Footage shows Israeli protesters blocking aid trucks at the Kerem Shalom crossing. They say Hamas broke ceasefire terms. WHO warns deliveries remain only a “fraction of what’s needed” and estimates $7 billion to rebuild Gaza’s shattered health system.
Published On 24 Oct 202524 Oct 2025
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Islamabad, Pakistan – Allah Meer’s parents were among the millions of Afghans who fled their country after the then-Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
His family settled in a refugee village in Kohat in northwestern Pakistan. That’s where Meer, now 45, was born. Meer says that more than 200 members of his extended family made the journey from Afghanistan to Pakistan, which has been their home ever since.
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Over the past two years, as Pakistan has moved to send back hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, the family has feared for its future, but managed to evade Islamabad’s dragnet.
Last week, the threat of expulsion hit home: Pakistan announced it would close all 54 Afghan refugee villages across the country as part of the campaign it began in 2023 to push out what it calls “illegal foreigners”. These include the villages in Kohat, where Meer and his family live.
“In my life, I visited Afghanistan only once, for two weeks in 2013. Apart from that, none of my family have ever gone back,” Meer told Al Jazeera. “How can I uproot everything when we were born here, lived here, married here, and buried our loved ones here?”
Amid heightened tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban, which returned to governing Afghanistan in 2021, families like Meer’s are caught in a vortex of uncertainty.
Fighting erupted between Afghan and Pakistani forces along the border earlier in October, pushing already strained relations into open hostility. On Sunday, officials from both sides met in Qatar’s capital, Doha, and signed a ceasefire agreement, with the next round of talks scheduled in Istanbul on October 25.
Yet, tensions remain high. And families like Meer’s fear that they could become diplomatic pawns in a border war between the neighbours.
Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghan refugees since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As civil war gripped Afghanistan and the Taliban first rose to power in 1996, successive waves of Afghans fled across the border.
After the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 following the September 11 attacks on the US, the Taliban’s fall prompted thousands of Afghans to return home. But their return was short-lived.
The Taliban’s stunning comeback in August 2021 triggered yet another exodus, when another 600,000 to 800,000 Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan.
However, as relations between Kabul and Islamabad soured during the past four years, Pakistan – which was once the Taliban’s principal patron – accused Afghanistan of harbouring armed groups responsible for the cross-border attacks. The government’s stance hardened towards Afghan refugees, even those who have lived in the country for decades – like Meer.
A father of 10, Meer earned a degree in education from a university in Peshawar, and now runs a vocational training project for Afghan refugee children backed by the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR.
Since 2006, the UNHCR has issued what are known as Proof of Registration (PoR) cards to document Afghan citizens living in Pakistan. These cards have allowed them to stay in Pakistan legally, giving them some freedom of movement, although this is restricted, as well as access to some public services, including bank accounts.
But from June 30 this year, the Pakistani government has stopped renewing PoR cards and has invalidated existing ones.
“We all possess the UNHCR-issued Proof of Residence cards, but now, with this current drive, I don’t know what will happen,” Meer said.
In 2017, Pakistan also started issuing Afghan Citizenship Cards (ACC) to undocumented Afghan nationals living in the country, giving them identification credentials to provide them with a temporary legal status.
But the ACC is not a protection against deportation any more.
According to the UNHCR, more than 1.5 million Afghans left Pakistan – voluntarily or forcibly – between the start of the campaign in 2023 and mid-October, 2025.
About 1.2 million PoR cardholders, 737,000 ACC holders and 115,000 asylum seekers remain in Pakistan, Qaiser Khan Afridi, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Pakistan, told Al Jazeera.
Pakistan’s tensions with the Taliban have added new precarity to their status.
“For over 45 years, Pakistan has shown extraordinary generosity by hosting millions of Afghan refugees,” Afridi said. “But we are deeply concerned by the government’s decision to de-notify refugee villages all over Pakistan and to push for returns [to Afghanistan].”
“Many of those affected have lived here for years, and now fear for their future. We urge that any return should be voluntary, gradual, and carried out with dignity and safety.”
Meer, who has volunteered for the UNHCR over the years, said that seven refugee villages in Kohat alone house more than 100,000 people. He accused both Pakistan and Afghanistan of using the refugee issue as political leverage.
“With the latest situation, our family elders have sat together to discuss options. We thought about sending some of our young men to Afghanistan to look for houses and means to do business, but the problem is, we have no connections there at all,” he said.
With his PoR card now invalidated by the Pakistani government, he has no recognised identity card, making it hard for him to access even medical facilities when his children need treatment for any illness.
“We are, for all practical purposes, considered illegal in a country that I and my children call home,” he said.
