conflict

Five Syrians and one Lebanese wounded in latest Israeli attack, officials say.

An Israeli drone attack has wounded six people in Lebanon’s Hermel district, close to the Syrian border, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The ministry said on Friday that the six wounded included five Syrian nationals, two of them women, and one Lebanese.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that the drone attack targeted a car.

It added the area has largely been spared such attacks since an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was agreed in June.

Israel’s military claimed it struck “a Syrian terrorist” who “operated under the direction of the Iranian regime”, alleging that the man “planned and advanced attacks” against Israeli forces in Syria’s southern territory.

Since the ouster of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against Syria. It has sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that had separated Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan since 1974, and has carried out repeated incursions deeper into Syrian territory, sometimes seizing residents.

Israel has also continued to attack Lebanon since a ceasefire with Hezbollah was agreed in June.

It has vowed to keep troops in so-called security zones along its border in both Syria and Lebanon.

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa told the UN General Assembly last month: “We reject Israeli attempts to impose a fait accompli. We reject their aggressions, which undermine peace and security.”

He said Israel had carried out “500 air strikes, more than 1,200 incursions and 300 detentions” in Syria.

He also called for Israeli withdrawal from Syrian territory and for the international community to commit to a 1974 agreement that created a UN-supervised separation zone between Israeli and Syrian forces.

Government security forces regain control of Rumbek town after outsiders attempted to take control of the area.

Intercommunal clashes have killed 71 people in South Sudan’s town of Rumbek, in Lakes State, the caretaker government said in a statement.

“According to initial security reports, approximately 71 people were reportedly killed,” including four soldiers, the South Sudanese interim Ministry of Information said in a statement on Friday. The exact number of fatalities has yet to be verified.

According to AFP, witnesses said a group of people from outside Rumbek tried to take control of the town and briefly succeeded. The attackers withdrew when police and military reinforcements arrived. Two witnesses said the fighting moved outside the city limits.

The government statement said, “Rumbek town is currently under the control of Government security forces, and efforts are ongoing to restore normalcy”.

The caretaker government strongly condemned the violence and urged all communities to “exercise maximum restraint and refrain from acts of retaliation that could further escalate tensions”.

Interim government

On September 22, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir dissolved the transitional government, three months before the country’s first election since its independence in 2011. Kiir appointed a caretaker administration as the country prepares for its first-ever national elections.

His decree ended a power-sharing arrangement set up under a 2018 peace deal that halted a five-year civil war in which about 400,000 people were killed.

Intercommunal conflict has continued across South Sudan, resulting in multiple deadly clashes.

On September 17, 26 people were killed, and 82 were injured during days of fighting in a disputed region on the border between South Sudan and Sudan.

In early March, intercommunal violence left at least 169 people dead after dozens of armed men attacked a town.

Eritrea denies backing TPLF as Ethiopia alleges collusion, further straining their already volatile relationship.

Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of an “all-out invasion” in a message to the United Nations Security Council, while Eritrea says it is facing a “war of aggression” from its neighbour.

“The all-out invasion of parts of northern Ethiopia by Eritrea is a matter of public record,” said a letter by Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gedion Timothewos, which was shared with news agencies on Friday.

“It is a blatant act of aggression that engages Ethiopia’s inherent right to self-defence,” added the letter dated Thursday and addressed to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

Gedion said that Eritrean troops had advanced up to 60 kilometres (37 miles) into Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and demanded their withdrawal, just days after the two nations cut diplomatic ties.

Eritrea’s Minister of Information Yemane Gebremeskel rejected Ethiopia’s claims.

“The Ethiopian regime has been pursuing, in effect, an unprovoked war of aggression against Eritrea for more than three years now,” he said on X.

Yemane said Asmara had shown restraint since landlocked Ethiopia had essentially declared a war against Eritrea when it stated in 2023 that it would gain access to the sea.

Citing statements made by Ethiopian officials, Yemane accused Addis Ababa of using the current conflict ⁠to take Assab, an Eritrean port, in order to restore access to the Red Sea.

Eritrea also denied Ethiopia’s claim that it is backing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is part of an alliance of seven armed groups that has been attempting to overthrow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government since September.

Over the past week, Ethiopia’s army has pushed back the TPLF and seized the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle.

Witnesses also told the AFP news agency that rebels had lost the Tigrayan cities of Shire and Adigrat. Eritrean troops were reportedly seen in Adigrat before Ethiopian drone strikes hit them, according to several witnesses.

Tumultuous history

Ethiopia and Eritrea have traded accusations since the reported ⁠incursions by Eritrean troops this week raised fears of outright war in the region, where the two nations have fought previous conflicts.

The stakes have been raised this time around by conflicts in the Horn of Africa region and tensions across the Red Sea.

Diplomatic ties between the two have collapsed amid the escalation: Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara and ordered 10 Eritrean diplomats to leave the country last week. In response, Eritrea announced it was severing ties.

The neighbours have a tumultuous history, as Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and they fought a border war for two years in 1998.

Relations improved slightly in 2018 when Abiy took power in Addis Ababa, and Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopia against the TPLF in a civil war from 2020 to 2022.

Eritrea, however, was not part of the peace deal that ended the war, which soured ties soon afterwards.

Tensions are also fuelled by Abiy’s repeated claim that landlocked Ethiopia – which lost its access to the coast when Eritrea secured independence – has a right to sea access, which Eritrea sees as a threat to seize its Red Sea port of Assab.

Sanaa, Aden and Marib, Yemen – As fighting intensifies across Yemen between the government and the Houthis, millions of people are confronting another battle far from the front lines: the deteriorating living and economic conditions in the country.

With salaries for large segments of the workforce either unpaid or irregularly disbursed – and the prices of goods and services rising – Yemen’s economic struggles have been compounded by a divided banking system that has made moving money between different parts of the country increasingly complicated.

From Aden’s struggling shoppers to displaced families in Marib and unpaid public-sector workers in Sanaa, Yemenis are being forced to make difficult choices about what they can afford, and what they must go without.

Aden: Food costs swallow salaries

In Aden, the internationally recognised Yemeni government’s interim capital in the south, the problem is not so much a shortage of goods in markets as people’s inability to afford them.

Salaries have failed to keep pace with the rising costs of food, rent, healthcare and transport, leaving workers with little money left over at the end of the month.

The consequences are evident in the smaller quantities and cheaper products that now make up shoppers’ baskets, and the decisions they are forced to make about what to cut back on.

Bushra Abdullah Abdulwarith is a government employee in Aden. She earns 78,000 Yemeni riyals ($50) a month at the black market exchange rate while typical household food costs in government-held areas run about 130,366 riyals ($83), according to estimates by the Yemen Economic Tracking Initiative. And that’s before she factors in the cost of rent, transport, healthcare and other household expenses.

