Gaza

The UN agency says funding shortages threaten to reverse ‘modest and fragile’ progress on food security.

The ⁠World Food Programme (WFP) has announced ⁠major cuts to its Gaza response due to a funding shortage, leaving about ‌500,000 people without critical support as much of the ⁠population of the war-ravaged Palestinian territory struggles to get enough to eat.

In a statement on Monday, the United Nations agency said it received less than half as much funding for its Palestine operation in 2026 as in previous years. It said it urgently needs a further $450 million to maintain critical operations in the occupied Palestinian territory over the next six months.

As a result, the WFP said it would reduce ⁠the number of people receiving monthly assistance in Gaza from 1.6 ‌million to 1.1 million. Rations will be cut from two food parcels per family to one, and bags of flour will be smaller.

The UN agency said it would also reduce the number of hot meals provided, from 250,000 to 150,000 a day. Families living in hard-to-reach areas, including near the so-called “yellow line” demarcating Israeli military control, will receive a hot meal every other day instead of daily.

More than three years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, have brought the collapse of education, healthcare and the economy, while access to food, water, shelter and other basic necessities has become a daily struggle.

More than 74,245 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

UN estimates show more than 80 percent of people are unemployed and unable to afford fresh or protein-rich foods when they are available. Only one in five children consumes a sufficiently diverse diet while access to health services remains limited.

An estimated 1.4 million people, or 67 percent of Gaza’s population, are experiencing acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse. This figure is down from 1.6 million people, or 77 percent of the population, at the end of 2025, however the WFP said the improvement “remains modest and fragile.”

Funding shortfalls had already affected operations in the occupied West Bank, where the number of people receiving assistance was halved in September, from 400,000 to 200,000.

Most of the victims were from the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City, the Health Ministry says.

A mass funeral has been held for 75 Palestinians whose remains were found recently under the rubble of homes and buildings destroyed in the months since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the Ministry of Health announced.

Hundreds of Palestinians attended the funeral procession before the remains were buried at the Sheikh Radwan Cemetery on Sunday morning.

Most of the victims were from the Daraj neighbourhood in the northeastern part of Gaza City.

Al Jazeera correspondent Nour Khaled said the majority of the remains belonged to women and children “who were inside their homes when they were targeted”.

The remains consisted of some body parts and personal belongings and were wrapped in Palestinian flags before the burial, she said.

Abdullah al-Majdalawi, director of public relations and media for Gaza’s Civil Defence, told the Turkish state news agency Anadolu that the remains had been recovered over recent weeks from several destroyed homes in Daraj.

He said the buildings were bombed while residents were inside during the early months of the war and that the victims belonged to about 20 Palestinian families, including people who had been displaced to the homes.

Efforts to recover bodies from beneath the rubble continue to face severe difficulties due to a lack of equipment and heavy machinery, he added.

The Civil Defence launched the second phase of its recovery operations in July. It recovered 333 bodies and remains of 559 people during its first operation in November 2025.

The Civil Defence says it believes the remains of another 8,000 Palestinians are still trapped beneath the rubble across Gaza. There are about 200,000 damaged and destroyed buildings in Gaza, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

At least 74,475 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched the genocidal war three years ago.

The UK Foreign Office says it advises against “all but essential travel” to Saudi Arabia, after attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on the country.

Police reviewing social media post by writer Sarah Helm, wife of Burnham’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell.

British police are reviewing a social media post by the wife of National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell in which she appears to endorse Palestine Action, a group proscribed in the country as a “terrorist” organisation.

“God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action,” Sarah Helm, a writer who is married to Powell – Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s national security adviser – wrote on X on Thursday.

She was responding to a post defending Irish novelist Sally Rooney, who this week announced her books would no longer be sold in the United Kingdom over her plans to use her royalties to support Palestine Action.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson on Friday said Helm’s post is “being assessed to determine whether any further police investigation may be required”.

A government spokesperson cited by the Reuters news agency said the views expressed in Helm’s post “are held by an individual who does not represent the government in any capacity”.

‘Absurdly authoritarian ban’

UK-based activist group Defend Our Juries defended Helm for defying what it called an “absurdly authoritarian ban on Palestine Action”.

“We know of 36 people who have been arrested and had their homes raided for similarly expressing support for Palestine Action on social media,” said a spokesperson for the group.

“We hope Sarah will not face the same treatment for standing up for free speech and Palestinian lives.”

The UK government outlawed Palestine Action in July 2025, after activists from the group broke into a Royal Air Force base and sprayed red paint on two aircraft to protest against UK military support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Being a member or a supporter is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Since the ban went into effect, police have arrested more than 3,500 people in the UK for alleged support of the group, many of them for holding up placards, according to rights group Amnesty International.

Palestine Action has contested its proscription, but the Court of Appeal upheld it in June.

The UK’s new Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband last month said the government was “looking at” the Palestine Action ban, adding that he did not believe mass arrests resulting from its proscription were “anyone’s intent”.

Review prompted by Gaza action calls for Norway’s sovereign wealth fund to lift ethical risk limitations on its investments.

A government-appointed committee has called for Norway’s sovereign wealth fund to lift limitations on its investments based on ethical risks, including those regarding nuclear weapons and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

In a report released on Thursday, the committee said the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, which controls assets totalling nearly $2.3 trillion, should be allowed to invest in companies that produce nuclear weapons. With reference to Gaza, it also called for the fund to refrain from involvement in diplomatic issues.

