Gaza

Gaza will not forget

The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.

The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.

These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.

Gaza will not forget

She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.

Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.

This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.

Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.

Palestine will remember

She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.

Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.

She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.

Gaza will not forget those who betrayed her

Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.

Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.

For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.

Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.

Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.

Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.

Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.

The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.

Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.

But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.

Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

A Palestinian doctor has been killed and three people injured in an Israeli attack in central Gaza, as Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian homes and property in northern and southern parts of the occupied West Bank.

The attacks across Palestine on Saturday, the fourth day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, came amid continued Israeli violations of a United States-backed “ceasefire” implemented in October aimed at halting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Dr Jamal Abu Aboun, the head of anaesthesia at Al-Yafa Medical Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, was killed in an Israeli strike near the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, also in Deir al-Balah on Saturday.

“The body of Jamal Abu Aoun and three injured people, including a child, had arrived at the hospital following an Israeli drone strike that targeted a group of civilians near the hospital,” a medical source at Al-Aqsa hospital told the Anadolu news agency.

Earlier, Israeli artillery shelling targeted areas east and south of Khan Younis city in southern Gaza. Another artillery strike targeted al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

At least 922 Palestinians have been killed and 2,786 others injured in Israeli attacks since the October “ceasefire”, according to the Gaza Media Office.

Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, killing at least 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 172,000 others, according to Palestinian figures.

In testimonies to The Associated Press news agency, Israeli soldiers described a climate of dehumanisation, permissive rules of engagement and the routine killing of Palestinians during the “ceasefire”.

Reservists who served in Gaza between last October and January said Israeli troops frequently opened fire on Palestinians approaching or crossing the so-called “Yellow Line”, an often poorly marked boundary separating Israeli-occupied areas from the rest of the enclave.

One soldier said that fellow troops celebrated after a strike on a vehicle carrying Palestinians killed everyone inside. “It was a jungle,” the soldier told AP. “After the ceasefire, the order was: If someone crosses the line, you shoot them.”

Another reservist said commanders repeatedly emphasised holding territory at all costs. “There was a general feeling that human lives are not valuable,” he said.

Settler attacks in occupied West Bank

Elsewhere in occupied Palestine, Israeli settlers attacked several homes early on Saturday in the town of Beita, south of the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

They threw stones at houses and smashed several vehicles, Wafa reported.

State-run Voice of Palestine radio reported Israeli forces firing light bombs into the sky over the town.

In the southern West Bank, settlers attacked Palestinian farmland and damaged several trees in Khirbet el-Muraq in Masafer Yatta, activist Osama Makhamra, who follows Israeli violations south of Hebron, told reporters.

Israeli settlers carried out at least 540 attacks in April against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, according to a monthly report by the Palestinian state-run Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

The attacks ranged from “direct physical violence, uprooting trees, burning fields, preventing farmers from accessing their land, seizing property, as well as demolishing homes and agricultural structures”.

Israeli army raids, arrests and settler attacks have intensified across the West Bank since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza.

According to Palestinian figures, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,168 Palestinians, injured 12,666, displaced about 33,000, and detained nearly 23,000 in the West Bank since October 2023.

Egypt races to salvage Gaza ceasefire as Israeli attacks and displacement threats push deal to the brink of collapse.

Egypt has launched an urgent diplomatic intervention to rescue a fragile Gaza ceasefire agreement that is on the brink of collapse.

The government warned Israel against expanding its occupation in Gaza, which would undermine efforts to end the war amid of wave of deadly air strikes.

According to an Egyptian intelligence official who spoke to Al Jazeera, Egypt has also invited a senior Hamas delegation, led by chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, for urgent talks to salvage the peace process.

The source described contacts between the parties as intense, saying Cairo was racing to arrange negotiations before the end of the week in order to prevent all-out war in Gaza.

The diplomatic moves come in the wake of renewed Israeli military attacks on Gaza and statements from top Israeli officials that threaten to unravel months of diplomacy.

At least 141 Palestinians have been killed in the last two weeks in an intensification of Israeli attacks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday issued a directive ordering the military to expand the area under its control from 53% to 70%.