The economic difficulties facing Yemenis like Bushra illustrate how more than a decade of war has devastated the economy. According to the World Bank, real GDP per capita has fallen by approximately 58 percent since 2015.

The fragmentation of Yemen’s monetary institutions between the government and the Houthis – who have operated their own institutions since seizing the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 – along with the disruption of oil exports, and declining international assistance have all contributed to the economic decline.

Bushra told Al Jazeera that rising prices have forced many households to give up almost all non-essential purchases and cut back on some expensive basics, particularly meat. Other families, she said, have resorted to buying food in smaller quantities, sometimes on credit or loans.

Reduced demand

The impact of rising prices is reflected not only in economic figures but also in the way people shop.

Ayman al-Maqtari, who works at a shopping centre in Aden’s Mansoura district, said that his customers now rarely buy non-essential items.

When it comes to the essentials such as rice, sugar, flour, and cooking oil, he has noticed that customers size up the price of each item before putting it in their baskets. They are also buying smaller quantities, for example, opting for a 5kg (11 pound) over a 40kg (90 pound) bag of rice.

“Many people have come to live day by day, or week by week,” Ayman told Al Jazeera, adding that more families are buying on credit when they run out of money before the end of the month.

The decline in purchasing power is also affecting commercial activity.

Across several streets and shopping centres in Aden, advertisements for discounts and special offers have become increasingly visible in shop windows and on retailers’ social media pages, as businesses attempt to attract customers and boost sales.

Weak demand, retailers say, is particularly evident for items that households can put off buying, such as clothing and household goods. A growing share of family income is spent on food, rent, healthcare and transport.

Limited pay increase

The Yemeni government approved a 20 percent cost-of-living allowance in May for public-sector employees in an attempt to ease the pressure of rising prices. But the amount is calculated based on each employee’s base salary, rather than their total pay, meaning the actual increase is relatively small for many workers.

Bushra, the government employee in Aden, said the increase has done little to improve her family’s financial circumstances. She described the allowance as “a temporary painkiller that does not reflect the scale of the actual pressure on people’s living standards”.

Her experience is far from isolated. In early October, the World Food Programme said its latest monitoring in accessible government-controlled areas showed that 74 percent of households were unable to meet their basic food needs.

One of the places where the crisis is evident is Marib, a government-controlled city east of Sanaa that is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The sharp increase in the population over the war years, in what was previously a provincial backwater, has led to pressure on the city’s housing, employment and public services.

Government employees in Marib see their salaries disappear within the first few days after being paid, labourers struggle to find more than a few days of work and displaced families are forced to choose between buying water and milk.

Salah al-Zuhaifi works for a government institution in Marib. He said the war has separated him from his parents, who live in Houthi-controlled territory.

Alone in Marib, al-Zuhaifi said that inflation had eroded much of his salary’s purchasing power.

“No matter how much you earn, it will not be enough to meet your needs,” he said.

Abu Mohammed Nasser al-Asbahi, another government employee, described a similar struggle.

He told Al Jazeera that he earns 400,000 riyals ($250) a month, but more than half of that goes towards his rent, leaving little for his other expenses.

“We don’t even get to the first one-third of the month before the salary is gone,” he said, explaining that his family spends the rest of the month relying on loans and credit from local shops.

The healthcare sector in Marib has also been affected by widespread household spending cuts.

Pharmacist Khaled Mohsen told Al Jazeera that the rising price of medicines has prompted many patients to decline parts of their prescribed treatment and purchase only what they consider most essential.

People with chronic illnesses, meanwhile, have increasingly begun reducing their medication doses to make their supplies last longer before having to buy more, which creates serious health risks.

Houthi areas

Residents of Sanaa and other areas of Yemen’s populous northwest, controlled by the Houthis – an armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God) – since 2014, are also facing a worsening economic and cost-of-living crisis similar to that affecting Yemenis elsewhere in the country.

Several factors are driving the crisis, particularly unpaid public-sector salaries, declining purchasing power, rising prices for goods and services, and the continuing consequences of the division of Yemen’s currency and banking systems in the early years of the war.

Many public-sector employees in Houthi-controlled areas have gone years without receiving regular salaries, with some sectors only receiving limited payments or half-salaries at irregular intervals.

Even when payments are made, they cannot cover families’ basic needs amid the rising cost of living.

Meanwhile, private-sector workers and business owners face growing pressures as a result of declining economic activity, multiple fees and levies, and a shortage of employment opportunities. The conditions have undermined incomes and job security.

The Yemeni riyal’s exchange rate in Houthi-controlled Sanaa is more stable than in areas controlled by the government. The Houthis have imposed strict monetary controls, banning the circulation of newer banknotes printed by the Yemeni government, and have also enforced a largely fixed exchange rate.

However, that does not necessarily translate into stronger purchasing power. Markets face difficulties caused by cash shortages and the division between monetary and banking systems operating in different parts of the country, including increased costs for moving funds.

That directly affects the many households relying on domestic and international remittances.

For residents in Houthi-controlled areas, the result is an economy in which the currency may be relatively stable, but livelihoods are precarious. Years of unpaid salaries and limited employment opportunities have left many families struggling to afford basic necessities, with few options beyond borrowing, cutting spending or relying on support from relatives.

Opposition unionists call for the prosecution of Sinn Fein lawmakers who participated in the protest.

Northern Irish police have contacted representatives of Sinn Fein in an investigation into a protest that blocked a Protestant parade from marching through a Catholic area, the party said.

The Sinn Fein party leads Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government alongside its main pro-British rival, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which has called for Sinn Fein lawmakers to be prosecuted.

In a statement posted to Facebook on Thursday, Sinn Fein confirmed “that a number of its representatives and party members received correspondence” from police.

“Sinn Fein will continue to stand with the Garvaghy Road residents who should be allowed to live in peace and free from sectarian intimidation,” the party said in the statement.

It added they have “stood with residents of the Garvaghy Road for the last two weeks in the face of provocation and the threat of an unwanted Orange march through their community”.

March permitted

Northern Ireland’s High Court permitted the Protestant Orange Order to march on the Catholic Garvaghy Road for the first time in 28 years.

Police opened an investigation into what they called the unlawful protest of the march, and said people reasonably suspected of committing offences will receive letters for interviews.

Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald participated in the protests.

The DUP called for O’Neill and other lawmakers to be prosecuted.

“A political title is not a shield, and no one is above the law,” the party said in a statement on Thursday.

Before the Good Friday Agreement was signed, annual attempts by the Orange Order to march through the area triggered unrest across the British-run region until the route was banned in 1998.

