Features

DARE to bare was the theme of the night for the planet’s sexiest women as they stunned in these eye-popping dresses.

A-listers left little to the imagination at the LACMA Art+Film Gala, where the biggest surprise of the evening was Kim Kardashian arriving in a Gucci gown which was uncharacteristically modest by comparison.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who last month parted ways with M&S lingerie after 14 years, chose a look that needed no undies at all.

The 39-year-old British model made a big impact in a backless, black Gucci gown with an ultra-high leg slit.

The raised collar gave the appearance of a demure floor-length dress from the front, but when she turned round, Rosie revealed her bum.

Never one to miss an opportunity to flash some flesh, model Emily Ratajkowski, 35, sizzled in a white halter-neck Gucci number, which was slashed on the thigh and across her chest.

ROO REVERSAL

Rooney’s move to prepare for jungle revealed – and it’s opposite of Coleen’s

BRA-VO

Celebs cashing in with Christamas lingerie from Sydney Sweeney to Maura Higgins

Also on the red carpet at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was actress Amber Valetta, 52, in a backless gown complete with yet another thigh slit and a silver Gucci insignia.

Models Iris Law and Candice Swanepoel and US influencer Alix Earle all shimmered in silver at the charity gala on Saturday, which was sponsored by Gucci and co-chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Iris, 26, was the boldest in a metallic mesh Amaramara dress, which had a thin strip covering her chest but had her rear end in full view.

Alix, 25, wore a Gucci thong halter bodysuit, draped in floor-length crystal tassels, to show off her bottom, back and sideboob.

And Candice, 38, went commando in a crystal Gucci design, which had two front slits so high that she was one gust of wind away from a paparazzi catastrophe.

Another head-turner — though not because of the amount of skin on show — was actress Anya Taylor-Joy, 30.

The Dune: Part Three star wore an off-white vintage Pierre Cardin gown with an extravagantly layered organza shawl.

Anya’s Style Queen

By Emily Regan Sun Stylist

AFTER a summer of near-naked fashion dividing critics, it seems the cut-out trend isn’t going anywhere despite the drop in temperature.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley proved she can push the boundaries in attention-grabbing Gucci.

With an almost entirely open back that revealed her toned physique and bottom, Rosie’s floral M&S collections suddenly seem a distant memory.

Fellow Victoria’s Secret Angel Candice Swanepoel also got the balance right. Her sparkly gown featured dramatic shoulder pads, which balanced out the plunging neckline and thigh-high slits.

A daring but sophisticated look.

Meanwhile, Alix Earle and Iris Law played a risque game in barely-there silver dresses.

But for me, the standout looks of the night came from the celebrities who chose to keep things a little more under wraps.

Anya Taylor-Joy brought the drama in a vintage floor-length column gown, by Pierre Cardin, which had a ruffled organza shawl.

The Queen’s Gambit actress made a big statement without a bum in sight.

Meanwhile, Nicole Kindman, 59, embraced the ballet-core trend, wearing a voluminous Chanel tulle dress with a taupe long-sleeved, open-back bodice.

Top Gun: Maverick star Monica Barbaro, 36, kept things tasteful in a white sequin Dior gown with a circular cutout back.

Proof you can still turn heads on the red carpet without flashing your flesh.

New Delhi, India – Both daughters of S Budhiraja live in the United States. Yet, when he and his wife head out to the market in Gurugram, a bustling business district on the outskirts of India’s capital, a young man walks beside them.

It is 26-year-old Roney Raju, their “hired grandson”.

Across Indian cities, a small but growing number of companies are now selling what families once took for granted: someone to take care of ageing people. Chores include taking them to the temple, sitting with them during a hospital visit, playing cards, or simply listening to them.

Some firms call such workers “children for hire”; others call them a “grandchild for rent”.

India, the world’s most populous country, is growing older quickly.

People over 60 made up 10.5 percent of its population in 2022, a demographic projected to nearly double to 21 percent by 2050, according to the India Ageing Report 2023 by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Institute for Population Sciences.

That means about 347 million elderly Indians – a number almost equal to the entire population of the US, the world’s third most populous nation – will need specialised care by 2050.

Several Indian startups see the opportunity, with the Indian government estimating the senior care industry at about $7bn.

Raju, holding a master’s degree in social work, works for one such company in Gurugram. He has been looking after the Budhirajas for the last few months.

“I was comfortable with him from the get-go,” Budhiraja, who is in his 80s, told Al Jazeera. “I feel he understands me 200 percent.”

Raju describes the bond in the same vein. “Right now, he is family to me,” he said. The couple, he said, see him as “their proxy child, and much more than a service companion”.

The bond has deepened over the past months. When Budhiraja was admitted for surgery, Raju kept track of the doctors and the medicines. He would even call to check on them after his shift had ended.

Growing industry

Raju’s boss Gaurav Mittal says many clients actually come to treat their companions “like their own grandchildren”.

He charges 450 rupees ($5) an hour for 10 hours of service in a month, or 400 rupees ($4.5) per hour if it is 25 hours. Like a mobile phone recharge, unused hours are rolled over to the next month.

In a country with an average per capita income of about 220,000 rupees ($2,750) a year, Mittal’s service caters to a small minority of urban, financially secure families.

Mittal said the idea for his company came from home. After his father died four years ago, his mother had to leave their hometown and move in with him. She was sociable and had money to spend, but depended on family members to go anywhere.

“The world is not designed keeping the senior citizens as the central pillar,” Mittal said.

The idea for such startups, however, is not entirely new.

A 2017 report counted at least five startups offering young companions to seniors. In 2022, the late Ratan Tata of the Tata Group promoted a Mumbai-based startup whose tagline says: “Everything Grandkids Do!”

The companions who work for these companies undergo police verification before they start working for a senior person. Before working alone, they often shadow a senior staff member on home visits.

Most companions are trained in psychology, social work or hospitality.

Vinay Kumar works as a companion for a firm based in the southern city of Hyderabad.

“We are not just taskmasters, but we develop a relationship with our clients. We support them and spend quality time with them so that they don’t miss their close ones,” he told Al Jazeera. “They may still do, but we try.”

Lonely seniors

The 2023 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report projects that older Indians will outnumber the country’s children by 2046. And many of these seniors are lonely.

In 2022, India conducted the Longitudinal Ageing Study, a national survey of more than 72,000 people. It found that 20.5 percent of middle-aged and older adults reported moderate loneliness, while 13.3 percent categorised their loneliness as severe.

Among people over 60 who lived alone, more than a third (37 percent) reported feeling lonely, the study found.

Globally, a study commissioned by the World Health Organization in 2025 found that loneliness affects one in six people and is linked to about 871,000 deaths a year.

Santosh Abraham, CEO of a Bengaluru-based startup founded in 2015, says while the children of elderly people are worried about medical emergencies or market errands, their parents mostly had a different concern.

“I am lonely, I don’t have anyone to talk to,” Abraham recalled one of his clients as saying. “I have done so much for my family and society; there is no recognition for it.”

Abraham said the most common request he gets is one that “nobody says out loud”.

“A senior calls us claiming to feel unwell. A care manager arrives, finds nothing wrong, and is then asked to sit and talk for an hour,” he said. “They just want company.”

Kumar said companions like him have to “understand their pain”.

“Most of the seniors who are living alone are very lonely. They want someone to play cards or indoor games with. Someone wants to go to a movie, or a temple, or parks, or attend local programmes,” he said.

Abraham said some seniors find a stranger easier to confide in. “With a companion, there is no baggage,” he told Al Jazeera.

For the young people doing the work, the line between their job and a relationship blurs quickly.

Raju says the visits to the Budhirajas are harder than office work. “Forming an emotional connection is never easy and is different each and every time,” he said.

Kumar, in Hyderabad, agrees. He said his clients often tell him about health problems that they hide from their children living in another city or abroad so as not to worry them.

He recalled a client who went from shutting the door on his face because he did not know English or Hindi to paying for his driving lessons and introducing him to people as his “god-gifted son”. When the man died in 2023, his son asked Kumar to perform the final rites alongside him.

Kumar once even cut short his 12-day marriage leave because one of his clients kept calling, asking him to come. “I genuinely feel these seniors are my own parents and grandparents,” he said.

‘Older person feels seen, heard, safe’

Others are more cautious about what the job demands.

Prashanth Reddy, founder of the Hyderabad-based company that Kumar works for, said companions must understand boundaries.

“Companions are there to provide support, not to replace doctors or mental health professionals,” he said.

Abraham agreed. He said he underlines one golden rule during his training sessions with aspiring companions: “Talk less and listen more.”

The children of such elderly people who buy the services of these companies say paying takes out the awkwardness of asking neighbours or relatives for help.

“When you pay for a service, you don’t have to feel like you’re asking someone for a favour,” says Vinnay K, a US-based software professional, who has been hiring a companion for his ageing mother for five years.

Shilpa Bandyopadhyay, assistant professor at Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences near New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that hiring a companion “should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that their families have failed”.

She said a growing demand for professional elderly care raises harder questions about a family-centric society like India’s.

“Do we recognise ‘companionship’ as a legitimate and continuing need of our older family members or see eldercare mainly as food, shelter, healthcare and physical help?” she asked.

She argued for “a more balanced ecosystem of ageing” that brings together families, community networks, accessible public spaces and affordable professional services, without romanticising traditional family structures or dismissing new ones.

“At the end of the day, the question isn’t who lives with an older person,” she said, but “rather whether the older person feels seen, heard, safe, valued, and meaningfully connected”.

Back in Gurugram, Budhiraja is asked how he would feel if Raju did not show up for work tomorrow.

“I will make sure he comes after finding out why he couldn’t come,” he said. “I need him. As you grow older, the needs are more.”

Ahmed Abed (a pseudonym due to ongoing threats of arrest) still feels like a prisoner despite being released from an Israeli jail to the occupied West Bank nearly two years ago.

Despite being technically “free”, Abed, 43, is still often rearrested by Israeli forces or summoned by intelligence for interrogation.

Hundreds of other Palestinians in the occupied West Bank face similar ordeals after being released from Israeli prisons. Their homes are sometimes raided twice a week; they can be detained, assaulted and interrogated on the spot before being released.

Every day, organisations dedicated to prisoners’ affairs document the arrests of dozens of Palestinians across the West Bank as part of large-scale operations that frequently target former detainees. Most of those detained are released after hours of interrogation, in what appears to be a campaign of intimidation by Israel against former Palestinian prisoners.

Frequent detentions

Abed was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel in January 2025, having served 22 years of a life sentence. Since his release, he has faced persistent harassment by the Israeli military.

Just days after Abed’s release, he was summoned by Israeli intelligence for questioning. They informed him that they were unhappy with the political decision to carry out the exchange deal and warned they would rearrest him if he made the “slightest mistake”.

Since his release, he has been arrested six times and summoned for interrogation five times. Each time, his home has been raided and his family terrorised by Israeli soldiers. His father was once arrested simply because Abed happened to be outside his house at night.

“Whenever there are reports of Israeli military activity in the city, my family goes into a state of high alert; no one sleeps all night,” he told Al Jazeera. “Some neighbours even leave their homes, fearing they might be raided as part of the collective intimidation campaign imposed because of me.”

When Abed is arrested, he is often forced to walk for several kilometres handcuffed and blindfolded, accompanied by soldiers. He is then placed in a detention centre under dire conditions, deprived of food and water, subjected to beatings and verbal abuse, and then the threats begin.

“Every time, they threaten to send me back to prison to the point where I feel as though two-thirds of my body are still in captivity, with only one-third outside,” he said. “The threats vary, but the underlying message is always the same: I am not permitted to do anything ordinary or live a normal life like everyone else.”

Abed avoids family gatherings, fearing his presence may bring them harm, and so limits his interactions to his immediate family. An Israeli officer warned him that if he were to go to the mosque to pray, he would be arrested.

“The Israeli officer told me, ‘We have zero patience for you. Any behaviour we deem inappropriate, or any movement we find suspicious, we will rearrest you immediately,’” Abed added.

Although he managed to earn both a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate during his time in prison, he has been unable to secure a job. When employers learn about his repeated arrests, they refuse to hire him. Instead, he has to rely on day-labour work to cover his basic costs.

Loss of livelihood

A former prisoner from Qalqilya says he is arrested on average twice a week during the frequent Israeli military sweeps of the city, where former detainees are targeted. He was recently warned during one interrogation that if he ever set foot on a football pitch, he would be arrested. This puts his job as a referee in jeopardy.

Abdullah, another former prisoner from the city who also requested not to use his real name, told Al Jazeera that he has been arrested so many times since his release in 2000 that he has lost count. But he says he has spent a total of 17 years in custody since his “release”.

He was recently held under “administrative detention”, lasting from November 2023 to February 2025, during which he was subject to physical and psychological torture. By the time he was released, he had lost 60kg (132 pounds).

Abdullah, who supports a family of seven, is repeatedly arrested and released after a few hours, but only after his children have been terrorised and his home ransacked.

His employer grew frustrated with his repeated detentions and found a replacement for him.

“After losing my job, I began working on a piece of land I inherited from my father. However, due to arrests and threats, I can never find the right time to tend to it,” he said. “I often fall behind in irrigating, applying pesticides, or tilling the soil, all of which have taken a toll on my seasonal yields, leaving me with more losses than profits.”

‘Normalising fear’

Since the outbreak of the war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, the occupied West Bank has witnessed a wave of Israeli arrest campaigns and pogroms. Israeli troops now make regular incursions into towns, refugee camps, and homes, as well as arrests at military checkpoints to detain former prisoners.

Palestinian prisoner advocacy organisations have documented approximately 26,000 arrests in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 2023, when the genocidal war on Gaza began, and early October 2026. This figure includes more than 800 women and nearly 2,000 minors. The total encompasses individuals who were subsequently released, not just those who remain in custody.

Amani Sarahneh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, told Al Jazeera that Israeli operations in the West Bank have evolved into a continuous, round-the-clock wave of detentions. On average, between 10 and 15 Palestinians are arrested and remain in Israeli custody every day.

These arrests not only take place at night, as they did before, but also during daylight hours, at military checkpoints, and through field interrogations.

“The persistence of these campaigns has led to a ‘normalisation of fear’ among the citizens, which has significantly impacted social relations, particularly in villages where residents live in a state of constant anxiety, fearing that occupation forces might storm their towns or public spaces and arrest groups of people at any moment,” she told Al Jazeera.

These arrests are frequently accompanied by physical assaults and abuse, with detainees held for long hours while handcuffed and blindfolded. The victims’ family homes are frequently ransacked and possessions taken away during the Israeli raids.

“These policies also include using family members of those targeted, such as wives and sisters, as hostages to exert pressure,” Sarahneh said.

“The impact of these campaigns has extended beyond the detainees and their families, deepening a sense of fear and apprehension among the general public, who now worry that the arrests could reach a much wider segment of the population,” Sarahneh said.

