Human Rights

Attack on Nablus-area mosque is latest in surge of Israeli settler and military violence targeting Palestinians.

Israeli settlers have defaced and set fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, marking the latest incident in a wave of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the territory.

The Wafa news agency reported on Monday that settlers graffitied racist slogans on the walls of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq Mosque, located between the towns of Sarra and Tal, near Nablus in the north of the West Bank.

Worshippers arriving for the day’s first prayers found the damage and a smouldering fire that spewed black smoke across the mosque’s entrance and stained the ornate doorway, The Associated Press reported.

“I was shocked when I opened the door,” Munir Ramdan, who lives nearby, told the news agency. “The fire had been burning here in the area, the glass was broken here and the door was broken.”

Ramdan told AP that security camera footage showed two people walking towards the mosque carrying gasoline or petrol and a can of spray paint, and running away a few minutes later.

The attackers spray-painted graffiti denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the words “revenge” and “price tag” – a term used to describe attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property.

The assault comes amid a wave of intensified Israeli settler and military violence across the West Bank in the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the nearby Gaza Strip.

At least 1,094 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank since the Gaza war began in October 2023, according to the latest United Nations figures.

Last week, the UN Human Rights Council warned in a new report (PDF) that Israeli policies in the West Bank – including “the systematic unlawful use of force by Israeli security forces” and unlawful demolitions of Palestinian homes – aim to uproot Palestinian communities.

“These violations, together with pervasive and growing settler violence committed with impunity, are fundamental to the coercive environment that induces forced displacement and forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” the report said.

It added that these policies are aimed at “altering the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied West Bank, raising serious concerns of ethnic cleansing”.

Back in the West Bank village of Tal on Monday, resident Salem Ishtayeh told AP that the Israeli settlers’ assault on the local mosque was “directed especially” at Palestinians who are fasting during Ramadan.

“So they like to provoke you with words. It’s not that they are attacking you personally, they are attacking your religion, the Islamic faith,” Ishtayeh said.

According to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, settlers vandalised or attacked 45 mosques in the West Bank last year.

The Israeli military and police said they responded to the latest incident and were searching for suspects.

But human rights groups say the Israeli authorities have allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians.

Israeli organisation B’Tselem has accused Israel of actively aiding the settlers’ violence “as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land”.

The UN also warned last year that settler attacks were being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.

Maryna Bondarenko, a 51-year-old journalist, has three packed suitcases in her apartment in Poland, hopeful for the return of peace in Ukraine. She fled Kyiv with her son and mother when Russia invaded on February 24, 2022, expecting to be away for just a month or two. Now, four years later, she continues to work in a Ukrainian language newsroom serving over 1.5 million Ukrainians in Poland. Bondarenko recounts many moments of anticipation for returning home, having even packed her belongings multiple times, convinced the war would soon end.

The ongoing war has resulted in Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War Two, with over 5 million Ukrainians dispersed across Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern regions. Most refugees are women and children due to martial law in Ukraine that prevents military-age men from leaving. Bondarenko expresses a strong desire to reunite with her husband, Andrij Dudko, who works as a drone operator on the front line. However, the harsh conditions in Kyiv, including devastating air strikes and bitter winter, keep her from returning with her child.

In Poland, large Ukrainian communities have formed in cities like Warsaw and Krakow, but this has sometimes led to tensions with local residents over jobs and welfare benefits. Bondarenko wishes to return home but acknowledges that Ukraine will be significantly changed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hopes that 70% of Ukrainians abroad will go back after the war, but surveys indicate that many want to stay away, particularly among younger generations. Her 11-year-old son, Danylo, finds it hard to remember life in Ukraine and finds Poland more familiar, though he has faced some hostility at school.

Additionally, Iryna Kushnir and Olga Yermolenko, who were high school friends in Kharkiv, found each other again in Istanbul, where they moved at the start of the war. Kushnir had hoped for a quick return home but remains in Turkey, now married and employed as a teacher at Istanbul University, while she left her 19-year-old daughter Sofia to study in Ukraine. Yermolenko works remotely for Ukrainian clients and stays in touch with her mother who still lives in Kharkiv. Despite her efforts to adapt to life in Turkey, she feels caught between her past and an uncertain future. Both women follow the war closely, with Yermolenko expressing fear when seeing news of missile strikes in Kharkiv and making sure to check on her mother’s safety.

With information from Reuters

The Israeli Knesset is pushing through a bill that, if passed, would allow the occupation authorities to legally execute Palestinians. This development has attracted hardly any international attention, but for Palestinians, it is yet another looming horror.

The bill is part of the deal that allowed the formation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government in late 2022. It was demanded by Itamar Ben-Gvir, now national security minister, who has led a reign of terror across the West Bank for the past three years.

In November, the bill passed its first reading, and in January, its provisions were revealed: execution carried out within 90 days of sentencing, no appeals, and death by hanging. Palestinians charged with planning attacks or killing Israelis would face the death penalty. Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for the execution of Palestinians, most recently during his visit to Ofer Prison, where he filmed himself overseeing the abuse of detainees.

That we got to this point is hardly surprising. For decades, the international community has neglected the fate of Palestinian prisoners. In the past two and a half years, there has been almost no global reaction to the mass brutalisation of Palestinians held in Israeli jails with or without charges. Israeli efforts to legalise executions of Palestinian is the logical next step in eliminating the Palestinian question.

‘Prisoners’ or captives?

The use of the term “prisoners” to refer to Palestinians held by Israel is deceptive. It strips this cruelty of its context – the military occupation and colonisation Palestinians live under. Prisoners of war or captives are much more accurate terms. That is because Palestinians are taken away either for resisting the occupation or for no reason at all – for the sake of terrorising their families and communities.

Currently, more than a third of the Palestinians Israel is holding are under “administrative detention” – ie, they are being held without charge – and some are women and children. Palestinians are also “tried” in military courts, which are blatantly biased against the occupied population.

I, myself, was a victim of this system of oppression through unjust detention.

In November 2015, Israeli soldiers burst into my home in Ramallah and took me away.  They tortured and isolated me for weeks without even telling me what I was accused of.

Eventually, they came up with an accusation of “incitement”, for which they did not produce any evidence. They kept me under their “administrative detention”, or what is really an arbitrary arrest. The abuse continued, and during one interrogation session, an Israeli officer threatened me with rape.

They treated me like an animal without rights or legal protection. Representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross were prevented from visiting me. I was released only after I went on a hunger strike for three months and my condition deteriorated to a dangerous level.

This happened to me 10 years ago, long before October 7, 2023. Back then, the international community was turning a blind eye to Israel’s violations of international law through administrative detention and abuse.

After October 7, the conditions in Israeli military prisons worsened, with rampant torture, starvation and medical neglect. At least 88 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli detention since then. The international community has remained silent, issuing an occasional weak condemnation.

Legalising the illegal

Israel’s brutal mistreatment of detained Palestinians is in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which it is a party to. By virtue of being under occupation, Palestinians are considered a protected population and have rights which the Israeli authorities have systematically denied.

Nevertheless, the international community has accepted these flagrant violations. Under the guise of anti-terrorism, the international discourse has transformed Palestinians from an occupied people to threats to Israeli and international security.

Not even the shocking images and testimonies of mass rape at Israeli detention centres managed to overturn this flawed framing.

In this context, the death penalty bill is not an extremist proposal; it fits right into the pattern of the brutalisation of Palestinian detainees.

From the perspective of the Palestinians, this bill is yet another tool of Israeli revenge. If passed, it would spread more fear and further diminish any peaceful resistance against the Israeli settlers’ violent assaults on the Palestinian people and their property.

The bill is also a nightmare for every family that has a member in an Israeli prison. They have already been pushed to the edge by the lack of information about their loved ones since a ban on visiting amid the spike in deaths in detention.

Even more horrific is the prospect that the bill may be applied retroactively. This means anyone with the charges of planning or causing the death of an Israeli could be executed.

There are currently reports in Israeli media that supposedly, the Israeli government is under pressure not to push forward with this law. There have been some suggestions to amend the text to make it more palatable. But we know that Israel will eventually get to executing Palestinians. Just as it has done with other laws, it will deceptively manoeuvre to minimise reactions but still proceed with what it wants to do.

As Israel is well on its way to bulldozing through yet another international legal norm, the most it will likely get is “calls for restraint” or “statements of condemnation”. Such weak rhetoric has enabled its onslaught against international law for the past few decades, and especially during the past two and a half years.

If the international community wants to salvage what is left of the international legal regime and save face, it is time to radically change its approach.

