Israel

Aug. 9 (UPI) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel rejects a U.S.-backed 15-point plan to disarm Gaza.

Last month, President Donald Trump‘s Board of Peace created the plan for the gradual disarmament of Gaza and withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory.

But in a cabinet meeting Sunday, a readout from Netanyahu’s office from a meeting of government ministers said, “I want to be clear here — Israel is ruling out the 15-point plan.”

He said he has told the Trump administration about his concerns.

The Israeli military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens,” Netanyahu said.

“We are now discussing this with the Americans,” he said. “They have ideas, some of which are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand up to those things.”

He reiterated his opposition to a two-state solution.

“As long as I am prime minister, no Palestinian state will be established — not in Gaza and not in the West Bank,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu and his coalition are facing a difficult re-election vote in late October.

“Contrary to all those who preach to us, we do what must be done for Israel’s security and we can and will stand our ground even against our best friends when necessary,” Netanyahu added.

Hamas has said that handing over its heavy weapons was contingent on Israel ending “all forms of aggression” and withdrawing from Gaza.

“We expect the mediators and the American guarantor to pressure Netanyahu and his government to adhere to the roadmap and not obstruct the process for internal political and electoral reasons,” Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’ politburo, said on X Sunday.

Since the cease-fire last October, Israel has continued to strike Gaza.

Israel’s military occupies more than half of Gaza, and Netanyahu’s far-right allies have implied that they want to expand the control. They lauded Netanyahu’s comments.

“The [Israeli military] cannot retreat one millimeter in the Gaza Strip,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said.

Iran says the Strait of Hormuz will remain restricted unless the US meets a series of demands. The UAE accuses Tehran of targeting an oil tanker, while Yemen’s Houthis claim an attack on a Saudi refinery. Al Jazeera’s Nour Hegazy reports.

Umm al-Khair, Occupied West Bank — There were weddings in Umm al-Khair this week, but almost no one danced. The small Bedouin village, located in Masafer Yatta, was marrying off two of its sons. Cauldrons of slow-cooked lamb meat for mansaf – a large platter of traditional Arabic food – fed the whole community. But there was no dahiyya, the line dance and chant that normally opens a Bedouin wedding.

Residents said it did not feel right coming so soon after the first anniversary of the killing of Umm al-Khair activist and community leader Awdah Hathaleen, allegedly by Israeli settler Yinon Levi. The community continues to endure daily settler attacks, arrests and incursions by Israeli soldiers, and the threat of further demolitions by Israeli authorities looms.

During celebrations, families spread out in different areas rather than gathering in one place, wary of drawing any attention that, in the past, has brought soldiers to disrupt the celebrations.

“There is a wedding, but they are not letting us celebrate quietly,” said Tariq Hathaleen, an English teacher and community leader in Umm al-Khair.

On Thursday, the first day of the wedding, Shimon Atiya – the Israeli settler behind the illegal outpost of Havat Shorashim, established roughly 800 metres from the village in 2022, and who has been under a restraining order since July 2025 for harassing Umm al-Khair families — crashed the wedding in the only style he knows. He brought his livestock to graze in a resident’s vegetable garden, escorted by Israeli soldiers who stood by as it happened.

When villagers told the soldiers that the plot is recognised as Umm al-Khair land, they were told the maps had changed; when they asked to see the new maps, they were refused. That night, the outpost’s fence towards the village homes was torn down – a prelude to pushing the boundary further in, residents believe.

Hathaleen says the settlers’ timing was a reaction to Levi’s indictment days earlier — one of the few times an Israeli has been charged with the killing of a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank since October 2023.

Just a couple of days before, on Thursday, Hathaleen watched as buildings and vehicles in the nearby Palestinian community of Khirbet Tuba were set ablaze by settler arsonists.

“The occupation always tried very hard to erase the Palestinian Indigenous people and their history, their legacy, their heritage,” Tariq said. “This really reminds me of the Nakba, and how the Israelis destroyed Palestinian cities and villages”, he noted, even planting cactus over the ruins to bury the evidence. “Back then it wasn’t documented. Nowadays, it’s happening, but it is documented.”

Sunday marks the United Nations’ International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In Umm al-Khair, the wedding felt symbolic of the threats to Indigenous Palestinians’ way of life and their basic presence on their own land.

‘They try to imitate us’

According to local Palestinians and watchdog NGOs, the threats facing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip include detentions, killings, demolitions, restrictions on movement and evictions.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed 1,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 242 minors, according to the Israeli NGO B’Tselem. Israel has also demolished more than 3,000 Palestinian homes since October 2023, the vast majority due to a lack of Israeli-issued permits that Palestinians in Area C are routinely denied.

According to the latest figures from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), demolitions and settler violence displaced an average of 17 people a day this year, double the rate of the previous three years.