Led by former Central Bank Governor Svein Gjedrem, the committee recommended easing the fund’s investment conditions as part of a broader overhaul that would give its manager, the central bank, greater discretion over how it addresses ethical risks.

The review was prompted in part by controversy over the fund’s disinvestment last year from United States construction giant Caterpillar. The fund said the move was prompted by Caterpillar’s purported involvement in rights violations perpetrated by Israel amid its genocidal war on Gaza and in the occupied West Bank. Washington has since pressured Oslo over the move.

“Parts of the rationale for the appointment of the Committee was the Fund’s management related to the war in Gaza,” the committee commissioned by the government said. In the report, it argued that decisions regarding “another state’s conduct” should not be made by the fund but “reserved for the ordinary diplomatic channels of the Norwegian authorities”.

The unanimous recommendations of the committee in the report, which was submitted to the Ministry of Finance, also called for a review of the fund’s exclusion of investment in companies involved in the production of nuclear weapons.

Citing Norway’s reliance on NATO’s nuclear deterrent and a worsening security environment, the report suggested that investments in companies based in the US, United Kingdom and France that are involved in the production of nuclear weapons should be allowed.

The proposals also extended to reshaping the role of the fund’s independent ethics watchdog, allowing some assessments of potential investments to remain confidential.

‘Pandora’s box’

The report has already provoked a backlash in Norway, with opposition politicians slamming the potential changes. Meanwhile, analysts suggested that weakening ethics considerations could have a wide impact.

“If the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund – often considered a global gold standard – changes its posture towards nuclear weapons, it will open Pandora’s box for many global investors to follow suit,” Lawrence Loh, director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at the National University of Singapore Business School, told Al Jazeera.

The committee framed the proposed change as an obligation to protect Norway’s national security, citing the country’s dependence on its allies’ nuclear umbrella.

“The global security situation has changed. Norway is building up its defence capabilities, and the protection provided by NATO’s nuclear umbrella has become increasingly important. The companies that would be reincluded produce weapons that Norway needs for its own defence”, the report argued.

Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister, told Al Jazeera the report was “an encouraging initiative in a world that has become alarmingly complacent about the risks of nuclear war, with every major nuclear arms control agreement dead, dying or on life support, and the longstanding taboo against threat or use eroding”.

Amid US President Donald Trump’s shake-up of NATO, European countries are increasingly looking to join France’s nuclear deterrent umbrella.

Trump said on Thursday that Washington is holding talks with Russia and China aimed at denuclearising the countries with the biggest stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

However, Loh warned that shifting the Norwegian fund’s investment conditions could encourage investment by others in nuclear companies “in scenarios different from the Norwegian’s condition of the invested companies being based in allied, nuclear-armed NATO countries”.

“The Palestinian question is the greatest historical injustice of this century,” China’s foreign minister said.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has told Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Azerbaijan that Israel should stop and reverse its “forced establishment” of West Bank settlements, China’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Wang told Herzog that China has consistently viewed the Palestinian question as the greatest historical injustice of this century, the ministry said in the statement on Friday.

Wang emphasised that the “two-state solution” is the right path to a resolution and said the immediate priority is to fully open access to the Gaza Strip so a humanitarian “catastrophe” is not allowed to spread.

Wang added that China is willing to work with the international community to push all parties to return to dialogue as soon as possible and seek a political settlement.

Wang is attending the Seventh Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, as the special representative of President Xi Jinping, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported.

China urges new Middle East framework

In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Cairo for the first time in a decade and called on Middle East countries to oppose external influence and consider reshaping the region’s security order.

Xi’s rare visit arrived as Beijing seeks to expand its influence in the region amid the US-Israel war on Iran.

The talks covered the US-Israel war on Iran, with both presidents urging “diplomatic solutions” to reach a “comprehensive agreement to end the war”, according to a statement from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s spokesperson.

In March, China criticised the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, with Beijing demanding an immediate halt to the joint attacks. Wang told his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, that the attack on Iran came as negotiations between Washington and Tehran had “made significant progress, including addressing Israel’s security concerns”, China’s foreign ministry said in a statement following the start of the war.

China was Iran’s largest trading partner, buying up to 90 percent of its oil, according to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. In 2021, Beijing signed a 25-year “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” with Tehran.

At the same time, Beijing has spent the past decade cultivating closer ties with Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and remains a top trade partner of both the US and Israel.

The halt to commercial shipments, including fruit and winter clothing, cuts off a key source of critical supplies.

Israeli authorities say no commercial goods have entered Gaza for two days, citing what they claim is a tax dispute between local merchants and Hamas.

COGAT, or the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli military body that “oversees humanitarian affairs” in Gaza, announced the halt on Wednesday.

COGAT claimed that local merchants “made the decision in response to a 10,000 shekel ($3,220) fee imposed by Hamas on each truck entering Gaza” as well as a demand for 30 percent of all sales in Gaza to be carried out in cash.

This decision is expected to impact a crucial source of food and goods for the 2.1 million people in the Strip, who are completely reliant on Israel’s border crossings in a territory that is still suffering from famine.

Gaza’s government media office refuted the claims on Thursday and condemned the “blatant disinformation campaign and false statement”.

The media office instead said it was an attempt “to hold the government apparatus in Gaza responsible for the disruption of truck entry” and that the fee was a voluntary payment to a fund providing aid for those in need, such as widows and orphans.