Instead of making weak statements about respect for international law, they must impose sanctions on Israel. Israeli officials who have been accused of committing crimes against Palestinians should not be hosted but held to account.

Only then can there be hope for the safe and peaceful return of all Palestinian prisoners – something that was already agreed upon during the Oslo Accords. And only then can there be hope that Israeli efforts to dismantle international law so it can do as it pleases in Palestine will be stopped.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Tehran, Iran – The Iranian government has again blamed “terrorists” for the killings of thousands during last month’s nationwide protests after United States President Donald Trump and human rights experts weighed in.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that the government has released a list of 3,117 people, whom he described as “victims of recent terrorist operation”, including about 200 security personnel.

“If anyone disputes accuracy of our data, please share any evidence,” the diplomat, who has previously stated that 690 people on the list were “terrorists” armed and funded by the US and Israel, wrote on X.

Araghchi’s comments come hours after the US president told reporters that 32,000 people were killed during the protests, adding that “the people of Iran have lived in hell” under the theocratic establishment.

The Iranian foreign minister has also been speaking with multiple US media outlets to advocate for a “fair” agreement with Washington over Iran’s nuclear programme.

The threat of war looms increasingly large over the country and potentially the region, with Serbia on Saturday becoming the latest country to call on all its citizens to immediately leave Iran.

‘Majority of those killed are ordinary people’

Mai Sato, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, has said more than 20,000 civilians may have been killed, but information remains limited amid heavy internet filtering by the state, six weeks after a nationwide communications blackout was imposed.

The US-based HRANA says it has documented more than 7,000 people killed during the nationwide protests, and is investigating nearly 12,000 more cases.

Sato was among 30 special rapporteurs and international human rights experts who signed a joint statement on Friday calling on Iranian authorities to fully disclose the fate and whereabouts of tens of thousands arrested, forcibly disappeared or missing in the aftermath of the nationwide protests, and to halt all related death sentences and executions.

“The true scale of the violent crackdown on Iranian protesters remains impossible to determine at this point,” the experts said. “The discrepancy between official figures and grassroots estimates only deepens the anguish of families searching for their loved ones and displays a profound disregard for human rights and accountability.”

The international experts added that “the vast majority of those detained or killed are ordinary people, including children, from all provinces and diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, as well as Afghan nationals”, in addition to lawyers representing protesters, medical professionals who treated the wounded, journalists and writers, artists and human rights defenders.

Iranian state media were accused of regularly broadcasting what the experts said are “widely regarded as forced confessions”.

The latest such incident came on Saturday, when the official Mizan news agency of the Iranian judiciary released footage from a court session for three men who said they regret setting fire to motorcycles, a mosque and copies of the Quran in Tehran during the unrest.

Also on Saturday, some students in Tehran and across the country returned to university campuses for the first time, as authorities kept universities closed and took some classes and exams online in the aftermath of the protests.

In Tehran’s Sharif University, one of the most prestigious in the country, students clashed after two separate demonstrations. Videos circulating online showed students shouting “dishonourables” at a group of paramilitary Basij students affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who chanted back in favour of the establishment.

The clashes come amid a heightened security atmosphere in Iranian schools and university dormitories. Teachers and schools in a number of cities near the capital went on strike last week to protest the killing of at least 230 children and teenagers, as well as increased presence of security forces in classrooms.

Families dance in defiant grief

The Iranian government held mourning events on Tuesday and Wednesday in Tehran, with some officials in attendance.

Culture Minister Reza Salehi-Amiri announced on Saturday that the government has decided to call the upcoming ceremonies around Newroz, the new Iranian year starting in late March, an exercise in “unity and empathy” with the aim of “getting past the grief” of thousands killed.

But numerous families have been holding defiant commemoration events of their own over the past week to mark 40 days since the killing of their loved ones during the anti-establishment protests.

Footage from many ceremonies across the country this week showed family members, and large crowds gathered to support them, proudly holding up images of those killed and celebrating their shortened lives.

Many chose to clap, play traditional drums and cymbals, and even dance in symbolic shows of resistance and defiance that heavily clash with religious rituals favoured by the theocratic state.

“May your pen break, O fate, if you do not write about that which befell us,” the father of Abolfazl MirAeez, a 33-year-old killed in the city of Gorgan in the northern province of Golestan, told crowds gathered at a ceremony on Thursday.

“My son was neither a rioter, nor an embezzler nor an aghazadeh [child of an elite]. He was the son of a farmer.”

More than 600 people may be in custody for political reasons, one Venezuelan rights group estimates.

Venezuela’s acting president has signed into law an amnesty bill that could see hundreds of politicians, activists and lawyers released soon, while tacitly acknowledging what the country has denied for years – that it has political detainees in jail.

The law, signed on Thursday, in effect reverses decades of denials in the government’s latest about-face since the United States military’s January 3 attack in the country’s capital, Caracas, and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro.

Opposition members, activists, human rights defenders, journalists and others who were targeted by the governing party over the past 27 years could benefit from the new law.

But families hoping for the release of relatives say acting President Delcy Rodriguez has failed to deliver on earlier promises to release prisoners. Some of them have been gathered outside detention centres for weeks.

Venezuela-based prisoners’ rights group Foro Penal has tallied 448 releases since January 8 and estimates that more than 600 people are still in custody for political reasons.

The new law provides amnesty for involvement in political protests and “violent actions” which took place during a brief coup in 2002 and during demonstrations or elections in certain months going back to 2004.

It does not detail the exact crimes which would be eligible for amnesty, though a previous draft laid out several, including instigation of illegal activity, resistance to authorities, rebellion and treason.

People convicted of “military rebellion” for involvement in events in 2019 are excluded. The law also does not return assets of those detained, revoke public office bans given for political reasons or cancel sanctions against media outlets.

Opposition divided

“It’s not perfect, but it is undoubtedly a great step forward for the reconciliation of Venezuela,” opposition politician Nora Bracho said during a debate on the bill in the legislature on Thursday.

But the law was criticised by other members of the opposition, including Pedro Urruchurtu, international relations director for opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado.

“A true amnesty doesn’t require laws, but rather will, something that is lacking in this discussion,” he said on X on Thursday. “It is not only an invalid and illegitimate law, but also a trap to buy time and revictimize those persecuted.”

Since Madura’s abduction, US President Donald Trump has praised Rodriguez, Maduro’s former deputy, while downplaying the prospect of supporting the opposition.

For her part, Rodriguez has overseen several concessions to the US, including freezing oil shipments to Cuba and supporting a law to open the state-controlled oil industry to foreign companies.

The US has said it will control the proceeds ⁠from Venezuela’s oil sales until a “representative government” is established.

Environment group says FBI is visiting climate activists’ homes as Trump administration rolls back pollution protections.

Environmental group Extinction Rebellion has said that climate change activists associated with the group are being investigated by the Trump administration, which is also openly working to roll back environmental protections in the United States.

The group’s New York chapter said that at least seven of its activists have been visited by FBI agents since Trump’s second term began last year, including one person who had two special agents from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force come to their home on February 6.

The Department of Justice also opened an investigation into the environmental group Climate Defiance earlier this month in response to what Extinction Rebellion said was a “viral peaceful protest”.

“Trump is weaponising the DOJ to attack peaceful protesters in order to appease a multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel industry that got him elected,” Extinction Rebellion’s New York chapter said in a statement shared on Instagram.

“We can only assume that they are feeling threatened by our movement,” the statement added.

Known as XR, the activist group garnered media attention worldwide through disruption, hitting roads, airports and other public transport networks with direct action protests against climate change in major cities.

The environmental group’s global website says it is a “decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly” on the climate emergency.

Activist Greta Thunberg has previously attended actions organised by the group.

‘The single largest deregulatory action in American history’

According to the natural resource monitoring group Global Witness, fossil fuel companies, including Chevron and Exxon, donated $19m to President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund last year, representing 7.8 percent of the total amount raised. A number of fossil fuel companies also donated to Trump’s re-election campaign.

Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”, has taken several steps to fulfil his campaign promise to “drill, baby, drill” as president, including expanding oil extraction in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Trump administration also recently revoked a 2009 government declaration known as the “endangerment finding”, which has been used as the legal basis for regulating pollution under the Clean Air Act, which was originally adopted in 1963.

Trump, who described the endangerment finding as “one of the greatest scams in history”, has claimed that repealing it was “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far”.

The move has prompted alarm from environmental and health groups, more than a dozen of which filed a lawsuit on Wednesday over the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to withdraw the endangerment finding, saying removing it will lead to “more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths”.