The standoff has become a political crisis in Northern Ireland, affecting the region’s power-sharing government.

For more than a decade, Yemen has been facing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world.

The latest round of fighting between the government and the Houthis is worsening the suffering of millions of people.

The United Nations migration agency says it is alarmed by the speed of the displacement.

So, how difficult is it for aid agencies to operate in Yemen?

And how much further can the situation deteriorate?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Abdusattor Esoev – Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration in Yemen

Hisham Al-Omeisy – Senior Yemen Advisor at the European Institute of Peace

Ammar Al-Asaadi – Programme Manager at ZOA, an international relief and recovery organisation

Colombian President Abelardo De la Espriella had promised closer ties with Israel on the campaign trail.

Israel has announced that Colombia will open an embassy in Jerusalem, becoming the latest country to establish a diplomatic mission in the disputed city claimed as a capital by Israelis and Palestinians. Most countries have their embassies in Israel in Tel Aviv.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Thursday the Latin American country’s embassy would open next week as he touted expanding relations with the region.

“Next Wednesday, we are going to inaugurate … the Colombian embassy,” Saar told attendees at a conference in Jerusalem.

An official at the Colombian Foreign Ministry in Bogota told AFP news agency the country’s Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar would travel to Jerusalem on Sunday ahead of the opening.

Colombian President Abelardo De la Espriella, who was sworn in as president in August, promised close relations with Israel during his election campaign. When he came into office, he restored diplomatic ties between Colombia and Israel. Colombia had previously severed ties with the country over Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

The announcement comes as a small but growing list of countries has opted to route their diplomatic ties with Israel through Jerusalem.

Since 2018, the US, Guatemala, Paraguay, Kosovo, Honduras, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Nauru and Somaliland, which has been recognised as an independent entity only by Israel, have opened embassies in the city.

Other countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel have located their embassies in Tel Aviv, as Jerusalem is not recognised by the international community as Israel’s capital.

“We will work hard because this is the diplomatic battle over the truth. And the truth is, Jerusalem was always the capital of one nation,” Saar said, dismissing Palestinian claims to the capital.

The Israeli minister said the Democratic Republic of the Congo would open its embassy in Jerusalem “very soon” and hinted at another opening.

“I think that with the possible results in Brazil, they might have the same move,” he said after right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro won the first round in the country’s presidential election.

Protesters in Colombia took to the streets of Bogota on Wednesday to rally against the new far-right government’s policy towards Israel, including the decision to open the Jerusalem embassy.

“When diplomatic relations with Israel were broken off, the message was that we would not be a nation complicit in their atrocities,” Nicolas Isaza, who took part in the protest, told Al Jazeera.

“Today our government is no longer drawing a line against the atrocities being committed in Palestine,” he added.

Ukraine says it has received proposals from India, Turkiye, Egypt and the United States to broker talks with Russia. The offers come as the two adversaries escalate attacks on each other’s energy and port infrastructure with their war now in its fifth year.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha revealed the four proposals at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday and singled out New Delhi’s. “The most comprehensive is India’s proposal,” he said, adding that India had signalled a willingness to play a role for the first time.

None of the proposals aims to end the war. Each seeks a narrower truce, covering energy facilities, ports or commercial shipping in the Black Sea.

Here’s what we know:

What is India proposing?

India has not made its plan public. Quoting unnamed sources, however, Indian media have reported it has three parts. According to the Hindustan Times, it would aim to protect infrastructure, keep grain and energy supplies moving through Black Sea ports, and ensure the safety of commercial shipping.

The first part – mutually halting strikes on energy facilities and ports – matches what Kyiv has been demanding. Sybiha said any deal must be a complete energy truce that covers port infrastructure as well.

The second part builds on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which Turkiye and the United Nations mediated in 2022 but Russia abandoned in 2023.

The third part, protecting merchant ships and their crews, is particularly important to India because Indian sailors have been killed or harmed on Black Sea routes.

The sources were quoted as saying India’s plan goes further than the other three proposals because it covers infrastructure and shipping together. A Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that it incorporates elements of the Turkish, Egyptian and US initiatives. The Kyiv Post reported that Sybiha also described the plan as addressing a possible ceasefire along the front lines, although other accounts said he gave no specifics.

The proposal likely took shape during Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s first visit to Ukraine last month and in a later meeting with Sybiha at the UN General Assembly in New York, also in September. Jaishankar said New Delhi was “trying to be helpful, starting with the Black Sea safety of shipping issue”.

What do we know about the Turkish and Egyptian proposals?

Very little. Neither Ankara nor Cairo has published details. Both reportedly focus on keeping Black Sea grain supplies moving by suspending attacks on commercial shipping. Some reports said the two countries proposed a grain truce jointly while others described two separate plans.

Turkiye has done this before. With the UN, it steered the 2022 grain deal, one of the few narrow truces of the war to hold for any length of time. Ankara and the UN are now organising new Black Sea talks with a round planned for October.

Beyond its Black Sea focus, almost nothing is known about Egypt’s proposal. Its interest, however, is clear: Egypt relies on Ukraine for nearly one-third of its grain supplies.

What is the US pitching?

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Washington has proposed three steps: a mutual halt to energy strikes, a reopening of the grain corridor and a trilateral meeting with Ukraine and Russia, possibly in Abu Dhabi.

The latest effort began in early September when US President Donald Trump’s envoys visited Kyiv and Moscow and secured an agreement in principle for a trilateral meeting. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on September 5 while Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev visited the US twice in September.

The trilateral meeting has since been pushed back. It had been expected to take place in the United Arab Emirates in early October. Washington now wants it in late October, and people close to the talks blamed the delay on Russia.

Washington has also invited Putin to the Group of 20 summit in Miami, Florida, in December. “We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. The Kremlin said no decision has been made.

At the same time, the US is applying pressure to try to end the war. Trump recently signed a law giving him sweeping powers to sanction buyers of Russian energy.

He has also called on Ukraine to stop targeting Russian diesel facilities amid a diesel prices crisis in the US, where Trump faces tricky midterm elections next month. “Mr Zelenskyy has to do one thing,” he said on September 13. “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia.” This drew much criticism that Trump instead should focus his comments on Russia, which began the war with its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

He is reportedly sceptical about his own government’s latest diplomatic initiative. People familiar with his thinking have told US media that he doubted Putin would agree to an energy truce before winter.

How have Russia and Ukraine responded?

Sybiha said Ukraine would agree to a truce but with conditions. It would accept an energy and Black Sea shipping ceasefire, but only as a combined package, he said.

He added that Kyiv is also open to an unconditional ceasefire along the current front lines. Zelenskyy backs the US-proposed meeting but stressed it needs “not only Ukraine but also the Russian side” to support it.