It also said that cash payments were encouraged due to what it described as an acute cash shortage in the war-torn territory, but were never a mandatory requirement.

An already dire humanitarian crisis

The halt to commercial shipments, including fruit and winter clothing, cuts off a key source of food and other critical supplies as fears mount ahead of the encroaching winter.

Aid groups generally bring in staples such as flour, while merchants import more perishable foods like fruits and meat, according to data released earlier this year by COGAT.

The suspension is raising fears about affordability, with humanitarian workers saying a combination of aid and a robust commercial market is needed to keep prices under control.

“The humanitarian sector on its own cannot meet the needs of all the people,” said Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council. “The markets need to be functioning.”

Local merchants step in

The head of Gaza’s private truckers union, Nahed Sheheiber, denied the Israeli narrative, saying: “The Israeli coordinator is claiming that Gaza’s merchants are responsible, but the truth is that the Israelis are the ones who imposed the restrictions.”

Following COGAT’s announcement, Sheheiber’s union met with Gaza’s Ministry of Economy to express concern and say Israel was citing fees levied by the ministry as a pretext to cut off commercial goods.

A global hunger monitor in July warned that more than two-thirds of people in Gaza could face acute hunger by the year-end.

Israel is obliged under a US-mediated agreement to allow a minimum of 600 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter Gaza each day.

Diplomats say that far fewer than 600 trucks normally enter Gaza each day. Sheheiber said the figure was closer to 300, with two-thirds carrying commercial goods.

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – For 11 days after giving birth last month, Rania Fadel could not hold her newborn son.

The 24-year-old gave birth to twin boys, Ilyas and Yahya, on September 25.

While Yahya was born healthy, Ilyas was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, where he remained for nearly two weeks.

Born prematurely, Ilyas weighed just 1.4 kilogrammes (3 pounds) at birth, according to his mother. He had medical issues affecting his blood and lungs, she said, and needed specialised care in an incubator.

Rania herself was recovering from a Caesarean section when her son was taken into intensive care. For days, she could not hold him.

“When they called me to hold him, I rushed over,” she recalled. “I was in a hurry to get to him. It was such a feeling.”

As Ilyas’s condition improved and he moved from intensive care to the hospital’s neonatal care unit, Rania was able to hold him against her bare chest, introducing her to a form of care for low-birthweight newborns known as kangaroo mother care, part of a newly-launched programme at the hospital.

It involves prolonged skin-to-skin contact between a caregiver – ideally the mother – and baby, with exclusive breast milk feeding, and has been shown to have important health benefits for premature and low-birthweight babies.

“I was so happy. It was such a beautiful feeling,” Rania said.

During the session, a nurse helped Rania position Ilyas against her chest, with his skin touching hers. Rania said he remained there for about 90 minutes.

“He started breastfeeding from me, and he stayed a little longer,” she said. “I felt he was improving.”

For Rania, the contact also brought a sense of closeness after days of separation.

“The baby feels that his mother is there,” she said. “He feels safe. Honestly, it makes me very happy.”

Skin-to-skin

Kangaroo mother care involves placing a baby against a parent’s bare chest for skin-to-skin contact, alongside breastfeeding and appropriate medical care.

For premature and low-birthweight babies, it can help regulate body temperature, support breastfeeding and improve health outcomes.

World Health Organization (WHO) guidance says that kangaroo mother care has been shown to reduce neonatal mortality by 32 percent, and mortality by six months of age by 25 percent, compared with conventional care.

At Nasser Medical Complex, Khawla al-Madhoun, director of nursing at the hospital’s maternity and neonatal departments, described it as an integrated approach to newborn care that supports growth and strengthens the bond between mother and baby.

“When we place a baby on the mother’s chest, it helps the baby grow,” she said.

“We have seen babies who were unwell or underweight begin to grow faster with kangaroo care. This can help them leave the hospital sooner.”

The hospital has begun introducing kangaroo care through a pilot programme supported by WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). The agencies announced the initiative at Nasser Hospital in September, but the practice is being introduced gradually in its external neonatal care unit, where babies stay with their mothers, and in maternity wards after delivery.

Al-Madhoun said the team was also preparing a dedicated room and seeking equipment to make the sessions more comfortable.

The team aims for longer periods of skin-to-skin contact – WHO recommends at least eight hours per day – although its immediate target is at least two hours, depending on each family’s circumstances.

At Nasser, the team is currently prioritising babies who are medically stable and do not require oxygen support. Nurses monitor their vital signs and assess them throughout the process.

Al-Madhoun stressed that the technique cannot replace an incubator or other treatment when a baby needs intensive care.

“It can help babies grow, gain weight and leave the hospital earlier, but some babies need other interventions, such as respiratory support,” she said. “Those babies still need the incubator and the care it provides.”

Shortage of neonatal equipment

The need for specialised newborn care comes as Gaza’s health system continues to struggle with damaged facilities, shortages of equipment and overcrowded neonatal units.

Before Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, Gaza had eight neonatal intensive care units with a total of 178 incubators, according to UNICEF.

By November 2024, three of those units had been destroyed by Israel, and the number of available incubators had fallen to about 54, a reduction of 70 percent. The shortage of equipment, compounded by limited supplies of fuel and electricity as a result of Israeli restrictions, put premature newborns at serious risk.

