the harsh winter. Cold winds tear through overcrowded camps filled with exhausted people who have endured every form of trauma imaginable. Yet despite hunger, exhaustion, and despair, we continue to cling to our land and reject any Israeli efforts to displace and erase us.

We also reject any form of external guardianship or control over our fate. We demand full Palestinian sovereignty over our land, our resources, and our crossings. Our position is clear: the Rafah crossing must be opened in both directions; not as a tool of displacement, but as a right to free movement.

Rafah must be accessible for those who wish to return, and for those who need to leave temporarily: students seeking to continue their education abroad, patients in urgent need of medical treatment unavailable in Gaza, and families who have been separated and long to be reunited. Thousands of critically ill Palestinians have been denied life-saving care due to the siege, while hundreds of students holding offers and scholarships from prestigious universities around the world have been unable to travel to pursue their education.

Rafah should also be open to those who simply need rest after years of trauma – to step outside Gaza briefly and return with dignity. Mobility is not a privilege; it is a basic human right.

What we demand is simple: the right to determine our future, without coercion, without bargaining over our existence, and without being pushed into forced displacement disguised as a humanitarian project.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The incident involved JetBlue Flight 1112 from Curacao, which is just off the coast of Venezuela, en route to New York City’s JFK airport.

A JetBlue flight from the small Caribbean nation of Curacao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a US Air Force refuelling tanker on Friday, with the JetBlue pilot blaming the military plane for crossing his path.

“We almost had a midair collision up here,” the JetBlue pilot said, according to a recording of his conversation with air traffic control. “They passed directly in our flight path… They don’t have their transponder turned on. It’s outrageous.”

It comes as the US military has stepped up its drug interdiction activities in the Caribbean and is also seeking to increase pressure on the Venezuelan government.

“We just had traffic pass directly in front of us, within 5 miles [8km] of us – maybe 2 or 3 miles [3 or 5km] – but it was an air-to air refueller from the United States Air Force, and he was at our altitude,” the pilot said. “We had to stop our climb.”

The pilot said the US Air Force plane then headed into Venezuelan airspace.

Derek Dombrowski, a spokesman for JetBlue, said on Sunday: “We have reported this incident to federal authorities and will participate in any investigation.”

He added, “Our crew members are trained on proper procedures for various flight situations, and we appreciate our crew for promptly reporting this situation to our leadership team.”

The Pentagon referred The Associated Press agency to the Air Force for comment. The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US Federal Aviation Administration last month issued a warning to US aircraft, urging them to “exercise caution” when in Venezuelan airspace, “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around Venezuela”.

According to the air traffic recording, the controller responded to the JetBlue pilot, “It has been outrageous with the unidentified aircraft within our air.”

Winter came to Gaza last month with a violent storm. I woke up at night to a disaster. Our tent was flooded with water which had transformed our “floor” into a shallow pool. The mattresses and pillows were completely soaked, cooking pots were submerged, the clothes were drenched, and even our bags— which function as our “closets”—were filled with water. Nothing inside remained dry.

As I tried to understand what was happening, I suddenly heard children crying at the entrance of our tent. I opened it quickly and found three children from the neighbouring tents, their lips blue from the cold, with their mother trembling behind them saying, “We are completely soaked… the rain leaked inside and the water reached everywhere.”

The same tragic scene was repeated all around us: women, children, and elderly people sitting in the street under the rain, their bedding drenched and their belongings scattered, while confusion and cries filled the air.

All 1.4 million displaced Palestinians who lack proper shelter suffered that day—people with no protection against the weather or its sudden storms.

For us, it took two full days for our belongings to dry because the sun barely appeared; everything stayed cold and damp. We didn’t move to another place—we stayed where we were, trying to salvage whatever we could, because there was simply nowhere else to go.

Only a week later, an even stronger winter storm arrived with severe rainfall. Tents were flooded again; little children froze in the rain again.