A June report by the West Bank Protection Consortium, which includes the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and monitors more than 200 communities it judges at risk of forcible transfer, said 96 percent of those who had been forcibly displaced were previously dependent on farming or herding. They have mostly lost access to these lands or pastures.

However, residents and watchdogs say such dispossession takes place within a system of Israeli permits, demolition orders and land policies controlled by the state alongside hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding for settlements and outposts. Israeli NGO Peace Now counts 146 illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and 390 unauthorised outposts and farms.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice found Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful.

Amid dispossession of their traditional grazing lands, 13 structures in Umm al-Khair were issued demolition notices last October, following demolitions in 2024 that left a third of the village homeless. The restraining order against Atiya, residents say, has done little to stop him.

Tariq argues the erasure is not only physical, but cultural also, and that it comes paired with an attempt by settlers to claim the very Palestinian identity they are displacing.

“The settlers nowadays try to imitate that lifestyle, building tents that they probably stole from Palestinians somewhere, using tractors to bring water from far away,” he said.

Young men from the hilltop outposts can be seen grazing camels, goats and sheep. All the while, Tariq observes them wearing Palestinian scarves and even attempting the Bedouin dialect when leading their own flocks.

“They know the Indigenous people of this land are the Bedouins and other Palestinians. So, they try to imitate that – to show to themselves and to the world that they are the Indigenous people of this land,” he added. “[But] this land doesn’t relate to them, because only the Indigenous people of this land know how to live in this land.”

‘We are the Indigenous people of this land’

Many outpost settlers serve as military reservists while living on the farms themselves, Tariq noted – a status that comes with state-issued weapons.

He recalled Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly distributing all-terrain vehicles to South Hebron Hills outpost settlers. He also remembers the day Awdah was killed, when soldiers let Levi point out five community members for arrest.

“This is not only settler terrorism backed up by the state,” Tariq said. “It is the state’s plan, carried out by the settlers, well planned in rooms where officials sit around a table and tell them what to do.”

Yair Dvir, spokesperson for B’Tselem, said: “Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and an all-out assault on the Palestinian people. We see it on many levels: military violence and repression, home demolitions, and the funding and backing of settler militias.”

Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the NRC, described the same pattern as a coordinated strategy across the Israeli-occupied territories.

“For nearly 80 years, we’ve seen Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians from their land play out, starting with the Nakba and continuing to the present day,” she said. Low cited an acceleration of these actions since October 2023, when the genocidal war on Gaza began, that has seen expanding settlement infrastructure, rising West Bank demolitions alongside East Jerusalem evictions in neighbourhoods like Silwan. There has been an “astronomical increase” in settler violence documented, Low added.

Gaza shows the same agenda but taken to the extreme. Since the October 2025 “ceasefire”, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Gaza, on top of a cumulative death toll that has climbed past 73,000 since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

According to UN satellite analysis, roughly 81 percent of all structures in Gaza have been damaged. Even with the “ceasefire”, OCHA reports that some 59 percent of Gaza’s population faced crisis-level food shortages or worse between April and June, a share it projects will rise again by year’s end as aid funding shrinks.

Following successive campaigns of expansionism, the Israeli military now controls at least 64.9 percent of Gaza. “These policies are all working together,” Low said. “They may be different tactics, but it’s all part of the same agenda to force Palestinians from their land and increase Israeli control over the territory and expand Israeli presence.”

Still, on the eve of a day meant to mark the world’s Indigenous peoples, Tariq was resolute.

“They will try a million ways to erase the Palestinian Indigenous people, but they will fail because this land doesn’t speak their language, it doesn’t carry their colour, it doesn’t go by their ideologies,” he said.

“This is our land, and we have always been living here in harmony – with nature, the desert, the mountains, the valleys of Palestine – because we are the Indigenous people of this land, and we always will be. Their attempts are failing, and will fail. One day, we will get our freedom.”

New illegal settlement tender in West Bank deepens Israeli efforts to sever Palestinian ties to Jerusalem, officials warn.

Israeli authorities have issued a tender for 627 new housing units in the Kochav Yaakov settlement in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC).

The Israel Land Authority on Thursday published the tender for the project, which will be built on land in the Ramallah and al-Bireh governorate, the commission said on Saturday.

Israel set November 30 as the deadline for construction companies to submit bids, moving the project from planning to construction just 15 months after it was first approved, it said.

CRRC slammed the expansion, saying it is designed to “deepen the separation between Jerusalem and its Palestinian surroundings”.

The illegal Israeli settlement of Kochav Yaakov sits between northern Jerusalem and the twin cities of Ramallah and el-Bireh, within a cluster of settlements Israel administers under the name “Binyamin”.

According to CRRC, the new project covers 253.7 dunams (25.37 hectares or about 63 acres) and was approved by Israeli authorities on April 27, 2025.