Port Sudan, Sudan – After a two-and-a-half-hour journey from the village of al-Lalouba, Layla Ali arrived in Port Sudan to get help for her five-year-old son, Adam. His severe malnutrition had left his ribs visibly protruding beneath his skin.

He had begun to lose his appetite two weeks earlier and became too sick to move. The distance to the hospital and Ali’s fears about the cost of treatment stopped her from rushing Adam for medical treatment. But when his condition deteriorated further, Ali had no choice but to rush him to hospital.

“We spent five days in hospital while my son received treatment. He suffers from recurring bouts of malnutrition, but this time we brought him to hospital because I was afraid he might die,” Ali told Al Jazeera.

“When Adam became ill, he would stop eating. I used to give him the usual meals we prepared at home, mostly porridge and milk. But the doctors have now helped me understand which foods are appropriate for his age and the nutrients he needs.”

Adam’s condition reflects a wider crisis facing children across Sudan, where a civil war has continued since April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimates that 825,000 children under five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2026, a 7 percent increase from 2025.

In the first six months of this year, UNICEF and its partners treated 174,700 children with severe acute malnutrition nationwide. The Port Sudan Teaching Hospital has recorded 433 cases between January and August this year.

Maryam Gadalsid, a nutrition counsellor at the hospital, said the number of children admitted with malnutrition continues to rise, forcing medical staff to accommodate as many as possible.

But this has led to overcrowding, with three children to a single bed in the hospital’s 17-bed malnutrition unit, Gadalsid told Al Jazeera, increasing the risk of disease spreading among patients.

“Medical staff assess each child’s condition before providing essential supplies, including therapeutic milk and other nutritional supplies free of charge, with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF,” Gadalsid said. “However, intravenous fluids and medication remain a significant financial burden for many families, struggling with the economic crisis caused by the war.”

Gadalsid added that inadequate nutrition among pregnant women, driven by displacement and economic hardship, was also putting their babies at risk of poor growth and malnutrition.

An increase in the numbers of flies, which can contaminate food and water, and mosquitoes, which transmit malaria, was worrying, she said. Malnourished children, in particular, are at risk of these diseases and viruses.

“With the onset of winter, malnutrition cases increase [and] … the number of flies rises, contributing to the spread of diseases that cause malnutrition,” she said.

Displaced children face worsening malnutrition

The situation is particularly bad in western Sudan’s Darfur region, which had already faced two decades of war before the 2023 nationwide conflict broke out.

Darfur has been an epicentre of the current conflict and is currently an RSF stronghold. Fighting there, combined with hunger and disease, has created an increasingly desperate situation for millions of civilians, particularly women and children.

In North Darfur alone, there were at least 40,000 cases of malnutrition between January and May 2025, according to UNICEF, when the RSF imposed a siege on the state’s capital, el-Fasher. The city was later taken by the RSF in October, and the paramilitary group is accused of killing thousands of civilians there.

Meanwhile, in Blue Nile State, southeastern Sudan, malnutrition is also taking a growing toll on displaced children.

Sabri Adam, deputy head of the committee overseeing al-Karama 3 displacement camp, which is located in the state capital al-Damazin, told Al Jazeera that cases of malnutrition had risen from 1,800 in September to 2,116 in November, accounting for more than a quarter of the camp’s children. Of those affected, 1,760 are under the age of five.

According to Adam, al-Karama 3 is home to more than 7,600 children under the age of 10, among almost 4,000 displaced families. They had fled areas in western Blue Nile State, including al-Tadamon, Bau and Kurmuk, where military operations between the SAF and the RSF have intensified.

“These families arrived at the camp in extremely difficult humanitarian conditions, amid limited funding and humanitarian assistance from organisations, and a lack of health monitoring despite the growing needs of displaced people,” he said to Al Jazeera.

Adam said the camp received cash assistance from the Red Crescent earlier this month to support people affected by malnutrition and pregnant women. Each eligible household received 620,000 Sudanese pounds (about $60 at the parallel market rate).

The situation is unfolding as the IPC warns of a growing risk of famine across parts of Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan. Conflict, mass displacement, severe drought and inadequate humanitarian funding are driving a further deterioration in food security.

The El Nino climate phenomenon has led to reduced rainfall in Sudan during the rainy season, leading to drought that is affecting roughly half of the country.

According to the IPC, nearly two-thirds of farmland in North Darfur and roughly half in South Darfur and Kordofan states have had poor vegetation growth, threatening harvests and leaving families facing higher prices and worsening hunger.

War and poverty deepen Sudan’s malnutrition crisis

Back at the Port Sudan Teaching Hospital, Dr Ahmed Youssef, the medical director of the paediatric department, said increasing malnutrition was driven not only by the effects of war and displacement but also by limited nutrition awareness or accessibility among families, particularly in rural communities.

Many families in smaller villages across Sudan rely heavily on flour and milk as staple foods, with meat largely absent from their daily diets.

“We are working to provide families of children with malnutrition with basic nutrition education as a first step towards tackling the problem. However, we face difficulties reaching villages to deliver healthcare and raise awareness,” he told Al Jazeera.

Food contamination, particularly amid unreliable electricity supplies and a lack of refrigerators in many households, makes it difficult for families to store food safely and is also a major issue.

“Families often bring their children to hospital only when malnutrition has reached an advanced stage, either because of financial hardship and fears about treatment costs or because of limited education,” he said.

Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel – On election day, Lama Yassin, 31, drove to polling stations in her hometown of Arrabeh, where Palestinian citizens of Israel make up an overwhelming majority, inspired by what she was witnessing.

“You would see families coming to the polls together, grandparents and grandchildren,” she said. “It was the first time in a really long time that I felt there is hope – hope of a change.”

The overwhelming Arab turnout in the October 27 Israeli election won the Arab parties a record 19 seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

Thabet Abu Rass, an expert on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, had predicted the Arab parties would be impossible for Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc to ignore: Their seats push it past the 61-seat threshold for a ruling coalition.

Instead, Yassin and others saw Israeli channels invite “Jews to talk about Arabs and Arab voter turnout”, she recalled, with almost no Arab guests.

“The whole conversation was about how dangerous these Arab voters are.” The “most disgusting term” she saw online, however, was the repeated refrain of “election terrorism” on Channel 14, the hard-right, pro-Netanyahu station.

Within a day of the vote, Likud and figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir accused the Arab parties of stealing the election through “bribery, threats, violence, forgeries”. The accusations have continued even after the Central Elections Committee and the Israeli police said they found no sign of organised tampering.

Distraught, Yassin posted an Instagram video that went viral among Palestinians, capturing the doublespeak of Israelis they so often hear:

“Eating hummus with us? ‘Brothers and friends’.

Seeking political power? ‘Terror supporters’.

Helping someone in distress? ‘Brothers and friends’.

Voting in large numbers? ‘Terror at the ballot box’.”

“When it suits you, we are brothers and friends. When it suits you, we are a symbol of coexistence. When it suits you, you go around the world boasting about our integration into Israeli society.

“But the moment we demand to have influence, to shape policy, and to take part in decision-making – suddenly, our very presence becomes a threat.”

When voting becomes ‘a danger to the state’

More than a week after the election, Jaffa’s Ajami neighbourhood offers both the history leading up to – and the fraught circumstances of – this moment that Abu Rass calls Israel’s “political crossroads”.

Faded Arabic signs on abandoned buildings hint at the Palestinian community that thrived in Ajami before 1948. On Ajami’s streets, posters of children killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza hang metres away from campaign posters for Ra’am and the Joint List.

From the back office of his cluttered hardware shop, Omar Siksik, once a Tel Aviv-Jaffa city councilman who now co-chairs Kulna Yaffa, a grassroots, Arab-Jewish civic initiative in the city, weighs this moment of unprecedented representation – met by renewed delegitimisation efforts – against Ajami’s own history. It is a struggle, he says, for basic existence.

Before 1948, Jaffa had about 100,000 Palestinians. After the Nakba, fewer than 4,000 remained – with those left fenced inside Ajami under military rule. “We called it the Ajami ghetto,” explained Siksik. Born there in 1957, he grew up sharing a toilet and kitchen with newly arrived Jewish immigrants who took the homes of expelled Palestinian neighbours.

Over time, the fence surrounding Ajami was torn down, martial law ended, and the Palestinians who remained there were granted Israeli citizenship. But later, when Siksik became the head of the Rabita Association, a nonprofit for the Palestinian residents of Jaffa, he remembered “sleeping under the bulldozers” that were razing the houses of Palestinians in the area, a practice that Rabita had fought in court.

For Siksik and others, election day is the only occasion that’s different for Palestinian citizens of Israel. “This is a democratic election,” he said. “It’s the only thing where we’re equal with the Jews. The only thing.

“When we came and expressed our dissatisfaction with this government, the Arab vote became a danger to the state,” said Siksik. “It’s not normal.”

Many Palestinian citizens of Israel believe they’ve been allowed to remain out of necessity, not equality. “The bus drivers are Arabs, the doctors in the hospitals are Arabs, the construction workers are Arabs,” Siksik notes.

But even those “essential worker” roles are being stripped away. After October 7, Israel revoked tens of thousands of work permits for Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank to enter Israel, and the essential jobs they filled are being replaced by short-term labourers brought from abroad. Yassin notes fabricated stories over the summer on Israeli social media that Arab doctors were poisoning Jewish patients at Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

“If they could give up on anything Arab, they would,” says Yassin. “It’s not because they like us [that they let us remain]… It’s not because they want to; it’s because they have to.”

Facing ‘the whole Israeli system’

Yassin herself went through that struggle for acceptance in Israeli society. After growing up in Arrabeh, she learned Hebrew so well at Ben-Gurion University that “no one knew I was an Arab any more.” She took a job at a regional council near Jerusalem, in an entirely Jewish workplace, to prove she was “fully Israeli”.

“I did not speak Arabic in public. I even voted for [left-wing Zionist party] Meretz and favoured them over Arab parties,” said Yassin. “I wanted to be ‘the good Israeli’.”

But she could never escape that sense of otherness. At the council, colleagues asked if they could call Yassin – whose first name, Lama, means “why” in Hebrew – “Yasmine” instead, because she reminded them of Jasmine from the movie Aladdin. She was Yasmine for a year and a half. “It was another demand of giving up on another part of my identity – one that defines me literally.”

And then, the Sunday after the October 7 attacks, her colleagues would not say hello back to her.

She came to realise that “shared society cannot be built over inequality.”

After becoming director of public policy at the Abraham Initiatives, which advances the rights of Palestinian citizens in Israel, Yassin testified at Knesset committee meetings regarding unchecked crime and violence affecting their communities. She describes being dismissed or silenced outright, despite prior approval to speak. “If you say one more word,” she recalled the National Security committee chairman saying, “I will ask you to leave.”

Yassin sees that derision of a Palestinian political voice carrying over into the rhetoric – and investigations – surrounding the post-election talks. In Jaffa, that wider climate was felt on November 3, when, about midnight, about 15 security officers, a few of them masked, raided the Jaffa home of Abed Abou Shehadeh, a journalist and activist, arresting him in front of his two children. Accused of having “contacts with a foreign agent”, a court has ordered him held until November 8.

The ‘loyalty test’

In the south, meanwhile, police arrested seven Bedouin men on suspicion of planning to pay people to vote for Ra’am, which calls them party activists and denies the allegations. Arab political leader Ayman Odeh now faces investigations as well by the Shin Bet intelligence service, which is run by the Netanyahu-aligned David Zini, over allegations that he received money from foreign sources to influence voter turnout. Odeh denies the allegations, calling them “political persecution”.

“We are now facing the whole Israeli system,” says Abu Rass. “I think we are facing the deep state also.”

Before the election, Abu Rass had predicted to Al Jazeera that 15 to 17 seats would have Israeli party leaders knocking on the Arab parties’ doors. But despite the Arab parties exceeding even those high expectations, that success has not yet borne such fruit.

With 67 members of the Knesset, including those from the Arab parties, recommending Eisenkot to the president to form a government, the anti-Netanyahu bloc has signalled agreement to remove Knesset speaker Amir Ohana and halt the judicial overhaul legislation. The Arab parties also plan to back a state inquiry into the October 7 security failures. But Abu Rass does not mistake this for a lasting partnership.

“[Eisenkot is] counting on us only for the coming months,” he says, “to help him stabilise his government, to pass this stage of removing the government and Netanyahu.”

And while Eisenkot campaigned on two pillars – removing Netanyahu, and mandating military service for ultra-Orthodox Haredim who largely do not serve – even Avigdor Liberman, long a fierce opponent of Haredi draft-dodging, now signals he would work with the Haredi parties to form an anti-Netanyahu government without the Arabs, who have repeatedly offered to support Eisenkot from outside the coalition to unseat Netanyahu.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, tasked with choosing a leader to try to form a government, this week condemned “the coarseness and racist expressions that we have heard recently”. But according to Israeli media, during meetings with party leaders, he asked Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas whether he considers Hamas a terrorist organisation. “You cannot constantly put us to this test,” said Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the October 7 attacks, according to Israeli media.

Yassin has felt and seen these loyalty tests play out before in Israel. “Even if the two million Arabs who live here … say ‘we condemn Hamas,’ the day after, we will have another loyalty test,” she says. “It’s never-ending, and whoever wants to deny our rights in this country does not really need a reason to.”

A Jewish-only coalition, she says, would mean “we went a few stairs down in the whole democracy approach, the so-called democracy in Israel.”

‘We don’t have the privilege of giving up’

Most people in working-class Ajami have swiftly come down from their election-night highs. “I am not optimistic,” said Nadia, a middle-aged woman sitting behind the counter of a clothing store. “If we raise our voice in the streets, we are arrested. If we raise our voice in the ballot, we are dismissed.”

Siksik fears: “I see catastrophic things coming here.”

But Nadia noted she would vote again if it means keeping Ben-Gvir and Smotrich out of government.

As Yassin puts it: “We don’t have the privilege of giving up. If we don’t do this work, no one will.”

After the sense of power the 19 seats gave people, she says, “it’s going to be hard to give it away.”

Sitting in a liberal Tel Aviv cafe, Yassin overheard a conversation at the adjacent table turn to Gaza and “how they killed the children” – apparently in reaction to what she had been saying.

As the opposition bloc appears to be pursuing every avenue to avoid including Arab parties in any position of power, she finds herself looking at even “liberal” Israelis differently.

“I was looking at every one of them and wondering if they would support an Arab or Arab parties being part of the coalition,” she said.

“Because if they don’t want my representatives, it also means that they don’t want me.”

Ten years ago, as parts of Diyarbakir in southeast Turkiye were reduced to rubble in battles between the military and Kurdish fighters, the city’s main football club, Amedspor, became a target.

Diyarbakir is the biggest Kurdish-majority city in Turkiye, and Amedspor, then in the third tier, had become a standard bearer of Kurdish identity.