This week, when Storm Byron hit, we were flooded once again. Despite all our efforts to reinforce the tents, secure them tightly, and bring in stronger tarps, nothing worked. The winds were fiercer, the rain heavier, and the water pushed its way inside from every direction. The ground no longer absorbed anything. The water began rising rapidly beneath our feet, turning the entire area into a swamp.

According to the authorities, the strong winds destroyed at least 27,000 tents. These are 27,000 families who already struggled and now have nothing, no shelter, nowhere to hide from the rain and cold.

The rain also brought down damaged homes where people had been sheltering. Every time there is a storm or strong wind, we hear the sound of falling debris and concrete pillars from badly damaged buildings near us. This time, the situation was so bad that 11 people were killed by collapsed buildings.

It is clear that after everything we have endured, we – like other displaced Palestinians – cannot survive a third winter in these harsh conditions. We survived two winters in displacement, living in tents that protected neither from cold nor rain, waiting with exhausted patience for a ceasefire that would end our suffering. The ceasefire finally came, but relief did not. We remain in the same place, with bodies drained by malnutrition and illness, under tents worn out by the sun and wind.

We are a family of seven living in a tent that is four by four metres (13 feet by 13 feet). Among us are two children aged five and 10 and our grandmother, aged 80. We, the adults, can push through the cold and hardship. But how can the elderly and children bear what we live every day?

We sleep on mattresses pressed directly against the ground, with cold seeping in from below and above, with only two blankets that can’t shield us from the freezing nights. Everyone in the tent has two blankets each, barely enough to offer temporary warmth. There is no source of heating—no electricity, no heater—just tired bodies trying to share whatever warmth remains.

My grandmother cannot tolerate the cold at all. I watch her shiver through the night, her hand on her chest as if trying to hold herself together. All we can do is pile every blanket we have on top of her and watch anxiously until she is able to fall asleep.

Many people in Gaza live in conditions far worse than ours.

Most families who just want a modest tent over their heads cannot afford one. The price of tents can go as high as $1,000; the rent one has to pay to pitch a tent on a piece of land can be as much as $500. Those who cannot pay live in the street in makeshift shelters.

Salah al-Din Street, for example, is crowded with them. Most are simply blankets hung and wrapped around small spaces for minimal privacy, offering no protection from rain or cold. With any strong gust of wind, they burst open.

There are also children living directly in the streets, sleeping on the cold ground. Many have lost their mothers or fathers during the war. When you pass by, you see them—sometimes silent, sometimes crying, sometimes searching for something to eat.

Despite repeated promises of aid and reconstruction, the trickle of supplies that entered Gaza has made almost no difference on the ground. Earlier this month, the United Nations announced it had managed to distribute only 300 tents during November; 230,000 families received a single food parcel each.

We did not receive any food parcel—there are simply too many people in need, and the quantities are far too small for everyone to access. Even if we had received one, its contents wouldn’t have lasted us longer than a week or two.

Food prices continue to be high. Nutritious items like meat and eggs are either unavailable or cost too much. Most families have not eaten a proper protein meal in months.

There is no mass campaign to remove rubble or level the ground so people can pitch their tents due to an equipment shortage. No steps have been taken to provide permanent housing for families.

All of this means we now face a terrifying possibility: that life in a tent—one that can be flooded or ripped apart by the wind at any moment—may become our long-term reality. This is an unbearable thought.

During the bombardment, we lived with the constant fear of death, and perhaps the intensity of the war overshadowed everything else—the cold, the rain, the tents shaking above our heads. But now, after the mass bombing has stopped, we are facing the full ugliness of Gaza’s “new normal”.

I fear this winter will be much worse for Gaza. With no heating, no real shelter, and the weather getting worse each day, we are likely to see many deaths among the children, the elderly and the chronically ill. Already, the first deaths from hypothermia were reported – babies Rahaf Abu Jazar  and Taim al-Khawaja and nine-year-old Hadeel al-Masri. If the world is really committed to ending the genocide in Gaza, it needs to take real, urgent action and ensure that we have at least the basic conditions for survival: food, housing and medical care.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Dublin, Ireland – When I was accepted to Trinity College Dublin, I imagined a fresh start, new lectures, late-night study sessions and a campus alive with possibility.