This fundamentally violates the US-brokered comprehensive peace plan signed in October 2025 under the Trump administration, mediators say.

Compounding the crisis, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz also triggered regional outrage by publicly reviving a blueprint for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians out of the enclave.

Speaking during an announcement confirming the assassination of Hamas’s newly appointed military chief, Mohammed Odeh, Katz asserted that the forced displacement scheme would be implemented “at the right time and in the right manner”.

Cairo sent a warning to the Israeli government, rejecting any measures designed to push Gaza’s residents towards voluntary emigration or direct Palestinians towards the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

Egypt has been coordinating with mediators in Qatar and Turkiye, as well as US officials, to return the process to a negotiating track, including revisions to the addendum of the original Gaza peace plan, designed to reduce violence.

The source said Egypt and its fellow mediators were aware that Netanyahu’s recent statements on expanding Israel’s occupation of Gaza, as well as attacks that killed Hamas military figures Izz al-Din al-Haddad and Mohammed Odeh, were driven by electoral calculations and compounded by difficulties Netanyahu faces in Lebanon.

Egypt has contacted United States officials to ask President Donald Trump to urgently restrain Netanyahu, given the recent Israeli escalations in Gaza, the source said.

A senior Hamas official abroad told Al Jazeera that Hamas had received Egyptian communications aimed at containing the escalation and preventing talks from collapsing, suggesting a meeting in Cairo was expected within days.

Hamas said the ceasefire was on the brink of collapse due to repeated Israeli violations, and called on the US and guarantor countries to take “serious and urgent” steps to compel Israel to honour its commitments.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October to end two years of fighting, which had seen more than 72,000 Palestinians killed and the vast majority of Gaza’s population made homeless.

Despite a ceasefire still being in place, at least 929 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October.

Five Palestinians, including three members of the same family, were killed and five others injured in fresh Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on Sunday amid daily violations of an ongoing ceasefire, medical sources said.

One of the Palestinians was killed by Israeli gunfire in the center of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza and his body was transferred to Al-Shifa Hospital in western Gaza City, the sources told Anadolu.

A couple and their child were also killed, and three others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the sources added.

In a separate incident, the sources said a child died from injuries sustained in an Israeli strike that targeted a police headquarters in northwestern Gaza on Saturday.

In northern Gaza, a Palestinian fisherman was moderately injured after Israeli naval forces fired shells and machine-gun fire at fishing boats off the coast of Gaza City, according to the sources.

READ: France bans Israeli Cabinet Minister Ben-Gvir over treatment of Gaza flotilla activists

Another Palestinian was injured by shrapnel from a shell fired by Israeli forces on the beach in the Al-Sudaniya area, northwest of the enclave.

In a related development, the Israeli army carried out demolition operations targeting buildings and facilities in northern Gaza. Local sources reported hearing a large explosion resulting from the demolitions.

In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Israeli forces also carried out similar demolition operations east of the city, accompanied by gunfire and artillery shelling near Bani Suheila roundabout, according to the local sources.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, over 880 people have been killed and more than 2,645 others injured in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire was announced on Oct. 10, 2025.

The agreement was meant to halt Israel’s two-year war that killed more than 72,000 people, most of them women and children, injured over 172,000 since October 2023, and caused massive destruction affecting 90% of civilian infrastructure.

READ: Israel pounds Gaza, Lebanon in daily breaches of ceasefires

After two years of relentless bombardment and ground invasions, Israel’s future in Gaza had appeared to be settled with the signing of United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan on October 9, 2025.

Under the terms of that agreement, Israeli forces were meant to withdraw behind what planners called the “Yellow Line”, maintaining control of 58 percent of the territory, with their full withdrawal to be set at a date to be determined.

That withdrawal hasn’t happened. In fact, in the months since, as well as killing at least 922 people in near-daily strikes on the enclave during the “ceasefire”, Israel has expanded its territory by about 11 percent.

According to satellite data gathered in March, it has also established at least 32 military outposts, a ground barrier and infrastructure along what was supposed to be a temporary line.

Since October last year, numerous humanitarian agencies, including Oxfam, have accused Israel of compounding the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by restricting deliveries of aid and other essential goods.