The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed a criminal complaint to a court in Chile, seeking the prosecution of an Israeli Ukrainian who was an Israeli sniper in Gaza. Lucia Newman investigates his role in the deaths in Gaza.

Tigray, Ethiopia – Saba Gedion was 17 when the peace deal that ended the conflict in her homeland of Tigray in northern Ethiopia was signed in 2022.

She hoped then that fighting would be a thing of the past, but the last few months have convinced her that strife is once again looming, and she feels paralysed with despair.

“Many people are leaving the region in droves,” Gedion told Al Jazeera as she sat under the shade of a tree, selling coffee to the occasional customer in an area frequented by internally displaced people (IDPs) in Tigray’s capital, Mekelle.

Gedion – herself a displaced person – is from the town of Humera, a now-disputed area with the Amhara region that witnessed heavy clashes during the 2020-2022 war between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The now-21-year-old remembers the horrors she witnessed. Some of her family were killed, while others were abducted into neighbouring Eritrea, she says. She has not heard from them since.

Though she made it out alive, her life was turned upside-down when she was forced to flee to Mekelle for safety.

Years later, Gedion sees similar patterns as people leave Tigray – most headed to the neighbouring Afar region – once again looking for the safety that has become elusive at home.

“Recurring conflict and civil war have made us zombies rather than citizens,” she told Al Jazeera.

In recent weeks, enmity between Ethiopia and Eritrea has escalated amid separate accusations by both sides.

Speaking to Ethiopia’s parliament in early February, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addressed his landlocked country’s access to the sea, saying “the Red Sea and Ethiopia cannot remain separated forever”. This has led to accusations by Eritrea that Addis Ababa is seeking to invade its country and trying to reclaim the Red Sea Assab seaport, which it lost in 1993 with the independence of Eritrea.

Ethiopia, meanwhile, has accused Eritrean troops of occupying its territory along parts of their shared border, and called for the immediate withdrawal of soldiers from the towns of Sheraro and Gulomakada, among others. Addis Ababa also accuses Eritrea of arming rebels in the vast Horn of Africa country.

Observers say the heightening tensions point to an impending war between the two countries – one that could once again involve Tigray.

Unhealed scars of war

In Tigray’s capital, a once-booming city of tourism and business, most streets are quiet.

The young people who previously frequented cafes are now often seen applying for visas and speaking with smugglers in the hope of leaving Tigray.

Helen Gessese, 36, lives in a makeshift IDP camp on the outskirts of Mekelle. She worries about what will become of the already struggling region should another conflict erupt.

Gessese is an ethnic Irob, a persecuted Catholic minority group from the border town of Dewhan in the northeastern part of Tigray.

During the Tigray war, several of her family members were kidnapped, she said, as Eritrean troops expanded their hold of the area.

As the war intensified, she fled to Mekelle, about 150km away, looking for safety. Her elderly parents were too frail to join her on foot, so she was forced to leave them behind. Like Gedion, she has not heard from them or the rest of her family since 2022.

“My life has been held back, not knowing if my elderly parents are still alive,” she told Al Jazeera, the stress of the last few years making her seem much older than she is.

In Mekelle, it is not uncommon to meet people who are anguished or frustrated – some by the renewed tensions, and many by the trauma of the previous conflict.

More than 80 percent of hospitals were left in ruins in Tigray during the war, according to humanitarian organisations, while sexual violence that defined the two-year conflict is still a recurring issue. Hundreds of thousands of young people are still out of school, foreign investment that created jobs in the past has in large part evaporated, and the economy remains crippled after years of war.

Meanwhile, nearly four years later, the federal government’s decision to withhold foreign funds meant for the region is deepening a humanitarian crisis. The bulk of the public service in the region, for instance, has not been paid for months.

The Ethiopia-Eritrea relationship has also deteriorated in recent years.

The longstanding foes had waged war against each other between 1998 and 2000, but in 2018, they signed a peace deal. They then became allies during the 2020-2022 civil war in Tigray against common enemy, the TPLF.

But the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been in sharp decline since the signing of the 2022 accord that ended the Tigray war – an agreement that Asmara was not party to.

‘Acts of outright aggression’

Earlier this month, Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gedion Timothewos wrote an open letter acknowledging the presence of Eritrean troops loitering on the Ethiopian side of the border and calling for them to leave.

“The incursion of Eritrean troops …” he wrote, “is not just provocations but acts of outright aggression.”

Asmara continues to deny the presence of its troops on the Ethiopian side, and Eritrean Minister of Information Yemane Gebremeskel has called such accusations “an agenda of war against Eritrea”.

As a sign of the worsening of the relationship between the two neighbours, Ethiopia’s Abiy, in his address to lawmakers early in February, also accused Eritrean troops of committing atrocities during the Tigray war. The accusation was a first from the prime minister, following repeated denials by his government about reported mass killings, looting and the destruction of factories by Eritrean troops during the Tigray conflict.

Eritrea’s government rejected Abiy’s claims about atrocities, with Gebremeskel calling them “cheap and despicable lies”, noting that Abiy’s government had until recently been “showering praises and state medals” on Eritrean army officers.

As the tensions escalate, many observers say war between the two is now inevitable and have called for dialogue and the de-escalation of the situation.

“The situation remains highly volatile and we fear that it will deteriorate, worsening the region’s already precarious human rights and humanitarian situation,” the United Nations Human Rights spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, said this month.

Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College, told Al Jazeera a new war would have “wide-reaching implications for the region” – regardless of the outcome.

He believes the looming conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea could take the shape of a new civil war, positioning Addis Ababa against Tigray’s leadership yet again.

From Ethiopia’s side, he argues the objective would be regime change in both Asmara and Mekelle, noting that “regime change in Eritrea may lead to Ethiopia gaining control of Assab”. For Asmara and Mekelle, the aim would also be regime change in Addis Ababa, he suggests.

“If it erupts, it will be devastating for Tigray,” Tronvoll said. “The outcome of such a war will likely fundamentally alter the political landscape of Ethiopia and the Horn [of Africa],” he warned, pointing out that regional states could also be pulled into a proxy war.

Fears for the future

For many in Tigray, memories of massacres committed during the 2020-2022 war are still fresh.

Axum, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the central zone of the Tigray region, is known for its tall obelisk relics of an ancient kingdom. But for 24 hours in November 2020, the city was the site of killings carried out by the Eritrean army. “Many hundreds of civilians” were killed, rights group Amnesty International said.

While the killings were denied by both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments for many years, this month Abiy acknowledged they had taken place.

However, despite speaking of “mass killings” in Axum, he has been silent about the fact that the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies worked together openly as allies during that war.

Marta Keberom, a resident in her forties who hails from Axum, says very few people in her hometown have not been touched by violence in the last five years.

“The killings that happened during the war wasn’t just a conflict, it had the hallmark of a genocide where whole families were murdered without a cause,” she said of the killings that targeted Tigrayans.

“To relive that,” Keberom said, speaking at an IDP centre in Mekelle, would be “something I can’t begin to comprehend.”

Waiting for customers at her coffee stand in the city, Gedion is also afraid of what might come next.

She once aspired to be an engineer, but since being uprooted from her village, she now dreams of a future far away from Ethiopia.

She has already contacted a smuggler to help her leave, she says, through Libya and on towards the Mediterranean Sea – despite the extreme risks of such a journey.

“I would rather take a chance than die a slow, certain death with little future prospects,” she said.

China has previously criticised the role, accusing the US of interfering in China’s internal affairs.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that the Trump administration has appointed an envoy to the position of United States special coordinator for Tibetan issues.

The role, which was created by the US Congress in 2002, will be filled by Riley Barnes, who is currently also serving as the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labour.

Rubio announced Barnes’s appointment in a statement on the occasion of Losar, the Tibetan New Year, on Tuesday.

“On this first day of the Year of the Fire Horse, we celebrate the fortitude and resilience of Tibetans around the world,” Rubio said in a statement.

“The United States remains committed to supporting the unalienable rights of Tibetans and their distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage,” he added.

The new appointment comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump has stepped back from speaking out on a range of human rights issues globally, and as the US has either intervened directly or threatened other countries, including Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and Denmark’s Greenland.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to Rubio’s announcement, which comes during the Chinese New Year holiday, but Beijing has criticised similar appointments in the past.

“The setting up of the so-called coordinator for Tibetan issues is entirely out of political manipulation to interfere in China’s internal affairs and destabilise Tibet. China firmly opposes that,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesman at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said after a similar appointment was made by the US State Department in 2020, during Trump’s first presidency .