Pakistan’s plan to expel Afghan residents began in late 2023, amid a rise in rebe attacks. Since then, violence has surged, with 2025 shaping up to be the most violent year in a decade.
Pakistani authorities argue Afghan refugees pose a security risk, accusing the Taliban government of sheltering armed groups, a charge Kabul denies.
Two years ago, Pakistan’s then interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, alleged that 14 out of 24 suicide bombings in the country in 2023 were carried out by Afghan nationals. He did not provide any evidence to back his claim, and he did not clarify if the individuals were refugees living in Pakistan, or Afghan nationals who had crossed the porous border between the two countries.
But Meer fears that Afghan refugees in Pakistan will be distrusted back in Afghanistan, too, given the climate of animosity between the neighbours.
“We will be seen as Pakistanis, as enemies there, too,” he said.
Afridi, the UNHCR spokesperson, urged Pakistan to reconsider its repatriation drive.
“UNHCR calls on the government to apply measures to exempt Afghans with international protection needs from involuntary return,” he said.
“Pakistan has a proud history of hospitality, and it’s important to continue that tradition at this critical time,” he said.
Israel’s latest forced displacement order for Gaza City is one too many for Nahd al-Rafati. He is refusing to leave, weary of what seems like a never-ending cycle of expulsion.
Published On 11 Sep 202511 Sep 2025
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CRYSTAL PALACE fans have been struck by another bout of tough luck as the Premier League has rescheduled their upcoming match with Aston Villa
The match, scheduled to be held at Villa Park on Friday August 29th, has been moved to a 7pm Sunday kick-off.
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The move adds insult to injury following the confirmation of their demotion to the Europa Conference League for the upcoming season.
The rescheduling has been made to accommodate the second leg of the Eagles’ opening fixture of that competition.
They will face either Fredrikstad or Midtjylland on August 28th.
The decision has piled the misery on to fans who are only just coming to terms with the brutal rejection of their CAS appeal on Monday.
Some fans have taken to social media to voice their dissatisfaction with the impractical timing of the fixture.
One fan said: “7pm on a Sunday is outrageous.”
Another sarcastically pointed out the difficulties the fixture can bring travelling fans.
They said: “Oh brilliant. That will be fun with an early shift the next day.”
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The game’s 9pm finish will cause havoc for fans making the over-200-mile round trip from Selhurst Park to Villa Park.
The topsy-turvy week just keeps getting more conflicting for fans following their surprise victory over Liverpool to secure the Community Shield on Sunday.
Ecstasy made way for disappointment as news emerged of their defeat at CAS the following day.
Now news has emerged that Spurs have joined Arsenal in their pursuit of Palace talisman Eberechi Eze.
And now Liverpool have reportedly agreed terms with Palace captain Marc Guehi over a move to Anfield.
Should one or both of those deals go through, the club will be in dire shape ahead of their season opener at Chelsea this weekend.
India is expelling Bengali Muslims – stripping citizenship, detaining and deporting them to Bangladesh. The crackdown has spread nationwide, prompted by years of BJP propaganda and a news media all too willing to sell the story of a Muslim “enemy within”.
Contributors:
Shoaib Daniyal – Political editor, Scroll
Fatima Khan – Political journalist
Vaishna Roy – Editor, Frontline magazine
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta – Journalist and filmmaker
The images of starving Palestinians in Gaza have provoked global outrage. Israel has launched a PR campaign to deflect blame. Ryan Kohls reports.
Alex Shephard of The New Republic explains how Donald Trump is putting unprecedented pressure on US media outlets.
After CBS was forced to settle out of court with the president, Trump is now suing the Wall Street Journal and its owner – Rupert Murdoch – as well as politicising the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Featuring:
Alex Shephard – Senior editor, The New Republic
Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia have asked a federal judge in Tennessee to delay releasing him from jail in order to prevent the Trump administration from trying to swiftly deport the Maryland construction worker.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. in Nashville is expected to rule soon on whether to free Abrego Garcia while he awaits trial on human smuggling charges. If the Salvadoran national is released, U.S. officials have said he would be immediately detained by immigration authorities and targeted for deportation.
Abrego Garcia became a prominent face in the debate over President Trump’s immigration policies when he was wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador in March. That expulsion violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shields Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faces threats of gang violence there.
The administration claimed that Abrego Garcia was in the MS-13 gang, although he wasn’t charged and has repeatedly denied the allegation. Facing mounting pressure and a U.S. Supreme Court order, the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. last month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “preposterous.”
The smuggling case stems from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding, during Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. Police in Tennessee suspected human smuggling, but he was allowed to drive on.