The plan was clear: begin my studies in September 2024 and finally step into the future I had worked so hard for.

But when September came, the borders of Gaza were shut tight, my neighbourhood was being bombed almost every day, and the dream of university collapsed with the buildings around me. Trinity sent me a deferral letter, and I remember holding it in my hands and feeling torn in two.

I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or heartbroken. That letter became a strange symbol of hope, a reminder that maybe, someday, my life could continue. But everything else was falling apart so quickly that it was hard to believe in anything.

My family and I were displaced five times as the war intensified. Each time, we left something behind: books, clothes, memories, safety.

After the first temporary truce, we went home for a short time. But it no longer felt like the place we had built our lives. The walls were cracked, windows shattered, and floors coated in dust and debris.

It felt haunted by what had happened.

I knew I had to go

I’m the middle child among three siblings. My older sister, Razan, is 25, and my younger brother, Fadel, is 23.

You might think being a middle child spares you, but during the war, I felt responsible for them. On nights when bombings shook the building and fear crept into every corner, I tried to be the steady one. I tried to comfort them as I trembled inside.

Then, in April 2025, my name appeared on a small, restricted list of people allowed to leave Gaza. About 130 people could cross at that time, dual-nationality holders, family reunification cases and a handful of others. My name on that list felt unreal.

The morning I approached the crossing, I remember the long, tense line of people waiting, gripping documents, holding bags, clutching their children’s hands. No one talked.

When two IDF officers questioned me, I answered as steadily as I could, afraid that something, anything, might go wrong and they’d send me back.

When they finally waved me through, I felt relief and guilt at the same time.

I didn’t call home until I got to Jordan. When my mother heard my voice, she cried. I did, too. I told her I was safe, but it felt like I had left a part of my heart behind with them.

My family is now in Khan Younis, still living through the chaos.

I arrived in Amman on April 18, my heart heavy with the weight of what I had escaped. The next morning, I boarded a flight to Istanbul, with nothing around me feeling real.

The sounds of normalcy, laughter, announcements, and the rustle of bags were jarring after the constant bombardment. I had been living in a world where every sound could signal danger, where the air was thick with fear and uncertainty.

I felt like a ghost, wandering through a world that no longer belonged to me.

Finally, after hours of flying, waiting, being screened and watching departure boards, I landed in Dublin. The Irish air felt clean, the sky impossibly open. I should’ve been happy, but I was engulfed by crushing guilt, the joy overshadowed by the pain of separation.

I wasn’t completely alone. A Palestinian colleague from Gaza had arrived in April 2024, and two friends were also in Ireland. There was an unspoken understanding between us.

“You recognise the trauma in each other without saying a word,” I often tell people now. “It’s in the way we listen, the way we sit, the way we carry ourselves.”

Back in Gaza, my daily life had shrunk to pure survival: running, hiding, rationing water, checking who was alive. Bombings hit every day, and nighttime was the worst. Darkness makes every sound feel closer, sharper.

You don’t sleep during war. You wait.

Those nights, the silence was deafening, punctuated by the distant echoes of explosions. I would lie awake, straining to hear danger.

The darkness wrapped me like a suffocating blanket, amplifying every creak of the building, every whisper of the wind.

During the day, people on the street moved quickly, eyes darting, alert.

Water was a precious commodity; we would line up for hours at distribution points, often only to receive a fraction of what we needed. It was never enough.

No human should live like that

Five times, we fled in search of safety, packed in minutes, hearts racing with fear.

In one building where dozens of displaced families stayed, people slept on thin mattresses, shoulder to shoulder. Children cried quietly, adults whispered, trying to comfort one another, but every explosion outside sent ripples of panic through the rooms.

No human being should have to live like that, but millions of us did.

As I sit in Dublin, I carry the weight of my family’s struggles with me, a constant reminder of the life I left behind.