Then, on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel will take over yet more territory in Gaza, telling a conference: “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60 percent of the territory of the Strip – you know this. We were at 50. My directive is to move to …,” he said, pausing briefly as someone in the crowd yelled, “100!”

“Let’s go step by step,” he responded, “First of all, 70. Let’s start with that. We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”

Al Jazeera contacted the Israeli prime minister’s office for clarification of this, but received no response by the time of publishing.

Can Israel just grab more land in Gaza?

“If Israel’s ultimate plan is to exercise permanent effective control over the entirety of the Gaza Strip, we are talking about unlawful annexation,” Michael Becker, a professor of international human rights law at Trinity College in Dublin, told Al Jazeera.

“As the International Court of Justice reaffirmed in a 2024 advisory opinion, annexation constitutes a violation of the bedrock prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force.”

Nevertheless, to date, since the onset of its war on Gaza in October 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 72,819 men, women and children in Gaza, with many thousands more missing and presumed dead under the rubble.

By 2025, Israel had caused a confirmed famine in the enclave and has now decimated nearly all infrastructure needed to support life. It has done all this without experiencing any meaningful international sanctions and still takes part in numerous international sporting and entertainment competitions – despite protests.

Hopes that the US might enforce its own conditions on Israel also appear ill-founded. Since announcing a ceasefire in the enclave in October last year, the US has failed to react as Israel has expanded and entrenched its presence in Gaza, choking off access to about two-thirds of the enclave for its inhabitants by April 2026.

Al Jazeera also contacted the US State Department for comment about this, but received no response by the time of publishing.

Can Gaza’s population survive in such a reduced territory?

It’s very hard to tell. Several agencies, including the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), have expressed deep concern about how Gaza’s remaining population can continue to subsist in an ever-shrinking space.

Israel’s answer to this is simple. “The plan for voluntary emigration from Gaza will also be implemented, all at the proper time and in the proper manner,” Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote in a statement marking the killing of Hamas leader Mohammed Odeh on Wednesday this week.

“Voluntary emigration” is a term used by a number of Israel’s government ministers, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Observers typically acknowledge that this means the ethnic cleansing of the enclave.

Israel’s Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions about this from Al Jazeera.

Is any of this legal?

No.

“The idea of permanently removing Palestinians from Gaza smacks of forced displacement and would also violate the fundamental right to self-determination of the Palestinian people,” Becker said. The principle of self-determination serves as a “cornerstone” of the UN Charter, he said.

However, Becker said, the spotlight of international attention has now shifted from the crisis in Gaza to the US and Israel’s war on Iran, as well as Israel’s actions in Lebanon, where it has occupied large swaths of the south of the country.

“While the Trump administration may be willing to diverge from Israel’s interests in seeking a resolution to the disastrous and illegal war that the United States started against Iran, the United States seems to have lost interest in Gaza or pushing for restraint on the part of Netanyahu’s government. It is unclear what role the so-called Board of Peace is willing to play in terms of maintaining a future for the Palestinians of Gaza,” he said.

A digital register of land ownership in the West Bank is seen as an escalation of Israel’s occupation.

Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestine – A controversial Israeli plan to digitally register property ownership in the occupied West Bank is a “dangerous colonial occupation step that represents a direct assault on the historical and legal rights of the Palestinian people to their land and property”, the Palestinian Land Authority has said.

The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate and the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC) have urged Palestinians in the West Bank not to engage with any Israeli “entities, committees, platforms, or procedures” of lands and property.

Israel reportedly launched the online “Land Registry and Settlement of Rights” platform on which it plans to “update” property ownership in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday this week.

The Jerusalem Governorate and the CRRC have called on the international community, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and all international human rights and legal institutions to “take their urgent responsibilities to stop these illegal procedures and hold the occupying state accountable for its continuous violations against the Palestinian people, their land, and their resources”, they said.

Moayad Shaaban, head of the CRRC, which is part of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said the move reveals “the occupation’s transition from traditional policies of field control to digital and administrative colonial engineering aimed at imposing permanent legal realities on the occupied Palestinian territory”.