U.S. officials have said they’ll try to deport Abrego Garcia to a country that isn’t El Salvador, such as Mexico or South Sudan, before his trial starts in January because they allege he’s a danger to the community.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville ruled a month ago that Abrego Garcia is eligible for release after she determined he’s not a flight risk or a danger. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys asked her to keep him in jail over deportation concerns.
Holmes’ ruling is being reviewed by Crenshaw after federal prosecutors filed a motion to revoke her release order.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys initially argued for his release but changed their strategy because of the government’s plans to deport him if he is set free. With Crenshaw’s decision imminent, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a motion Sunday night for a 30-day stay of any release order. The request would allow Abrego Garcia to “evaluate his options and determine whether additional relief is necessary.”
Earlier this month, U.S. officials detailed their plans to try to expel Abrego Garcia in a federal court in Maryland. That’s where Abrego Garcia’s American wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is suing the Trump administration over his wrongful deportation in March and is trying to prevent another expulsion.
U.S. officials have argued that Abrego Garcia can be deported because he came to the U.S. illegally around 2011 and because a U.S. immigration judge deemed him eligible for expulsion in 2019, although not to his native El Salvador.
Following the immigration judge’s decision in 2019, Abrego Garcia was released under federal supervision, received a federal work permit and checked in with ICE each year, his attorneys have said. But U.S. officials recently stated in court documents that they revoked Abrego Garcia’s supervised release.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys in Maryland have asked U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to order the federal government to send Abrego Garcia to that state to await his trial, a bid that seeks to prevent deportation.
His lawyers also asked Xinis to issue at least a 72-hour hold that would prevent immediate deportation if he’s released from jail in Tennessee. Xinis has not ruled on either request.
Finley writes for the Associated Press.
Israeli soldiers bound Mohamed Yousef’s hands behind his back as they dragged him to a military camp near the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in Hebron governorate, in late June.
With him were his mother, his wife and two sisters, arrested on their land for confronting armed Israeli settlers.
Settlers often graze their animals on Palestinian land to assert control, signal unrestricted access and lay the groundwork for establishing illegal outposts, cutting Palestinians off from their farms and livestock.
Yousef knew this, so he went out to defend his farm when he saw the armed settlers.
But as is often the case, it was Mohamed, a Palestinian, who was punished. At the military camp, he was left with his family in the scorching sun for hours.
While Mohamed and his family were released the next day, they fear they will not have the means to defend themselves for much longer.
“The police, the [Israeli] army and settlers often attack us all at once. What are we supposed to do?” Yousef said.
The Israeli military did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on the incident.
Things might be about to get worse for Yousef and his family, who, along with about 1,200 other Palestinians, could soon be expelled from their lands.
On June 17, during the zenith of Israel’s war on Iran, the Israeli government submitted a letter, a copy of which has been seen by Al Jazeera, to the Israeli High Court of Justice that included a request by the army to demolish at least 12 villages in Masafer Yatta and expel the inhabitants.
The Israeli army argued that it has to demolish the villages to convert the area into a military “firing” or training zone, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups.
However, a 2015 study by Kerem Novat, an Israeli civil society organisation, found that such justifications are a ruse to seize Palestinian land. From the time Israel occupied swaths of the West Bank in the 1967 war, it has converted about one-third of the West Bank into a “closed military zone”, according to the study.
And yet, military drills have never been carried out in 80 percent of these zones after Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes.
The study concluded that the military confiscates Palestinian land as a strategy to “reduce the Palestinian population’s ability to use the land and to transfer as much of it as possible to Israeli settlers”.
Yousef fears his village could suffer a similar fate following the state’s petition to the High Court.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen to us,” Mohamed told Al Jazeera. “Even if we are forced to leave, then where are we supposed to go? Where will we live?”
Many fear the Israeli High Court will side with the army and evict all Palestinians from “Firing Zone 918”, a battle that has been ongoing for decades.
Israeli courts have played a central role in rubber-stamping Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank, described as apartheid by many, by approving the demolition of entire Palestinian communities, according to Amnesty International.
The communities currently at risk were first handed an eviction notice and expelled in 1999, and told that their villages had been declared a military training zone, which the army dubbed “Firing Zone 918”.
The army claimed that the herding communities living in this “zone” were not “permanent residents”, despite the communities saying they lived there long before the state of Israel was formed by ethnically cleansing Palestinians in 1948, an event known as the Nakba.
With little recourse other than navigating an unfriendly Israeli legal system to resist their dispossession, the communities and human rights lawyers representing them initiated a legal battle to stop the evictions in Israeli district courts and the High Court.
In 2000, a judge ordered the army to allow the communities to return to their villages until a final ruling was issued.
Human rights lawyers have since filed countless petitions and appeals to delay and hinder the army’s attempt to expel the villagers.