Israeli strikes have continued since an October 2025 “ceasefire”. Despite this supposed truce, and despite the delivery of some new equipment, the shortage of incubators and other equipment has persisted.

In May, UNICEF said it and its partners had supplied incubators and ventilators to hospitals in Gaza, while warning that neonatal units were still managing large numbers of fragile infants with limited equipment, space and power.

The war in Gaza has worsened living conditions for pregnant women with economic hardship, food shortages, poor nutrition and the harsh realities of displacement, including cooking over open fires and carrying water.

“These conditions have contributed to the rise in premature births and babies born with low birth weight who need specialised neonatal care,” al-Madhoun said.

Meanwhile, repeated displacement and overcrowding have placed further pressure on hospitals, including Nasser Medical Complex, which is already struggling with limited space and shortages of incubators and other essential neonatal equipment.

Newborn in a tent

Linda Abu Nasira’s baby girl is only three days old.

The infant initially developed a fever, which has since subsided, according to 23-year-old Linda.

As her daughter was being treated and breastfed, Linda was learning how to hold her against her chest under the guidance of the medical team.

The sessions were brief. Linda said she held her daughter against her chest for about 30 minutes at a time, repeating the process roughly every two hours, according to the instructions she had received.

“She is a little better than yesterday,” Linda said. “Little by little.”

Away from the hospital, Linda lives in a tent in al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis, where she is raising her two older children – aged three and two – while caring for her newborn.

She described the conditions as difficult, particularly when it comes to securing food and drinking water.

“We try to manage,” she said. “But it is not like before, or like the conditions you would expect when giving birth.”

She does not know how long the baby will need to remain under observation in the hospital’s external neonatal care unit.

“As a mother, it means a lot to me to feel that I am helping my daughter recover,” Linda said. “I hope she will recover and be discharged as soon as possible.”

Oil prices gain as Houthi strikes hit Saudi Aramco and Tehran vows new tactics against shipping in Hormuz.

The woman’s young daughter was rescued from a large fire inside the apartment caused by the attack.

An Israeli air strike on an apartment block in Gaza has killed a woman and wounded two other people, hospital officials said.

Reem Asaad Awad, 33, was killed in the attack early on Wednesday in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported, quoting a source at Al Shifa hospital.

The source said the strike caused extensive destruction to the targeted apartment and nearby buildings.

The daughter of the woman who was killed was rescued from a large fire that broke out after the attack.

Israel says it is investigating the strike and claims it targeted a member of Hamas, without providing evidence.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili said the strike happened at 4am (01:00 GMT).

Israel has killed 1,501 Palestinians in Gaza since it agreed a “ceasefire” with the Palestinian group Hamas last October. The truce was part of a wider United States-backed proposal to end Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

Talks aimed at advancing to the second phase of the US plan, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the disarmament of Hamas, have stalled.

The agreement states that 600 trucks of humanitarian aid are to be allowed into Gaza each day, but Israeli authorities have continued to impose severe restrictions on supplies entering the enclave, and reconstruction of the war-shattered territory has not begun.

Israel has expanded its military occupation in the Gaza Strip in violation of a United States-brokered ‘ceasefire’, forcing Palestinians into an ever-smaller share of the besieged territory, devastated by Israel’s ongoing genocidal war.

Nearly two-thirds of Gaza is now under Israeli military control or subject to access restrictions.

The original ‘Yellow Line’, established under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war, marked the area to which Israeli forces initially withdrew. They were expected to make further withdrawals gradually, but instead, they have seized more territory.

On Sunday, Israeli forces moved yellow concrete blocks dozens of metres west in Shujayea, a neighbourhood in southeastern Gaza City, forcing Palestinian families to flee and bringing more of the neighbourhood under Israeli military control.

“It’s not simply about where the ‘Yellow Line’ is today but where it can move next,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili said, reporting from Gaza City. “For families who have been repeatedly displaced in the past three years, the situation remains dire, and they have to make the impossible decision of where they can go.”

More than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has been forcibly displaced by Israel’s war, launched on October 7, 2023, after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.

Using maps, Al Jazeera shows how much of Gaza Israel has grabbed since the ‘ceasefire’.

Gaza before the war

Before the war, Palestinians were spread across the Gaza Strip, a 365sq km (141sq-mile) territory roughly 41km (25 miles) long and from 6km to 12km (4 to 7 miles) wide.

That made it one of the most densely populated places on Earth with about 6,000 people per square kilometre, similar to Nairobi or London. Each person had, on average, about 160sq metres (1,722sq ft) of land.

Even then, not all of Gaza’s land was accessible. Israel enforced a buffer zone along the fence with Israel, and Palestinians who approached it risked being shot. In 2010, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that the restricted area covered 17 percent of Gaza’s land and 35 percent of its farmland.

Gaza has been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007.

Gaza at the ‘ceasefire’

Under the first phase of the “ceasefire”, Israeli forces were to withdraw to the “Yellow Line” within 24 hours, after which a 72-hour period began for the handover of Israeli captives held in Gaza. Trump first published a map of the line on his Truth Social platform.

The line left Israel in control of 53 percent of the Strip, mostly farmland and border areas in the east, and confined Palestinians to the remaining 47 percent, about 172sq km (66sq miles).

By October 2025, two years of war had killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, and tens of thousands more had left the territory, reducing Gaza’s population to about 2.1 million.