As fighting raged between the state and groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the club was hit with fines and bans on away supporters and outspoken players. Its premises were raided by antiterrorism police, and its fans, players and officials were attacked by rival supporters. In the years that followed, its survival looked uncertain.

A decade on, a peace process is under way between the government and the PKK, and Amedspor – in their first season in the top-flight after successive promotions – are second in the Super Lig after 10 games. A win at league leaders Galatasaray on Saturday would take them to the top.

“Amedspor have achieved a level of success that nobody expected,” said Vahap Coskun, an academic from Diyarbakir who has written a book about the club.

Coskun told Al Jazeera there are several factors behind the success this season; an experienced and canny coach in Besnik Hasi, and a mostly new squad of players performing above expectations, including the 24-year-old Nigerian striker Gift Orban, who has scored nine goals in 10 games so far.

Then there are the passionate, sellout crowds of more than 30,000 that have helped the side win its six home games so far.

But he also said the “softening political climate” was key as it “affects everything from the treatment Amedspor receive in away matches to the refereeing, and it allows Amedspor to compete in fairer conditions”.

Reha Ruhavioglu, director of the Kurdish Studies Center (KSC) and a former member of the club’s advisory board, told Al Jazeera Amedspor’s matches have become a “weekly barometer” of whether Turkish society and state can accept the club as part of the country “with its own colours, culture, language and identity”.

From obscurity to the Super Lig

Amedspor was formed as Melikahmet Turanspor in 1972 and later passed through various name changes and was taken over by Diyarbakir’s municipality in 1990. They spent much of their history toiling in the lower leagues.

The club gained promotion to the third tier for the first time in 2013, and the following year caused a stir after renaming themselves with the Kurdish word for Diyarbakir – “Amed” – and adopting the red, green and yellow of the Kurdish tricolour.

Expressions of Kurdish culture and language have long been suppressed in Turkiye, especially after the separatist PKK launched an armed uprising against the Turkish state in 1984. But the club were allowed to use the name Amed and their green and red colours at least, if not the full tricolour.

They were clearly on the up. In January 2015, they claimed a 2-0 victory away at Galatasaray in the Turkish Cup. In 2015-16, as conflict raged in Turkiye’s southeast, they reached the quarterfinals of the Turkish Cup, beating Super Lig sides Basaksehir and Bursaspor along the way.

In the following years, the club was bailed out by local businesses after its funding was cut by government appointees to the municipality. It continued to face significant hostility from rival fans, frequent punishment from the federation and verbal attacks from politicians.

But it was becoming increasingly popular among Kurds across the country, not only in Diyarbakir.

Research published by the KSC in March 2026 found that Amedspor’s support had quadrupled to four million among Kurdish adults in Turkiye over four years – even before the promotion to the Super Lig – and that the club had become the best supported among Kurds in the country.

Meanwhile, a new peace process between the state and the PKK had begun in late 2024, and in May 2025 the PKK formally announced its dissolution and the end of its armed struggle.

When Amedspor were promoted to the Super Lig in May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ultranationalist ally Devlet Bahceli congratulated the club. Erdogan later received Amedspor officials and players at the presidential palace along with those from other promoted clubs.

Bagis Erten, a sports journalist with Oksijen newspaper, said that now the political winds have shifted, the club is not being held back or excessively punished by footballing authorities.

“Especially when we talk about the football federation and referees, [Amedspor] were always treated very badly in previous years. Their penalties were not given, their red cards were not fair,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But now this system at least is not stopping them.”

‘Fragile progress’

At Amedspor’s Diyarbakir Stadium, the crowd in one stand calls out in Kurdish: “Ki ne em?” (Who are we?). Another stand thunders in response: “Kurd in em!” (We are Kurds!) At a recent game against Istanbul giants Besiktas, which Amedspor won 3-2, a tifo featured the words “EM HATIN” (We are here).

Turkish society is now encountering the Kurdish language and other expressions of Kurdish identity more regularly because of Amedspor’s promotion to the Super Lig.

There has been hostility shown by rival fans this season, with some provocatively displaying yellow body bags and images of F16s in reference to the darkest days of the conflict with the PKK.

But Ruhavioglu says that, despite incidents like this, the “barometer” is generally looking positive and that football can help to “normalise” Kurdish identity in Turkiye, as several teams and their fans have now visited the city without incident.

“When you see the bigger picture, it is going well,” he said.

Ruhavioglu says his centre’s research has also challenged some misconceptions around the club and its fans.

“Amedspor’s stands are really not homogenous,” he said, adding that while many fans support the left-wing, pro-Kurdish DEM Party, others are “close to other parties and ideologies. The Kurdish political movement is [generally] a secular movement, but many fans are praying in the stadium.”

And although the research found that a sense of Kurdishness and speaking Kurdish were strongly tied to fandom of Amedspor, he said the club should not be seen as “a national team for Kurds”, but rather more like “the representative of Kurdish identity” in Turkiye. Indeed, 61 percent of Kurds in the survey said they support the Turkish national team when it plays.

Unlike when the club was playing in the lower tiers, Amedspor now rarely features Kurdish or local players in the starting XI – it is mostly comprised of foreign players and some non-Kurdish Turks.

Coskun denied this undermines the club’s sense of Kurdishness.

“I think the fact that few of the players are Kurdish is not of vital importance to the fans, because it is the club that carries the identity, not the players,” he said. “Of course, fans would like to see many more Kurdish players in the team, but what matters most here is success.”

But Erten says the club may end up seeking to dilute its political identity to pursue footballing success or at least avoid trouble.

“Of course, it’s the symbol of Kurdish movement … [but] they are trying to convince Turkish society that it’s a good football project as well.”

Erten says attitudes towards Amedspor show how Turkiye’s state and society have become more tolerant of prominent expressions of Kurdishness on a national level, something that was unthinkable in previous decades.

“It’s progress, but it depends only on the approach of government,” he said. “It’s very fragile progress.”

Flights across Europe have been diverted, grounded and escorted by fighter jets in response to a wave of bomb threats, marking a second major outbreak of false alerts in less than a week.

On Thursday, planes departing from 16 countries, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain and Denmark, were affected. Flights have either been forced to divert to alternate locations or undergo additional security checks. On Friday, the threats continued.

Authorities have deployed bomb disposal teams and military fighter jets in several countries. So far, security inspections following threats have yielded no evidence of explosives or suspicious materials on board aircraft, and no passenger has reported being harmed.

What happened?

On Friday, a Ryanair flight landed in Lisbon, Portugal at 8am after a bomb threat was made by phone to the authorities, Italian media has reported. A security operation was mounted as soon as the plane landed. Separately, the control tower in Fiumicino, Italy, received an alert about a device aboard a Wizzair flight to Rome from Paris. The Wizzair flight was diverted to Venice where police were clearing the area around the plane.

On Thursday, there were numerous threats, including the following:

• In Poland, authorities received a warning about a potentially dangerous object on board a Polish Airlines flight already taxiing on the runway at Warsaw Chopin Airport. The flight to Paris was prevented from taking off and passengers disembarked, but a search by security services found nothing dangerous on board, an airline spokesman told local media.
• In Warsaw, a LOT flight to Paris was also halted and passengers were transferred to another ‌aircraft.
• A LOT flight from London Heathrow to Warsaw-Chopin Airport was forced to land at the Polish capital’s other airport, Warsaw-Modlin, following a threat. Nothing was found on board.
• The Italian Air Force escorted a Finnair plane into Rome after an anonymous bomb-threat email was sent to Aeroporti di Roma (ADR) and other companies at Fiumicino. The plane arrived safely.
• In Bulgaria, a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia was diverted to make an emergency landing in Plovdiv, the country’s second city, following a bomb threat.
• In the space of just 20 minutes, Spanish authorities reported receiving three emailed bomb threats regarding two Air Europa departures from Madrid to Paris and four inbound Iberia flights from Rome and Milan, Spain’s Guardia Civil said.
• A flight ⁠from Cork in Ireland was delayed for 90 minutes when the airport received a threat, the airport operator said.
• A Ryanair flight from Pescara in Italy to Charleroi in Belgium was subject to a false bomb alarm, state news agency Ansa reported. Local media in Belgium reported that security protocols were triggered after the word “bomb” was found written in one of the aircraft’s restrooms.

What happens when a threat is received?

When an airline is notified of a threat to an aircraft, it is passed to a team of assessors, said Joji Waites, director of flight safety, policy and regulation at BALPA, the British Airlines Pilots’ Association.

“These assessors use standard processes to grade the threat and decide whether the threat is red (credible), amber (partially credible) or green (not credible). Amber is not considered an appropriate assessment if the plane is airborne,” said Waites.

After receiving a threat, an aircraft is directed to an area well away from the airport buildings. Passengers are disembarked and screened while border police with sniffer dogs inspect the plane, according to an airport official.

Is this the first time threats like this have been made?

No.

The incidents follow a series of hoax bomb threats earlier this week. On Monday, a flight from the UK to Bulgaria was diverted after a threat that turned out to be without substance. On Tuesday, seven planes across Europe were searched or diverted because of malicious hoax bomb alerts.

And also this week, there have also been cyberattacks on supermarkets in several European cities, with hackers changing the temperature on refrigeration in an apparent attempt to spoil food.

How unusual is this?

Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University, said the scale and coordinated nature of these latest incidents are unusual.

“There are indeed individual airlines that experience a bomb threat every day, but most of those are very quickly evaluated and determined to be non-specific, and the aircraft do not divert,” said Baum.

What sets the latest incidents apart, he said, is that authorities across several European countries appear to be treating the threats as credible enough to require planes to land and undergo security inspections. Baum noted that each flight disruption could cost airlines as much as $250,000.

The UK’s government called the latest disruption “malicious hoax threats”. London Heathrow, the busiest airport for passenger traffic in Europe, was also targeted. It says it has one of the most robust aviation safety systems in the world, but countries still have to take the threats seriously and figure out how to stop any actors from creating further disruptions to air travel across Europe.

Who is behind this?

The European Commissioner for Transport said it is too early to say who’s behind these attacks or whether the incidents are even connected.

European governments have so far refrained from blaming anyone. But those which have supported Ukraine are wary of hybrid attacks. Germany has directly pointed the finger at Russia for recent drone incursions at Leipzig-Halle Airport. Moscow rejected the accusations.

EU officials are aware of the possibility that Russia would step up its hybrid campaign. In September, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service warned that this could happen to pressure adversaries in the West and NATO.

However, Moscow has denied being involved in the threats to aviation in Europe and there is no evidence of any involvement by Russia, Iran or any proxy groups linked to them.

Ritu Pant always made sure that her merchant navy officer husband told her two things before departing on an assignment.

“I always noted the details and the name of his ship and his emergency contact details in case of a crisis,” says Ritu, who is based in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

That’s what she did on April 25, when her husband Ajay left Paradip Port in the state of Odisha on board the MT Smyrtos, a crude oil tanker. Her husband had been a sailor for 18 years, and spent six or seven months a year at sea. But growing threats to seamen – amid the wars in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, and from pirates roaming the high seas – had increased her jitters in recent years.

Yet it was through a social media post that she learned in mid-June that the ship had been captured. Not by pirates, but by the British armed forces, because the MT Smyrtos is under Western sanctions for allegedly working as part of Russia’s shadow fleet, a network of vessels that help Moscow evade United States and European economic restrictions to continue to sell oil and gas, amid the war on Ukraine.

Now Ajay Pant faces charges of flouting United Kingdom sanctions against Russia by commandeering the ship. It’s the first known instance when a European nation has kept a ship captain under arrest on such grounds, and could set a worrying precedent, say lawyers and groups advocating for the rights of seafarers. “This is a unique case,” said Tony Patten, the UK representative at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), an organisation that works for the rights of seafarers.

Other European countries have also taken over ships that they accuse of violating sanctions against Russia, but while they’ve kept the vessels, they have so far let the sailors go. In March this year, a captain of a suspected Russian shadow fleet was prosecuted in absentia by a French court. In another case from Finland, a court dismissed charges against the captain of a Russian oil tanker accused of damaging undersea cables in the Baltic Sea on account of lack of jurisdiction. In other cases, European nations have set commercial sailors free with fines.

By contrast, Ajay faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The case has also underlined a growing tension between maritime traffic through international waters – the Smyrtos was not in British territorial waters when it was captured – and the enforcement by countries of sanctions that are not approved by the United Nations.

‘Situation of the sea was very bad’

The open seas have always been dangerous, but the risks have mounted as wars and piracy have turned ships and their crew into active targets for militaries and mercenaries alike.

At least 24 seafarers have been killed in the Strait of Hormuz since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in February. More than 120 commercial ships and tankers have been attacked in this period in the waterway, which used to transport a fifth of the world’s energy supplies before the start of the war.

The death toll in the Black Sea is even grimmer: At least 40 sailors have been killed in more than 570 attacks on vessels there. Piracy off the coast of Somalia has resurged, too.

For Ritu Pant, all of that meant increased insecurity each time her husband went on a ship.“I was quite worried,” she said, describing her thoughts while Ajay was at sea. “When I talked to Ajay, I would tell him that you need to keep in touch always; you need to tell me that you’re fine and everything is safe around because the situation of the sea was very bad.”

But it was not uncommon for her to not hear from her husband for days, due to network disruptions at sea. So Ritu would track updates of her husband’s ship online, a practice that has become increasingly common among families of sailors at sea.

On June 14, the MT Smyrtos was chugging through the English Channel when the Royal Marines Commandos intercepted it, in what was a first-of-its-kind operation authorised by then British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

At the time, the ship was in international waters, outside the territorial jurisdiction of the UK. Yet Chinook, Merlin Mk4 and Wildcat helicopters from the Maritime Air Group; a Royal Air Force P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft; a frigate; and a mine countermeasures ship participated in the military operation to take control of the vessel, according to the British Ministry of Defence.

The ship was carrying oil from Russia and was on track to pass through the Suez Canal on its way to India, its destination.

“This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide,” Starmer said in a post on X.

What followed was equally unprecedented; charges of allegedly breaching Russian sanctions were brought against Ajay, who has since been in detention in the UK. After an initial court hearing, his bail was denied.

‘Criminalisation of seafarers’

Enforcement of maritime sanctions brought against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been tenuous at best, which makes the Smyrtos case “very unique”, said David Hammond, a lawyer and founder of Human Rights At Sea, a nonprofit and UN-accredited organisation advocating for the rights of people living, working, transiting and operating at sea.

“It is unique in terms of the interception and the interdiction of a vessel that had been sanctioned, having passed through the English Channel as an international transit corridor. It’s, in my understanding, not happened before,” he said.

On the one hand, Hammond explained, the outcome of the case will determine how coastal states enforce sanctions against vessels. But, he said, it also underscores the risks of “criminalisation of seafarers”.

Hammond said Ajay Pant’s case was part of a broader pattern of “shipping crews finding themselves in a position where they are arrested for many crimes, such as trafficking or movement of drugs that they’re not even aware of having been put on board the ship”.