The guilt of survival is a heavy burden, but I hold onto hope that one day, I can return and help rebuild what has been lost.

Even now, far from Gaza, I feel it. You don’t leave war behind; you carry it with you like a second heartbeat.

Watching a world I’m not part of yet

I often stop in the campus courtyards. Not just because they’re beautiful, though they are, but because I need those moments to remind myself that I survived.

The laughter of children here feels foreign, a reminder of joy that has been stolen from so many.

Walking through Trinity College today feels surreal. Students laugh over coffee, rush to lectures and complain about assignments. Life moves so seamlessly here.

I message my family every day. Some days, they reply quickly. Other days, hours pass with no response. Those silent days feel like torture.

But I’m determined. Being here is about rebuilding a life, about honouring the people I left behind.

Survival comes with weight.

I carry the dreams of those who couldn’t leave. That responsibility shapes the way I move through the world; quieter, more grateful, more aware.

I hope someday I can bring my family to safety. I hope to finish my studies, rebuild my life and use my voice for people still trapped in war.

I want people to know what it takes to stand in that line at the border, to leave everything behind, to walk into a future alone.

Renewed border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand entered a second week after Bangkok denied US President Donald Trump’s claim that a truce had been agreed to halt the deadly fighting.

A Royal Thai Navy spokesman says its military launched an operation to reclaim border ‘territories’ in Trat province.

Thailand’s military has launched a new offensive against Cambodia to “reclaim sovereign territory”, spurning mediation efforts including that of United States President Donald Trump.

Violence between the two Southeast Asian nations continued on Sunday, a day after Phnom Penh announced that it was shutting all of its crossings with Thailand, its northern neighbour.

The conflict stems from a long-running dispute over the colonial-era demarcation of their 800km (500-mile) shared border. Fighting has left at least 25 soldiers and civilians dead, and displaced over half a million people on both sides.

The newspaper Matichon Online quoted a Royal Thai Navy spokesman, Rear Admiral Parach Rattanachaiyapan, as saying that its forces “launched a military operation to reclaim Thai sovereign territory” in an area of the coastal province of Trat.

“The operation began in the early morning hours with heavy clashes, conducted under the principles of self-defence according to international law and the preservation of national sovereignty,” Rattanachaiyapan told the Thai newspaper.

The Thai military said it has “successfully controlled and reclaimed the area, expelling all opposing forces”.

The public television channel Thai PBS also reported that the country’s military “planted the Thai national flag” after “driving out all opposing forces” in the area.

Thailand’s TV 3 Morning News quoted the military as saying that, as of early Sunday, the country’s “army, Navy and Air Force are continuing with [their] operations” along the border.

It also reported “sporadic clashes” in several other areas, including in Surin’s Ta Khwai area where “direct fire and indirect” and drone attacks took place.

There were no immediate reports on casualties from the latest incidents. The Cambodian military has yet to issue a statement regarding the latest fighting on Sunday.

But the Cambodian news website Cambodianess reported attacks in at least seven areas including in Pursat province, where the Thai military reportedly used F-16 fighter jet to drop bombs in the Thma Da commune.

Thai military also allegedly fired artillery shells southward into Boeung Trakoun village in the Banteay Meanchey province.

Al Jazeera could not independently confirmed the reports as of publication time.

Border shutdown

Late on Saturday, Cambodia announced that it was shutting all border crossings with Thailand due to the fighting.

“The Royal Government of Cambodia has decided to fully suspend all entry and exit movements at all Cambodia-Thailand border crossings, effective immediately and until further notice,” Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior said in a statement late on Saturday.

The border shutdown was yet another symptom of the frayed relations between the neighbouring countries, despite international pressure to secure peace.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump had declared that he had won agreement from both countries for a new ceasefire.

But Thai officials said they had not agreed to pause the conflict. Rather, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul pledged that his country’s military would continue fighting on the disputed border.

Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs Sihasak Phuangketkeow also said on Saturday that some of Trump’s remarks did not “reflect an accurate understanding of the situation” on the ground.