Pushed into less than half of Gaza’s territory under the “ceasefire”, its density doubled to about 12,000 people per square kilometre, comparable to New York City. Each person was left with about 82sq metres (883sq ft).

Gaza today

Since the “ceasefire”, Israeli forces have repeatedly moved the yellow concrete blocks marking the “Yellow Line” farther west, sometimes overnight, expanding the areas under their control. Satellite imagery has also documented continued demolitions in areas held by Israeli forces.

The research group Forensic Architecture estimated that Israel controlled 58 percent of Gaza by December. In March, the Israeli military sent aid agencies maps of a new “orange line”, a restricted zone beyond the “Yellow Line” where humanitarian movements must be coordinated with the army.

According to OCHA, restrictions now cover 65 percent of Gaza. Israel itself said it controls about 70 percent of the territory, a UN official told the Security Council in June.

That leaves 2.1 million people in about 35 percent of the Strip, roughly 128sq km (49sq miles). The population density has nearly tripled since before the war to about 16,000 people per square kilometre, close to central Tokyo.

Each person now has about 61sq metres (657sq ft) of land for everything: shelter, roads, schools, hospitals and farmland.

Unlike Tokyo, Gaza has little space left to house its people. The UN Satellite Centre, UNOSAT, found 82 percent of structures in the Strip are damaged or destroyed. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says only 3 percent of Gaza’s cropland is both undamaged and accessible.

OCHA says the remaining 35 percent of Gaza is “already overcrowded” and access restrictions are a key obstacle as aid groups try to relocate families before the rainy season. More than 950,000 people live in displacement sites at risk of flooding, according to the UN, most of them in tents and makeshift shelters, as seen in the satellite image below.

Approaching the ‘Yellow Line” can be deadly. Israel treats areas beyond it as a free-fire zone, and Palestinians who come near it have been shot. Nearly 1,500 people have been killed across Gaza since the ceasefire was announced.

Documentary draws on 24 anonymous Israeli sources accusing military of killing Palestinians in Gaza using AI systems.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for an investigation into the anonymous sources featured in a documentary alleging that Israel’s military killed civilians in Gaza using AI-powered targeting systems.

The award-winning film, NAZA, draws on testimony from 24 unnamed Israeli military whistleblowers accusing the army of using the systems to kill numerous civilians in the besieged territory.

“I demand that the chief of general staff, the head of the Shin Bet, and the attorney general launch a comprehensive investigation into the participants in the film ‘Naza’ and prosecute them for serious information security violations, criminal libel, and harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests,” Netanyahu said on X on Saturday evening.

“The film presents a false, misleading, and biased narrative that defames the State of Israel and the [Israeli military] internationally, severely damaging Israel’s standing,” he added.

In a statement last month, the Israeli military said it “categorically” rejected the whistleblowers’ allegations, calling some of their assertions “absurd’ and contradictory.

It insisted that the selection and approval of strikes “are made by human personnel only”, in line with the military’s guidelines.

Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has called for legal action against the participants to be considered and ordered an investigation into suspected leaks of classified military information used in the film’s production.

NAZA takes its name from the Israeli military term for civilian casualties expected in air strikes, an abbreviated form of the Hebrew phrase for “collateral damage”.

The film was awarded a special jury prize at the Venice International Film Festival and received a historic 25-minute standing ovation.

It has also triggered a political storm in Israel.

The film’s directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, have been accused of “treason”. Netanyahu and Culture Minister Miki Zohar have threatened to revoke their Israeli citizenship.

Last week, the head of Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, Tzipi Hotovely, awarded the creators of another film, NAZA: The Real Story, certificates of recognition for countering the “blood libels” made in the original NAZA film.

According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, NAZA: The Real Story features testimony from soldiers refuting the original claims.

In contrast, 43 Israeli rights groups defended the filmmakers of NAZA and denounced the threats being directed at them, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, after Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and other Palestinian groups attacked southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking about 240 captive.

Since then, Israel has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, including at least 21,000 children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

As Israel entered the final month before its October 27 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a chilling warning to share.

Israel’s enemies, he said on September 29, were plotting an attack on the country before the vote. Without providing any evidence, he then quickly referred to continuing attacks by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip, where he said they had killed more than 100 “terrorists” in recent weeks.

That link drawn by Netanyahu – between the genocidal war on Gaza that began after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks, the upcoming elections, and Israel’s national security – was not coincidental, say analysts.

Netanyahu’s insistence that he alone can secure Israelis from a range of threats they face from across the country’s borders, they say, lies at the heart of his re-election campaign, even as his alleged failures during the attack three years ago and in securing the quick release of captives have offered his opponents ammunition.

When a Flydubai flight packed with Israeli passengers on their way from Dubai to Tel Aviv a day after his recent warning nearly crashed after a co-pilot attacked his pilot with an axe in the cockpit, Netanyahu was quick to seize on the incident to argue that he is still man for the country’s top job.

Polls suggest that he faces a stiff test in what is the first general vote since the 2023 attacks, which led to the killing of 1,139 people in Israel and triggered the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, where Israeli have attacks have since killed more than 74,000 Palestinians.

Three years later, the war has become inseparable from the domestic debate over Israel’s direction while also accelerating a political shift to the right – with once-fringe positions on Palestinians now very much the mainstream view.

Few embody this transformation more than Israel’s far-right financial Minister Bezalel Smotrich, sanctioned by a number of Western countries and known for his incendiary and racist language and policies towards Palestinians.