“Tibet affairs are China’s internal affairs that allow no foreign interference,” Lijian had said.

China has governed the remote region of Tibet since 1951, after its military marched in and took control in what it called a “peaceful liberation”.

Exiled Tibetan leaders have long condemned China’s policies in Tibet, accusing Beijing of separating families in the Himalayan region, banning their language, and suppressing Tibetan culture.

China has denied any wrongdoing and says its intervention in Tibet ended “backward feudal serfdom”.

More than 80 percent of the Tibetan population is ethnic Tibetan, while Han Chinese make up the remainder. Most Tibetans are also Buddhists, and while China’s constitution allows for freedom of religion, the governing Communist Party adheres strictly to atheism.

Also on Tuesday, the head of the Washington-based Radio Free Asia announced that the US-government-funded news outlet has resumed broadcasting into China, after shutting down its news operations in October due to cuts from the Trump administration.

Radio Free Asia President and CEO Bay Fang wrote on social media that the resumed broadcast to audiences in China in “Mandarin, Tibetan, and Uyghur” languages was “due to private contracting with transmission services” and congressional funding approved by Trump.

The Israeli government has approved a plan to begin land registration in the occupied West Bank, meaning it will be able to seize land from Palestinians who cannot prove ownership.

For the first time since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967, it will register such land as property of the state – also known as settlement of land title – in Area C of the occupied West Bank.

Area C is the part of the West Bank that remains under direct Israeli control. It covers about 60 percent of the West Bank.

According to Israeli media, Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, who submitted the proposal to restart land registration with Minister of Justice Yariv Levin and Minister of Defence Israel Katz, said the move was a continuation of “the settlement revolution to control all our lands”.

The Palestinian Authority presidency said the decision amounts to “de facto annexation” of the West Bank. It is the formalisation of the ongoing process of building settlements in the West Bank in violation of international law over the past several decades.

Here’s what we know about how this could be implemented:

What does the land registration process mean?

During Jordanian control of the West Bank from 1949 to 1967, the administration primarily followed the British Mandate of land ownership, under which land was registered as state or private property.

But only about one-third of the land in the West Bank was formally registered under this process. Large numbers of Palestinians living in the region had no documentation or other means of proving they owned their own land. Many of them had also lost documents or they had been destroyed during the 1967 six-day Arab-Israeli war, which resulted in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

When Israel took control of the West Bank, it discontinued the process of land registration.

Now, the government has decided to restart the land registration, a move that many Israeli human rights groups and political analysts have condemned.

Xavier Abu Eid, a political analyst based in the West Bank, described the Israeli government’s move as a “de facto annexation of Palestinian territory”.

“What they are doing is the implementation of annexation, packaging it as a mere bureaucratic process,” he told Al Jazeera.

He added that it reaffirms the idea that “there is a colonial power that sets two different sets of legislation depending on ethnic and religious identity, defined also as apartheid.”

Where will land registration be implemented?

In 1993 and 1995, the Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. They laid out administrative control of the West Bank and Gaza and divided the occupied West Bank into three areas – Area A, Area B and Area C.

The new Palestinian Authority (PA) was granted full administrative control of 18 percent of the land – Area A – and joint control with Israel over 22 percent – Area B. Area C remained under complete Israeli military control. These areas were meant to be in place for five years, after which full administrative control would be handed to the PA. However, this transfer never took place.

The land registration that will now be restarted will apply to Area C, which is home to more than 300,000 Palestinian people.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, in Area C, about 58 percent of the land remains unregistered. In a statement on Sunday, the group warned that the Israeli government’s land settlement process will now facilitate full Israeli control of this unregistered land.

How will land registration work?

Israeli authorities have provided few details about how the process will unfold, but essentially, it will likely involve transferring legal ownership of land to the Israeli state and issuing evictions to Palestinian communities, as has been happening in East Jerusalem in recent years, experts told Al Jazeera.

Michal Braier, an architect and the head of research at Bimkom, an Israeli human rights organisation that focuses on land and housing rights, said it is likely Israeli authorities will take the same approach in the West Bank as they have taken in East Jerusalem since 2018. In East Jerusalem, only 1 percent of settled land has been registered to Palestinians from 2018 to 2024, according to Bimkom.

Braier said Israel will begin by selecting the areas of land it wants to register. The government has set a goal of registering about 15 percent of the unregistered land within the next four years, she added.

“Now we can pretty clearly guess that this 15 percent will be lands where they assume that they can prove the state ownership easily or they can easily reject Palestinian ownership claims because a lot of these unregistered lands don’t have clear records and the records go a very, very long time back. So it will be very hard to prove Palestinian ownership,” she told Al Jazeera.

In theory, she said, Palestinians will be able to file land claims as part of the new process, but in practice, it is likely that they will be prevented from successfully doing so.

“Even if they do file claims, the legal bars they need to meet are very difficult to obtain. On top of this, there is the problem of Absentee Property Law, which moves land into the state’s hands and is yet unclear how exactly it will be practised in the occupied West Bank. So Palestinians are highly likely to lose their individual property rights,” she said.

The Absentee Property Law is an Israeli law enacted in 1950 that states that Israel has the right to seize property of “absentees” – people who were expelled, fled or who left the country after November 29, 1947, the day the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to end the British Mandate and recommend the creation of a Palestinian and a Jewish state. Israel was founded less than six months later.

Braier said land registration “will be used as another mechanism to grab land that they could not grab until now for different reasons and to build more settlements and push out Palestinians from Area C”.

According to a Times of Israel report, an Israeli government resolution linked to the land registration bill has allowed for an initial budget of $79m for the land registration process in Area C from 2026 to 2030. The report added that during this process, Israel, which already has civilian and military control of the area, will establish 35 ministerial positions and set up state agencies to begin the process of registering land.

What does this mean for Palestinian communities?

Peace Now described the Israeli government’s decision to restart land registration in the West Bank as “a mega land grab of Palestinian property”.

“Land registration will result in the transfer of ownership of the vast majority of Area C to the state, leaving Palestinians with no practical ability to realise their ownership rights,” the group said in a statement on Sunday.

Abu Eid said the land registration process the government intends to undertake amounts to a “full-fledged ethnic cleansing policy” and added that it is a moment that will be “remembered as a turning point in Israeli attempts at erasing the Palestinian cause”.

But he noted that the Israeli government’s decision has not arisen in a vacuum as Israel has “allowed for a wave of terror attacks by Israeli settlers and the expansion of colonial settlements all over the West Bank” for years.

“Palestinians in general are not just dispossessed of their land and natural resources but come under attacks that are dealt with utter impunity both by the Israeli regime and by the international community,” he said.

“In al-Auja, for example, near Jericho, from 100 Palestinian families that used to live in the place a few months ago, now there is not a single family left,” he added.

He said it is likely that Israel will expect thousands of displaced people from the West Bank to go to Jordan.

“You should not forget the incitement coming out from members of the Israeli government claiming that Jordan should be turned into Palestine while Palestine should be left for the Zionist project,” Abu Eid said.

How have Palestinian land rights been eroded before this?

The West Bank is home to about 3.3 million Palestinians. It is divided into 11 governorates with Hebron being the most populous at 842,000 residents. Jerusalem follows with 500,000, Nablus with 440,000, Ramallah and el-Bireh with 377,000 and Jenin with 360,000.

Since the Israeli occupation in 1967, the Palestinian people have been subject to  land seizures and illegal settlement expansion.

Today, about 700,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in settlements and outposts that are Jewish-only communities built on Palestinian land. These range in size from a single dwelling to a collection of high rises. Last year, the Israeli government approved the construction of new settlements in the region, seeking to advance “de facto sovereignty” in the region.

In all, the number of settlements and outposts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has risen by nearly 50 percent since 2022 – from 141 to 210 now.

Besides eroding Palestinian people’s land rights, Israel has also carried out frequent raids in the West Bank, where Palestinians are also subject to checkpoints, arbitrary arrests, home demolitions and settler attacks.

The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem estimated that settler attacks against Palestinians have forcibly displaced 44 communities across the West Bank in recent years. These attacks have also resulted in the deaths of Palestinian people. Since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, settler attacks have also intensified.

At least 1,054 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and settlers from October 7, 2023, to February 5 of this year, according to the latest United Nations figures.

Braier said Sunday’s approval of Israel’s land registration in the West Bank will result in a rise in violence in the region.

“Area C is being cleared out by what is usually regarded as settler violence, but this violence is actually state violence, backed by state mechanisms, so this is all working together to expand Israeli control over Area C and expand settlement in Area C,” she said.

Is Israel’s land registration process legal?