He cited the example of Ali Albokhari, a Finnish-Syrian chief mate on a cargo ship, who was detained by Turkish authorities in 2023 after 137kg (302lb) of cocaine was found on board.

Patten of the ITF echoed similar sentiments. “Our stance is that seafarers being penalised automatically when something like this happens isn’t fair. We would always uphold the right of the seafarer,” he said.

Hammond said Ajay’s case was especially without parallel. “In the case of the Smyrtos,  it could be argued that Captain Pant is being criminalised for simply doing his job,” he said, adding that the direction in which the British courts rule will set a new precedent for masters’ accountability over movement of sanctioned goods.

The case, Hammond added, “is a perfect storm in a global storm of impunity; who is accountable and who enforces accountability”.

“And the unintended consequences of which are yet to be seen,” he warned.

‘Horrible year at sea’

The case also raises wider concerns, Hammond said, about how shipping companies and the countries vessels traverse often treat seafarers. “Undeniably, seafarers are seen as disposable assets,” he said, “disposable because they can be easily replaced but concurrently, as assets for assuring continuous global movement of goods by sea.”

The killings in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea have underscored that sense among sailors and their families – that the lives of those who keep the global economy moving are seen as disposable by those in power.

In a statement shared with Al Jazeera, the International Maritime Organization confirmed at least 66 sailors were killed in various conflicts this year, and hundreds of others injured. Many sailors are also still missing and feared to be dead. “It has been a horrible year for people at sea,” Patten said. “Problems have always existed, but conflicts and geopolitical change have certainly heightened them.”

Ajay Pant’s case also shines new light on a growing number of instances where navies have gone outside their territorial waters to seize tankers that they claim are violating their domestic sanctions regimes.

Since February, when the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, US forces have intercepted and captured several cargo ships in the Indian Ocean. These vessels were seized not just far from US territorial waters but also far from the theatre of their war, on accusations that they were helping Iran evade US sanctions.

The US and the UK argue that they are acting within the bounds of international law.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea permits a warship to visit a cargo ship to verify its flag where there are reasonable grounds to suspect the vessel is without nationality. The British Defence Ministry, in its statement after the seizure of the Smyrtos, said that if a vessel is determined to be stateless, the UK can exercise criminal and maritime enforcement powers under its domestic Policing and Crime Act.

The Smyrtos, like many ships that are accused of belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet”, has frequently changed its flag. The ship had once previously been registered in The Gambia, and then adopted a Cameroon flag in December 2025. When it departed from a Russian port, it had a Cameroonian flag, but Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported that the ship had been removed from Cameroon’s register earlier, in June. It is owned by a Chinese company.

According to the British Defence Ministry, Russia sells about 75 percent of its oil using such shadow tankers.

But whether militaries have the right to enforce their domestic sanctions and laws in international waters against individuals and vessels that are not registered in their territory remains a contested question in international law.

The capture of such vessels raises “a much bigger issue” of “the freedom of navigation at sea”, said Hammond.

To Ajay’s family and those advocating for him, it also raises a more human question: If a cargo ship captain passing through international waters can be captured and tried by nations for allegedly violating their domestic laws, is any sailor safe?

Anchored with hope

That’s a question that Ritu has lived with in the past few months, forcing the former school principal into advocacy not just for her husband’s release, but for seafarer rights globally.

“Ajay’s case goes beyond just our family, and could be a landmark judgement for seafarers worldwide,” she said. “It raises the fundamental question of whether a master of a ship can be criminalised for decisions that are beyond his authority, knowledge or control.”

The journey has been a difficult one, she said.

“Ajay was the primary breadwinner of his family, and I have also been forced to give up my work to focus on this case,” the mother of an eight-year-old and a one-year-old said.

“He has also been a caregiver to his elderly parents,” she added, saying that for the first few days after the arrest, she kept the news from them, worried for their health. “I wouldn’t allow the daily newspaper in the house and stopped sending my older daughter to school, afraid that someone would say something hurtful to her.”

Eventually, Ritu informed the family and prepared them for the struggles ahead.

“The hardest part is having to do this across continents. We have only spoken to him over short calls, and he has had no personal visitors since I went to meet him in August,” she said. “I don’t want him to feel that he has been forgotten.”

But despite the hardships, she remains hopeful, as support has poured in from the global seafarers community. “When I started posting on social media, I received so many messages from families and wives of sailors,” she said. “Every seafarer’s family I’ve talked to relates to this. So many sailors are getting targeted right now in conflict at sea; they are being made scapegoats.”

Now, she’s preparing for Ajay’s upcoming trial. “I have to bring him back home,” she said. “For his family, but also because no seafarer should be treated in this way.”

IN the summer of 1970, Tom Petty met one of his future Heartbreakers – and made a friend for life. 

He was 19 when he invited guitarist Mike Campbell, then 20, to join his band Mudcrutch, named after the rundown Florida farm where they practised. 

“Tom was instantly unforgettable,” says Campbell today. “Of course, he had the long blond hair but he also had a swagger. 

“He had this vibe around him of knowing where he was going — and he was smarter than anybody else in the room.”

The pair hit it off from the get-go, resulting in Campbell being by Petty’s side throughout his career — playing lead guitar in The Heartbreakers, joining Tom on his solo albums and taking part in the Mudcrutch revival in 2007. 

“We immediately connected as musicians,” continues Campbell. “We had a similar dream — not to be rock stars, just to be professional and successful. 

SKYE FALL

Moment Brit popstar suffers nasty face-first fall over barrier during live show

SUMMER LOVIN’

Huge popstar revealed as 2027 BST headliner – joining rock legends Bon Jovi

“The whole rock star thing came later. Tom lived at home [with his parents Earl and Kitty] and was a hippie dude like me.” 

The first incarnation of Mudcrutch “paid their dues” in Petty’s hometown of Gainesville, Florida, known for its vast university campus. 

Campbell recalls: “I’d come down from Jacksonville and was pretty much homeless. I was sleeping on couches and giving guitar lessons. It was a meagre existence.” 

Things began to fall into place when he hooked up with two Toms — Tom Petty and Tom Leadon (brother of Eagles’ guitarist Bernie) — and drummer Randall Marsh to form Mudcrutch. 

He says: “Gainesville was a great place to be. There was a thriving artistic community around the university, lots of parks for us to play for free and little bars to play in around town.  

“We even got a gig in a topless bar for a while but it kept us in money for a few months. 

“We mostly played covers but Tom was beginning to write and I was dabbling around with ideas.” 

I ask Campbell what kind of music and which artists were his and Petty’s chief inspirations.  

“Florida was a hotbed for all kinds of music, from blues and country to rock ’n’ roll,” he replies. 

“But the strongest influence on both of us was the whole British Invasion — The Beatles, the Stones, The Kinks, The Animals.  

“We would draw on them our whole lives.” 

I’m speaking to Campbell, 76, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band that Mudcrutch eventually morphed into, all-American icons Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. 

Campbell is in Memphis, Tennessee, for the last stop on his tour with his post-Heartbreakers band, The Dirty Knobs.  

He notes that he is in the music-loving Southern city where Elvis Presley started out at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records. 

“The tour is coming to a close and everybody has picked up the flu,” he sighs when we’re connected via video call from his hotel room.  

“Sorry if I sound a little under the weather but I’ll be OK.” 

The main hook for our chat is a new boxset documenting the earliest recorded forays of Mudcrutch, Petty’s solo excursions as he searched for his direct yet melodic sound, his first two albums with The Heartbreakers, an incendiary 1977 Heartbreakers gig and footage from BBC Two’s cult late-night show, The Old Grey Whistle Test. 

It is nine years since Petty’s death, aged 66, from an accidental overdose of prescription meds a week after his final show with The Heartbreakers, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.  

Campbell is still coming to terms with his loss. Before returning to memories of their early years together, he reflects on the man he was proud to call his “best friend”. 

“It was like losing your right arm,” he affirms. “Very hard — and a surprise — and I’m still grieving. 

“Tom and I were close, not necessarily to hang out all the time, but our musical and spiritual connection was about as strong as anybody can have.” 

When touring with The Dirty Knobs, Campbell makes sure to include Heartbreakers songs in the set, featuring some of his co-writes with Petty such as Runnin’ Down The Dream and You Got Lucky. 

“I can’t believe it’s nine years,” he says. “But, as time goes on, I’ve dealt with the grief better. 

“I like to perform Heartbreakers songs to keep them alive, to remember and revisit my time with Tom.  

“It is bittersweet but there are moments when I feel his spirit. He’s right behind me, saying, ‘Go man, go!’ ” 

Campbell concludes: “You might never get over the loss of your brother or your father or your mother or your best friend but you learn to cope. That’s what grief is. 

“Memories seem to have a life of their own and I have very good memories. I treasure them.” 

This is a cue for more of Campbell’s precious recollections of the Seventies, beginning with Mudcrutch’s first attempts at recording.  

On the first disc of the new boxset, No Sleep Till LA, there is an unpolished but promising song from 1971 called Up In Mississippi Tonight — a self-financed single — and later efforts including Depot Street and Wild Eyes. 

So what does Campbell make of those initial studio forays all these years later? 

“I hear immaturity and I don’t hear any big hit singles,” he decides. “But I do hear dedicated dudes trying to learn their craft. 

“We drove down to Miami to cut a couple of demos and were intimidated because we only knew how to play live. 

“We were ducks out of water so it was quite an education. 

“The looseness of it all is shocking to me now but you sense the germ of something special is about to show itself.” 

Their chastening early studio endeavours meant that Petty, Campbell and the rest of Mudcrutch decided they needed “to get smarter and get out of Gainesville”. 

By this time, another future Heartbreaker, keyboardist Benmont Tench, had joined the fold, bringing an extra level of sophistication to the group’s music. 

Campbell says: “We had done everything we could do as a local band. We had played everywhere, we had a following, but there was nowhere else to go.  

“So we thought either New York or LA was our best shot at getting into the rat race.” 

He adds that they chose the West Coast because “we already had a friend in Bernie Leadon, who came back to Florida and said, ‘It’s all going on in LA — record companies and musicians everywhere’. 

“He encouraged us to get our asses out there, take our hard knocks, and get into it.” 

Mudcrutch arrived in LA in 1974 but things didn’t go well. Although famed musician Leon Russell signed them to Shelter Records, their first single, Depot Street, flopped and they were dropped soon afterwards. 

Petty, however, still had a solo deal with Shelter and his next efforts are represented on the No Sleep Till LA disc by a gorgeous acoustic demo, Unheard Kind Of Hero. 

Campbell remembers the period like this: “After a couple of years of Mudcrutch struggle and the band falling apart, then Tom trying to go solo, The Heartbreakers showed up like magic one night — and boom!” 

He explains: “Benmont had put together a demo session [in 1976] to work on songs and he called us all down. 

“It was as if a light went on — this is who we are, this is what we do. 

“Tom immediately said he was fed up with trying to make a solo record. He wanted to be in a band and said, ‘I’ve still got a deal and this is my band!’ ” It consisted of Petty, Campbell, Tench and new recruits Stan Lynch on drums and Ron Blair on bass.  

“And we started that first Heartbreakers record almost overnight,” continues Campbell. 

As for calling themselves Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, he says: “I never had any issues with that. Tom was a great leader and frontman.” 

Producer Denny Cordell gave them “unlimited studio time and nice equipment” and soon songs flowed thick and fast. 

“They just started exploding out of Tom like they were waiting for an outlet,” says Campbell. “He’d come in and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got a song, it’s called Breakdown. And here’s another called I Need To Know’.” 

The self-titled debut album kicks off in thrilling fashion with Petty/Campbell’s Rockin’ Around (With You). 

“I wasn’t even trying to write a song,” says the guitarist. “I was sitting in the studio playing the riff and Tom walked by and goes, ‘What’s that?’  

“He took it home and came back the next day with Rockin’ Around (With You). But the real lightbulb moment was on the 4th of July, 1976, when we recorded American Girl.” 

Campbell watched Petty demo the first Heartbreakers stone-cold classic on acoustic guitar and decided it would benefit from a 12-string.  

“But we couldn’t afford a 12-string so I tried to emulate it with my six-string by playing octaves,” he says. 

“When we finished that song, we realised something had happened. We had found our sound — and nobody else sounded like that.  

“From then on, it was smooth sailing. Tom was finding his persona and his voice. He was getting confident and he was proud of the band.” 

The self-titled debut album, released on November 9, 1976, failed to make an impact in the States but, as Campbell points out: “The British press loved us. They thought we were a punk band.” 

A brief UK tour in May and June, 1977, brings back fond memories for Campbell. 

He says: “Our first show was in Cardiff supporting Nils Lofgren. We drove there in a little bread truck, facing each other on wooden benches. 

“For the last song, Tom and I were running around in circles and got our guitar cords tangled up. We were literally hog-tied to each other and everyone was laughing. 

“After that it was Heartbreaker mania for a while. We played places like Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds.” 

On returning to the States, the Heartbreakers set about trying to break through. 

“But we couldn’t get arrested,” laughs Campbell. “The first album came and went so it was back to the grind. The second [1978’s You’re Gonna Get It!] picked up a little traction with songs Listen To Her Heart and I Need To Know but the response was still pretty meagre.  

“We were opening for Bob Seger if we were lucky or the J. Geils Band, going from city to city in a minivan.”  

Everything changed with the fabulous third album, Damn The Torpedoes (1979), which reached No2 on the Billboard charts despite what Campbell calls “a difficult birth”. 

It opened with two of his co-writes, Refugee and Here Comes My Girl, but the story behind that album is for another time. 

Before I let him go, I ask Campbell about playing not just with Petty but many great artists during his career. 

“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world,” he says. “My path has landed me in the presence of my heroes — and they always tripped me out.  

“I’d think, ‘Wow, I’m just this little kid from Florida and there’s George Harrison or Bob Dylan or Roy Orbison or Johnny Cash. How did I get here?’  

“People like that can overwhelm you. You get a gush of confusion but it soon settles down.” 

As for Petty, it was never like that. He just wanted to be one of the boys. 

Campbell says: “Tom could have gone solo and could have been like Rod Stewart or whoever but he grew up in a band and he wanted to keep it that way. 

“It’s why we stayed together for so long. I always liked that about him.” 

On a personal note, he adds: “If Tom was working on a record, he could always look at me and say, ‘Should I go this way or that?’ 

“He trusted me and we loved each other.” 

TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS 

Origins 1971- 1978 

★★★★★

Khan Younis, Gaza – A few metres from the sea, near al-Qarara port on Gaza’s coast, Anas al-Shami, 33, is trying to keep his family of six warm and dry in a dilapidated tent. It offers little protection from wind and rain, while the damp seeps into their bedding and belongings at every moment. The swelling waves in the sea also pose a constant threat as winter approaches.

The beach was not al-Shami’s choice of place to live, but the refuge his family took shelter in after being displaced from their home quickly became overcrowded. They can’t afford anything safer than this tent.