Cambodia has not commented directly on Trump’s claim of a new ceasefire, but its Ministry of National Defence said earlier that Thai jets carried out air strikes on Saturday morning.

The latest large-scale fighting was set off by a skirmish on December 7, which wounded two Thai soldiers, derailing a ceasefire promoted by Trump that ended five days of combat in July.

The July ceasefire was brokered by Malaysia and pushed through by pressure from Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. It was formalised in more detail in October at a regional meeting in Malaysia that Trump attended.

Trump has cited his work on the Southeast Asian conflict as he lobbies for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Late on Saturday, a spokesman for Trump said in a statement: “The President expects all parties to fully honor the commitments they have made in signing these agreements, and he will hold anyone accountable as necessary to stop the killing and ensure durable peace.”

Here is where things stand on Sunday, December 14:

Fighting

• Two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on the Russian city of Saratov, regional Governor Roman Busargin said in a statement on Telegram. An unspecified number of people were also injured in the attack.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it hit Ukrainian industrial and energy facilities with hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, in what it called a retaliatory attack for Ukrainian strikes on “civilian targets” in Russia.
• Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa and the surrounding region have suffered major blackouts after a large overnight Russian attack on the power grid left more than a million households without power.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s overnight attack on Ukraine included more than 450 drones and 30 missiles.
• Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the attack as one of the war’s largest assaults on Odesa, where supplies of electricity and water had been knocked out. She said supplies of non-drinking water were being brought to areas of the city.
• Ukraine’s power grid operator said a “significant number” of households were without power in the southern regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv, and that the Ukrainian-controlled part of the front-line Kherson region was totally without power.
• Ukraine’s navy has accused Russia of using a drone to deliberately attack the civilian Turkish vessel Viva, which was carrying sunflower oil to Egypt, a day after Moscow hit two Ukrainian ports. None of the 11 Turkish nationals onboard the ship was hurt, and the vessel continued its journey to Egypt.
• Earlier, it was also reported that three Turkish vessels were damaged in a separate attack.
• Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant temporarily lost all offsite power overnight for the 12th time during the conflict, due to military activity affecting the electrical grid, according to Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Both power lines are now reconnected, the IAEA said.

US-led negotiations

• Zelenskyy said he would meet US and European representatives in Berlin to discuss the “fundamentals of peace”. He added that Ukraine needed a “dignified” peace and a guarantee that Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of his country in 2022, would not attack again.
• US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet Zelenskyy and European leaders in Berlin on Sunday and Monday, a US official briefed on the matter said.
• French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz were also expected to attend the Berlin meeting, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Europeans and Ukrainians are asking the US to provide them with “security guarantees” before any territorial negotiations in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, the French presidency said.
• British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have discussed work on US-led peace proposals for Ukraine and efforts to use frozen Russian sovereign assets to provide funds for Kyiv, a Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement.
• Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, fresh from a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Turkmenistan, said he hopes to discuss a Ukraine-Russia peace plan with Trump, adding that “peace is not far away”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukraine received 114 prisoners released by Belarus, including citizens accused of working for Ukrainian intelligence and Belarusian political prisoners, according to Kyiv’s POW coordination centre. The centre posted photos appearing to show the released captives boarding a bus, with some of them smiling and embracing.
• Zelenskyy spoke to Belarusian prisoner Maria Kalesnikava after her release, presidential aide Dmytro Lytvyn told reporters. Lytvyn told reporters that military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov was present when the prisoners released by Belarus were received.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korea’s KCNA news agency reported. At the event, Kim praised officers and soldiers for their “heroic” conduct during their 120-day overseas deployment.
• Russia has sentenced top International Criminal Court (ICC) judges and its chief prosecutor Karim Khan to jail, in retaliation for the court’s 2023 decision to issue an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes during the Ukraine war.

United States President Donald Trump has pledged to pursue “serious retaliation” against the armed group ISIL (ISIS) after an ambush in central Syria killed two US service members and one civilian interpreter, also from the US.