Moscow has been warm in tone but has committed to nothing. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia would welcome India’s peace efforts while Putin said Modi has “very good ideas aimed at finding mutually acceptable solutions”, but he did not elaborate.

In private, Moscow appears to have said no. A Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that Russia has rejected India’s proposal although this has not been confirmed publicly. Ukraine’s agriculture minister said Russia had rejected every Black Sea ceasefire option the mediators have presented.

Why are Global South countries becoming more involved?

Food supplies, the lives of their citizens and fuel prices are all at stake.

“I think it’s clear to many countries that this war is not a localised war, but it’s a war that has these global consequences,” Fredrik Wesslau, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera.

Russia and Ukraine account for more than a quarter of global wheat shipments, and their attacks on each other’s ports helped push wheat futures to a three-year high in August.

Sailors from countries with no links to the war are being killed. At least five Indian seafarers have died in strikes on Black Sea shipping in recent months along with seven Azerbaijani crew members since June. On Saturday, a Russian strike on a Liberian-flagged ship in a port in the Odesa region killed a crew member. Ukraine, for its part, has targeted tankers it links to Russia’s shadow fleet since July.

The energy war is also being felt in global markets. Ukraine reported more than 194 drone attacks on Russian refineries this year, hitting all 11 of the largest. Bloomberg News estimated that Russia’s fuel output has fallen by more than 30 percent. With Middle East supply already down as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran, global diesel markets are more exposed to the loss of Russian supplies.

Maximilian Hess, a nonresident senior fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said energy is at least as important as grain in driving the diplomatic efforts. He pointed to a “clear frustration” among many countries over high oil prices, which reflect both the Russia-Ukraine war and the crisis in the Middle East.

“Of course, Ukrainian grain is important for them, but the oil-price factor is important there as well,” he told Al Jazeera. “I think it is those commodity-shock concerns that are pushing them to re-embrace this rhetoric, rather than anything else.”

What are the challenges ahead?

Every previous attempt at diplomacy has failed to end the Russia-Ukraine war. A US-brokered, 30-day energy truce in early 2025 collapsed amid accusations of violations on both sides. At talks in Istanbul in May 2025, Zelenskyy complained that Russia had sent a junior delegation with no authority to sign a ceasefire.

In August 2025, a meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska yielded no results despite Trump claiming to be close to a deal ahead of it.

Wesslau said Washington’s efforts have faltered partly because Trump – who had boasted he would end the war within 24 hours of taking office in January 2025 – has appeared unwilling to put real pressure on Moscow. “The Russians see this, and they conclude that they can continue this war,” he said.

Deep distrust remains. Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said: “Putin never keeps agreements.”

Moscow’s actions on the ground suggest it is in no hurry, Wesslau said  “They’re trying to strangle Ukraine, strangle the economy, and make it unliveable ahead of the winter,” he said. He added that Moscow’s occasionally softer rhetoric was aimed mainly at the Trump administration and “has always proved to be a bluff”.

Russia’s terms are another obstacle. Hess said Moscow’s demands have not softened at any point since it launched the war and at times have grown. Putin has demanded all of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, including territory Russian forces have never controlled, as well as a buffer zone in northern Ukraine. Moscow is also seeking sanctions relief and military concessions for any Black Sea deal.

“I don’t think it’s a question of who actually mediates. I think it’s really a question of the calculation in Moscow,” Wesslau said. “Fundamentally, the problem is that Putin doesn’t want a ceasefire or a peace agreement. He wants to continue the war. He believes that he can win.”

Analysts said only greater economic pressure is likely to change that calculation.

Wesslau said if Europe can close down Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers, “this would be a massive blow to Russia’s war economy.” Hess said the country best placed to shift things quickly is China, rather than the US, by cutting its purchases of Russian oil. However, he added: “I don’t think Beijing is interested in doing so.”

Hess said that unless there is an outside shock, the war “is much more likely to last another four years than another four months”.

Sanaa, Yemen – The Yemeni government’s new military offensive against the Houthis is testing more than the balance of forces in the country – it is also testing whether the government can persuade powerful tribes in Houthi-controlled areas that the balance of power is beginning to shift.

For years, many of the tribes hostile or wary of the Iran-backed Houthis have stopped short of openly confronting the movement, deterred by their military strength and by previous failed uprisings. Those same tribes are now looking to the internationally recognised government’s newly-activated frontlines – on the Red Sea coast, Marib and al-Jawf primarily – to see if the limited advances made since the Dawn of Yemen military operation launch this week can turn into sustained gains.

The offensive by the Saudi Arabia-backed government forces follows major Houthi gains in September, when the armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God) swept across the country’s Red Sea coast. The Houthis captured vital trade corridors, including the port city of Mocha and territory around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

While airstrikes have inflicted losses on Houthi forces over the past few days, pushing towards Houthi strongholds where the group has been entrenched since the war started in 2014, including Sanaa, Saada, and Amran, remains a formidable challenge.

With the government declaring an all-out war on the Houthis, pledging to recapture Sanaa, tribal distrust of the government may diminish, prompting tribes to shift positions at the right time, experts say. The role of the tribes could therefore prove critical to the government’s ability to advance deeper into Houthi-controlled territories.

On Monday, Marib governorate – the government’s stronghold in the north – saw a large tribal rally attended by tribal sheikhs and local anti-Houthi fighters from tribes such as the Jadan from Marib, Nihm from Sanaa and other allied tribes.

The rally announced a general mobilisation to support the armed forces in the battle to “restore the state and topple the Houthi coup”.

“If this tribal support translates into actual mobilisation and sustained participation in the battle, tribes will help government troops advance toward Houthi-controlled areas and the Houthi heartland, including Sanaa,” said Adel Dashela, a researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies.

Over the past decade of war in Yemen, tribes have repeatedly mobilised against the Houthis at a local level, but deep divisions and a lack of sustained outside backing have prevented the emergence of a unified tribal front. Nevertheless, tribes can potentially be a key source of manpower and influence for the government.

“Tribal fighters remain indispensable to any future campaign against the Houthis. But to be effective, their military engagement must occur through formalised state and coalition command structures, rather than as an independent vanguard,” Dashela said.

‘Wait for the right time’

Tribes in Yemen do not want to risk confronting Houthi forces without support, and they “wait for the right time” to act, Abdulsalam Mohammed, chairman of the Yemeni Abaad Studies and Research Center, said.

“The tribes seek a powerful state, and once they find the state reliable, they can side with it,” Mohammed said.

He added that tribes do not want to repeat mistakes made by tribes that had rebelled against the Houthis, and then not received enough support from the government.