‘Annexation’ by land registry

In May 2025, the Israeli Security Cabinet launched a new, aggressive land settlement process throughout the West Bank, with the aim of “completing the legal and administrative annexation of the occupied territories through fully registering the lands under Israeli authority”, the Jerusalem Governorate said.

Then, in July 2025, Israel’s parliament approved a symbolic measure calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank. The move was first tabled in 2024 by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in an illegal Israeli settlement.

On February 15, 2026, the permanent acquisition and registration of approximately 58 percent of Area C – the part of the West Bank over which Israel exerts total control – began.

Under that decision, Palestinian land registration in the Israeli “Tabu” – the land registry extract – began for the first time since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967. It is a final measure that will be difficult to challenge in Israeli courts, the Israel Hayom newspaper reported in February.

With the onset of land settlement, the Israeli Land Registry unit will take over the regulation and registration of land ownership in Area C. It also has the power to issue sales permits and to collect fees. Israel aims to complete the full settlement of 15 percent of the West Bank by the end of 2030.

Some 700,000 Israeli settlers already live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as illegal settlement has expanded under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Rights groups say settlement approvals, along with rising settler violence against Palestinian communities, have accelerated since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.

The Israeli army has already expanded its control of Gaza by 11 percent over the ‘Yellow Line’, beyond the terms of the ‘ceasefire’.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli army to expand its control of the Gaza Strip to 70 percent, according to remarks aired by Israeli media.

“At this point, we are fully in control of 60 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip … and my directive is to get to … 70 percent,” Netanyahu said in footage recorded by Channel 12 and aired on Thursday.

When someone in the audience shouted that Israel should take the entire besieged enclave, the prime minister said “we are going in order”, according to The Times of Israel. “First 70 percent,” he said without disputing that a complete takeover could take place. “We’ll start with that.”

The Israeli army had in mid-March quietly sent maps to aid organisations showing it had already expanded its control to about 11 percent beyond the so-called “Yellow Line” demarcating areas of the enclave occupied by Israeli troops. That line was agreed in a United States-brokered “ceasefire” in October 2025. That meant it controlled 64 percent of the Palestinian territory, instead of 53 percent.

Due to the Israeli army occupation, Palestinians cannot access about two-thirds of Gaza. A further seizure of the territory would force two million of them, already living in disastrous conditions, into an even smaller territory after enduring two years of genocidal war.

Despite the nominal truce reached last year, Israeli bombing in Gaza continues with near-daily attacks. An Al Jazeera tally from October to April counted at least 2,400 Israeli violations. Earlier on Thursday, health authorities said an Israeli air raid killed at least 10 people, including four children, and wounded 20 others.

According to the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) latest report, the humanitarian situation for civilians in Gaza remains critical, with displaced families living in overcrowded tents, schools or damaged structures. Clean water is scarce, and poor waste collection is increasing health risks, including the spread of rats and insects. Many neighbourhoods across Gaza are also still dangerous, with frequent air strikes, shelling and shootings happening in or near residential areas, the report said.

Last week, the high representative overseeing the US-founded Board of Peace for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that the deteriorating status quo in the enclave risks becoming “permanent”.  Speaking to the UN Security Council, he urged the international body to use “every means at its disposal” to press Hamas to disarm and to push Israel to uphold its commitment under the October ceasefire, pointing to its continued killings and restrictions on humanitarian flow.

The war that Israel launched following the October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups has killed more than 72,775 Palestinians. The Israeli military continues to maintain a strict security regime, and many hundreds more have been killed in the past seven months. Conflict monitors warn that since the US-Israel war on Iran started in February, Israeli bombardment of Gaza has accelerated.

Gaza will not forget

The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.

The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.

These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.

Gaza will not forget

She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.

Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.

This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.

Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.

Palestine will remember

She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.

Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.

She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.

Gaza will not forget those who betrayed her

Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.

Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.

For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.

Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.

Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.

Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.

Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.

The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.

Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.

But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.

Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

May 27 (UPI) — The Israeli Defense Force said Wednesday that it has killed Mohammed Odeh, a senior commander in Hamas‘ military, during a strike in northern Gaza.