In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s “expropriation of land and properties, transfer of populations, and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section are totally invalid and cannot change that status”.

The ICJ has also ruled that Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal and must be terminated “as rapidly as possible”.

Braier said the Israeli government’s latest decision on land registration also contravenes international law.

“International law is clear: As an occupying power, Israel cannot exercise sovereign powers, including final determination of land ownership, in an occupied territory,” she told Al Jazeera.

“This position was reinforced by the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion, which found that similar settlement of land title proceedings in East Jerusalem violate the laws of occupation,” she said.

“Furthermore, the decision to authorise Israeli civilian authorities to manage the land registration procedures likewise constitutes a clear indication of the annexation of the area,” she added.

What does this mean for Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan?

On October 26, 1994, Israel and Jordan signed the Wadi Araba Treaty, which formally ended the state of war between the two nations that had existed since the creation of Israel in 1948.

Under the agreement, Israel and Jordan established diplomatic ties, agreed to exchange territory and opened the way for cooperation in trade, tourism, transport links, water resources and environmental protection. Jordan also signed the agreement seeking to ensure a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine would be established.

But the public in Jordan, opposition groups and human rights groups have repeatedly called on the government to sever relations with Israel due to its continuing aggression in Palestine.

In 2014, many Jordanians took to the streets, calling on the government to scrap its peace treaty with Israel after clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

In 2024, a similar call was issued by Jordanian activists as Israel conducted its genocidal war in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.

On Sunday, Jordan, which shares a 482km (300-mile) border with Israel and the West Bank, condemned Israel’s decision to reinstate land registration in the West Bank. Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described Israel’s move as a “flagrant violation of international law”.

While Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel still holds, Abu Eid said Sunday’s decision by the Israeli cabinet is a serious and sensitive matter for Jordan, particularly if thousands of people are forcibly displaced from the West Bank.

Furthermore, he said, Israel has been acting against the principles of the Jordan-Israel peace agreement for years.

“If peace agreements are aimed at creating the conditions to enhance cooperation and establish a two-state solution, Israel goes against all of such principles, seeking the expansionist ‘Greater Israel’ agenda,” he said.

“Jordan takes such matters seriously and will certainly seek to have collective action with other regional and international allies,” he added.

Five European countries say findings ‘conclusively’ confirm the deadly toxin in the Russian opposition leader’s body as Moscow calls it Western propaganda.

Five European countries – the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands – have accused Russia of poisoning and killing opposition leader Alexey Navalny in 2024 based on lab results from a sample taken from his body.

The five governments said in a statement on Saturday that tissue samples “conclusively” confirmed the lethal toxin epibatidine. The poison is found in wild dart frogs from South America.

“The UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands are confident that Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin,” the statement issued during the Munich Security Conference said.

Russia had “the means, motive, and opportunity to administer this poison”, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office added in a statement.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told state-run RIA Novosti news agency she’ll comment once the test results are publicly presented – something she noted has not yet been done.

The five countries said they’re reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. There was no immediate comment from the organisation.

Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence he called politically motivated.

Epibatidine is found naturally in dart frogs and can also be manufactured in a lab, something European scientists suspect was the case in the alleged poisoning of Navalny.

The poison works by causing shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures and a slowed heart rate and can kill on contact.

The five countries said Russia needs to be held accountable for its “repeated violations” of the convention.

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper met Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, at the Munich Security Conference. She said the new findings are “shining a light on the Kremlin’s barbaric plot to silence his voice”.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on X the alleged poisoning shows “Vladimir Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people in order to remain in power.”

The Russian government has repeatedly denied any involvement in Navalny’s death. Authorities said he became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.

“Once there are test results – once there are formulas for the substances – there will be a comment. Without this, all talk and statements are just information leaks aimed at distracting attention from the West’s pressing problems,” said Zakharova.

‘Science-proven fact’?

It’s unclear how the samples from Navalny’s body were obtained or where they were assessed. Cooper told reporters “UK scientists worked with our European partners to pursue the truth” on Navalny’s death.

Navalnaya said the “murder” of her husband is now a “science-proven fact”.

“Two years ago, I came on stage here and said that it was Vladimir Putin who killed my husband,” Navalnaya said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

“I was, of course, certain that it was a murder, … but back then, it was just words. But today these words have become science-proven fact,” Navalnaya added.

Navalny was the previous target of a nerve agent poisoning in 2020 that he blamed on the Kremlin.

He was flown to Germany for treatment, and when he returned to Russia five months later, he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the remaining three years of his life.

The UK held a ‌public inquiry into the poisoning in Britain of Russian double agent Sergey Skripal in 2018. It concluded last year that Putin must have ordered the Novichok nerve agent attack. The Kremlin has denied involvement.

Russia also denied poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent-turned-Kremlin critic who died in London in 2006 after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. A British inquiry concluded that two Russian agents killed Litvinenko.

Tehran, Iran – Iran and the United States are presenting clashing views before expected talks as diaspora Iranians rally across the world to demand action after thousands were killed during last month’s nationwide protests.

Amid reports that a second round of mediated talks may take place over the coming days, Washington has maintained it wants to limit Iran’s missile programme and end all its nuclear enrichment. Iran has consistently rejected both demands, saying it could dilute highly enriched uranium – all said to be buried under rubble after being bombed by the US in June – in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

US President Donald Trump said at the White House on Friday that he is sending a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East, adding that “regime change” in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen”.

Speaking at a conference in Tehran on Saturday aimed at attracting regional investment for railroad projects, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian thanked the leaders of Azerbaijan, Turkiye, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and others for mediating to prevent a US military attack.

“All of these countries are working so that we can resolve our own problems with peace and calm, and we are able to do this. We do not need a custodian,” Pezeshkian said, warning that a war would impact the entire Middle East.

Major rallies in US, Europe

A large number of Iranians abroad who are opposed to the theocratic establishment governing Iran since a 1979 revolution participated in rallies across the world on Saturday to demand an end to religious rule.

Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s US-backed shah who was deposed in the revolution, called on Iranians living abroad to be part of a “global day of action” aimed at “taking Iran back” from the Islamic Republic. He also addressed the Munich Security Conference in Germany and met with leaders such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and senior US Senator Lindsey Graham.

The three main cities designated for the protests were Munich, Los Angeles and Toronto. Iranians also marched in cities in Australia, including Sydney and Melbourne.

A similar rally last month in Toronto saw more than150,000 people in attendance and no adverse incidents, according to city police. About 100,000 people registered early to attend the Munich rally on Saturday.

The rallies are some of the largest ever held by the Iranian diaspora and the biggest since demonstrations in solidarity with the deadly 2022-2023 nationwide protests in Iran, triggered by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, for allegedly wearing the mandatory hijab for women improperly.

The latest protests were held days after the Iranian establishment organised demonstrations and burned the flags of Israel and the US to mark the 47th anniversary of the 1979 revolution.

“They killed my innocent girl for a few strands of hair and nobody was held accountable, but now they record women with bare heads and so-called unconventional attire in their official ceremonies and nobody yells that Islam is in danger,” Amini’s father wrote in an Instagram story after state television interviewed a pro-establishment woman without a hijab.

Since the killing of thousands of protesters last month, mostly carried out on the nights of January 8-9, similar rallies have been held to raise awareness in dozens of cities across the globe, including The Hague, Zurich, Rome, Budapest and Tokyo.

The United Nations and international human rights organisations said they documented widespread use of lethal force by state forces against peaceful protesters. But the Iranian government rejected all their allegations, claiming “terrorists” and “rioters” armed and funded by the US and Israel were behind the killings across Iran.

Families united in grief, strength

From Kuhchenar county in southern Iran’s Fars province to central Arak and Mashhad in the northeast, families continue to release footage online to commemorate their loved ones killed during the demonstrations.

Behesht-e Zahra, a cemetery in Tehran, was crowded on Friday as people gathered in solidarity with multiple families holding mourning ceremonies to mark “chehelom”, or 40 days since the killing of their loved ones.

Bereaved relatives somberly clapped, played music and showed the “victory” sign in an attempt to express pride, strength and defiance despite their losses.

Among those remembered were Ayda Heydari, 21, a medical student, and Zahra “Raha” Behloulipour, who attended Tehran University. Both were shot and killed with multiple live rounds in separate incidents.

The state-run Mehr news agency reported Heydari was “a victim of Mossad agents in recent riots” and released a short clip of an interview with her family. Heydari’s mother said her daughter was not a “munafiq”, a term the Islamic Republic uses to describe dissidents.