“Those tribes revolted against the Houthis, and they were crushed amid the absence of the government’s effective role,” Mohammed said.

In January 2019, fighting broke out between the Houthis and the Hajoor tribe in northwest Yemen’s Hajjah, lasting several weeks. The Houthis eventually captured the Hajoor areas in March of the same year.

At the time, Saudi Arabia dropped food, medical supplies and weapons to besieged Hajoor fighters, but this did not prevent the tribe’s defeat by the Houthis.

Mohammed said that even in areas where the Houthis have local support, some tribes could gradually shift their allegiance towards the government, if they saw it as serving their interest.

“Not all tribes fighting for the Houthis are staunch supporters. Their motivations range from pragmatism to ideological loyalty and material necessity,” Mohammed said.

‘A friend of the tribe’

Over the past decade, the Houthis have weakened traditional tribal power structures in areas under their control, co-opting some leaders and replacing others with loyalists. They have defeated tribal challenges, and have withstood not only conflict with the Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia, but also bombing by the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. All of that has reinforced a perception among tribes that the Houthi military capability had become “invincible”.

A tribal sheikh in northern Yemen, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told Al Jazeera that the Houthi military “supremacy” in the country over a decade-long war has “dwarfed the political and military role of the tribe”.

“Before the Houthi takeover of power, the government was like a friend of the tribe,” he said. “Today, the tribe is subordinate to the Houthis.”

The Houthis, according to him, used three tactics to tighten their grip on territories under their control: military force, financial incentives and their public identification with the Palestinian cause.

“The Houthis used military force if negotiations or financial incentives failed to win the tribes’ backing. Moreover, the Houthi military support for Palestine has earned the group additional popular and tribal support,” said the tribal figure.

As the Houthis built up enormous military and financial power over the past few years, the tribal sheikh said tribes acting alone could not match the group’s power. He also said that the government’s reported gains on some frontlines could not by themselves be taken as a sign that the Houthis were collapsing.

“A concrete government advance on the battlefields would reassure some Yemeni tribes that the Houthis have lost ground,” the tribal sheikh said. “Once this materialises, anti-Houthi and neutral tribes can feel confident and begin confronting the group.”

Thursday marks 30 days since Israel’s foreign minister ordered the closure of the UK consulate in occupied East Jerusalem.

Workers at the UK consulate in occupied East Jerusalem have removed its signage as the Israeli shutdown deadline arrives, further damaging strained ties between allies.

Journalists from the Reuters news agency saw ‌workers remove a plaque reading “British Consulate General” from the building on Thursday, as well as another sign for its consular section. The UK flag was still flying over the building.

Thursday marks 30 days since Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar ordered the closure of the consulate in occupied East Jerusalem. The move was in response to the UK’s wave of sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements, including a ban on importing goods made there.

The United Nations and most countries consider the settlements illegal under international law. Israel disputes this.

The United Kingdom threatened to expel 27 Israeli diplomats if Israel proceeded to close the consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, according to unverified Israeli media reports.

The consulate has not responded to an immediate request for comment.

Israel has been adamant the consulate will close even as the UK has sought to keep it open, including sending the country’s top national security adviser to Israel last week for talks.

The UK’s presence in the city dates back almost 200 years, long before the state of Israel was established in 1948. The closure order does not affect the UK’s embassy in Tel Aviv, which handles diplomatic relations with Israel’s government.

The consulate, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, handles the UK’s relations with Palestinians in Jerusalem, as well as in ‌the occupied West ⁠Bank and Gaza. It also provides consular services to Palestinians.

The UK Foreign Office on Wednesday declined to comment when asked whether the consulate was still operating or if diplomats working there had returned to the UK.

Despite the current strains, the ⁠UK and Israel are close economic, security and intelligence partners.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said there were no casualties after small arms fire targeted a border post.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) says one of its posts on the Lebanon-Israel border was targeted by small arms fire, with no casualties reported.

The UN force said the incident occurred on Wednesday morning with several rounds of small arms fire targeting a UNIFIL position near Kfar Shouba along the UN-drawn border with Israel, known as the Blue Line.

“Such deliberate attacks gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers,” UNIFIL said in a statement, adding that it was investigating the incident.

Under pressure from the United States and Israel, the UN Security Council decided earlier this year to set December 31 as the end of the mandate for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

UNIFIL was initially created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion, and its mandate has been renewed annually since then.

The mission was expanded after the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Proponents say it remains important to maintaining a demilitarised buffer between the two sides along the volatile Israeli and Lebanese border.

Israel has long accused UNIFIL of failing to prevent threats posed by Hezbollah and has increasingly pushed for the end of its mission since cross-border fighting escalated in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

UNIFIL currently has 7,500 peacekeepers from around 50 countries operating in Southern Lebanon.

Last month, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam pressed the UN on the need to “avert the vacuum” that would be caused by withdrawing the mission from the country’s south without a viable replacement.

Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a June memorandum of understanding in the US-Iran war. Lebanon and Israel concluded a US-sponsored framework agreement later that month.

The Israel-Lebanon deal involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon’s south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in test areas known as “pilot zones”.

Eritrea dismisses allegation as Ethiopia’s pretext for more war.

Eritrean soldiers have been seen driving through a northern town inside Ethiopia, witnesses tell the Reuters news agency, days after the neighbouring countries severed ties.

At least two witnesses told Reuters they saw “dozens” of Eritrean soldiers drive through Adigrat in two trucks on Wednesday. The town is located 25km (15 miles) south of the border with Eritrea.

The witnesses said they could identify the soldiers as Eritrean by their off-white camouflage uniforms.

Another Adigrat resident who was not in town at the time said family members had told him they had also seen Eritrean troops, according to Reuters, which could not independently verify their accounts.

“The Eritrean army has entered Tigray in uniform, equipped with heavy weaponry,” said Gebreigziabher Beyene, commander of the Tigray Peace Force, a pro-government militia that has fought alongside the federal army.

“This force is being struck by drones,” he said, adding Eritrea was “deliberately deploying its forces so that the fighting takes place inside Tigray rather than spilling into Eritrea”.

Last week, the chief administrator in Ethiopia’s northeastern Afar region said Eritrean troops were fighting in the area, but Reuters was unable to confirm the claim.

In a statement on X, Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Meskel did not deny that troops had crossed the border, but said Ethiopia’s government was creating “a fallacious narrative of ‘self-defense’ to rationalise and camouflage its war of aggression”.

If confirmed, it would mark the first time Eritrean forces have been seen inside Ethiopia since the renewal of fighting between Ethiopian forces and a seven-group armed alliance, including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), on September 23.

Ethiopia has accused Eritrea, as well as Egypt and Sudan of backing the armed alliance which is fighting to remove the government. All three countries have denied involvement.