In one of his characteristically inflammatory statements, Smotrich told Israeli outlet Ynet late last month that the Israeli army should “go to war” in the occupied West Bank and “do there what we did in Gaza”.

Less than two weeks later, Smotrich’s electoral ally Moshe Feiglin added fuel to the fire.

“The enemy is Gaza, not Hamas”, he told the Jerusalem Post, calling for the annexation of the besieged territory after the election. “The baby that will be born tomorrow in Gaza will do exactly the same,” he said, in reference to the 2023 attacks.

Palestinian political analyst Ahmed Najar said these are not “stray comments” from marginal figures but an electoral message from power-seeking politicians aimed at portraying Palestinians as “not a people with rights, but a demographic and security problem to be expelled, conquered or destroyed”.

He added: “The frightening reality is that the coming election risks becoming a competition not over whether Palestinian life should be protected, but over who can promise to erase it most aggressively.”

‘This is madness’

Following October 7, the younger generation in particular slid rightwards, said Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow at King’s College London.

He said the forces driving Israel to the right had been gathering for decades.

“The trend toward the right began after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, but it has intensified dramatically since October 7,” Bregman told Al Jazeera, referring to the bloody 19-day October War, or the 1973 Arab-Israeli War – a conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.

More recently, the far right has been emboldened through electoral politics as part of Netanyahu’s government since 2022 – the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

Another outspoken cabinet member alongside Smotrich is Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right provocateur who has previously been convicted of inciting racism and of supporting a terrorist organisation.

“Netanyahu’s greatest mistake – among many – was bringing figures like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich into his coalition,” said Bergman. “By doing so, he legitimised them as influential forces in Israeli politics.”

Ben-Gvir has been so cemented into Israel’s political system, he has hopes pinned on becoming the next Israeli defence minister, the analyst pointed out.

“This is madness. But that’s contemporary Israel,” said Bergman.

Analysts also pointed out that several parties running, including ones that are currently in power and a number that are challenging the current coalition, all advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, as one of the examples of the shift to the right.

Omar Baddar, director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, said the messaging from across the Israeli political and military spectrum in the lead-up to the election shows that there is “a consensus” to continue the attacks on Gaza, where nearly 1,500 have been killed since a “ceasefire” last year.

“They’re using the threats to get more votes,” he said, pointing out to what he described as the radicalisation of the society.

With the election approaching, added Baddar, Israeli leaders are seeking to undo one another: “Who[ever]’s more radical is more likely to get more votes.”

As Ehab Jabareen, a Palestinian political analyst and researcher from inside Israel, writes, “what it means to be ‘right-wing’ in Israel today is above all to take a harder line on Palestinian national claims, security and territorial control.”

He adds: “On security and the Palestinians, a large part of Jewish Israeli politics already works from assumptions that would have been treated as right-wing a generation ago: Deep suspicion of a sovereign Palestinian state, a high tolerance for prolonged military control, and a stronger insistence on Jewish sovereignty as the starting point rather than one value among others.”

Observers and rights groups say the disparity is even evident in the electoral process. A prominent politician and Palestinian citizen of Israel, Sami Abu Shehadeh, has been forced to withdraw from the election over his remarks about the Gaza war, while Israeli far-right leaders have remained untouched despite their violent rhetoric against Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s security credentials endure

Recent polling indicates that the events of October 7 are top of mind for Israelis, who also have questions about who was responsible for the security failures of that day.

Just last month, reports surfaced indicating that Netanyahu had received two separate warnings about an imminent Hamas attack in 2023, from Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, and United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Netanyahu’s two main rivals in the race for prime minister have cited the alleged warnings to call the prime minister “unfit” to remain at the helm of the country.

But Netanyahu has denied suggestions that he had been forewarned about the attack, and the reports do not appear to have had a significant effect on opinion polls.

While October 7 represents a profound rupture in Israelis’ sense of security, public trust in the Netanyahu government had already been badly shaken by its controversial judicial overhaul, introduced when the prime minister’s current coalition first came to power, said Mairav Zonszein, an Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Tel Aviv.

Despite these breaches of trust, the Israeli leader retains support.

“Israelis in general still see Netanyahu as kind of the guy on security. And more to the point, they don’t really see an alternative,” Zonszein told Al Jazeera.

A June survey by Mitvim – the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies found that the Israeli public supports its government’s military and security solutions, and rejects resolving the Palestinian issue and ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. This is the case even while it has been concerned about international isolation and the decline of Israel’s international standing since the beginning of the genocidal war on Gaza, the survey reported.

Yet Israelis are also increasingly war-weary, even as they back the use of more force. Its troops – stretched between six fronts of war in the last few years – are bearing the brunt of this fatigue in Israeli society.

Israel’s Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that nearly 30,000 soldiers and security personnel are facing psychological trauma since the war.

The ministry said its rehabilitation department’s budget has increased by 88 percent over the past three years to 10 billion shekels ($3.3m), with the majority supporting treatment for mental health conditions and post-traumatic stress disorder.

As Israel expands, the two-state solution fades

Still, Israel in recent months has been more and more vocal about its expansionist vision, with officials brazenly stating the goal of “Greater Israel”. The claim for the conquest is based on a biblical verse (Genesis 15:18-21).