An airstrike in Gaza City hit a residential building Tuesday and also killed at least three Palestinians while injuring dozens more. It struck the upper three floors of the al-Kayali building above a busy shopping area in the center of the city.

The IDF claims the residential building was used by Odeh as a hideout.

The area of the strike was busy as shoppers prepared for Eid al-Adha, a Muslim holiday that began on Wednesday.

The IDF said Odeh was responsible for planning Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel.

“The commander of Hamas terror [organization’s] military arm number 4 in Gaza was eliminated yesterday and sent to meet his partners in the depths of hell,” Israel Katz, Israeli Defense Minister, posted on social media.

The IDF said it had been tracking Odeh for months leading to the airstrike.

More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel and Palestine reached a ceasefire agreement enacted on Oct. 11. The Gaza Ministry of Health reports that 72,803 Palestinians have been killed in the war since Oct. 7, 2023.

May 27 (UPI) — Federal prosecutors are suing the University of California, alleging civil rights violations were committed in connection with pro-Palestinian campus protests, the latest lawsuit by the Trump administration, which has targeted universities over issues from antisemitism to their hiring practices.

The Trump administration has taken dozens of actions against higher education institutions, including investigations, lawsuits and funding freezes, in what critics describe as an effort to crack down on left-leaning ideology in public and private spaces.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Western District of California, focuses on the encampment erected on the University of California, Los Angeles, campus in April 2024 as pro-Palestinian protests erupted across U.S. universities against Israel’s war in Gaza as students sought to pressure their schools to divest from Israel.

Federal prosecutors allege the school failed to protect its Jewish and Israeli students through its inaction concerning the encampment, which was erected April 25, 2024, and torn down May 2, 2024, when the school permitted police to clear the campus of protesters.

“Universities have an obligation to maintain safe and inclusive campuses for all students,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli of the Central District of California said in a statement.

“Universities that violate our nation’s civil rights laws by repeatedly failing to shield Jewish students from antisemitism will be held accountable.”

The lawsuit is similar to the one federal prosecutors filed against UCLA in February, accusing the institution of creating a hostile work environment for Israeli and Jewish faculty and staff over its inaction with regard to the encampment.

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk on Tuesday rejected the accusations.

“Let me be direct: The suggestion that UCLA has been passive in the face of antisemitism is simply wrong. Combating antisemitism is a moral imperative — one rooted, for me, in personal history that makes indifference unthinkable,” he said in a statement.

Frenk highlighted a series of actions the school has taken over the past year, from recruiting an associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety to reorganizing its civil rights office, as proof of the school’s commitment to stand against antisemitism.

The Justice Department is seeking a court declaration that UCLA unlawfully discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students, an order forcing it to institute a series of changes and a declaration that the federal government does not need to make additional grant payments to the university.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced the results of an investigation into UCLA’s medical school admissions process, saying it discriminated by race to favor Black and Hispanic applicants.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of using the Justice Department to crack down on disfavored speech and ideology.

In April 2025, more than 200 college and university leaders issued a joint statement condemning the actions of the Trump administration targeting higher education institutions as “unprecedented government overreach and political interference.”

Gaza will not forget

The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.

The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.

These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.

Gaza will not forget

She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.

Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.

This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.

Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.

Palestine will remember

She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.

Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.

She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.

Gaza will not forget those who betrayed her

Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.

Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.

For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.

Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.

Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.

Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.

Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.

The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.

Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.

But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.

Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

As the US and Iran move closer to a peace deal, Israel says it reserves the right to keep attacking regional ‘threats’, including in Lebanon, despite any US‑brokered ceasefire. Meanwhile, criticism within Israel is growing over Netanyahu’s handling of the war.

Gaza will not forget

The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.

The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.

These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.

Gaza will not forget

She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.

Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.

This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.

Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.

Palestine will remember

She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.

Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.

She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.

Gaza will not forget those who betrayed her

Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.

Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.

For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.

Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.

Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.

Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.

Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.

The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.

Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.

But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.

Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

A small boat believed to be part of the Global Sumud Flotilla that was carrying aid for Gaza has washed ashore in Alexandria, Egypt. Activists were intercepted and detained by Israeli forces in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea last week.