Eritrea announced it was severing ties with Ethiopia on Thursday after Addis Ababa announced it would close its embassy in Asmara and expel 10 Eritrean diplomats.

In a statement, Eritrea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Ethiopia’s actions had left it with “no option but to reciprocate in kind and sever all diplomatic ties with Ethiopia”.

On Monday, Ethiopian forces captured Tigray’s regional capital Mekelle, days after the TPLF confirmed that it had withdrawn from the city and moved its regional administration “temporarily” to another location.

It happened as Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was sworn in for another five-year term, during which he insisted that his landlocked country must have access to the Red Sea.

On the same day, Eritrea joined Somalia, Sudan and Egypt in issuing a joint declaration calling for a political and peaceful solution to the war in Ethiopia.

The declaration appeared to push back against several policies pursued by Ethiopia in recent years, highlighting widening rifts between Addis Ababa and its neighbours.

London, United Kingdom – Claire, 52, lives in the Scottish countryside, not far from Edinburgh.

She describes her work as “low-level administration” and does not use social media. She lives a quiet life with her dog, reading and baking in her spare time. Until three years ago, she did not consider herself political.

Now, she faces 14 years in prison for her suspected show of support for Palestine Action.

Claire, who requested Al Jazeera withhold her surname, is one of the many people in the United Kingdom who, until three years ago, did not consider themselves activists.

But as the genocide in Gaza was livestreamed, many have rallied around the cause of Palestinian solidarity.

Organisations like Defend Our Juries, Artists for Free Palestine, Workers for Free Palestine, and virtually every other insert-profession-here for Palestine have cropped up across the UK.

In the summer of 2023, Claire read I Shall Not Hate by Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian physician in Gaza who lost his three daughters to Israeli tank fire. Not long after finishing the book, Claire watched the aftermath of October 7 unfold online.

“For me, there wasn’t a delay between ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ and then lies,” she told Al Jazeera.

She went to a pro-Palestine rally on Armistice Day, calling for a ceasefire, and “was horrified” by then Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who called the protests “hate marches”.

“I was determined not to ignore [Palestine],” she says.

She continued to march, writing letters to lawmakers and fundraising for various Palestinian aid programmes.

In August 2025, she began publicly protesting against the proscription of Palestine Action with Defend Our Juries, the group behind a campaign of civil disobedience aimed at lifting the ban. To date, more than 3,000 people have been arrested for showing support for the pressure group that was banned in 2025.

Earlier this year, police arrived at her door to arrest Claire under Sections 11 and 12 of the Terrorism Act: “Being a member of a proscribed organisation and encouraging others to join a proscribed organisation.”

“I’ve never been in trouble before,” she says. “I’m not backing down.”

Marji, 70, lives in Colchester and had a similar feeling after hearing Braverman’s words.

“I had never been to a protest in my life,” she says, until she carried a “Ceasefire Now” sign at an Armistice Day march in 2023.

“I knew it wasn’t a ‘hate march’.”

Marji’s father served in the British Army, and her father-in-law was in the Royal Air Force and taken as a prisoner-of-war in Japan during World War II.

“Our parents’ generation fought fascism,” she says. “Now Britain is breaking British law.”

Marji, who also requested to be identified only by her first name, had a successful career in financial services, while her husband held an executive-level role.

They are now retired grandparents.

In July, they were arrested in Westminster under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act and are now waiting to see if charges will be laid.

“We’ve had to decide … is it safe to have grandchildren here? When the police could come to the door?”

Her children remain supportive.

“I think they’re proud of us, even if there’s been fear on their part.”

Across sectors, from the arts to railways, financial services and administration, Britons have risked professional and legal repercussions for the sake of Palestinian solidarity.

Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and what they see as the UK’s role in the conflict. They have urged the UK government to cease all arms sales to Israel and cut diplomatic and trade ties as the genocide goes on in Gaza and violence escalates in the occupied West Bank.

This week, tensions have flared again as the Metropolitan Police warned pro-Palestine protesters against rallying on the three-year anniversary of October 7. The force said on Wednesday that five people were arrested outside the Board of Deputies of British Jews in north London for “inciting racial hatred, involving allegedly shouting or chanting slogans calling for Intifada”.

Israel’s latest war on the Gaza Strip – it has waged several since 1948 – began after Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, attacked southern Israel. About 1,200 people were killed that day, while more than 240 were taken captive, including Israeli soldiers, citizens and some foreign nationals.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s relentless bombardment has killed more than 74,000 people and  devastated Gaza, making life for survivors nearly impossible. The small territory is now home to the largest group of child amputees in modern history.

“The narrative that we had grown up with was wrong – that the people who were there and living peacefully have been cast as ‘terrorists’, when they have suffered terrorism,” Marji says.

Both Marji and Claire spoke about their belief that the UK government is “complicit” in the genocide.

“The government participation, complicity, and their lies. Their gaslighting makes people more determined,” says Claire.

As the legal dangers and rhetorical backlash mount against pro-Palestine protesters, Marji, whose maternal grandmother was Jewish, is only more resolved: “We knew that saying ‘stop the genocide’ doesn’t mean you’re an anti-Semite. We’re not stupid, we can differentiate between Jewish people and people who support illegal occupation.”

Workers for Free Palestine, which includes a range of trade unions, formed in late 2023 and soon began holding protests.

“Many people oppose how their labour is used to prop up an apartheid state, but have been told there is nothing they can do as individuals,” a spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

Many workers are nervous to speak out against their workplace’s role in producing weapons, their investments in Israel, or other ways of enabling Israel’s war.

“Many are unfamiliar with their rights as workers and are afraid of the repercussions of speaking up – and these repercussions can be very real,” the spokesperson said.

Still, for some, there is not just resolve but optimism.

“Doing nothing makes us feel sick, angry and powerless,” says Marji. “I hope people will wake up and see how our own civil liberties … are being eroded to protect the interests of Israel.”

Rescuers halt operation off the coast with no survivors found, following a Black Sea attack that also damaged a second vessel.

Bulgarian authorities have ended search operations after confirming no survivors were found following a drone strike that sank a ship off the country’s coast.

Drones hit two commercial vessels early on Tuesday as attacks on Black Sea shipping increase amid an intensifying Russia-Ukraine war. One caught fire, and the other sank.

“There is no trace of the sailors,” Rumen Nikolov, the head of the country’s Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Centre, told reporters on Wednesday.

The search stopped late on Tuesday and would not continue, he added.

Eighteen Turkish and Indian crew members were rescued from the ship that caught fire, but the crew members from the vessel that sank remain missing.

Authorities have not said how many people are missing, but according to the Maritime.bg specialised website, 10 people were on board the ship.