Now, he and his family are living in constant fear of a repeat of last winter’s flooding.

Al-Shami and his family were forced to leave Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, when it became part of Israel’s so-called “Yellow Zone” beyond which Palestinians are not permitted to go.

“I searched for land in displacement areas where I could pitch a tent, but overcrowding and high rental costs made that impossible,” he tells Al Jazeera. “I was therefore forced to stay on the beach, despite the dangers facing my family and me.”

Al-Shami recalls last winter, when seawater and rain flooded his tent while the family was asleep. He would wake to find his children lying in water. Their bedding and belongings were repeatedly soaked, leaving him unable to protect them from the cold as the tent turned into a pond.

Despite trying all year, the family has been unable to find anywhere else to go, leaving them facing another winter on the beach.

“My children’s repeated exposure to water, cold and damp caused serious illness which threatened their lives,” he says.

‘I feel helpless in front of my children’

It’s a familiar story along this stretch of coastline.

Ibrahim Abu Tair, 47, whose family has also been displaced from eastern Khan Younis, is sharing a cramped tent with his seven children on the port’s shoreline. The dilapidated shelter lacks any basic necessities and offers little protection from the cold, rain and wind.

“What hurts me most is feeling helpless in front of my children,” he says. “I cannot provide winter clothes to protect them from the cold or even a dry mattress for them to sleep on.”

The strong wind and the sound of the rising waves keep him awake at night, he says, and he is terrified of another flood like last year’s, when water inundated the tent and forced the family to endure the cold in the open. His greatest wish is to find safe shelter where his children can sleep without fear.

Some families have found a makeshift solution to keep the water at bay.

By filling damaged cooking pots with earth, they have forged a barrier against encroaching seawater alongside the tents.

Mayasem Association, an aid organisation which works in cooperation with World Central Kitchen, has seized on this innovation and is now producing these pot-barriers for families in this area close to al-Qarara port.

The initiative reuses large pots rendered unusable by repeated exposure to flames, corrosion and holes. Three pots, donated by World Central Kitchen, are filled with soil and stacked on top of one another, reaching approximately 150 centimetres in height to form barriers that hold back the incoming water and prevent waves from reaching shelter sites.

“The initiative initially involved building barriers to protect the association’s safe space, which hosts its education programmes, school, cultural activities, arts and heritage programmes,” Khalil Abu Lahia, the association’s emergency response coordinator, tells Al Jazeera. “The idea later developed into an attempt to protect the displaced families’ tents along the coastal strip.”

A winter fraught with risk

While this is an example of the innovative thinking which can help families who are destitute and at risk in Gaza, it is nevertheless only a temporary measure which cannot make up for the widespread lack of safe shelter.

The initiative comes amid a warning from Gaza’s Winter Emergency Committee of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, as tents and caravans remain in critically short supply as Israeli authorities continue to prevent their entry into the Gaza Strip, alongside the delivery of critical construction materials and fuel.

The committee has reported that Israeli forces have also destroyed about 70 percent of municipalities’ essential operational equipment and 90 percent of civil defence rescue equipment. The fuel crisis means machinery and generators will soon stop functioning altogether, further limiting the ability to respond to floods, carry out rescue operations and clear roads.

In all, there are about 200,000 dilapidated tents sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children, women and people with disabilities.

Some 7,800 of them are located in extremely hazardous areas, the committee has warned, including on dry riverbeds which may now flood, rainwater collection ponds and beaches exposed to crashing winter waves. These need to be urgently relocated to safer locations.

About 2,000 cracked buildings are also at risk of collapse, threatening families who have sought refuge inside them. Building materials, caravans, shelter and fuel are all urgently needed, the committee says.

In a small house in Omdurman, Hassan Saber Jumaa, a senior administrator at the Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan, sat on a simple wooden chair. He scrolled through his phone, looking for any photograph he might have of Zamzam, which is near el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and once sheltered hundreds of thousands.

He found nothing. Jumaa explained that his old phone was looted during last year’s attack by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces on the camp. Pointing to the bare walls around him, Jumaa said that all he has left are his memories of the camp, and the people who once called it home.

Zamzam, established in 2004, was home to generations of people displaced by western Sudan’s Darfur war, which began in 2003 and continued for nearly two decades. Alongside Abu Shouk camp and al-Salam camp, Zamzam formed part of one of Darfur’s largest concentrations of displaced people.

Jumaa recalled a bustling community, with its market open every day, and children walking to school.

Zamzam memories

Zamzam continued as a refuge for civilians until Sudan’s current war, which began in 2023. The RSF, fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces and its allies, captured the camp in April 2025, after months of attacks. Famine had been confirmed in the camp in August 2024.

Mukhtar Musa, a survivor of the assault, watched the community he knew descend into starvation and violence. He said restrictions on the movement of goods had exhausted food supplies, leaving some residents with little choice but to eat animal feed and peanut shells.

Umm Kulthum Ali Saleh described the months before the final attack as the hardest of her life. The RSF siege on Zamzam stopped goods from entering. She searched for food every morning, and recalled seeing women cooking grass and mixing mud with flour to bake bread.

Saleh believes the blockade was not merely a military measure, but a deliberate way to weaken the camp’s residents in advance of the final offensive, and Zamzam’s fall.

Brutal military offensive

On April 11, the RSF launched a three-day assault using cars, camels, and horses, burning straw homes and health facilities.

A United Nations Human Rights Office report documented at least 1,013 civilians killed, including 319 who were summarily executed in homes, markets, schools, clinics, and mosques. The report documented other abuses, including rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence, particularly targeting the Zaghawa community.

Musa was a witness to some of those mass killings, and said he saw RSF fighters kill civilians while chanting religious slogans. He described seeing bodies scattered around the main market and near schools, and said fighters continued pursuing civilians along roads leading out of the camp.

Saleh also recalled seeing bodies littering the roads, with only chickens, donkeys, and sheep wandering among the abandoned buildings.

The attack forced tens of thousands to flee Zamzam, with many remaining in the el-Fasher area, and others fleeing south to Tawila and Dar al-Salam.

The violence continued to engulf el-Fasher and its surrounding displacement camps over the following months.

With Zamzam under its control, the RSF launched an attack on el-Fasher in August 2025, and soon captured the Abu Shouk camp.

The UN Human Rights Office said at least 40 displaced people were killed inside Abu Shouk, while 19 others were injured. The International Organization for Migration reported that at least 500 residents fled the camp that day.

The RSF captured el-Fasher itself on October 26, 2025. More than 6,000 people are believed to have been killed in the attack, in el-Fasher as well as on escape routes out of the city. The UN found that RSF fighters targeted civilians, including members of non-Arab communities, and committed acts amounting to war crimes.

The RSF has previously denied targeting civilians in Zamzam and el-Fasher, while acknowledging that some fighters committed abuses.

The survivors of Zamzam, al-Shouk, and el-Fasher focus on bearing witness to the tragedy they faced.

Jumaa said the destruction of Zamzam marked not the end of the violence, but the beginning of another wave of displacement.

For him, the camp survives in the memories of those who once lived there – even as they are now displaced elsewhere.

Musa, meanwhile, said he cannot forget the first days of the siege, and the bodies he saw on the streets.

“Whoever survives must tell the story of what happened,” Musa said.

Supermarket refrigerators and freezers across Europe have been targeted by a cyberattack that raised the temperature of internet-linked units, destroying and damaging large quantities of food.

On Monday, fridges and freezers at more than 100 shops in several European countries ran hot. Cyberattacks on supermarkets began last month, when hundreds of French supermarkets were left with spoiled food and damage to units which had overheated, costing millions of euros.

So far, it remains unclear why hackers targeted the supermarkets, but attacks have spread across the continent and even to the United States.

Here’s what we know:

Which countries in Europe have been targeted?

On Monday, several supermarkets in Europe were affected, including the following:

• Dutch supermarket operator Delhaize said dozens of its shops in Belgium and Luxembourg were hit by an “IT incident”.
• French retailer Carrefour said about 15 of its 700 Belgian locations were hit by refrigeration problems.
• The Colruyt group, which runs Spar stores in Belgium as franchises, said five of its shops were affected.
• Swedish Coop said cooling systems at seven of its 800 stores were affected, with disruptions ranging from complete shutdowns to partial operation.
• Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, which also operates restaurants at its stores, said one site in Mons, Belgium, had been affected by a cyberattack.
• De Laet & Van Haver, the Belgian butchery chain, said the temperature in its fridges at its store in Hove, south of Antwerp, was raised as high as 18 degrees Celsius, ruining meat worth about 15,000 euros ($16,764).
• The food wholesaler Musgrave said a cyber-incident affected refrigeration systems in 13 of its SuperValu stores in Ireland.
• In October, hundreds of French supermarkets suffered cyberattacks, spoiling tonnes of food, causing fires and melting parts of refrigeration units.

What has happened in the US?

In August, freezers at a market in Fort Huachuca, an Army base in Arizona, went into defrost mode, spoiling all the frozen food they contained, according to a post on Facebook by the base.

The same month, the naval station in Newport, Rhode Island, reported on Facebook that its refrigeration system was affected, leaving only dry goods were available for purchase.

The Pentagon considered the freezer malfunctions on the military bases to be a suspected hack, the Reuters news agency reported late last month, citing four officials close to the matter.

One official said Pentagon investigators were communicating with the French authorities about the issue.

How are cyberattackers targeting fridges and freezers?

Hackers can access the controls of fridges and freezers which use internet software and raise their temperature in order to spoil frozen food.

In some cases, hackers have increased the temperature of appliances to as high as 50C (122F) in European supermarkets, causing them to melt or even catch fire.

Awais Rashid, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Bristol in the UK, explained that many supermarket refrigeration systems which are remotely managed and, often by third parties, have not been given necessary software updates to prevent hackers.

“In line with established cyber security practices, these systems should be managed via secure networks. However, this is not the case in these incidents and they are accessible on the Internet,” Rashid told Al Jazeera.

“A remote managing party can access a web server on the controller to configure the system including temperature changes and maintenance. There are known vulnerabilities in several controllers (many of which are past their end of life),” he said.

Rashid added that vulnerabilities include “easily guessable” passwords, which would mean anyone could gain access.

Why are hackers doing this?

The motive behind the attacks is unclear, but authorities believe it may be a deliberate attempt to disrupt food supplies.

On Monday, the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen, said the attacks on fridges were a “deliberate attempt to disrupt” the bloc’s food supply and to undermine consumer confidence.

He added that while “food security is not currently at risk … the food waste and impact on businesses are real”.

Rashid said that while there are few details about who may be behind the attacks or what their motives are, it is likely that these are “the motive here is likely disruption”.

“This has financial impacts on the supermarkets but also societal impacts in terms of security of the food supply chain. Critically, this risks undermining trust in infrastructures on which people rely daily,” he said.

Who is behind the attacks?

On Monday, Belgium’s prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened a criminal investigation into the latest fridge cyberattacks. But so far, no one has taken responsibility.

Theories have emerged linking state actors to cyberattacks generally, with North Korea most recently accused of being behind last week’s $6.3bn Binance cryptocurrency heist, which forced the crypto group to freeze accounts.

European intelligence officials have also warned that Russia is escalating its shadow war on the continent amid the ongoing conflict with Ukraine, with cyberattacks among the methods it uses.

On Tuesday, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre warned that Britain needs to be prepared for an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cyberattack on its critical national infrastructure within the next two years.

“By 2028, it is highly likely that Russia, China and other nation states will routinely use AI-cyber to achieve their geopolitical goals, with the UK facing an increase in scale and speed of sophisticated cyberattacks,” the NCSC said in a report.

The report comes shortly after the UK launched its “Be Ready” campaign, calling on citizens to stockpile enough tinned food, bottled water and cash to last three days in the event of a cyberattack or national emergency.

Rashid said that as our infrastructure becomes increasingly digitised, the risk of disruption from cyberattacks, especially “cyber-physical infrastructures such as refrigeration systems”, has risen.

“However, we should also note that a lot of our digital infrastructures operate safely everyday because good security practices enable that. The world works because cyber security works effectively. So it is important that all businesses follow good cyber security practices,” he said.

The election night highs for Palestinian citizens of Israel – Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats – turned into a week of delegitimising rhetoric from Israeli politicians.

Nearly 840,000 people voted for Ra’am and the Joint List, a 64 percent increase on 2022, and adding them to opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc would give an anti-Netanyahu coalition 67 seats; without them, only a unity deal between the main Zionist blocs or another election is possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud alleged the election had been “stolen” by Palestinian parties with unproven claims of Qatari financing. Qatar denied such accusations, as police sources told The Times of Israel that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. By Sunday, election committee chairman Noam Sohlberg declared the election “conducted properly”.

However, the rhetoric delegitimising the Palestinian vote is now being reflected in the coalition negotiations under way. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, has ruled out Palestinian partners, and Eisenkot has presented four conditions for anyone joining his coalition that would be anathema to the Palestinian parties, including recognising Israel as “a Jewish, democratic, liberal, and egalitarian state”, and mandatory national service for all citizens, including Palestinians.

However, Palestinian politicians continue to express a willingness to back an Eisenkot government from outside – if only to enable the departure of Netanyahu and the far right. Meanwhile, thousands rallied in Tel Aviv for a coalition that includes the parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

10 days of siege in Hebron

While the Israeli electorate was consumed by the election’s unclear results, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continued enduring a variety of sieges, most prominently in Hebron. By October 29, Al Jazeera’s data unit counted 10 entrances sealed and about 5,000 people displaced. The city saw at least 120 arrests and 13 businesses demolished by Friday, when the army also blew up the homes of two men it blamed for an attack. Palestinian officials accused the government of using the operation to win settler votes; no Israeli official has said so outright.

On November 2, Governor Khaled Dudin announced the army had withdrawn from Hebron, and that displaced families could return. The Jerusalem Post reported that the army’s chief of staff recommended leaving Hebron before the election, but that Netanyahu refused.

But even with the operation over, the damage remains following more than 120 arrests and daily economic losses the governor put at 10 million to 12 million shekels ($3.2m to $3.8m) in a city responsible for about 40 percent of Palestinian industrial output.

Sieges in homes, expulsions from land

But Hebron was only the largest of many closures that continue to plague the West Bank. In Masafer Yatta, at least 12 villages were cut off, and the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that forces detained 10 teachers from the Jinba school on Sunday.

Yousef Shanaran – who has been besieged in his home with his family in Wadi Rakhim for four weeks now – told Al Jazeera on Monday that settlers have now poisoned the well outside his family home, which the family already was unable to access for days at a time due to the siege. “No water, no food, nothing at all I’ve got,” he said. “Nobody is allowed to bring anything to us.”

These sieges continue as settlers, and increasingly Israeli forces, disrupt the olive harvest across the West Bank. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 397 settler attacks causing casualties or damage in the first 26 days of October – a monthly high since OCHA began tracking such incidents in 2006.