Australian activists from the Gaza-bound aid flotilla have arrived back in Sydney, reuniting with loved ones as they describe beatings, sexual assault and torture at the hands of Israeli forces who intercepted their boats in international waters.

US president says any potential agreement with Tehran will be ‘good and proper’ as mediation efforts continue.

Baltimore, United States – Muslim Americans are grieving after two gunmen last week opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three people.

But at the annual conference for the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) in Baltimore, community leaders stressed the urgency of turning the sorrow into action.

Nearly 25,000 people turned out for the annual event, held on Saturday and Sunday. Speakers addressed the recent shooting, pointing to the courage of the three victims as examples for the broader community in a time of heightened Islamophobia.

“We owe them more than condolences. We owe them resolve,” said Lena Masri, a lawyer at the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

She explained how the victims — a security officer, a caretaker and a neighbour — sacrificed their lives to save others. The security officer, Amin Abdullah, exchanged fire with the shooters, while the other two victims, Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad, rushed to help and called for emergency services.

“They protected the physical space of our community: the masjid [mosque], the school, the children, the teachers, the worshippers,” Masri explained.

“Our responsibility is to protect the civic space of our community: the right to worship, the right to speak, the right to organise, the right to defend Palestine, the right to build institutions.”

That was the recurring theme of the conference: that the Muslim American community cannot afford to be passive and must draw on its strength to push back against bigotry and hate.

Speakers emphasised voting, organising and donating to community institutions and candidates who align with Muslim Americans. They also underscored the need to hold officials accountable and push for an end to Israel’s atrocities in Palestine.

“We owe Gaza more than grief. We owe Gaza advocacy that cannot be intimidated into silence,” Masri said.

Islamophobia and Palestinians’ dehumanisation

Symbols of Palestine could be seen everywhere at the conference, from bags emblazoned with watermelons and flags to keffiyeh-patterned scarves, shirts and water bottles.

At a bazaar featuring dozens of vendors, conference-goers left messages of solidarity on a tent that will be sent to Gaza by the charity Life for Relief and Development (LIFE).

In speeches and on panels, advocates drew a link between anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States and Israel’s abuses in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

Some of the loudest promoters of Islamophobia in the US are also staunch Israel supporters, among them right-wing commentator Laura Loomer and Congressman Randy Fine.

Both Loomer and Fine are allies of US President Donald Trump, whose administration has unleashed a crackdown to deport critics of Israel who live in the US but are not citizens.

Altaf Husain, a professor at the Howard University School of Social Work, said anti-Palestinian voices are trying to “scare” Muslims as a means of silencing criticism of Israel.

“They want to shut this down, so it’s a direct connection,” Husain told Al Jazeera.

He said the large turnout at the ICNA conference shows that the community is not intimidated and will not back down.

In the response to the shooting in San Diego, Husain pointed out that the community raised more than $3.5m for the victims’ families and moved to bolster security around Muslim institutions.

Layers of security

Saad Kazmi, the president of ICNA, said the organisation relied on three layers of protection to secure this weekend’s event: its own security guards, an outside firm and local law enforcement agencies in Baltimore.

While there is anxiety in the community over the rise of Islamophobia and Trump’s immigration crackdown, he said Muslim Americans must take matters into their own hands and work with “sensible” people across the political spectrum to defeat hate.

“We are very thankful that we live in a country that is ruled by the Constitution and law,” Kazmi told Al Jazeera.

Kazmi added that the shooting in San Diego only added to the community’s determination to assert and protect its rights. The Islamic centre in the city, he noted, did not shut down after the attack.

“If anything came out of this, it is that there are more attendees to the masjid, more people who believe that the way forward is to strengthen ourselves, strengthen our community and march on,” Kazmi said.

After the shooting, Loomer doubled down on her anti-Muslim rhetoric, calling on immigration authorities to target the Islamic Center of San Diego.

She also called for the deportation of all Muslims from the US, describing them as an “invasive species”. But few Republicans disavowed Loomer, who maintains close ties to the White House.