Nikolov said the ⁠incident occurred in a so-called “responsible search and rescue zone” and not in the country’s territorial waters, which extend to 12 nautical miles off the coast.

“What was found from the sunken ship was one overturned boat, three life rafts and debris from the ship’s equipment that was floating on the surface of the sea,” he said.

Asked whether any debris from the drones had been recovered, Nikolov said: “I have no information about drone debris.”

Prime Minister Rumen Radev has described the attack as “absolutely unacceptable”.

European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen has also condemned the incident.

Bulgarian authorities have said they are not yet able to determine the origin of the drones.

A distress beacon signal from the ship that sank was received at 2:54am on Tuesday (23:54 GMT on Monday), while the distress signal from the other ship was received at 3:23am (00:23 GMT), Nikolov said.

Both commercial ships were managed by Turkiye-based companies, according to the Equasis merchant shipping database.

They were hit about 80 nautical miles (150km) east of the Bulgarian coastal town of Byala.

The strikes came a day after another ship caught fire and sank off the Romanian coast on Monday, killing two people. Ukraine blamed Russia for the drone attack.

Al-Awsaj, occupied West Bank – On September 23, weeks before Israel’s parliamentary elections, ministers and lawmakers gathered on an occupied West Bank hilltop to inaugurate a new settlement, Metzoke Eretz, illegal under international law. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich used the ceremony to salute the settler outpost that made the eventual settlement possible.

“The first pioneering settlers who were here on the farm… we will lift them up as our greatest joy,” Smotrich said. “It shows that the method works: establish a farm, seize the land, prepare it, turn it into a community, move to the next point. There are many, many such heroes – those who prove they are not doing real estate. They are doing Zionism.”

Metzoke Eretz was previously an outpost – the name given to the Jewish settlements illegal even under Israeli law – called Netzah Harel, established in 2023 in the middle of al-Muarrajat, a Bedouin community on private Palestinian land east of Ramallah. Alia Mleihat, 29, and others from the community remember those settlers well. “Of course, this outpost played a major role in displacing the Palestinian Bedouin communities in al-Muarrajat and the areas east of Ramallah,” said Alia, now living in a tent in al-Awsaj, a few kilometres away, after her forced displacement in July 2025. “[The Netzah Harel settlers] took part in every attack the settlers carried out on families, and confiscated sheep, under the protection of the Israeli police and army.”

Dror Etkes, founder of Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, said Smotrich’s description of his “method” was spot-on – except for one omission. “The political discourse skips the [Palestinian] expulsion chapter,” said Etkes, suggesting Smotrich and other politicians avoid doing so explicitly to avoid potential scrutiny from international criminal courts. “They want it to happen, and they know that it happens, and they let it happen.”

Haaretz reported that Metzoke Eretz is one of 19 outposts legalised by the Netanyahu government after nearby Palestinians were violently expelled.

‘Not a single moment of joy’

Jamal Mleihat, Alia’s 45-year-old uncle, sits with eight relatives nestled inside a bare concrete-block house on the ridge in al-Awsaj, with his daughter Sewar hanging off his lap.

Below the ridge, rows of young trees climb a cultivated slope towards a factory at the foot of the hills. The ridge itself is rock and dust, now home to about 25 families from al-Muarrajat, among others forcibly displaced in the past three years.

“Before October 7 [2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent genocidal war on Gaza], we were in the pastures – no harassment, we moved around freely,” said Jamal, a father of seven. “We had healthcare. We had a school. We had water in the same encampment. Life was a million times better than this.”

Since October 7, the Israeli government has stepped up its raids on the occupied West Bank, while settlers have largely been given free rein to pursue a pogrom against Palestinians, with little pushback from within Israel.

Just below Jamal’s shelter, alone on a slope, Muhammad Ghawanmeh lives with his wife and seven children. His toilet does not work; he relies on water tanks and has almost no electricity. The rocky track to the Mleihats’ area is too steep to drive. He built a fence around the house after recent settler attacks, and now faces constant drone surveillance from Israeli settlers.

Ghawanmeh is from Ras Ein al-Auja, which had been the largest Bedouin community in the central Jordan Valley – so robust that humanitarian coordinators told Al Jazeera in October 2023 that the village’s displacement was unlikely. Instead, its more than 600 Palestinian inhabitants experienced the largest single-community expulsion of Bedouins in the last three years, after repeated attacks by settlers from four surrounding outposts.

“From my childhood, the land was open. The water was open. We were living happily. We’d graze 10 kilometres, 15 kilometres with the sheep, and come back,” he said. “Today we can’t go 500 metres from the house.”

His flock has shrunk from about 300 to roughly 100 physically thinning sheep, which he now must buy fodder for, instead of letting them graze on the land, which he now says is largely forbidden by Israeli settlers and the army.

‘Nothing was left except this’

A few hundred metres beyond Ghawanmeh’s fence, a white trailer and a few containers mark an Israeli outpost, established about six months ago on a hill overlooking Highway 90 and the displaced families along the ridge. Two months ago, Ghawanmeh said, soldiers came to his house and told him he could no longer pass to the highway. The settlers, he said, “are with the army”.

“You leave this place, go to another one, and it follows you – the same problem, unsolved,” Ghawanmeh said. “Every three months, there’s a displacement operation.”

Al-Awsaj barely existed as an inhabited place before, but Bedouin from different depopulated communities have now converged on this barren ridge, overlooking land largely declared – again – off-limits to grazing.

Allegra Pacheco, head of the West Bank Protection Consortium, calls al-Awsaj “basically a refugee camp, an internally displaced camp, that we see in other countries. But here, there’s no safe space. Wherever people like in al-Awsaj go, they’re chased by settlers or their tents are demolished by the Israelis.”

“It’s been very painful to get the authorities, the Palestinian authorities, the international leaders, to recognise that this is a mass displacement happening in front of us, and people have nowhere to go,” she said.

Project of forced transfer

In the West Bank, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) counts at least 130 Palestinian communities fully or partly displaced by settler attacks and related restrictions since January 2023, and more than 6,400 people uprooted. According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, since October 7, 2023 there have been almost 15,000 attacks by settlers, with 66 Palestinians killed by settlers. OCHA says the rate of settler attacks increased from about three a day before October 7, 2023, to almost seven per day this year.

The increase in displacement after October 2023 can also be seen in the numbers for that year. Nearly 80 percent of all Palestinians displaced by settler violence in 2023 were uprooted after October 7.

A report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot found that Israeli farm outposts had seized roughly 18 percent of the West Bank by the end of 2025. “We’re talking about a land area bigger than the size of the Gaza Strip altogether,” Pacheco said.