It says the tender marks the transition from planning to the “marketing and implementation” stage of settlement construction, with the new units expected to expand the illegal settlement’s built-up area and strengthen its links to nearby settlements and access roads. It added that the decision reflects growing investment in settlements’ economic infrastructure, not just housing.

The Israeli decision is one of several the commission has tracked this year aimed at tightening Israel’s illegal control and pressure on the Palestinian region.

According to CRRC, Israeli authorities have made 12 illegal settlement tenders in the first half of 2026, including 1,138 housing units concentrated in five main settlements, alongside a separate wave of tenders for industrial zones, offices, nursing homes and tourism facilities.

Illegal settlement expansion and settler violence have surged dramatically across the occupied West Bank this year. Palestinian monitors have recorded more than 11,000 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers across the West Bank since January 2026.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly said Israeli settlements have “no legal validity” and constitute a “flagrant violation” of international law.

A 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion deemed Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful.

IRGC sets terms to reopen Hormuz as US seeks commitments to end attacks on ships in the waterway.

I do not recall my first encounter with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) because I was just a baby. In the months after I was born, medics gave me my first vaccines in an UNRWA-run clinic. Since then, the agency has been present in almost every part of my life. It has become a core piece of my identity as a Palestinian refugee.

And so, as I read in the news statements by US officials that UNRWA needs to be banned from Gaza, as I hear that Israel is preparing to raid an UNRWA compound in occupied East Jerusalem, which houses schools and clinics, or that the Israeli High Court is likely to reject an appeal against anti-UNRWA laws, my heart is aching.

I realise it is difficult for non-Palestinians to understand why the attacks on UNRWA are such an emotional issue for us. For the rest of the world, it is just another humanitarian body providing services in a conflict zone. But for us, UNRWA is so much more. Let me explain.

Fifty-two years before an UNRWA nurse gave me a measles shot in a medical facility in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City, UNRWA employees approached my grandfather, Ahmed Abo Aisha, who was just six years old at that time.

It was 1950, a year after UNRWA was created by the UN to deal with a refugee disaster it played an active role in creating. Two years earlier, during the Nakba of 1948, my grandfather and his family had fled on foot from their hometown of Bir al-Sabea, as Zionist militias advanced. My great-grandfather, Ibrahim Abo Aisha, a well-known livestock merchant, thought they were coming back, so he locked up the home, leaving behind title deeds, birth certificates, all his livestock and possessions. As a result, the family had no documents to prove their existence.

“Imagine, Nour, I didn’t know my real date of birth. When UNRWA came, they designed a certificate for me and wrote in it a random date of birth so that I could live with a documented existence,” my grandfather told me recently.

Thanks to this document, my grandfather was able to obtain an official identity card issued by the Egyptians when he was 16.

But ensuring he had an identity document was by far not the only thing UNRWA did for my grandfather. It issued his family a “kart al-moun” – a family registration card – that would serve as the only legal and political proof of their refugee status. The card allowed them to benefit from the various services UNRWA gradually set up.

In the following months, UNRWA proceeded to build tent camps, accommodating hundreds of thousands of refugees who had been sleeping out in the open air.

Little by little, it transformed what was an expanse of desert land around the historical city of Gaza into refugee camps: from Jabalia and Shati in the north, through Nuseirat, Bureij, Maghazi, and Deir el-Balah in the centre, and on to Khan Younis and Rafah in the south. It supplied each camp with schools and clinics to create a community for refugees.

My grandfather was soon enrolled in a primary school run by UNRWA. When he had children of his own – including my father – he also enrolled them in an UNRWA school.

By the time our generation came of school age, UNRWA had built and was running nearly 200 schools across the Gaza Strip. I watched as my two older sisters started school and wanted so badly to go, as well. I used to take their blue and white uniforms and put them on, as they laughed at me.

When I turned five, it was finally my turn. I was ready for pre-school. My mom took me to get the necessary vaccinations at an UNRWA clinic. I remember walking into that building – everything painted in blue and white. I remember the blue window in front of which my mother lined up, holding the “kart al-moun”.

After the vaccination, we went to buy my school uniform. It was a dress with blue and white stripes. I vividly remember my overwhelming excitement when I wore it on my first morning at Al-Daraj Co-educational School B.

From day one, the teachers distributed notebooks, pens, and bags to us, all stamped with the same blue and white logo. We had a free nutritional meal every day during the school break. Every semester, we got cash assistance distributed inside the classrooms, which helped our parents cover the cost of school materials and uniforms.

As refugees, we were not allowed to enrol in the regular schools in Gaza, but that was no loss for us. UNRWA schools provided the best primary education in the Strip. It is where I started learning English; it is where I learned how to tell the world my Palestinian story.

UNRWA became the pillar of Palestinian education. It laid the foundation for Gaza to become one of the most literate places on Earth despite being under occupation and a debilitating siege.