Mohammad-Hossein Omid, head of Tehran University, last week told the semiofficial ISNA news agency that “most” of the people taking part in the nationwide demonstrations were “protesters not terrorists”.

Concerns for prisoners

The Iranian judiciary confirmed on Saturday that a number of senior reformist politicians arrested last week for criticising the establishment were released on bail while others remained behind bars to face previous charges.

Vahid Shalchi, a deputy science minister, cited judiciary officials as saying “a considerable” number of arrested students will be released soon but did not say how many are being held.

Tens of thousands of people have been arrested during and after the protests, and human rights organisations said some are in immediate danger of being executed – allegations the Iranian judiciary has rejected.

Amnesty International said 18-year-old wrestling champion Saleh Mohammadi has been sentenced to public execution in Qom after being forced to make confessions about being involved in the death of a security agent.

Mai Sato – UN special rapporteur on Iran, who previously said more than 20,000 civilians may have been killed during the demonstrations – said three other people face execution and “What is happening now is not new.”

“The same patterns documented in those individual cases are being replicated on a mass scale after the nationwide protests,” she said.

A specific casualty toll from the demonstrations is unknown as information remains extremely limited because of ongoing heavy internet filtering.

Jury chair Wim Wenders said filmmakers ‘have to stay out of politics’ when asked about German support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Indian author Arundhati Roy has announced that she is withdrawing from the Berlin International Film Festival after what she described as “unconscionable statements” by its jury members about Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Writing in India’s The Wire newspaper, Roy said she found recent remarks from members of the Berlinale jury, including its chair, acclaimed director Wim Wenders, that “art should not be political” to be “jaw-dropping”.

“It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time,” wrote Roy, the author of novels and nonfiction, including The God of Small Things.

“I am shocked and disgusted,” Roy wrote, adding that she believed “artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop” the war in Gaza.

“Let me say this clearly: what has happened in Gaza, what continues to happen, is a genocide of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel,” she wrote.

The war is “supported and funded by the governments of the United States and Germany, as well as several other countries in Europe, which makes them complicit in the crime,” she added.

During a panel to launch the festival on Thursday, a journalist asked the jury members for their views on the German government’s “support of the genocide in Gaza” and the “selective treatment of human rights” issues.

German filmmaker Wim Wenders, who is the chair of the festival’s seven-member jury, responded, saying that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics”.

“If we made movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. But we are the counterweight to politics. We are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians,” Wenders said.

Polish film producer Ewa Puszczynska, another jury member, said she thought it was “a bit unfair” to pose this question, saying that filmmakers “cannot be responsible” for whether governments support Israel or Palestine.

“There are many other wars where genocide is committed and we do not talk about that,” Puszczynska added.

Roy had been due to participate in the festival, which runs from February 12 to 22, after her 1989 film, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, was selected to be screened in the Classics section.

Germany, which is one of the biggest exporters of weapons to Israel, after the US, has introduced harsh measures to prevent people from speaking out in solidarity with Palestinians.

In 2024, more than 500 international artists, filmmakers, writers and culture workers called on creatives to stop working with German-funded cultural institutions over what they described as “McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine”.

“Cultural institutions are surveilling social media, petitions, open letters and public statements for expressions of solidarity with Palestine in order to weed out cultural workers who do not echo Germany’s unequivocal support of Israel,” organisers of the initiative said.

Explosions are reported in eastern Gaza City, while at least 54 Palestinians are wounded in attacks by Israeli settlers across the occupied West Bank today.

Venezuela’s National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez has said that the country will not hold presidential elections in the immediate future, emphasising that the government’s current focus is on national stability.

His comments came late on Monday in an interview published with the conservative outlet Newsmax in the United States.

Presidential terms run for six years in Venezuela, and the last election was controversially held in 2024. Newsmax host Rob Schmitt asked if that meant another election would not happen for another five years.

“The only thing I could say is that there will not be an election in this immediate period of time where the stabilisation has to be achieved,” Rodriguez replied.

He explained that the decision is tied to a wider effort to rebuild and strengthen Venezuela’s state institutions.

“What we’re working on at the moment is what we call the re-institutionalisation of the country, so that every single institution of the country can again be brought to full power and full recognition by everybody,” he said.

Rodriguez, who has led the National Assembly since 2021, added that Venezuelans are seeking a return to normalcy following the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro.

“The government of Delcy Rodriguez is actually looking for that, to stabilise the country completely and to make it all good and reconcile everybody, all the population of Venezuela,” he said.

The US abducted Maduro in a military action on January 3. In the weeks since, the Venezuelan Supreme Court has appointed Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, the National Assembly leader’s sister, as acting president.

She was formally sworn in on January 5, with support from both Venezuela’s military and the governing party, as well as the US.

Jorge Rodriguez told Newsmax that the current government would need to “reach an agreement with all sectors of the opposition” to create a “timetable” for new elections.

Amnesty law

Maduro’s abduction had initially inspired hope that a new election would be carried out after the controversy that accompanied the 2024 presidential race.

In that election, Maduro controversially claimed victory for a third straight term, despite the opposition publishing voter tallies that appeared to show its candidate won.

Protests broke out, and Maduro’s government responded with a violent crackdown. An estimated 25 people were killed, according to the US State Department.

In Monday’s interview, Rodriguez rejected the assertion that the 2024 race was not legitimate. Instead, he emphasised his push for national unity, saying, “We have been divided for a very long time.”

He highlighted the legislature’s efforts to pass a mass amnesty law, which would result in the release of all political prisoners and forgive any crimes related to political dissent since 1999.

The bill was approved unanimously in the first of two votes on Thursday and is expected to pass this week.

Still, questions have surrounded the bill. Critics fear that political repression could take other forms after the prisoners’ release.

Schmitt asked whether opposition leader Maria Corina Machado would be able to return to Venezuela and campaign freely in a future election, following the bill’s passage.

“So, allow me not to speak about only one single name, because there are many, many actors abroad that have to be included in this discussion,” Rodriguez responded.

“There is an amnesty law that is being done at the moment that contemplates working with people, but there are sectors of the opposition abroad which have promoted violence.”

He then indicated that the amnesty bill would not apply to the opposition leaders accused of violent crimes.

“Through this amnesty law, we are promoting for all the sections of the opposition who are abroad to comply with the law, so they can come back to the country,” Rodriguez said.

Opposition leaders, however, have long alleged that the government has peddled false accusations of violent crime to arrest and jail them.

Machado herself was accused of conspiring to assassinate Maduro in 2014, leading to her expulsion from the National Assembly.

Rodriguez’s comments also come amid developments in the case of former lawmaker Juan Pablo Guanipa.

The leader was released on Sunday after spending more than eight months in pretrial detention, but he was rearrested less than 12 hours later, after speaking with the media and supporters.

According to his family, he was detained by armed men without identification or a court order. His son, Ramon Guanipa, described the incident as an “abduction”.

Officials later stated that they had requested the revocation of his release order, citing his alleged failure to comply with the conditions imposed upon his release.

In the early hours of Tuesday, Guanipa was transferred to his residence in Maracaibo, where he remains under house arrest.

Machado condemned the actions, stating that Guanipa’s case demonstrates that the releases announced by the government do not guarantee the full exercise of political and civil rights.

“What was Juan Pablo’s crime? Telling the truth. So are these releases, or what are they?” Machado said on Monday.

She proceeded to question whether the released prisoners were truly free from what she described as the repressive machinery of the Venezuelan government.

“Can’t we talk in Venezuela about those who have been in prison? Can’t we recount what they have experienced? Can’t we describe the horror of what is happening in our country today?”

United Nations human rights chief also decries ‘preventable human rights catastrophe’ in Sudan’s el-Fasher.

Fatal drone strikes on civilians persist in Sudan’s Kordofan, as the central region has emerged as the latest front line in Sudan’s nearly three-year conflict, the United Nations has said.

Addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk painted a grim picture of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has plunged the country into widespread bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe.

“We can only expect worse to come” unless decisive steps are taken by the international community to stop the fighting, Turk said, emphasising that inaction would lead to even greater horrors.

Turk also highlighted harrowing survivor testimonies from el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which fell to RSF forces in October following an 18-month siege. He described accounts of atrocity crimes committed by the paramilitary after it overran the city, including mass killings and other grave violations targeting civilians.

“Responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies squarely with the [RSF] and their allies and supporters,” he said

As Sudan’s devastating civil war expands beyond the western Darfur region into the central Kordofan areas, Turk cautioned that the shift in fighting is likely to bring even more severe violations against civilians, expressing deep concern over the potential for additional grave abuses, specifically highlighting the increasing use of “advanced drone weaponry systems” by both warring parties.