Rather, more than 60 Congress members have joined the Sharia-Free America Caucus since it was established in December. CAIR has designated the caucus a hate group.

At the state level, governors and local legislators have disparaged Islam while also pushing to penalise Palestinian rights activism.

Texas and Florida, for example, have labelled CAIR a “terrorist” group, while implementing measures against “Sharia law” that critics consider anti-Muslim dog whistles.

Rights under attack

In March, after CAIR sued Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over its “terrorist” designation, a federal court blocked the label from being imposed.

In his ruling, Judge Mark Walker wrote that DeSantis’s executive order (EO) targets the Muslim community as a whole.

“It should be lost on no one that Defendant’s EO targets one of America’s largest Muslim civil rights organizations for indirect suppression of speech. But, as we all know, it is easy for those in power to target minority groups with little pushback,” Walker wrote.

“Sadly, history teaches that it is often minority religious groups who find themselves in the crosshairs.”

On Saturday, several panels praised the US legal system and the laws that protect freedom of religion and speech. But the panellists argued that human rights do not defend themselves; people must step up to protect them.

“You’ve got to imagine rights are a territory, and you have to occupy that territory. If you do not actively occupy that territory, that territory will be taken from you. And that is exactly what has been happening,” Tom Facchine, an imam from New Jersey, said.

Last year, Palestinian immigrant Leqaa Kordia found her rights in jeopardy when immigration agents knocked on her door and detained her over her activism against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Kordia spent more than a year in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention before an immigration judge ordered her to be released in March.

But Kordia — who is still fighting deportation — told ICNA conference attendees on Saturday that she has no regrets, encouraging them to remain politically active and engaged.

“Speaking up, it comes with a cost … It cost me my health, my life, literally my freedom, and I’m living in uncertainty that tomorrow I’m going to be here, or I’m going to be deported,” she said.

“It comes with a cost, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it because silence, it costs even way more than speaking.”

Mohammad Abu Mallouh, ​Alaa Zaqlan and their child, Osama, killed in the attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp, medics say.

An Israeli air raid on a home in Gaza has killed three members of a family, including a six-month-old child, medical workers said, as Israel continues to violate the “ceasefire” brokered by the United States last year.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said it received the bodies of a couple and their young child in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Medics identified those killed in the attack on an apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp as Mohammad Abu Mallouh, his wife Alaa Zaqlan, and their child Osama, the Reuters news agency reported.

Medical workers said about 10 people were wounded in the attack.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Since the “ceasefire” came into effect in October, Israel has continued with its near-daily attacks across the besieged Palestinian territory, which Gaza health authorities say have killed nearly 900 people.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said Israeli bombing began on Sunday as Palestinians were fleeing following forced displacement orders. He said many people ran while carrying personal belongings, including mattresses.

Separately, Israeli forces continued demolishing homes and civilian infrastructure in eastern Gaza on Sunday behind Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line”, referring to Israeli-designated military zones and buffer areas inside the enclave, he said.

Israeli jets also carried out air raids on Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday, causing extensive damage near a hospital, Mahmoud said.

Earlier this month, the Gaza Government Media Office said it had documented at least 2,400 Israeli violations in the first six months of the ceasefire, including more than 1,100 air raids and at least 921 shootings targeting civilians.

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. Israeli officials acknowledged the data was broadly accurate in January, after casting doubt on their credibility for two years.

On Saturday, five police officers and a 13-year-old boy were killed in an Israeli attack.

Talks between Israel and Hamas aimed at reaching a permanent end to the war have stalled, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire. Israel says Hamas’s refusal to disarm is a key obstacle, while the Palestinian group says negotiations have been paused due to continued violations and restrictions on aid entering Gaza.

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch said the territory’s humanitarian infrastructure remained in peril, more than six months after the start of the ceasefire.

Overnight Israeli strikes devastated the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza despite an ongoing ceasefire, injuring dozens. The strikes targeted residential areas, leaving behind piles of rubble. Israel has now destroyed or damaged around 90% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

Video shows the moment Israeli forces struck Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza, injuring dozens despite an ongoing ceasefire agreement.