For decades, Israel has ignored international law in its continuous occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land, and has shown little respect for its neighbours’ sovereignty, occupying more land in Syria, as well as in Lebanon in more recent years.

According to Najar, the political economist, the “complete dehumanisation” of Palestinians as evidenced during the campaign reveal that Gaza “is being presented to Israeli voters not as a catastrophe or a crime for which there must be accountability, but as a blueprint to be repeated elsewhere”.

In southern Lebanon, where Israel has been carrying out near daily attacks and and has occupied large swathes of land, residents have told Al Jazeera they expect little to change even if Netanyahu is defeated in the election.

Netanyahu’s main political challenger, Gadi Eisenkot – head of the Yashar party and former army chief of staff – is the father of the so-called Dahiyeh Doctrine, and is just as hawkish about expansion. That doctrine, since Israel’s war with the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2006, calls for the use of huge force, even against civilian infrastructure, as a deterrent against enemies and was deployed in Israel’s recent wars, particularly in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

If it were up to Eisenkot, the Lebanon front of war would have never scaled down: He has accused Netanyahu of bowing to US pressure to halt operations in Beirut, and has insisted that the military should be able to attack Hezbollah anywhere in Lebanon.

For Israelis still reeling from the events of October 7, Eisenkot could fill the security void many are feeling, said Zonszein.

“They really … see the world as kind of very hostile towards them, the world not understanding what they went through on October 7, and [therefore why] the need to have these security buffer zones in Lebanon, in Syria, and Gaza,” she said.

A two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is therefore out of the question, said the analysts – and has not even made a blip of an appearance in campaigning before the election.

The idea first emerged during the Oslo Accords more than 30 years ago, which set out a negotiating process aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, predicated on the belief that the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel was imperative to forge peace.

But since the Oslo process began in 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has ballooned from about 260,000 to more than 700,000, embedded deep inside West Bank areas that would be needed for a contiguous Palestinian state.

“The concept of a two-state solution is currently irrelevant and likely will remain so for another decade or two, if not longer,” said Bergman. “It is unlikely to become a reality in the foreseeable future, as no Israeli leader can propose it to the Israeli public after the events of October 7.”

The only way it could regain prominence is if there is substantial international pressure, including severe sanctions on Israel, and a non-violent intifada, or an uprising by Palestinians, he said.

The outright rejection of Palestinian statehood has simply become much more “acceptable”, said Zonszein.

“There’s several parties who advocate these views, whereas there isn’t a single Jewish Zionist Party that puts the need for a two-state solution or a Palestinian political process at the forefront,” she said.

Taken all together, Israel’s election appears less a demand for change than a further entrenchment of the jingoism that surged after October 7, 2023.

“[There’s] more and more movement towards more military force, more need for pushing the borders … out of a lot of fear that another October 7 could happen,” said Zonszein.

Physicians accuse Israeli Medical Association of remaining silent as Palestinian healthcare is systematically destroyed.

Hundreds of doctors have gathered outside the World Medical Association (WMA) summit in the Netherlands, calling for the suspension of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) from the grouping of physicians.

On Saturday, 81 healthcare workers removed their scrubs and hung them in a line facing the WMA assembly in Rotterdam, each bearing the name of a Palestinian healthcare worker currently held in illegal Israeli detention.

It was part of a protest against the continued membership of the Israeli association in the WMA, “despite them breaching almost every ethical principle in the WMA’s Code of Medical Ethics”, the IMA Out! coalition that organised the demonstration said in a statement.

“These scrubs should not be empty. Our colleagues belong with their patients, not in Israeli prisons. Today, we literally placed their names at the WMA’s doorstep,” said Mejrem Ahmetaj, a general practitioner and member of IMA Out!.

Since October 2023, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers and destroyed nearly all the hospitals and healthcare facilities in the enclave.

The campaign accused the Israeli medical association of remaining silent as Palestinian healthcare has been systematically destroyed.

“The IMA is not a bystander. It defends these attacks and blocks international condemnation while Palestinian healthcare is being destroyed. That is not medical neutrality. That is complicity,” added Ahmetaj.

At a meeting of international doctors, medical leaders and human rights activists during the WMA summit on Thursday, the destruction of Palestinian healthcare and the responsibility of the international medical community were discussed, the campaign said.

“Our Palestinian colleagues are being killed and imprisoned, where they are starved and tortured. Their hospitals have been destroyed and patients driven out or murdered. The IMA has said and done nothing about these war crimes against health workers, patients and hospitals,” said a statement by Jonathan Fluxman on behalf of IMA OUT!.

“Thirty years of WMA dialogue with the IMA has done nothing but give the IMA a sense of impunity … It is time for national medical associations and the WMA to speak out and take action. Break your ties with the IMA and suspend the IMA from the WMA now,” he added.

The IMA OUT! campaign said it delivered a petition calling for the IMA’s suspension, signed by more than 6,500 health workers from around the world.

They also demanded accountability for the complicity of Israeli doctors in the starvation, torture and medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners.

Among those held by Israel is Dr Hussam Abu Safia, head of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, whose unlawful detention has prompted an international outcry.

He was briefly held at the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp and has been subject to torture and medical neglect. Doctors protesting in Rotterdam held up placards demanding his release.

Abu Safia’s son Elyas, addressing a meeting organised by the campaign, said, “My father and all Palestinian detainees must be treated in accordance with medical ethics, and doctors must abide by the Hippocratic oath they have taken. Care cannot be given based on whose life is deemed worthy.”