UNRWA also provided us with free healthcare. We got regular free checkups at its clinics, free basic lab tests, and free medication for common and chronic diseases.

We also received guaranteed food assistance. Each refugee family was given a “kapona” (a coupon) every three months that could be exchanged for flour, rice, sugar, milk, lentils, and cooking oil.

UNRWA was also a source of job security for thousands of Palestinians who were employed in its various structures.

The omnipresence of UNRWA in almost all aspects of our daily refugee lives made it inevitably an integral part of our identity. My grandparents still keep their original kart al-moun as a document of belonging and proof of their rights. We still keep in our minds the first lessons in UNRWA schools where we learned about Palestine, patriotism and love for our homeland. UNRWA, as an institution, still keeps the memory of the crime the UN perpetrated against the Palestinian people by deciding to give away our land against our will.

By virtue of its existence, this body reminds the world daily of our existence as refugees, of the moral obligation it has to address our suffering and of the inalienable right we have to return. It is hard not to see how UNRWA and the Palestinian cause are two sides of the same coin.

And that is why Israel and its allies are fighting so hard to destroy it. Their efforts to dismantle this institution are really aimed at erasing the Palestinian refugee question. They want UNRWA gone and our right to return renounced. But we will not give them up. The world must not either.

In 1948, after the Nakba, some 200,000 Palestinians poured into Gaza. Today, 78 years later, there are 2 million of us displaced Palestinians. Back then, the international community decided that it needed to create a special body to deal with the huge refugee problem. Today, that body, UNRWA, is the only one that can help deal with the displacement and dispossession of almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip.

If the international community wants to cope with the disaster that Israel’s genocidal war has left behind in Gaza, it must support UNRWA and stop efforts to dismantle it. We, the Palestinians, for our part, will continue to fight for the survival of a body that has been an essential component of our human and political existence.

Palestinian Christians are facing violence and displacement across Gaza, Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Attacks, including those targeting churches and clergy, are causing the Palestinian Christian population to shrink.

US President Donald Trump expects the conflict with Iran to end “pretty soon”, while Tehran reports that an agreement with Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is “on the verge of being finalised” following a route agreement between both nations.

New Israeli air and artillery attacks have hit Lebanon after soldiers were killed for the first time since a fragile ceasefire began in June.

The latest military assault comes despite Lebanese-Israeli talks in Rome, part of a US-brokered peace process.

So, where do things stand now?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Maha Yahya – Director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut

Jennifer Gavito – Former US Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs

Rami Khouri – Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – facing a crucial election later this year – has hinted that he may be considering taking unilateral action to prolong a costly war with Iran, even as Washington and Tehran appear to be close to an interim deal to open the Strait of Hormuz.

“We heard today the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ahmad Vahidi, declare that Iran intends to continue developing a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu claimed in an assertion, even though no official statement from Vahidi on the matter has been released by the Iranian government or official media.

Still, Netanyahu saw the opportunity to once again frame Iran’s nuclear threat as existential.

“As Israel’s prime minister, I am determined to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu told attendees at a state ceremony in West Jerusalem.

Describing the United States as “Israel’s greatest ally”, Netanyahu nevertheless added that he was prepared to do “whatever is necessary” to guarantee Israel’s security.

Israel has officially struck Iran only once since April’s initial ceasefire between the US and Iran took effect, even after it later broke down and the two sides resumed hostilities in the US-Israel war on Iran.

But observers – including US President Donald Trump – believe that Netanyahu wants to keep the US engaged in the fight against Iran, which began in late February with a joint US-Israeli attack that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Addressing reports that Netanyahu planned to bring fresh intelligence to Washington alleging that Iran was stockpiling uranium at its Pickaxe Mountain facility near Natanz in central Iran, Trump told reporters: “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.”

He then sharpened his criticism of the Israeli prime minister, adding: “Why don’t you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?”

Fight alone

With the US and Israel unable so far to topple the Iranian state or force concessions on the Strait of Hormuz, many analysts believe that the war has been unsuccessful.

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – formerly a free waterway – has paralysed much of the world’s economy.

Global oil prices have increased, with shortages in the supplies of liquified gas, fertiliser exports, sulphur supplies, and petrochemical feedstocks all threatening to ripple through international supply lines.

“The war against Iran is a strategic catastrophe,” said Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow in the Department for War Studies at King’s College London. “None of the original aims has been achieved… Trump is desperate for an exit. Almost at any price. He only cares about opening the [strait].”

But in Israel, the focus is less on the world’s economy, and more on the perceived danger posed by Iran and its allied groups across the region.

Netanyahu has consistently pursued a hawkish line on Iran, a power he has repeatedly claimed is on the brink of crossing the threshold to nuclear weapons capability.