“What we’re seeing is a continuous, sustained project of forced transfer and mass destruction,” she said. “Israeli authority demolitions and destructions by the Israeli army, and Israeli civilians – armed groups – carrying out destructions and sowing fear to push people out.”

Israeli NGO B’Tselem’s September report, “The Elimination Project”, links this to Smotrich’s 2017 “Decisive Plan”, which offers Palestinians three choices: live under Jewish supremacy, leave, or face violent repression.

“The Smotrich Plan has been implemented,” Pacheco said. “He laid out exactly what is going on now, and he’s very proud of his success. He now wants to transfer that success to [other areas of the West Bank], and also in the Galilee [an area in Israel with a large population of Palestinian citizens of Israel]. Wherever there are Palestinians living, he wants to make life so difficult that they will leave.”

With Smotrich exercising broad powers over the West Bank through the Settlement Administration within the Ministry of Defence, and leaders in the Israeli West Bank military command increasingly coming from far-right, settler backgrounds themselves, Palestinians across the West Bank describe a deepening symbiosis of military, police, administration and settlers in exacting Palestinian dispossession. “They all work together, like a cell, one completing the other,” said Jamal Mleihat. “The army, the police, the settlers – they’re the ones who displace, they’re the ones who establish the settlement, they’re the ones who take part in the thefts, in everything. And the army covers for them.”

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli authorities for comment on this piece, but has yet to receive a response.

Worse future

Smotrich has withheld part or all of the tax revenues Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority – roughly 60 percent of its income – for much of the past three years. The PA now struggles to provide the most basic of services. In al-Awsaj and elsewhere, that means classrooms that do not open. “The government school is shut down today, no salaries,” Ghawanmeh said.

There is no school bus; families pay for private transport, and “one day they study, one day they don’t, depending on the mood of the driver,” Jamal said. It has left the displaced alone on an inhospitable patch of rock.

“Palestinians have no protection in the West Bank,” said Pacheco. “They are completely vulnerable to assault, attempted murder, arson, invasion of their homes. The Israeli army is supposed to protect them and doesn’t. The Palestinian Authority can’t come in, and the international community is not protecting them.”

“We started to feel there’s no safety anywhere,” Ghawanmeh said. “Fear. Terror. Persecution. Ethnic cleansing. That’s what we feel.”

Amid the dispossession, Ghawanmeh looks out at the unwelcoming land he knows will not be his family’s refuge – only another transient stop. He sees his own brother now only once every month and a half or two. “The threats to Bedouin life have almost become extinction,” he said. “We now live in enclaves, separated.”

“For three years now, the day that’s passing is better than the one that’s coming,” Ghawanmeh said. “Yesterday is better than today. Today is better than tomorrow.”

Eastern-based parliament votes to replace longtime speaker with Al-Salhin Abdelnabi al-Obeidi.

Libya’s eastern-based House of Representatives has elected a new speaker, ending Aguila Saleh’s 12-year tenure amid growing discontent among lawmakers over his leadership.

Legislators in the 170-member House voted on Tuesday to replace Saleh with Al-Salhin Abdelnabi al-Obeidi, the parliament’s spokesperson announced on X.

The vote came a day after 98 members of the House approved a new system limiting the speaker and deputy speakers to a single 12-month term.

The change ended an arrangement that had been in place since the chamber’s first leadership was elected in 2014.

“There was significant discontent among MPs with the previous leadership over numerous errors,” lawmaker Jebree Oheida told the Reuters news agency. “We tried to engage with the leadership to address these issues, but to no avail. Among these errors were decisions made without consulting MPs.”

The vote was overseen by Second Deputy Speaker Misbah Douma, according to the Libya Observer.

Saleh has previously rejected the proceedings, saying the initial vote to limit the speaker’s term was “not official and had no legal effect”, according to the outlet.  He had also announced that he had cancelled the session he had called for Tuesday.

The developments come as Libya remains divided politically and militarily between the United Nations-recognised government in Tripoli led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, and a rival administration in the east backed by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar’s camp relies in particular on the parliament, which sits in the eastern city of Benghazi under their control.

Saleh has long been considered a staunch ally of the Haftar clan, but analysts said he appeared to be weakened as Haftar’s sons, in particular Saddam Haftar, consolidated their positions.

“Agila Saleh appears to be the latest casualty of Saddam Haftar’s drive to centralise decision-making in eastern Libya and bulldoze his way into a political role,” said Emadeddin Badi, an analyst at the London-based Chatham House.

Al-Obeidi, who comes from the same tribe as Saleh, represents the eastern city of Tobruk and has chaired parliament’s Libyan-Turkish friendship committee.

The House on Tuesday also elected Tarek al-Ashtar and Mesbah Douma as first and second deputy speakers, respectively.

Their election follows the signing of a landmark agreement by representatives of Libya’s rival political camps in Tripoli in August that could see presidential and legislative elections held within two years.

Mediated by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), the “4+4 committee” agreement attempts to resolve recurring legal and institutional disputes that have crippled the nation since the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The United States is pursuing a separate reunification plan for the oil and gas-rich North African country, led by Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and African affairs.

At least 10 civilians were killed in West Kordofan and 5,500 displaced in Blue Nile as clashes widened on Tuesday.

Sudan’s military chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has promised to seize “every inch” of territory under the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), rejecting negotiations to end three and a half years of war.

Al-Burhan made the comments on Tuesday while addressing a gathering in Village 5, located in the northern Sudanese locality of Merowe, according to the Sudan News Agency.

He said the “military option” would continue until the RSF was removed from Sudan.

The Sudanese army and the RSF have been fighting since April 2023 after leaders of the groups fell out over plans to integrate the paramilitary force into Sudan’s army. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced around 13 million, according to UN and international estimates.

Al-Burhan’s pledge to continue fighting came as 10 civilians were killed and several others were wounded in an attack by the RSF in Sudan’s West Kordofan state, according to a local charity group.

In a statement, the Dar Hamar Emergency Committee accused the RSF of multiple violations against civilians in Abu Ajal village in the southeastern countryside of En Nahud.

The RSF has been massing in West Kordofan as Sudan’s army advances towards the cities of En Nahud and Al Khuway after gains in neighbouring North Kordofan.

In Sudan’s Blue Nile state, more than 5,500 people were displaced from villages over three days amid deteriorating security, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, an envoy of US President Donald Trump said Sudanese parties must take the lead in talks to end the war.

In a post on X on Monday, Massad Boulos, the US senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, said peace could be achieved “through an inclusive Sudanese-owned and Sudanese-led national dialogue, transition toward a civilian-led government”.

The US State Department said last month that neither the Sudanese Armed Forces, the RSF, nor their respective leaders “represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan”.