“In the last two weeks, the SAF and allied Joint Forces broke the sieges on Kadugli and Dilling,” Turk said. “But drone strikes by both sides continue, resulting in dozens of civilian deaths and injuries.”

Turk’s office has documented more than 90 civilian deaths and 142 injuries caused by drone strikes carried ⁠out by both the RSF and the armed forces from late January to February 6, he said.

Among those incidents were three strikes on health facilities in South Kordofan that killed 31 people last week, according to the World Health Organization.

On February 7, a drone attack carried out by the RSF hit a vehicle transporting displaced families in central Sudan, killing at least 24 people, including eight children, the Sudan Doctors Network said.

The latest attacks follow a series of drone attacks on humanitarian aid convoys and fuel trucks across North Kordofan.

The UN human rights chief said he has witnessed the destruction caused by RSF attacks on Sudan’s Merowe Dam and its hydroelectric power station.

“Repeated drone strikes have disrupted power and water supplies to huge numbers of people, with a serious impact on healthcare,” he said.

Police in the Australian city of Sydney have used pepper spray against pro-Palestine protesters who have rallied against a visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

A journalist with the AFP news agency witnessed police arresting at least 15 demonstrators during the confrontation on Monday. Media members covering the event were also affected by pepper spray.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Sydney’s business district with more protests planned across the country on Monday night.

In Melbourne’s city centre, simultaneous protests took place with participants demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. About 5,000 protesters gathered outside downtown Flinders Street Railway Station before marching several blocks to the State Library, blocking evening peak-hour traffic, according to police.

The protests continued despite Palestine Action Group organisers losing a court challenge of a police order barring them from marching from the Town Hall in Sydney to the New South Wales Parliament.

A 20-year-old woman was arrested after allegedly burning two flags and causing fire damage to a tram stop. Police released her but said she was expected to face wilful damage charges.

Activists said Herzog, whom a United Nations commission of inquiry has found to be responsible for inciting genocide against Palestinians, should not be immune to protests.

“President Herzog has unleashed immense suffering on Palestinians in Gaza for over two years – brazenly and with total impunity,” Amnesty International’s Australia chapter said. “Welcoming President Herzog as an official guest undermines Australia’s commitment to accountability and justice. We cannot remain silent.”

Herzog characterised the protests as mostly attempts to “undermine and delegitimise” Israel’s right to exist.

Earlier, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had called for respectful behaviour during Herzog’s visit, noting he would join the president to meet families of the victims of the December Bondi Beach mass shooting.

New South Wales authorities implemented recently expanded police powers under new protest management legislation. Protesters’ legal challenge to these measures was rejected by the state’s Supreme Court shortly before the demonstrations began.

Herzog had earlier laid a wreath in the rain at Bondi Pavilion to honour victims of the attack that killed 15 people during a Hanukkah celebration.

The Israeli president began his four-day Australian visit there. He also met with survivors and victims’ families.

“This was also an attack ‌on all Australians,” Herzog said at the site. “They attacked the values that our democracies treasure, the sanctity of human life, the freedom of religion, tolerance, dignity and respect.”

“I’m here to express solidarity, friendship and love,” he added.

Women’s rights activist Mohammadi was arrested in December while attending a memorial ceremony in Mashhad.

Iranian human rights activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison, according to her lawyers and a group that supports her.

Mohammadi, 53, was on ⁠a week-long hunger strike that ended on Sunday, the Narges Foundation said in a statement. It said Mohammadi told her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, in a phone call on Sunday from prison that she had received her sentence on Saturday.

“She has been sentenced to six years in prison for gathering and collusion to commit crimes,” Nili told the AFP news agency.

She was also handed a one-and-a-half-year prison sentence for propaganda activities and is to be exiled for two years to the city of Khosf in the eastern province of South Khorasan, the lawyer added.

She also received a two-year ban on leaving the country, according to the report.

Nili said the verdict was not final and could be appealed, expressing hope that the activist could be temporarily “released on bail to receive treatment,” due to her health issues.

Mohammadi had on February 2 begun a hunger strike to protest the conditions of her imprisonment and the inability to make phone calls to lawyers and family.

“Narges Mohammadi ended her hunger strike today on its 6th day, while reports indicate her physical condition is deeply alarming,” the foundation said.

Mohammadi told Nili she was transferred to the hospital just three days ago “due to her deteriorating health”, it added.

“However, she was returned to the Ministry of Intelligence’s security detention centre in Mashhad before completing her treatment,” the foundation said.

“Her continued detention is life threatening and a violation of human rights laws.”

Mohammadi is the second Iranian woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize after Shirin Ebadi won the award in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights.

A prominent writer and journalist, Mohammadi serves as deputy director of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), an organisation long dedicated to defending political prisoners and promoting broader human rights reforms in Iran. Beyond her advocacy for gender equality, she campaigns vigorously against the death penalty and corruption.

Her 20-year fight for women’s rights made her a symbol of freedom, the Nobel Committee said in 2023.

Mohammadi was arrested on December 12 after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi.

Prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters then that Mohammadi made provocative remarks at Alikordi’s memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of ‌Mashhad and encouraged those present “to chant norm-breaking slogans” and “disturb the peace”.

Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman detained in the United States by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency since March, has been rushed to a hospital after a medical episode, according to media reports.

Kordia is being held in Texas after being detained as part of US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protests on college campuses across the country.

Her legal team said she was targeted for her protest against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza near Columbia University in New York in 2024, but the federal government said she was arrested for allegedly overstaying her student visa.

Since her hospitalisation on Friday, Kordia’s legal team and family said they have not been able to speak with her and do not know her whereabouts.

Here is everything we know about Kordia and why she continues to remain in detention:

Who is Kordia?

Kordia grew up in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah before coming to the US in 2016. She arrived on a visitor’s visa, staying with her mother, a US citizen, in Paterson, New Jersey, home to one of the largest Arab communities in the country.

She later transitioned from a tourist visa to a student visa, according to her habeas corpus petition.

After her mother applied for Kordia to remain in the US as the relative of a citizen, her green card application was approved in 2021. However, she received incorrect advice from a teacher that led to her student visa expiring in 2022, according to her lawyers.

Before her arrest, Kordia worked as a server at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Palestine Way in New Jersey and helped to care for her autistic half-brother.

Kordia was moved to protest against Israel’s war due to personal loss. Since the start of the war in October 2023, Kordia said, more than 200 of her relatives have been killed.

Israel has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 170,000 in a war that human rights groups, a United Nations commission and a growing number of scholars said amounts to genocide. Since a “ceasefire” began in October, Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinians and continues to impose curbs on the entry of aid into Gaza.

If deported, Kordia would be handed over to the Israeli government.

Why was Kordia arrested?

She was first arrested in April 2024 during a protest outside the gates of Columbia University, but the case was soon dropped.

On March 13, 2025, Kordia showed up at the ICE headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, for what she believed to be routine immigration questions. She was detained there, “thrown into an unmarked van and sent 1,500 miles [more than 2,400km] away”, Kordia wrote in the USA Today newspaper last month.

Kordia was neither a student at Columbia University nor a part of political circles.

“Though I was not a student, I felt compelled to participate. After all, Israel, with the backing of the United States, has laid waste to Gaza, forcibly displacing my family, killing nearly 200 of my relatives,” she wrote in USA Today.

Today, Kordia is the only person who remains in detention from the Columbia campus demonstrations. She has been held at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.

A leader of the protests, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student with Algerian citizenship and a US green card, and others have been released. Khalil, however, is still in a legal battle to remain in the US with his American wife and child. Last month, an appeals court panel dismissed a lawsuit Khalil filed challenging his detention and deportation order. The judges concluded that the federal court that ordered Khalil’s release last year lacked jurisdiction over the matter.

What are the charges against Kordia?

The US government has called Kordia’s money transfers to relatives in the Middle East evidence of possible ties to “terrorists”.

Kordia’s lawyers have continuously argued for her release, saying she was targeted by federal officials for her participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

The federal government has maintained that the case against Kordia is of overstaying a student visa.

“Her arrest had nothing to do with her radical activities,” the Department of Homeland Security said in April. “Kordia was arrested for immigration violations due to having overstayed her F-1 student visa, which had been terminated on January 26, 2022, for lack of attendance.”

Writing in USA Today last month, Kordia said she does not consider herself either a leader or an activist.