He is also thought to have been among the loudest voices that pushed for Trump to withdraw in 2018 from a nuclear deal agreed to by previous US President Barack Obama.

“Israel’s strategy is clear,” said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at Israel’s Misgav Institute for National Security. “Iran remains close to achieving nuclear capacity and has shown it’s able to continue producing ballistic missiles and supplying its proxy forces in the region.”

The war on Iran was currently a fiasco from Israel’s perspective, Michael added, with both the US and Iran insisting that they had won.

Michael, however, framed the current negotiations as “useless”, and unlikely to produce lasting security in the region, reflecting the sentiment in the Israeli security establishment.

Israel, Michael said, was prepared to fight alone if necessary.

“Israel can only have one strategy,” Michael said, “to strike directly at the head of the octopus that threatens global civilisation and to do that alone, if necessary.”

That might inflame tensions with the US, Michael added, concluding, “I can’t see any other option.”

Inconceivable

However, while some in Israel were confident of the country’s ability to strike unilaterally at Iran in defiance of US wishes, others expressed caution, suggesting that Netanyahu’s talk of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon might simply be little more than rhetoric ahead of an election that could conceivably jeopardise both his legacy and, as a result of his long-running corruption trial, his personal freedom.

The US relationship is important to the Israeli electorate, but relations between Netanyahu and Trump appear to be frostier than normal.

Beyond friction over Israel’s reluctance to accept terms apparently imposed on it in Gaza by the Trump-sponsored Board of Peace, there have also been widespread reports of tensions over Israeli strikes in Lebanon that have repeatedly threatened to derail US negotiations with Iran. Those attacks, however, have stopped far short of the unilateral strikes on Iran hinted at by Netanyahu on Wednesday.

“Israel launching unilateral action against Iran is inconceivable,” the US author and former diplomat Aaron David Miller said. “Something like that might be possible if Iran or Hezbollah struck Israel directly, but talk of Israel striking Iran now, when US negotiations are so close to a conclusion, is impossible.”

Relations between the two allies were entering a unique phase, he said. While the US had never cooperated so closely with an ally militarily since its relationship with the United Kingdom during World War II, diplomatic ties had rarely been so fraught.

“Trump’s leaked, expletive-laden criticism of Netanyahu; his direct negotiations with Hamas over Gaza; his lifting of sanctions on Syria despite Israel’s objections; and his negotiations with Iran without Israel’s involvement all point to a changing relationship,” Miller said. “What that might mean for future US military assistance to Israel – including defence cooperation, intelligence sharing, research and development, and diplomatic support in international forums – remains to be seen.”

However, he added: “Let me be clear. Netanyahu had a hell of a role in how this war started. He’s not going to have a role in how it shifts to its next phase.”

The day after the state’s Senate primary, I was at a gym in Michigan when I overheard a brief exchange about the results of the close race.

The small group of voters were all elderly and white. Most of them expressed disappointment that Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens lost. Most of them questioned victor Abdul El-Sayed’s ability to win in November against a Republican. One of them called El-Sayed — a born and raised Michigander who attended the University of Michigan and ran the Department of Health, Human and Veteran Services for the largest county in the state — “a radical.”

For a few seconds, the group went quiet.

The only sound heard was the echo from the dog whistle that was just blown.

The prejudicial rot at the heart of that comment is just one of the challenges facing El-Sayed in November, however it is the most significant.

MAGA Republicans may complain about identity politics, but they aren’t afraid to use them. During the primary campaign, both Republican gubernatorial candidates in the state continuously ran ads characterizing immigrants as violent criminals. That will likely continue. El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, is endorsed by President Trump, who has been making racially offensive statements for more than half a century.

That’s documented as far back as the 1973 lawsuit the Nixon administration filed against him and his family for racial discrimination, and it’s documented as recently as the octogenarian’s latest social posts about people from Somalia and Haiti. Not to be outdone by his boss, Vice President JD Vance started his fearmongering during a supposed anti-fraud event this week. The 2028 presidential hopeful quipped “God forbid, you’re going to have President El-Sayed in three years” — a thought I had not considered until he said it.

Many of us hadn’t given El-Sayed much consideration at all until recent months. When Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) announced he was not seeking reelection in January 2025, El-Sayed was not considered a strong contender to replace him. Many establishment Democrats believed former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who quietly moved to Michigan after running for the White House in 2020, or Stevens, were the party’s best shot of holding on to the seat and helping Michigan do its part to flip the Senate.