November 2026 vote delayed and joint presidential and legislative elections set for next year, president says in decree.

President Mahmoud Abbas has postponed what would have been the first Palestinian elections in nearly 20 years, issuing a decree to further delay voting for the Palestinian Legislative Council for almost another year.

According to the decree, legislative elections planned for next month will be combined with a presidential vote and set for September 11, 2027, Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, said on Saturday.

The long-awaited parliamentary vote was originally set for November 28, with a presidential election expected in early 2027.

The decree came after a committee of top Palestinian officials met on Saturday morning to discuss postponing the vote.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee, which Abbas heads, said in a statement that conditions in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were not conducive to holding elections, noting that Israel had not allowed election materials or international observers to enter Gaza.

Israeli interference, including military raids, settlement expansion and settler violence in the occupied West Bank, has made a fair vote in November impossible, Wafa reported.

The agency also cited Israel’s systemic withholding of Palestinian tax revenues and its restrictions on electoral candidates and international observers entering Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem, as reasons.

As for Gaza, it said that the lack of progress on reconstruction and on deploying an international stabilisation force factored into the decision as well.

The postponement leaves entrenched Palestinian leaders unchallenged and threatens to further erode the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) credibility among Palestinians and donor countries who fund it.

On Friday, the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, accused Abbas of “fooling the international community” by planning to cancel promised elections.

A source told the AFP news agency on Thursday that Palestinian factions, including Abbas’s Palestinian National Liberation Movement – also known as the Fatah party – had agreed to hold a “national dialogue” before legislative elections and that they wanted to postpone the vote.

The last parliamentary elections held in the Palestinian territories were in 2006, when Hamas defeated Fatah, which dominates the PA. The split led to factional fighting and Hamas later seized control of Gaza.

Ninety-year-old Abbas won the last presidential election in 2005. His term should have ended in 2009, but he has ruled by decree since then. In June, he signed a decree calling for the presidential election to be held in early 2027.

Using interviews filmed on rooftops at night in Tel Aviv, the documentary “NAZA” uncovers Israel’s brutal methodology of warfare in Gaza since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that took 250 hostages and killed at least 1,200 people. The testimony offered by these insiders is under the cloak of darkness, but the light it shines on the mass killing of Palestinian civilians is so harsh it burns the conscience. (The title refers to the Israel Defense Forces’ use of an acronym for the Hebrew term for collateral damage: nezek agavi.)

Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, half of the quartet (with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal) behind the Oscar-winning “No Other Land,” secured one-on-one interviews with 24 Israeli intelligence personnel and soldiers, digitally altering their faces and voices while their silhouettes are framed by the lit cityscape. Sitting across from interviewer Abraham, they recount their participation in a military campaign that has killed over 73,000 in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and is ongoing. Used as an estimation of casualties — just put a number in front, “20 NAZA”— it suggests a battle calculation that has permitted the detachment of moral consquences.

One participant makes his need for anonymity clear: “Israel will put me in jail.” At the same time, there has been clamor for the exposure of these sources so they can be prosecuted for war crimes. The uproar over “NAZA” has also led the filmmakers to be called traitors in their country. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to revoke their citizenship.

It all speaks to the power of a well-timed movie, since much of the reporting in “NAZA” has already been published by the Guardian, a co-producer of the documentary, and corroborated by other news outlets. After its theatrical run, the Guardian will stream “NAZA” for free on its website.

The picture painted from the interview subjects, who occasionally draw sketches of weapons-screen interfaces on notepads, is of a computerized tracking-and-killing apparatus, culled from the surveillance Israel keeps of nearly every phone in Gaza. The system is augmented by AI that isn’t always accurate about a target’s presence yet is implemented with airstrikes. Eavesdropping on children is used to track a targeted father’s arrival home in a program called “Where’s Daddy?” As one person says, “You hack her phone and then kill her.”

What’s chilling about these interviews is how they don’t feel like whistleblowing but rather a fact-finding inquiry with available explainers who betray little affect or remorse, even when the topic of personal doubt arises. When one is asked whether this is genocide, the answer comes back, “Yes.” “NAZA” eschews probing for guilty feelings, though, because the point is to unearth a process of obliteration: how it works and what it looks like as implemented by the willing. “My role is technical,” a subject says.

In between these interviews are glimpses of the occasional Israeli news media snippet and at one point an archival reminder of the circumstances of Tel Aviv’s founding. But most insistently, the interstitial visuals are cinematographer Szor’s night shots of apartment facades in modern Tel Aviv: citizens at rest with their loved ones, working out or eating in front of their televisions. It’s a casual surveilling of placidity just up the coast from the atrocities we hear about. “NAZA” isn’t just tough-to-hear journalism, it’s real filmmaking, the visual juxtapositions getting us to think about who doesn’t get to enjoy a quiet evening at home, especially when remote war-waging starts to look like a goal-oriented office shift with a lunch break — or a video game.

Wherever you fall regarding the continued destruction of Gaza, what the filmmakers of “NAZA” make disturbingly clear is that the simplest machinery to spread dehumanization and death is happening now, easing its users into acceptance and rewriting everything about the moral cost of conflict. It’s stone-cold frightening.

Iran’s IRGC says it struck a “giant LPG gas carrier named NV Sunshine” that was “attempting to pass through the illegal route” south of the Strait of Hormuz.