“I am a devout Muslim who is deeply committed to my faith and community. I’m a Palestinian woman who enjoys playing the oud, making pottery and hiking,” Kordia wrote. “Speaking out against what rights groups and experts have called a genocide is my moral duty and – I thought – a constitutionally protected right for all in this country. Except, it seems, when that speech defends Palestinian life.”

An immigration judge has called for Kordia’s release twice. However, it has been repeatedly blocked through a series of procedural and administrative moves.

“[The] Trump administration has exploited rarely used procedural loopholes to keep me confined, a practice now being challenged in federal district courts across the country, with many finding the practice unconstitutional,” Kordia wrote.

How has Kordia lived in ICE detention?

Since Kordia was moved to the ICE detention facility in Alvarado in March, she has been facing a range of issues, from sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor to being denied religious accommodations, including halal meals.

“Inside the ICE facility where I’m being held, conditions are filthy, overcrowded and inhumane,” Kordia wrote in her piece for USA Today. “For months, I slept in a plastic shell, known as a ‘boat,’ surrounded by cockroaches and only a thin blanket. Privacy does not exist here.”

Last year, when Kordia’s cousin Hamzah Abushaban visited her a week after her arrest, he told The Associated Press news agency in an interview that he was taken aback by the dark circles under her eyes and her state of confusion.

“One of the first things she asked me was why she was there,” Abushaban said. “She cried a lot. She looked like death.”

Rights groups and some Democratic Party leaders have called her a “political prisoner”, condemning the way her case has proceeded.

State Representative Salman Bhojani said the conditions at the detention facility were “suffocating”.

Kordia’s dorm, he said, had 60 mattresses crammed into a space designed for 20 women.

“She does not even have clothing that fully covers her body. Community organizations have tried to provide more appropriate clothing and have been turned away,” Bhojani said. “Male staff enter the dorm at any time, leaving her body exposed in violation of her religious obligations.”

Calling for her release, Amnesty International noted that ICE has “repeatedly violated” Kordia’s religious rights. “She has been served almost no halal meals, forcing her to eat food that doesn’t meet her dietary requirements and causing significant weight loss,” the human rights group said in a statement.

“During Ramadan, staff refused to let her save food for when she could break her fast, forcing her either to go hungry or to break her fast early,” Amnesty said. “She has not been provided with clothing suitable for prayer or a clean prayer space.”

Why was Kordia hospitalised?

On Friday, Abushaban said he heard about Kordia’s hospitalisation in the morning from a person formerly detained with his cousin.

Kordia had fallen, hit her head and suffered a seizure in a bathroom at the Prairieland Detention Center, he told The Dallas Morning News newspaper.

In a statement on Saturday, Kordia’s attorneys and family members demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security and Prairieland Detention Center regarding her health and whereabouts.

“[Kordia] was reportedly hospitalised yesterday morning after fainting and having a seizure at the Prairieland Detention Center,” the statement said, adding: “Neither her legal team nor family have been provided answers about where she has been hospitalised, the specifics of her health status, and whether and how ICE will ensure her health upon discharge from the undisclosed, off-site hospital.”

“We have since learned that she is expected to spend another night there, but we still have not been able to speak with her directly or have any confirmation of what brought her to the hospital in the first place,” the statement said.

The family members told US media that they called all hospitals in the vicinity but could not locate Kordia.

What were the Columbia protests about?

In 2024, pro-Palestinian student encampments at Columbia University helped ignite a global movement against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The protest sites, however, were broken up after Columbia University allowed hundreds of New York City police officers on campus, leading to dozens of arrests.

The student protesters demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and the university’s divestment from companies linked to the Israeli military.

Columbia University imposed severe punishments, including expulsion and revocation of academic degrees, on dozens of students who participated in the protests. University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who was criticised for the handling of the student protests, stepped down.

The protests also put Columbia at odds with the Trump administration, whose officials alleged anti-Semitism on campus. Campaigners said the campus crackdown violated US free speech rights.

Trump also cancelled millions of dollars in federal funding for the university, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students. Later, Columbia settled and agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years. In exchange, the Trump administration agreed to return parts of the $400m in grants it froze or terminated.

Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas abroad, has spoken at the Al Jazeera Forum on the rights of Palestinians to resist occupation. The political leader says the demand of disarmament is unacceptable.

Palestinian medics say several of the 54 bodies were found to be mutilated and showed extensive signs of abuse.

Israel has returned dozens of Palestinian bodies and human remains to Gaza without providing any information about their identities or how they were killed, according to Palestinian medical officials.

The remains arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday in plain white bags and are now being examined by forensic teams in an effort to identify them and provide answers to grieving families.

“The bags carry the weight of lives lost. Now they’re undergoing examination, prolonging the grief of families desperate for closure,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported from al-Shifa Hospital on Saturday.

Palestinian medics say several bodies were mutilated.

“The International Committee of the Red Cross handed over 120 body bags containing 54 bodies as well as skull samples placed in 66 separate bags,” forensic official Omar Suleiman told Al Jazeera.

Previous exchanges of Palestinian prisoners’ bodies have revealed extensive signs of abuse, with many showing indications of torture, mutilation and execution.

In November, the rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel released a report saying at least 94 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody, citing causes including torture, medical neglect, malnutrition and physical assault.

The group said the actual toll could be significantly higher.

‘Missing for 10 months’

For many Palestinians, the search for missing relatives has shifted from streets and rubble to computer screens and improvised identification centres.

At al-Shifa, Shadi al-Fayoumi scrolled through blurred and graphic images, hoping to spot anything recognisable that might tell him what happened to his brothers.

“My brothers have been missing for 10 months. They disappeared in the Tuffah neighbourhood,” al-Fayoumi, whose brothers remain missing, told Al Jazeera.

“I went to al-Shifa Medical Complex, where we were told there were bodies we could try to identify. However, the images were unclear and lacked discernible features. How are we expected to identify them under these conditions?”

According to al-Fayoumi, his brothers had gone in search of food and water during the peak of the famine last year but never returned.

“We contacted multiple institutions, but none was willing to help or provide reliable information,” al-Fayoumi added.

Al Jazeera’s al-Khalili said al-Fayoumi’s mother has been “inconsolable”.

“His brothers’ children are silent, unwilling to voice their worst fears. Israeli forces hand over the bodies of Palestinians with little regard for human dignity,” he added.

“There is no information on how they died or how long they were held, leaving Palestinians with not only their grief but unanswered questions.”

Lawyers for the Ecuadorian asylum seeker have speculated the Trump administration is seeking ‘retaliatory’ actions.

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has revealed it will continue to seek the deportation of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias, after their recent return to Minnesota.

The department, however, denied it is seeking their expedited removal, as the family’s lawyer claimed.

“These are regular removal proceedings,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on Friday. “This is standard procedure, and there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.”

Conejo Ramos’s case has drawn nationwide attention since his initial detention on January 20.

Photos went viral of Conejo Ramos standing in the snow, dressed in floppy blue bunny ears, with an immigration agent grabbing onto his Spiderman backpack.

Officials in Minnesota’s Columbia Heights Public School District accused immigration officials of using the preschool student as “bait” for his father. DHS, meanwhile, has claimed that his father abandoned the child when approached by immigration authorities.

Each side has denied the other’s account of the January 20 arrest.

Since December, the administration of President Donald Trump has led an immigration crackdown in Minnesota known as Operation Metro Surge. As many as 3,000 agents were deployed to the state at the operation’s height.

But bystander videos and photos have raised questions about the heavy-handed tactics being used, particularly in the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area.

There, two US citizens were shot dead by immigration agents in the last month alone: Renee Nicole Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24.

The outcry over the shooting deaths, as well as other reports of violence against bystanders and warrantless arrests, has prompted the Trump administration to announce this week the withdrawal of nearly 700 immigration agents.

The detention of Conejo Ramos and his father had been among the high-profile flashpoints during the crackdown.

The five-year-old and his father were detained as they were coming home from preschool. They were quickly transported from Minnesota to Dilley, Texas, where they were kept in an immigration processing centre while Trump officials sought their expulsion.

But on January 27, Judge Fred Biery ruled that the two should be released while they challenged their expulsion.

“They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law,” Biery wrote in his brief but cutting decision.

Conejo Ramos and his father arrived in the US from Ecuador. Their legal team has said the pair entered the country legally and were in the midst of their asylum proceedings at the time of their detention.

Lawyer Danielle Molliver told Minnesota Public Radio this week that DHS had filed documents to expedite the father and son’s removal, speculating that the action was “retaliatory”.

“It’s really frustrating as an attorney, because they keep throwing new obstacles in our way,” she told the public broadcaster. “There’s absolutely no reason that this should be expedited.”