They discounted El-Sayed’s chances in large part because they misread the moment we are in. The days of performative campaign endorsements, huge war chests and strongly worded posts started fading noticeably in 2016 — after Jeb Bush dropped out of the race early despite having north of $100 million at his disposal. Yet over the last decade, establishment Democrats have continued to replay the same playbook with mixed results. And in totality, Tuesday’s primaries in Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, Virginia and Washington are a mixed bag with no clear message beyond whatever you read into these facts: El-Sayed is a Muslim who has criticized the government of Israel, and yet he won a Democratic primary. Even so, the chatter before and after the vote is more revealing than the primary outcome. (On Tuesday, roughly 2 out of 10 eligible voters in the state cast a ballot in Michigan. Sweeping interpretations of El-Sayed’s narrow victory are rather bold when 80% of voters didn’t participate.)

Questions about his electability have little to do with his résumé — the Rhodes scholar led Columbia University’s research on global population health — and more to do with him being the son of Egyptian immigrants who prays five times a day. The president takes photos holding an upside-down Bible and has a 22-foot gold statue of himself, but it is El-Sayed’s faith that should worry good Christian folks?

Over the weeks leading to Tuesday, we saw entire interviews with El-Sayed — an epidemiologist — that dwelled solely on his thoughts about Israel, while voters in his state were dealing with a cyclosporiasis outbreak. He has plenty to say on other topics. Getting “money out of politics” is not only central to his campaign messaging, but also is an actual grassroots ballot initiative in Michigan. Yet the talk about El-Sayed mostly orbits around one foreign policy topic.

To be clear: The issue for establishment Democrats isn’t that something like “Medicare for all” is too radical of an idea to champion. Both President Obama and President Clinton campaigned heavily on healthcare, and history views them both as centrist. No, the concern is how easy it is for Trump, Rogers and other Republicans to “other” El-Sayed, so when he does question our spending priorities it can be painted as un-American or antisemitic. As a result, election analysis is indirectly being dictated by his identity, all but ignoring he’s one of the top healthcare experts in a state still reeling from a foodborne illness.

What El-Sayed and his supporters are questioning isn’t Israel’s right to exist. They’re wondering why the United States, the richest of all the developed democracies, is still the only one that does not guarantee healthcare to its citizens? The list of nations that do guarantee access includes Israel, which receives billions in U.S. aid. For a doctor who has written a book on healthcare access and co-authored about 100 scholarly articles on health, that line of questioning doesn’t seem radical at all.

It is who is doing the asking that unnerves some.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

For most of Israel’s history, disagreements between political leaders and the military remained largely private. Arguments over strategy, timing or risk were real, but they were managed away from the public eye. Citizens saw a country that, whatever its internal tensions, could present a coherent face in wartime.

That quiet arrangement has frayed. Nearly three years after the October 7 attacks, open clashes between ministers and senior officers have become almost routine. The latest began when Defence Minister Israel Katz criticised Major-General Avi Bluth, the commander of Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, for seeking to extend the detention of an extremist settler. Katz then announced on live television that Bluth would be replaced, only for Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to push back publicly, insisting that the general would remain in his post and that the proper procedures must be followed. What was once contained now plays out in full view.

This exchange, like many before it, is not the real story. The real story is what these repeated public ruptures reveal about a country still at war. The campaign that began with a demand for national unity has gradually redefined the relationship between those who set the direction and those who must turn it into reality. The disagreement is no longer mainly about tactics. It is about something more fundamental: Who has the right to define victory, to set the aims of the war, and to decide what is possible.

This change is bigger than a simple loss of discipline or a personal clash. Israel was never a state in which the army merely carried out orders. From the state’s earliest years, the military was a partner in shaping security policy, not a pure executive arm. David Ben-Gurion built the Israeli military as a central national institution. Later leaders – Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Benny Gantz, Yoav Gallant – rose from its ranks. The boundary between political authority and military judgement was always porous. The army did not simply implement policy; it helped define the realistic limits of what politics could demand.

For decades, that partnership rested on an unspoken understanding. The military, with its professional assessment of force, terrain, and risk, often set the ceiling of political ambition. Generals could, and frequently did, tell elected leaders: This is possible, this is not, this will cost more than you are prepared to pay. Politicians retained formal authority, but they operated within a framework of military realism that constrained excess. The army, in its own way, protected the political system from overreach by insisting on the boundaries of the achievable.

That relationship has inverted under the weight of a long war.

Four realities help explain why.

The first is time. Short wars allow disagreements to remain professional. A war that stretches across years turns almost every choice into a political one. How many reservists to call up, when to push deeper, how to weigh the lives of captives against broader military aims, how long a society can sustain the burden of repeated mobilisations – these are no longer purely operational questions. They touch families, communities, and the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people. As the fighting has continued into its third year, the space for quiet professional judgement has narrowed.

The second is the absence of a shared definition of success. Official statements still speak of dismantling Hamas’s military capacity, bringing the captives home, and restoring security to the border communities. In practice, these aims pull against one another and are valued differently by different actors. Some emphasise lasting control or the elimination of residual threats. Others place the captives first or warn against an open-ended occupation. When the meaning of victory itself remains unsettled, each side begins to measure progress by its own lights. Soldiers and their commanders look for results that can be sustained. Political leaders look for outcomes that can be explained to a weary public and to their own political bases.