The attack on US forces on Saturday was the first to inflict casualties since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a year ago.

Three additional US military members were injured in the attack, as well as at least two Syrian troops, according to government and media reports.

In a social media post, Trump said he had received confirmation that the injured US soldiers were “doing well”.

He, however, warned that there would be serious consequences for what he described as an ISIL (ISIS) attack.

“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” Trump wrote. “The President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack. There will be very serious retaliation.”

His remarks echoed those of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who likewise promised to take severe action against anyone who attacked US service members.

“Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you,” Hegseth wrote on social media.

Conducting ‘counter-terrorism operations’

Saturday’s attack was first announced by US Central Command, also known as CENTCOM.

It characterised the attack as an “ambush” carried out by a lone ISIL gunman, who was subsequently “engaged and killed”. Hegseth later confirmed that the perpetrator “was killed by partner forces”.

The attack took place near Palmyra in Syria’s central Homs region, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.

“The attack occurred as the soldiers were conducting a key leader engagement,” he wrote in a statement. “Their mission was in support of on-going counter-ISIS/counter-terrorism operations in the region.”

Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkiye, meanwhile, described the incident as a “cowardly terrorist ambush targeting a joint U.S.–Syrian government patrol”. He noted there were “Syrian troops wounded in the attack” and wished them a “speedy recovery”.

But the details about the attack and the individuals involved remain unclear.

CENTCOM indicated the US government would withhold identifying information about the late US soldiers and their units “until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified”.

The incident remains under “active investigation”, according to the US Department of Defense.

Who was the suspect?

The identity of the suspect has also not been released to the public.

But three local officials told the Reuters news agency that the assailant was a member of the Syrian security forces.

A spokesperson for the Syrian Interior Ministry also told the television channel Al-Ikhbariah TV that the attacker did not have a leadership role in the country’s security forces. He did not say whether the man was a junior member.

“On December 10, an evaluation was issued indicating that this attacker might hold extremist ideas, and a decision regarding him was due to be issued tomorrow, on Sunday,” the spokesperson, Noureddine el-Baba, said.

The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) state news agency reported earlier that Syrian security forces and US troops came under fire during a joint patrol.

The news agency AFP, meanwhile, cited an anonymous Syrian military official as saying shots were fired “during a meeting between Syrian and American officers” at a Syrian base in Palmyra.

A witness in the city, who also asked to remain anonymous, told the agency that he heard the shots coming from inside the base.

Traffic on the Deir Az Zor–Damascus highway was temporarily halted as military aircraft conducted overflights in the area, the agency said.

A security source told SANA that US helicopters evacuated those who were wounded to the al-Tanf base near the Iraqi border.

A long-term US presence

In the aftermath of the attack, US officials pledged to double down on their efforts to combat ISIL (ISIS) in Syria.

“We will not waver in this mission until ISIS is utterly destroyed, and any attack on Americans will be met with swift and unrelenting justice,” Ambassador Barrack wrote on social media.

“Alongside the Syrian Government, we will relentlessly pursue every individual, facilitator, financier, and enabler involved in this heinous act. They will be identified and held accountable swiftly and decisively.”

The US has troops stationed in northeastern Syria as part of a decade-long effort to help a Kurdish-led force there combat ISIL (ISIS).

ISIL captured Palmyra in 2015, at the height of its military ascendancy in Syria, before losing the city 10 months later. During that time, it destroyed several ancient sites and artefacts while using others to stage mass executions.

ISIL (ISIS) was vanquished in Syria in 2018 but still carries out sporadic attacks without controlling any territory inside Syria.

As of December 2024, there were approximately 2,000 US troops stationed in Syria to continue the fight against ISIL (ISIS).

In late November, CENTCOM announced the destruction of “more than 15 sites containing ISIS weapons caches”, as the US continues its campaign against the armed group.

This month, Syria marked one year since the ouster of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, but the war-ravaged nation continues to face stiff security and economic challenges as it seeks to rebuild and recover after 14 years of ruinous civil war.