Across villages, a familiar pattern has emerged: settlers attack pickers, the army declares a closed military zone and orders the farmers out, and the harvest is lost.

Amid reports of detentions and deportations of solidarity activists who came to the West Bank to assist in the olive harvest in recent days, activists accused settlers of assaulting three activist journalists at Umm al-Khair, and Israel revoked Brad Lander’s travel authorisation after he was detained while harvesting olives two weeks ago.

Gaza: Deadly ‘ceasefire’ continues

In Gaza, attacks continued on a daily basis as the UN human rights office warned on October 30 that Palestinians are being pushed into an ever smaller area, calling the “Yellow Line” a “kill zone” that is moving westward.

By November 2, the Ministry of Health put the death toll since last year’s ceasefire at 1,593. Sunday was the deadliest day of the week, with at least eight killed. Among those reported killed over the past week:

• Government and police personnel were among those killed. On October 28, a drone strike on a Ministry of Economy facility in al-Mawasi, Rafah, where staff and security personnel had gathered, killed five people, including Ministry of Agriculture official Wajdi Abu Bakr, who died on Sunday from injuries sustained in the attack.
• On November 1, a drone strike in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, killed five men whom Gaza’s Interior Ministry said were police officers.
• Israeli attacks also killed children. Six-year-old Tahani Shalalfeh died of a gunshot wound in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, on October 27, and Yamen Saqr, eight, died on October 30 of wounds from Israeli fire in Khan Younis, according to Wafa and local activists. The young child Zain Owais was reported killed on November 1 with his father, Mohammed Ali Owais, and a third man in a strike near Taj Mall in Gaza City.
• On October 27, a young man was killed in an air strike in west Rafah, and a member of the Bseiso family died of earlier wounds in Gaza City, Gaza Now reported. Mohammad al-Bayouk was killed in Khan Younis on October 28, and Mohammed al-Najjar was killed near Jabalia on Thursday.
• On Friday, the body of a 47-year-old man killed in an air strike at al-Waha, north of Gaza City, was recovered, Wafa reported.
• Ibrahim Saeed died on Sunday of wounds from tank fire in al-Musaddar, and Yusuf Abu Younis died Monday of wounds from a drone strike in Khan Younis the day before, according to local activist Hamza al-Masri.
• On Monday, Mahmoud Qaffa and Asaad Qeshta were killed in separate air strikes in Khan Younis and Ibrahim al-Saayida, 40, in al-Musaddar, according to Wafa and Haaretz.

Israeli authorities claimed many of those killed this week were Hamas fighters, though no evidence was provided. Among those were Diaa Abu al-Rous, killed north of Nuseirat on Saturday, and Mohammed Qudeih, killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis the same day, who the military claimed were members of Hamas’s Nukhba Forces; Palestinian reports describe Abu al-Rous as a teacher.

Such killings take place with winter closing in and humanitarian conditions struggling to improve: two infant girls died of burns in a tent fire in al-Mawasi on Friday, and the shelter picture is dire, with Gaza’s Social Development Ministry saying about 200,000 tents are needed, yet only dozens have arrived due to Israeli entry restrictions.

With no hospitals in Gaza fully functioning, the Red Crescent warned on Monday that the health system is at risk of collapse after 26 hospitals went out of service – with fuel shortages threatening the remaining facilities.

Oakland, California – Protesters dressed as cardboard robots chanted and danced to a drumbeat as they protested against new data centres outside Oakland City Hall last month.

Their concerns largely focused on how the centres — which process large amounts of digital information — might strain the energy grid.

The result, they argued, would not only be environmental harm but also sky-high electricity bills for local households.

“Power prices have gone up so much in Oakland that some people are thinking of shutting off their power,” said Carlos Gutierrez, an activist for Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental justice group.

“And the city is planning to provide power to a data centre instead.”

Opposition to data centres is growing across the United States, as residents express concern about their rapid expansion.

More than 3,000 data centres already operate in the country, with more than 1,500 others in development, according to the Pew Research Center.

But the backlash is perhaps most striking in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, a region considered to be the heart of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

Major AI companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta are based in the Bay Area, and the industry’s growth has been credited with fuelling a local economic renaissance.

Data centres house the advanced computer chips and servers needed to run AI-powered services such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

But they also require 24-hour power and a large supply of water to cool their processors.

Even with such cooling technology, data centres are notorious for emitting heat, leading to an increase in land surface temperatures as high as 9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit).

A midterm election issue

Concerns about the cost of rapid data centre growth, both environmentally and financially, have catapulted the issue into the discourse around Tuesday’s midterm elections.

In the final two months before the vote, at least seven Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and Richmond, have passed temporary moratoriums on data centre construction.

They include Oakland, which passed a data centre moratorium on October 6, after days of protest.

Local politicians competing in Tuesday’s midterms have also used the topic as a wedge issue, to rally support among certain pockets of voters.

One of the most closely watched races in the Bay Area is for the seat left vacant by longtime Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. After 39 years in the House of Representatives, Pelosi is retiring at the end of the year.

Two Democrats are competing in Tuesday’s election to fill her position in Congress: San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and state Senator Scott Wiener.

Each one has staked out a different position on AI data centres. Wiener, for instance, opposes any ban on data centres.

“A blanket data centre moratorium could undermine AI regulation,” he told the publication Mission Local.

Chan, meanwhile, has pledged to seek a nationwide moratorium on data centres, at least until responsible AI regulation is put in place.

“Let’s start with a moratorium on data centres. Allow us to have that moment to regulate artificial intelligence,” she said at a debate in October.

Chan played a leading role in passing San Francisco’s moratorium in early October.

A poll from the University of Southern California showed Wiener leading Chan 47 percent to 41, as of mid-October.

Navigating public backlash

“Right now, data centre opposition is an issue that unifies the US public like no other,” said Shum Preston, a political analyst based in San Francisco.

So far, there has been relatively little opposition to the data centre moratoriums in local hearings. But he speculates that there may be several reasons for the lack of pushback to the bans.

Among them are the surveys indicating widespread public backlash to data centre creation.

An October CNBC poll found that 63 percent of registered US voters oppose building data centres within 16 kilometres, or 10 miles, of their homes.

“Data centres poll very poorly, and developers probably don’t want to put their supervisor friends in trouble ahead of elections. So they probably let this pass,” Preston said.

He also signalled that the short-term nature of the moratoriums may be a factor.

Certain Bay Area cities like San Francisco, Brisbane and Oakland paused construction on data centres for 45 days, with the option to extend the ban later.

Opponents of the moratoriums “will be more vocal when” the 45 days end, Preston said. By that time, the heat of the midterm election season will also have settled, he added.

“That’s when the hearings will get more contentious,” he said.

Not long enough?

Another hurdle facing the moratoriums is the lack of transparency surrounding data centre construction.

Supervisor Shamann Walton, who sponsored San Francisco’s moratorium ordinance, has argued that the city’s definition of “data centres” is outdated.

Created in 2001 — long before the AI boom — the city planning code defines data centres as “internet service exchanges”, a definition that may not accurately characterise the technology today.

Walton said the outdated language has made it hard for authorities to count how many data centres exist in the city.

Not being able to identify data centres can also prevent city officials from monitoring their power and water usage.

“We cannot use 2001 rules to regulate 2026 technology,” he said in a September 14 statement.

Another issue is the time it takes to carry out the necessary environmental assessments. The moratoriums may not offer enough time for a comprehensive review.

“Forty-five days is hardly enough time to document and study the impacts and then frame regulations,” said Roger Lin, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a US environmental nonprofit.

He added that legal barriers limit access to such information from the data centres themselves.

“Data centres often have nondisclosure agreements, so even local air quality boards may not know the impact of data centres on air quality,” said Lin.

Supporters tout economic benefits

Still, AI industry supporters have touted the growth of the data centres as evidence of a flourishing industry, with positive downstream effects for US communities.

Anthropic, for instance, is preparing an initial public offering (IPO) that is likely to raise billions of dollars.

But critics warn that the company’s growth may not translate into an economic boom for the San Francisco Bay Area overall.

Instead, residents fear unequal economic growth that primarily benefits the wealthy. Already, San Francisco faces some of the highest and fastest-growing home rental prices in the country.

At a hearing at San Francisco City Hall, a resident vented their frustrations about the data centres to the supervisors.

“This city is less for humans and more for robots and billionaires,” the resident said.

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Laili Begum can no longer afford to keep her two children in school. There are days when the 37-year-old garment worker struggles to put even one proper meal on the table.

An experienced sewing operator at Virtual Bottoms Limited, a ready-made garments factory near Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, Begum earns around 15,000 taka ($121) a month, which sometimes rises to 18,000–20,000 taka ($145–$161) when she works overtime.

Her 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son dropped out of school earlier this year because she could not afford their education.

“We can barely afford one proper meal a day. This morning, we had only puffed rice and Bombay mix [a snack]. There was nothing for lunch. We’ve been going hungry, hoping to have a proper meal tonight. Yesterday was the same. This is how we survive now,” she told Al Jazeera.

“My son is so thin that you can count every rib in his chest. What else can I do?”

Begum is among approximately four million garment factory workers in Bangladesh, half of them women. They are now protesting for better wages.

Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest apparel exporter after China, is a key supplier to global fashion brands such as H&M, Zara, Levi Strauss, Walmart, and Primark. The country’s ready-made garment sector accounts for more ⁠than 80 percent of its export earnings, which touched $39bn last financial year.

Yet, the people sewing those clothes say their pay no longer covers basic living costs.

‘Government only makes promises’

A Muslim-majority South Asian nation of 170 million people, Bangladesh has one of the world’s lowest wages among apparel-producing countries.

Cambodia has a minimum wage of $210 a month for garment workers, Vietnam’s range from $140-$210, while wages at China’s manufacturing hub of Guangdong range between $286 and $378.

That disparity – worsened by rising inflation and the growing cost of living – pushed the workers to strike and hit the streets on Saturday to demand a minimum wage of 30,000 taka ($241), more than double the current wage of 12,500 taka ($102).

On Sunday, Begum joined one such protest in the Jamgora part of the Ashulia industrial area on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, with the police firing tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the protesters, and arresting dozens of them.

The ⁠Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said the demonstrations disrupted operations at 529 factories on Sunday and affected nearly a million workers.

Later that day, the government announced the formation of a six-member wage board to review the workers’ demands.

But that did not stop the garment workers from returning to the streets for a third straight day on Monday.

In northern Dhaka’s Gazipur area, the workers blocked the Dhaka-Tangail highway, and vandalised and torched several vehicles, while clashes with police were reported from the neighbouring Mirpur district.

“The government only makes promises,” Begum told Al Jazeera. “They haven’t told us when wages will increase and by how much.”

Inflation eating into wages

Rasel Khan, a 30-year-old garment worker at Ashulia, told Al Jazeera his monthly earnings of 18,000–20,000 taka ($145–$161), including overtime, were no longer enough to support his family, which included his mother and younger brother besides his wife and child.

As living costs soar, he has accumulated a debt of about 100,000 taka ($805) to meet his needs. “It’s impossible to support a family on this income anymore. Prices keep rising, and we have to borrow money just to survive,” he said.

The last revision of the minimum wage in the garment sector took place in December 2023. Since then, prices have continued to climb. Official data put annual inflation at 8.34 percent in September, including 7.22 percent for food and 9.30 percent for non-food expenses.

Begum says she pays 3,500 taka ($28) as rent for a single room shared with her mother and children. Her father, living in their village in the central district of Sirajganj, also depends on her income.

She says she is burning discarded paper and other materials to cook because she is not able to afford a gas cylinder that costs about 2,200 taka ($18).

Zahid Hussain, a former lead economist at the World Bank’s Dhaka office, said persistent inflation over the past five years has sharply eroded the purchasing power of low-paid workers.

“When real income falls, they have to cut their daily living standards,” he told Al Jazeera. “They don’t have any surplus income.”

Hussain said a recent hike in the salary of government employees has had a “demonstration effect” among private-sector workers waiting for a similar relief.

The government’s announcement of a wage board follows an amendment to labour laws to reduce the wage review cycle from five years to three years. The current three-year period ends in December.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman convened an emergency meeting of top government officials on Sunday, while Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed met the garment factory owners on Monday, assuring them that a new minimum wage would be fixed through negotiations.

Labour Minister Ariful Haque Choudhury meanwhile urged the workers to resume work, saying the wage board would begin its deliberations shortly.

But Babul Akhter, a workers’ representative on the board, called for the new wages to take effect with January 2027 salaries. He also asked the demonstrators to return to work and demanded the release of arrested workers and withdrawal of cases against them.

‘Western brands hold lion’s share’

The impending wage negotiations come at a challenging time for Bangladesh’s garment industry, as manufacturers balance workers’ demands for better wages with rising production costs and intensifying global competition.

Sheikh Hossain Muhammad Mustafiz, an official at Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association and managing director of Cute Dress Industry Ltd, told Al Jazeera that fair wages and employment security must go hand in hand with their ability to compete in the international market.

“Workers deserve wages that support a decent standard of living. However, without fair purchasing prices from international brands, significant wage increases could put pressure on factories and threaten employment,” he said.

Mustafiz emphasised that protecting the workers’ purchasing power amid rising inflation is a responsibility that global brands that buy Bangladeshi garments must share.

“Sustainable wage growth cannot be achieved by manufacturers alone,” he said. “International brands must contribute through fair pricing and responsible purchasing practices to protect both the workers’ livelihoods and the industry’s long-term sustainability.”

Taqbir Huda, a Tech Global Institute senior fellow at the University of Oxford, accused the western brands who buy Bangladeshi garments of not addressing the issue of the workers’ rights.

“One party that could change the situation overnight has held the most extractive and exploitative role: the western buyer brands who hold the lion’s share of the value that is generated by the clothes that these workers produce,” he told Al Jazeera.

Huda said the wage board, which was due this year, was announced only after the workers began their protest.

“History gives very little reason for the workers to believe anything will improve unless they protest,” he said, adding that the formation of the wage board does not meet their demands unless it addresses rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.

For Begum, a drawn-out process to decide the new wages means another month of struggle to feed her family.

“Wages must rise, but food prices must also come down.”

In June, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood before a packed house of voters, rallying support for a new wave of candidates hoping to build on his progressive momentum by winning seats in Congress.

Inside Brooklyn’s historic Kings Theatre, the crowd answered chants of “Abolish ICE”, “Tax the rich” and “Free Palestine” with roaring applause, leaving little if any room for doubt about what the audience wanted from its politicians.

Within days, all three congressional hopefuls endorsed by Mamdani – Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier – had won their Democratic primaries, becoming the party’s candidates in the midterm election.

Lander, the former New York City comptroller, defeated Congressman Dan Goldman in a race in which Israel was the defining issue.

Avila Chevalier, a community organiser, unseated longtime Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Valdez, a lawmaker in the New York State Assembly and member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), won the contest to succeed retiring Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez.

Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier had the backing of New York City’s DSA chapter.

The candidates’ heavily Democratic districts mean they are likely to win congressional seats in Tuesday’s midterm elections. The June Democratic Party primaries effectively served as the main event for voters.

In the final hours before Tuesday’s midterm election, New York City – a place colloquially dubbed the city that never sleeps – is more politically sleepy, with canvassers a bit harder to find than they were in the final stretch before the primaries.

For the three progressive candidates, the past few months have been a test of how to turn bold campaign promises into policy they can actually deliver. The often slow minutiae of daily governance stand in stark contrast to buzzword-laden campaign slogans on the posters and signs galvanising their base of voters.

Unique paths to politics

The three congressional candidates’ platforms overlap on issues like abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ending US military aid to Israel and establishing a public healthcare system dubbed Medicare for All. But their paths into progressive politics differ.

Lander spent years in the New York City government, most recently as comptroller overseeing the city’s finances. After losing to Mamdani in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, he backed Mamdani in the election.

But Lander’s congressional campaign against incumbent Goldman brought him national attention, with Israel and Palestine emerging as the defining issue in the race to lead a district with one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States.

Lander has described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide and its occupation of Palestinian territory as apartheid. He also identifies as a Zionist who embraces pro-Palestinian activism, arguing that the positions are not mutually exclusive. Lander has long supported a two-state solution.

“It’s straightforward that some approach to more shared safety for Israelis and Palestinians and for Jews and Muslims and everybody else here makes more sense,” Lander said. “I also want to be able to listen across those divides and have thoughtful policy debates.”

Two weeks before Tuesday’s election, Israeli forces detained Lander in the occupied West Bank while he was volunteering to help with the olive harvest. Israeli authorities have since revoked his travel documents for a planned return visit.

“The main story I come home with is not the story of my detention or the revocation of my travel authorisation,” Lander said. “The main story that I come with is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank, which I just saw with my own eyes.”

Lander has also long called for ICE to be abolished, including during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Pro-Palestinian activism 

Avila Chevalier’s political rise was similarly shaped by immigration and Palestinian rights, though she has taken a more uncompromising approach.

After interning at a youth organisation in Nablus in the occupied West Bank in 2014, she returned to the US and became an advocate for Palestinian communities.

Her “Babies Not Bombs” platform calls for redirecting military spending, including aid to Israel, towards domestic priorities such as childcare and healthcare.

“It’s important for us to see our budgets as moral documents,” Avila Chevalier told Al Jazeera. “Our resources should be going towards the things that make our lives dignified and make our communities thrive – not towards war, not towards ICE or things that are harming our communities.”

Valdez, meanwhile, came to progressive politics through the labour movement. A former union-organiser-turned-state-assemblymember, she supports stronger labour protections, including federal legislation such as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to make union organising easier.

Valdez also backs national rent control and a government-run healthcare system to provide wider healthcare access than the country’s private-sector insurance model.

“Public programmes and entitlements have been under attack by the right,” Valdez told Al Jazeera as she exited a polling location in her district on the first day of early voting. “I think not just clawing those back but really advancing a vision for what those things should be will be top priorities.”

Abolishing ICE and ending military aid to Israel are lofty, ambitious goals, and neither is likely to be achieved without navigating competing interests in Congress and the White House. With the balance of congressional power potentially shifting towards Democrats in the midterms, the newcomers will have to decide which priorities to pursue first.

That means looking for more immediate wins comparable to Mamdani’s move to fill 200,000 potholes when he took office as mayor, according to progressive political strategist Nomiki Konst.

“[Get] on the same page about an issue that we all agree on and leverage that in the Democratic Congress because there’s no better time than the beginning,” Konst told Al Jazeera.

For Lander, one such measure is banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

“Maybe that restores a little bit of trust,” Lander said. “People say that’s gross that members of Congress trade stocks. At least this new Congress is doing something, you know, to show me they’re not just all in it for themselves.”

Lander also sees an opportunity to restore enhanced government subsidies that expired at the end of 2025, raising premiums for many people who buy their private-sector insurance plans individually.

“We can say we’re not going to pass a budget that doesn’t do that and force Republicans to vote one way or the other and see what Trump does,” Lander said.

For Avila Chevalier, an early priority would be her “Babies Not Bombs” agenda, redirecting funding towards domestic needs. Valdez wants to pass the PRO Act.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sets a precedent

The three would not be the first progressive New Yorkers to enter Congress promising major change.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her legislative seat in 2018 by defeating longtime incumbent Joe Crowley. Since then, she has occasionally worked with Republicans on shared priorities.

In 2025, Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation with Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, echoing a proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

The question, Konst says, is whether Mamdani’s endorsed candidates can turn ideological commitments into legislative results. Doing so will require compromise, including setting aside some priorities to advance others.

Avila Chevalier is under the microscope after calling for New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to resign over a man being shot in his car by ICE while his child was in the backseat. Avila Chevalier said she was later shoved to the ground by New York City police officers during protests following the shooting.

Mamdani reportedly appointed Tisch on the recommendation of Governor Kathy Hochul, whose support was important to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. An Atlantic magazine report suggested that her endorsement of Mamdani, whose more progressive platform included universal childcare and government-operated grocery stores, hinged on Tisch’s appointment.

“Everybody wants to have their agenda passed, right? I think being really thoughtful about when to hold fire, when to fire, when to be bold, when to hold back, and when to say what you feel so you’ll get the most support,” Konst said.

But Avila Chevalier said she is willing to work with anyone to advance her priorities.

“There is always something that two people can agree on. And that’s where I plan on starting because I think organising is about meeting people where they’re at,” Avila Chevalier said.

“There are so many folks who really want to see healthcare transformed in this country, who really want to see a moratorium on data [centres]. That is a bipartisan issue for so many.”

Hebron, occupied West Bank – Nour al-Natsha knew there was a chance his home wouldn’t be in the best condition upon his return after 10 days of displacement.

Israeli forces had taken over Hebron’s al-Jalada neighbourhood on October 24, a day after Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers nearby. Al-Natsha’s family were given 20 minutes to leave, taking only their money, gold and important documents, and leaving behind most of their clothes, everyday belongings and family photographs.

After hearing that Israeli forces had withdrawn, al-Natsha tentatively returned to check on the house on Monday.

He found the doors wide open, and the house turned upside down. Belongings were missing, as well as his young daughter’s pet bird.

“When we entered the house, it was a mixture of emotions,” the 35-year-old orthopaedic surgeon said. “You couldn’t tell whether you were happy to be back home or heartbroken by what had happened to it.”

The Israeli military operation in Hebron appears to be over – but al-Natsha and his family, and thousands of others in the city, are left to pick up the pieces.

Anxious return

Al-Natsha explained that families and neighbours had gathered on Sunday evening in the nearby Wadi al-Karm area, close to their homes, waiting until around midnight after reports emerged that the military operation had ended. But seeing no signs of a withdrawal, they returned to their temporary accommodation, despite holding on to the hope of going home soon.

Then, in the early hours of the morning, it was confirmed that the military had withdrawn. Al-Natsha decided to head towards the neighbourhood at around 6am. There, he found several neighbours making their way home and waited for relatives to arrive before entering the area and inspecting their houses.

Al-Natsha was initially accompanied by his father and two brothers as they inspected the property, looking for suspicious objects or potential hazards after finding the doors open.

Once they were satisfied that the house was safe, family members began cleaning and putting things back in order, removing belongings they feared might have been damaged or contaminated, in an effort to make the house habitable again and resume their daily lives.

But the family’s return was not without anxiety, particularly for al-Natsha’s four-year-old daughter, Ilya. Her biggest concern was the fate of her pet bird, “Natosh”, which she had left inside the house when the family was forced to leave.

Al-Natsha has no idea where the bird is, whether it is dead, or whether the Israeli soldiers released it. Ilya, meanwhile, keeps asking about her pet.

‘Our paradise on earth’

The return of families to al-Jalada came after 10 days of military restrictions and evacuations affecting several neighbourhoods in Hebron.

During the operation, hundreds of families were forced to leave their homes, while shops and institutions in the areas were closed.

According to previously released figures from the Hebron Governorate’s Support and Relief Committee, 537 families, comprising approximately 3,300 people, were displaced.

With residents now returning, the extent of the damage to homes and belongings, and the lasting effects of the days spent away, remain part of the experience of families trying to rebuild their lives.

For 68-year-old Khaled Shawer, who also lives in the neighbourhood, the damage to homes and the debris and destruction left behind by the military operation could be dealt with. What mattered most was that residents had returned and could begin to regain a sense of stability.

“Everything can be replaced: the destruction, the damage, the dirt, everything,” Shawer said. “But the most important thing is that we have returned to our homes, our paradise on earth, the place where we find our psychological and physical stability.”

UNRWA’s West Bank director, Roland Friedrich, said the scenes in Hebron carry “alarming echoes” of the mass displacement in the northern occupied West Bank in early 2025, when Israeli military operations emptied the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps.

More than 34,000 Palestinian refugees from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps remain displaced, according to UNRWA, more than a year after Israel’s “Iron Wall” operation began in January 2025. The operation destroyed more than half of the camps’ residential buildings.

OCHA’s demolition records capture only a fraction of that destruction. Between 2009 and October 2026, the agency recorded 1,399 buildings demolished in the Jenin and Tulkarem governorates, displacing 4,139 people. Those records mainly track demolitions carried out for lack of permits or as punishment, not buildings destroyed during military raids.

An investigation by the research group Forensic Architecture found evidence of deliberate, systematic destruction. Researchers verified more than 200 incidents involving the destruction of buildings and streets across four refugee camps, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks. They found that roads were widened through homes and gardens to create routes for military vehicles. The group concluded that Israel was applying tactics in the occupied West Bank similar to those it had used in Gaza.

In February 2025, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tulkarem and Jenin would come to resemble Jabalia and Shujayea, two of Gaza’s most devastated areas.

The raids have not stopped. Last week, Israeli forces detained four Palestinians in Tulkarem, and in the village of Burin, south of Nablus, troops converted several homes into military barracks, as they have in Hebron.

Near Jenin, the army has ordered the residents of an entire village to leave permanently. “I have sheep and cows. Our entire lives are tied to this land,” said farmer Jabri Yahya. “Last year they uprooted our olive trees, and this year they want to force us to leave. We don’t know where to go.”

Along the shores of the Neiden Fjord, in Norway’s northernmost county Finnmark, Nils Boine* gazes out across the water. On the horizon, the Neiden River splits around the craggy island of Skogerøya, but lurking beneath its surface is a fisherman’s bounty: hundreds of king crabs.

His grandmother was Sea Sámi, from an Indigenous coastal people whose homeland, Sápmi, stretches across northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s heavily militarised Kola Peninsula. In Finnmark’s fjords, Sea Sámi families have fished for generations. But these waters are dissected by more than currents and shoals. Since Norway and Russia fixed their border in 1826, Sámi communities in the region have been divided by a national boundary.

Two hundred years later, this Arctic community is a combination of Sámi, Norwegians, Finns, Ukrainians, Russians, and international seasonal workers. Most of the Sámi population lives in Norway, with roughly 2 percent residing in Russia.

The Sámi have established a cross-border lifestyle, supported by flexible policies, including a Norwegian-Russian agreement allowing visa-free travel for those living within 30km (18.5 miles) of the border.

Security, however, has begun to tighten since the onset of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine. The West sees Finnmark as part of NATO’s exposed northern flank, as it is directly opposite Russia’s heavily armed Kola Peninsula. The Norwegian border town of Kirkenes has been caught in a spy war with Russia, with multiple Russian operatives having been caught posing as tourists and fishermen while trying to engage in espionage.

Now, border bureaucracy is a daily reality, and reindeer herding, language revitalisation and hunting traditions are increasingly being navigated through permits and regulations, making the wider Arctic infrastructure feel fractured.

“I have friends in Russia,” Boine says. “We used to go shopping in Russia, and go there for weekends.”

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, those crossings have stopped — partly as a display of solidarity with Ukraine, and partly due to safety concerns.

“A local person was just arrested in Russia, so people are afraid to cross the border,” Boine explains. “The rumours say that he had some illegal things in his car, but he was arrested, and the [Ministry of] Foreign Affairs in Norway tried to do something, but it’s very difficult, of course, because we don’t have any diplomats in Russia.”

He is referring to the reported June arrest of a Kirkenes businessman. Lawyer John Christian Elden told the daily newspaper Verdens Gang (VG) that the man was in custody for two months under alleged “possession of weapons or ammunition”. Some Kirkenes residents were left shaken by the news, as recreational hunting is common in the region. They fear accidentally crossing the Russian border with forgotten hunting ammunition that might be left in their cars.

The number of Russian tourists visiting Norway has also declined, from 250,000 in 2019 to 52,000 last year.

“Before, we had Russian guests, but not now,” Boine says. Fortunately for his family, who run a tourism company, 80 percent of customers come from Asia or Finland. Their business has emerged relatively unscathed, but other companies have not been as lucky.

“Shops in the area have lost a lot of income without Russian [tourists],” says Boine. “Several shops have had to close.”

In a landscape traditionally connected for centuries, the fragmentation of communities is deeply concerning for both the regional economy and Sámi culture. Cross-border connections are deeply rooted in the regional psyche.

For Boine, the war in Ukraine has put his friendships with people in Russia on hold.

“They are afraid to do something wrong or write something wrong,” he says quietly. “You never know what might happen if they have too close contact,” he says.

“I want to be careful.”

Port Sudan, Sudan – Awad Haroun, 45, a visual artist and theatre director, fled his home in Al-Halfaya, Khartoum North, after war destroyed a life he had worked hard to build in the capital.

He moved to Port Sudan with his wife and son, leaving behind his home, artistic workspace and the tools he needed to work, shortly after fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary in April 2023.

When he fled, he carried little: Two shirts, two pairs of trousers, two books and a few torn drawing papers, expecting to return soon. Instead, he has been forced to rebuild his life far from home.

He lost not only his home but also the tools and materials he relied on to work and make a living.

In Port Sudan, he looked to use his skills in sculpture, design and decoration for some money. He has since participated in theatrical performances at Wasel Festival, organised by Ahalina Cultural Group in partnership with UNESCO, and led traditional arts workshops with cultural groups.

Awad founded Ahalina cultural group in 2013 with a group of young people, using theatre, visual arts, music and puppetry to engage with young people and promote peace and social cohesion.

Drawing, storytelling, music and play have also given children opportunities to express themselves and connect with others.

“Losing my tools does not mean I have lost my skills, and losing my workspace does not mean I have lost my ability to create,” Awad told Al Jazeera.

Awad and other displaced artists found shelter at an old school in Port Sudan, where they helped clean and prepare the building for families forced from their homes.

“Now, concerns about the possibility of eviction have left us uncertain about where we will go next,” he said.