The third is the divergence of human incentives. Senior officers live with the state of the force and with the consequences of decisions that send people into harm’s way. Ministers live with coalition pressures, public anger, and the next election. When these pressures collide, public disagreement becomes more likely. The longer the war continues without a clear and jointly accepted end, the more often those collisions occur in the open.

The fourth, and most revealing, is the reversal of who defines the possible. Previously, the army told the political leadership what could realistically be achieved. Today, political leaders increasingly tell the army what must be achieved – and attack it when the answer is no. The military is no longer the institution that sets the ceiling of ambition. It is expected to make the politically desired outcome possible, and it is blamed when the limits of force become visible. This is not a minor adjustment in tone. It is a structural inversion of the old partnership.

The result is a deeper uncertainty about authority. In a short campaign, the question of who ultimately directs the war can remain unspoken. In a long war, it becomes unavoidable. Does final responsibility rest with the prime minister, the security cabinet, the defence minister, or the chief of staff? Different answers produce different strategies, different tolerances for risk, and different timelines for ending the fighting. When these answers are disputed in public, the coherence of decision-making suffers, and so does the clarity of what is being asked of the people who must execute the decisions.

The practical effects are already felt. Shared objectives become harder to set. An end that both political and military leaders can accept becomes more difficult to reach. A single durable strategy grows less likely. These are not problems of personality. They are problems of a system under prolonged strain. A country that once relied on the military’s professional standing to define the realistic boundaries of political ambition now finds politicians demanding outcomes that the army is expected simply to deliver, while soldiers, reservists, and families continue to bear the human consequences.

The public dispute between a defence minister and a chief of staff may look, on the surface, like another round of personal or partisan conflict. It is better understood as the latest expression of a larger question that has accompanied Israel since October 7: When a war stretches across years rather than weeks, who finally decides what is possible – the politician whose survival depends on the appearance of control, or the general who believes he understands the limits of military power? The answer will shape not only the relationship between government and army, but the manner and the moment in which this war eventually ends, and the human price still to be paid until then.

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

WASHINGTON — The narrow victory of progressive doctor Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s bitterly fought Democratic Senate primary sets up a defining test of the party’s progressive wing in one of the highest-stakes U.S. Senate contests of the midterms.

Whether El-Sayed, a former public health official, can carry swing voters in a battleground state could both determine the outcome of a Senate seat viewed as crucial to determining control of Congress and have broader ramifications on the Democratic Party’s struggle for its identity.

El-Sayed, a 41-year-old epidemiologist, defeated U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate Democrat, by a narrow margin Wednesday after a long and intense campaign that was seen as a proxy for the party’s fissures.

The race was far closer than some polls had indicated. El-Sayed was leading Stevens by 15,000 votes, about 1 percentage point, with 99% of votes counted Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

El-Sayed will face former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, in the general election. The winner will succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, whose seat Democrats see as critical to retain for the party to have a chance at flipping the Senate.

“We’ve got an opportunity to bring ourselves back together, to come together around a movement, to take our democracy back,” El-Sayed said Wednesday on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.”

El-Sayed’s victory will put to the test in a swing state the broader strength of the progressive movement, which has found success in deep-blue places like New York City, where Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor last year, and Los Angeles, where City Councilmember Nithya Raman is locked in a tight race mayoral contest with incumbent Karen Bass. Both Mamdani and Raman are democratic socialists.

As Democrats struggle over the party’s post-2024 identity and grapple with how to win back voters, the divide between the party’s progressive and centrist wings has been on display in primary fights. Both camps have notched victories: Many of the leftist wins have come in intensely blue districts, such as in New York, while more moderate districts have chosen centrists, as in Iowa.

On Tuesday, two progressive congressional candidates in Michigan beat out establishment Democrats in House races — in one case, ousting an incumbent. But in Missouri, democratic socialist and former Rep. Cori Bush lost to incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell, a moderate, for a key House seat.

In California, a handful of progressive candidates are on the November ballot, including the challengers to Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) and Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford). In the Aug. 18 runoff to fill the vacant seat of former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, progressive state Sen. Aisha Wahab is battling it out with fellow Democrat and BART board president Melissa Hernandez.

Progressive leaders celebrated El-Sayed’s win on Wednesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who backed El-Sayed, argue that his working-class-centered politics are more likely to have mass appeal.

“If you’re a working-class Republican in Michigan, I think you’re going to listen to what El-Sayed says,” Sanders told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “I think many of them will end up voting for him, independents as well, of course.”

Throughout the campaign, Stevens argued that El-Sayed would not be able to defeat Rogers, a refrain some moderates repeated Wednesday. El-Sayed vowed to unite Democrats around defeating Rogers, who previously served seven terms in Congress, saying that he and Stevens would be focused on “bringing the party back together.”