“The [Israelis]…have been trying to expel us for decades,” said 63-year-old Nidal Younis, the head of the Masafer Yatta Council.
Then, in May 2022, the High Court ordered the expulsion of eight Masafer Yatta villages. The court ruled that the inhabitants were not “permanent residents”, ignoring evidence that the defence provided.
“We brought [the court] artefacts, photo analyses and ancient tools, used by the families for decades, that were representative of permanent residence,” said Netta Amar-Shiff, one of the lawyers representing the villagers.
“But the court dismissed all the evidence we brought as irrelevant.”
Amar-Shiff and her colleagues filed another case in early 2023 to argue that military drills must, at the very least, not result in the demolition of Palestinian villages or the expulsion of inhabitants in the area.
The legal battle, and others, is now being upended by the Israeli army and government’s request to evict and demolish all the villages in the desired military zone, said Amar-Shiff.
In an attempt to fast-track that request, the Civil Planning Bureau, an Israeli military body responsible for building permits, issued a decree on June 18 to reject all pending Palestinian building requests in “Firing Zone 918”. The United Nations and Israeli human rights groups have been notified of the new decree, although it has not been published on any government website.
Across Israel and the occupied West Bank, Palestinians and Israelis need to obtain building permits from Israeli authorities to build and live in any structure.
According to the Israeli human rights group Bimkom, Palestinians in Area C, the largest of three zones in the occupied West Bank that were created out of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, are practically always denied permits, while permits for Israeli settlers are almost always approved.
Palestinians in Masafer Yatta still submitted many building requests, hoping the administrative process would delay the demolition of their homes.
However, the Central Planning Bureau’s recent decree, issued to align with the army’s prior announcement, supersedes all these pending requests and paves the way for an outright rejection of all of them, facilitating more ethnic cleansing, according to activists, lawyers and human rights groups.
Once the decree is published, lawyers representing Palestinians from “Firing Zone 918” will have to go to the High Court for a final and definitive ruling, which is expected within a few months.
“There are many judges in the High Court who will either dismiss this case on its face or not order the army to stop demolitions until they rule,” Amar-Shiff told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, settlers and Israeli troops are escalating attacks against Palestinians living in the area.
Sami Hourani, a researcher from Masafer Yatta for Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, said the Israeli army has confiscated dozens of cars since declaring its intent to ethnically cleanse the villages.
He added that the army is arresting solidarity activists trying to visit the area, as well as helping settlers to attack and expel Palestinians.
“We are in an isolation stage now,” Hourani told Al Jazeera, adding that the villages in Masafer Yatta are under siege and cut off from the outside world.
“We are expecting the army to carry out massive demolitions at any moment.”
Palestinians held marches in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah to commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, of their mass dispossession during the creation of Israel in 1948.
More than 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 and an aid blockade threatens famine, while Israeli leaders continue to express a desire to empty the territory of Palestinians.
In the West Bank, too, occupied since 1967, Israeli forces have displaced tens of thousands from refugee camps as part of a major military operation.
This year marks the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, during which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their lands after Israel declared itself an independent state in the territory.
In Ramallah city, Palestinian flags and black ones branded “return” flew at road intersections on Wednesday, while schoolchildren were bussed into the city centre to take part in the weeklong commemoration.
At one event, young boys wearing Palestinian kuffiyeh scarves waved flags and carried a giant replica key, a symbol of the lost homes in what is now Israel that families hope to return to.
No events were planned in Gaza, where more than 19 months of war and Israeli bombardment have left residents destitute and displaced.
Moamen al-Sherbini, a resident of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, told the AFP news agency that he felt history was repeating itself.
“Our lives here in Gaza have become one long Nakba, losing loved ones, our homes destroyed, our livelihoods gone.”
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during Israel’s war.
In early May, Israel’s security cabinet approved plans for an expanded military offensive in Gaza, aimed at the “conquest” of the territory while displacing its people en masse, drawing international condemnation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his government is working to find third countries to take in Gaza’s population, months after United States President Donald Trump suggested they be expelled and the territory redeveloped as a holiday destination.
“Nakba Day is no longer just a memory – it’s a daily reality we live in Gaza,” said 36-year-old Malak Radwan, speaking from Nuseirat in the centre of the enclave.
“This is a miserable day in the lives of Palestinian refugees,” said 52-year-old Nael Nakhleh in Ramallah, whose family comes from the village of al-Majdal near Jaffa in what is now Israel.
Palestinian refugees maintain their demand to return to the villages and cities in current-day Israel that they or their relatives were forced to leave in 1948. The “right of return” remains a core issue in the long-stalled negotiations between Israel and Palestine.