While art cannot replace a lost home or end the war, Awad believes it can preserve memories, bring communities together and offer children space to play and express themselves.

“From the ashes, we will rise” is the motto of Ahalina cultural group. This is more than a slogan for Awad; it is a reminder to keep creating, despite everything the war has taken from him.

The war has taken a heavy toll on Sudan’s cultural life, damaging heritage sites and disrupting the livelihoods of artists across the country.

In June 2026, UNESCO estimated that Sudan’s cultural sector faced a $30m funding gap. But behind this figure are deeply personal losses: Artists killed by the war or forced to leave behind studios, galleries, artworks and the tools they need to create.

In April 2024, UNESCO reported that the Artists and Writers Union in Port Sudan had provided shelter to more than 112 displaced artists and other cultural professionals.

The challenges remain significant, but cultural initiatives have continued. In April 2026, UNESCO said its initiatives in Port Sudan had benefitted more than 350 artists, women, girls and internally displaced cultural professionals, supporting efforts to sustain Sudan’s cultural life amid the conflict.

Asim Abdelaziz, 31, a musician and filmmaker, left El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, amid escalating fighting and repeated drone attacks. He arrived in Port Sudan in November 2023, hoping to find safety and work.

Separated from his family, who are scattered between Omdurman and El Obeid, Asim lives alone in a shelter for displaced artists. The war has uprooted his life and disrupted his career, but he continues to use music to preserve Sudan’s cultural heritage and bring communities together.

In Port Sudan, he has worked with the local Artists and Writers Union, UNESCO and community organisations.  He has also collaborated with the Ministry of Culture and Information and other artists on music programmes to address social issues, including hate speech and racism.

Asim said the war has spurred hate speech and deepened divisions between Sudan’s different communities. He believes art can counter these differences by promoting diversity, mutual acceptance and peaceful coexistence.

“I have seen firsthand how hate speech affects people’s lives,” Asim told Al Jazeera. “Through music, I try to remind Sudanese people that we are all brothers and sisters, and that war does not represent who we are.”

Mokhalaya, a project he founded to document and archive traditional music and rhythms from across the country a year ago, is one avenue for this.

“I hope to take the project to international festivals, introducing audiences abroad to [showcase] Sudan’s rich musical traditions and cultural diversity,” he said.

Preserving heritage is not just about safeguarding the past, but also about keeping Sudan’s cultural identity alive during a war that has displaced communities and disrupted lives, he said.

Abdelqader Hashem, secretary of the Red Sea State Writers and Artists Union, told Al Jazeera the union has supported artists and their families who fled fighting in other parts of Sudan since the war began on April 15, 2023.

“We worked to establish a shelter for displaced artists in a school in Port Sudan and sought support from local and international organisations to provide for their basic needs,” he said.

Beyond providing shelter, the union has helped displaced artists take part in the city’s cultural activities, contributing to community awareness programmes that address important societal issues such as the dangers of drug use, a growing concern in Sudan.

“We have also implemented projects in partnership with UNESCO to train children in displacement camps in handicrafts, including concrete crafts,” Hashem said.

“Most of the displaced artists have since returned to their homes in Khartoum following the Sudanese army’s recapture of the capital.”

Gaza City— Mohammed Hamad, 14, was on his way home from school in Deir el-Balah on October 17 when an Israeli strike targeted the road he was travelling along.

He had finished classes at the makeshift school and was walking home through the al-Baraka neighbourhood with his 10-year-old brother, Abdullah. Mohammed was killed in the strike along with another man. Abdullah survived.

Mohammed was Riyad Hamad’s third child, an eighth-grade student among the top pupils in his class. His loss is difficult for the 44-year-old father to comprehend.

“He was not just my son, he was my friend,” Hamad told Al Jazeera from his family tent in Deir el-Balah. “He was doing so well. May God have mercy on him.”

The family has struggled to come to terms with the death of a boy whose schoolwork and achievements had been a source of pride.

“Mohammed used to ask me: ‘How am I with you?’ I swear, I never asked him for anything more,” he said.

The loss has also left a deep mark on Abdullah, who now fears losing his father, too.

“He has become very afraid of going to school. They used to go together every day and come back together. Now he cannot come to terms with having to go on his own,” Hamad said.

“We are living in fear. When I go out into the streets, I swear I am afraid. Even when I am walking or sitting in a car, my heart is filled with fear … Why should our children have to live with this constant fear and anxiety, even until the last moment?

“Enough is enough. The child is supposed to bury his father, not the father bury his child. They have turned the order of things upside down.”

The gradual return of children to school – even in makeshift classrooms and tents – had offered families in Gaza some hope of restoring a sense of normality after years of disruptions.

But Israeli air raids and sniper fire have continued, despite a ceasefire being established last October for Gaza. Since then, Israel has killed at least 1,574 Palestinians and injured 5,687 in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.

The academic year resumed in Gaza on September 19, after nearly three years of disruptions caused by Israel’s war – and with it came more Israeli strikes.

Ten children aged from six to 16 and a teacher were killed between October 18 and 24. In a statement last Sunday, the Ministry of Education said that two girls were wounded during morning assembly at Muradiya School in Jabalia on October 21. Five students were also injured, some critically, in an attack on the Islamic University campus in Gaza City on Sunday.

The ministry called for urgent international action to protect students, schools and universities in Gaza.

The risks are particularly high for schools located near the so-called “Yellow Line”, a point that divided Gaza’s territory between Israeli and Palestinian control as part of the October 2025 “ceasefire” agreement. The line has moved westward to give Israel control of more than 65 percent of Gaza, according to the United Nations, up from the 53 percent agreed upon a year ago

At least 66 Palestinian children have been killed close to the Yellow Line, and pupils and teachers travelling near this zone remain in mortal danger from Israeli snipers and bombs.

On October 21, Suad Abd Rabbo, a fourth-grade student, went to school carrying her bag and books. Not long afterwards, her older sister rushed home shouting that Suad had been shot.

“I ran out barefoot,” Suad’s mother, Aliaa Abd Rabbo, recalled. “When I saw her, I was confused. I didn’t know what to do. She was bleeding, crying and screaming.”

The bullet struck Suad above the knee and lodged in a sensitive area close to her nerves and tendons. She was rushed to hospital, where doctors warned that trying to remove it could cause paralysis. They operated on Suad but were still unable to extract the bullet, which remains in her leg.

Abd Rabbo remembers when Suad came round from the anaesthesia after surgery and started reciting a passage she had been preparing for a school dictation exercise.

“‘O symbol of generosity and resilience … When I feel tired, I sit under an olive tree in the yard of our home, and feel rested after the exhaustion,” her mother recalled her saying.

Suad has since been discharged from hospital and has returned to her tent, where she remains unable to walk or move around. She needs surgery abroad to fully recover, but with Israel tightly controlling exit and entry from Gaza, her prospects of proper treatment are remote.

“Suad is now deeply frustrated. She cries and asks: ‘Why did this happen to me? Why was I targeted? What did I do?’” Abd Rabbo said.

Israeli tanks, military vehicles and cranes regularly open fire close to their tent in northern Gaza, particularly after sunset. Families often have to lie flat on the ground for hours to avoid the stray bullets that ricochet through the camp.

“My heart hurts when I send the girls to school. I told my husband I regret coming back from the south,” Abd Rabbo said about their return home to Jabalia after fleeing to Deir el-Balah during the war.

Another girl was also injured on the same day as Suad as students at Muradiya School were preparing for assembly at about 10:30am, Naim Aloush, the school’s principal, said.

“The girls had formed two lines … one suddenly screamed and fell to the ground … another girl standing nearby was struck by a bullet in her side,” she told Al Jazeera.

Teachers rushed to the girls and found that Suad had been shot while the second pupil, Amina Khader, a fifth-grade student, sustained a minor injury to her abdomen.

Aloush said the shooting sent fear through the school, with parents rushing to collect their children.

Pupils who had witnessed the incident were left terrified, and the school saw a marked increase in absenteeism in the days that followed.

The principal sees this incident as part of wider dangers facing the school in the al-Ghubari area, west of Jabalia al-Balad, consisting of 20 educational tents and serving about 1,000 pupils in the surrounding community, close to the Yellow Line.

Aloush said stray bullets or projectiles – from Israeli artillery, quadcopter drones and snipers – still regularly hit the school.

“Education is under fire, and our whole lives are under fire. At any moment, there can be gunfire. It is not light … it comes down like rain,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Every day, I come to school with my hand over my heart, afraid that one of my pupils or a member of the teaching staff might be hit.”

Amina, the other child injured along with Suad, has been left deeply traumatised by the incident, her father, Khaled Khader, said.

Khader said he rushed to the school after hearing that Amina had been injured and carried his daughter to a nearby clinic.

“There was terror, absolute terror. My daughter was in shock. She broke down, started screaming and collapsed,” Khader told Al Jazeera.

“Thank God she is safe … but the psychological impact of what happened will take years to overcome.”

Amina has since been afraid to return to school. Her family tried taking her back once, but she left early, unable to bear the sound of the gunfire.

“She is now afraid of the school itself. She keeps dreaming about her classmate lying there with blood running from her,” Khader said.

He said the incident had also left him afraid for the rest of his children and his wife, with Israeli air raids, random gunfire and shelling continuing to affect streets near the school.

“We are confused about what to do. Do we keep our children away from school and deprive them of their education, or do we send them out, knowing that they could be targeted at any moment?” Khader said. “A student needs stability to be able to learn. But we have no stability, and there are no alternatives.”

Earlier this month, authorities worldwide urged website administrators to execute emergency updates after a nonprofit programming foundation flagged critical security flaws that could allow hackers to breach systems.

Government and corporate websites briefly went offline to patch the vulnerabilities, nicknamed PHP2Shell, which were discovered by independent cybersecurity experts using artificial intelligence (AI).

The vulnerabilities were embedded in the code of a widely used open-source web programming language, PHP, for more than a decade. They had gone unnoticed, however, because it would have been too complicated for humans to exploit them without the use of advanced AI.

But cybersecurity experts, as well as those maintaining important software, say PHP2Shell could be the first in a deluge of security flaws exposed by emerging AI. They say much of the world’s most critical digital infrastructure is maintained by volunteers, who often lack the resources and time to respond to newly discovered threats.

“There’s been a lot of people in the AI safety community that said this is one of the first areas where we are going to see the harmful impact of AI,” said Peter Slattery, a research scientist at MIT’s FutureTech, who studies how cybersecurity experts are dealing with the new technology and tracks real-world incidents involving AI.

A digital world built on volunteer work

PHP got its start in 1995, when Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf sought to track how many people visited his online resume. Over time, others around the world improved Lerdorf’s software, and it grew in popularity.

As with other open-source coding projects, anyone could download, modify and share improvements. Websites like Facebook and Wikipedia were built using PHP, which runs about 70 percent of the world’s websites.

In 2021, a dedicated nonprofit, the PHP Foundation, was launched to coordinate development. Like many other foundations maintaining open-source software, it operates on a meagre budget.

Most of the digital infrastructure consumers use is powered by open source software. The Mozilla Firefox browser is open source, as are languages like Perl, Python, and JavaScript. The software that lets a computer communicate with others on the internet is often open source, with many servers using products like Apache HTTP Server, maintained by the Apache Software Foundation.

“The world today, including proprietary software vendors, relies on open source software for its digital infrastructure,” said Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, a nonprofit that supports open source software.

The world’s largest corporations, like Meta, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, depend on that volunteer-built, open-source infrastructure. Now, those companies’ own AI tools are uncovering security flaws in the infrastructure at a pace that needs far more resources for groups like the PHP Foundation to keep up.

“It’s simply not possible with the resources in place to fix all of the known vulnerabilities,” Brock said. “Foundations are attempting to manage these challenges, but the smaller ones don’t have hundreds of millions in funding, and managing this at the pace AI requires is proving impossible.”

A deluge of new bugs to fix

The PHP2Shell vulnerabilities were found through several advanced AI models, which can employ far more complicated attempts to hack past security barriers than humans could.

Developers of other software are also discovering far more security flaws than in the past because AI is being used to probe defences.

Google said it uncovered more than 1,000 security bugs in the last update for its Chrome browser, more than in the last two dozen updates combined. Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox browser, found more than 400 security vulnerabilities in April, a significant jump from the previous record of 76 bugs discovered just one month earlier.

“We have maybe 10 times more issues than usual because we are using AI to find them,” said Jarek Potiuk, part of the volunteer security team at the Apache Software Foundation. (In keeping with the foundation’s non-hierarchical ethos, Potiuk said he has no real title).

Potiuk said there is an “industry-wide movement” to conduct scans using AI models and identify security vulnerabilities, much like was done to find the bugs in PHP. But the scans themselves cost money – used to pay for the tokens for AI models – and afterwards, humans must pore over them to weed out false positives.

“Every project, every foundation is doing this right now – spending enormous amounts of time to find these issues,” Potiuk said. “AI helps to find them, but you have to verify things, you have to review them.”

Earlier this year, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing, offering $100m in credits to support its advanced Claude Mythos AI model to search for security vulnerabilities in the world’s critical software. In one month, more than 23,000 vulnerabilities were found across more than 1,000 open source projects.

The Apache Software Foundation has taken advantage of another scheme, the Alpha-Omega project, to scan for security bugs across the 290 software packages it maintains. The project, backed by companies like Anthropic, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, spends about $7m a year helping open-source developers find critical security bugs.

But those working on finding and fixing the security flaws say the corporate world could be doing a lot more, given the trillion-dollar valuation of companies whose products would not work without free software like the packages the Apache Foundation provides.

“They are helping a lot, but we need more active players in this area,” Potiuk said, “because it’s highly disproportional – the impact it has on the corporate world versus the open source world”.

When a major security flaw like PHP2Shell is uncovered, it often comes down to a handful of volunteers to fix it.

Keeping the internet’s infrastructure as decentralised and open-source as possible is crucial, Potiuk said. Instead of buying out something like PHP, major players like Google or Microsoft could, for instance, pay staff to dedicate some of their work hours to maintaining open-source projects they use.

Real-world targets

The 2021 Log4Shell vulnerability, which allowed hackers to remotely run code on millions of devices through a widely used library maintained by the Apache Software Foundation, underscored the critical role open-source software plays in system security. That bug was discovered without the use of AI.

Suddenly, cars, microwaves and a host of electronic devices connected to the internet were vulnerable, Potiuk said.

“That was the moment when the whole ecosystem realised how important it is to take care of open source,” he said.

A bug like that, if found by a malicious hacker and exploited before there is a chance to patch devices, could have caused a major disruption.

Slattery said the database of incidents he and his colleagues maintain shows that an increasing number of vulnerabilities are being detected, and it is a matter of time before some are exploited in the real world.

“We are starting to see both a lot more vulnerabilities detected and addressed in time, but also attacks on a wide range of systems,” Slattery said. “We have been moving in this direction for a long time. There are more and more things now you can attack.”