Rogers on Wednesday portrayed El-Sayed as an “extremist,” saying in a statement that the election is “about deciding whether Michigan has a future built on common sense — or whether we hand the keys to the most fringe extremists in the nation.”

El-Sayed, a former city and county health official, focused on opposing money in politics and pushing for Medicare for All, among other issues. His opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and Stevens’ support for Israel became a major issue in the campaign. AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, spent millions in support of Stevens.

Early in the primary race, El-Sayed sought to temper some of the concerns around his progressive agenda by presenting himself as a Michigan-first, working-class-focused candidate, said John Barry Ryan, a University of Michigan professor of political science.

But as excitement over his campaign began to mount among progressives on a national level, Ryan said, El-Sayed’s public posture swung to a middle ground.

“The signal he’s trying to send is, I’m not a moderate, but I’m also not an extremist,” Ryan said.

Whether El-Sayed can effectively sell his message to undecided voters against Rogers now becomes a key question of the general election, said Corwin Smidt, a politics professor at Michigan State University.

“[Rogers] has experience. He has credentials,” Smidt said. “El-Sayed doesn’t have that. But I do think he’s got the skill and the right language to get him over.”

At least two key Michigan Democrats signaled a desire to move past the primary’s fights. Late Tuesday, Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state senator who launched her own bid for the seat but suspended her campaign in early July, released an endorsement of El-Sayed.

“Whatever differences there were between the candidates in this race, those differences are nothing compared to the contrast in November,” McMorrow wrote on X. “The only way we get there is together.”

After conceding, Stevens sent a similar signal in a statement:

“We need to win this Senate race,” she said.

A deal between the US and Iran could be signed within 48 hours, according to US officials. The agreement would reportedly focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and could mark a first step towards broader negotiations.

Al Jazeera’s Marah Ryan has the latest.

Every Palestinian born in the West Bank before the start of the occupation in 1967 has witnessed the extent to which Israel has transformed the landscape through spatial planning, military closures, and settlement, infrastructure and road construction. Sixty years on, what used to be a straightforward journey from point A to point B within the West Bank has become an arduous and frequently hazardous undertaking.

As a foreigner living in the West Bank in the 1980s and visiting it off and on ever since, this transformation revealed itself in incremental leaps and bounds, on each occasion provoking a shock of recognition mixed with consternation at how things looked the same but different.

I remember driving from Jerusalem to Ramallah in the 1980s, for example. The two cities were linked by a single highway with an Israeli army checkpoint at Qalandia refugee camp. To get to my destination would take me from 20 minutes to half an hour, at most, depending on traffic and the mood of the soldiers that day.

Fast forward to 2000. I had not visited for several years on the day I took my rental car along the old road out of Jerusalem. Ten minutes into my journey and not having taken any turns, I suddenly found myself inside an Israeli settlement, a suburb of occupied East Jerusalem.

Backtracking, I discovered that the way to Ramallah now required leaving the main highway for a lesser road. I proceeded. Yet before another 10 minutes had passed, I ended up at the entrance to another Israeli settlement, this time in the occupied West Bank, having again missed the relevant exit.

Looking back at those days, I now remember such unexpected forced deviations as annoyances that barely consumed additional time. Today, by contrast, travelling from Jerusalem to Ramallah can take an hour, or hours, as the army slows down or holds up traffic at all the available access points to Ramallah at will.

For Palestinians, the experience is 10 times worse. Ever growing in number and impact, Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement have come in various types. One class includes army checkpoints, both stationary and mobile, on West Bank arteries, makeshift earthen embankments blocking roads to villages and refugee camps, and steel gates that the army can close and open via remote control.

A second category involves access to occupied East Jerusalem and Israel, which is possible only by obtaining a permit from the military authorities. This affects Palestinians wishing to visit Islam’s and Christianity’s holy sites as well as those employed inside Israel.

And a third category of restrictions concerns West Bank Palestinians’ ability to travel abroad via the Allenby Bridge border crossing with Jordan.

Movement restrictions intensified after the October 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel. Their cumulative impact has been to fragment Palestinian society and the way it functions. They have disrupted the economy, in particular.

A combination of military no-go zones and settler violence has made the 61 percent of the West Bank that constitutes Area C, where most agricultural lands are located, increasingly inaccessible.

Curbs on movement have affected trade, raising the cost of commerce when transport is delayed at checkpoints and perishable goods spoil.

Imports and exports also face impediments, harming a Palestinian economy that is heavily dependent on trade with Israel and the outside world (representing roughly 67 percent of its GDP).

Restricted hours at Allenby and an untransparent, elastic definition of “dual-use” goods cause costly delays for imports, stymying development. Traders’ inability to meet their Israeli counterparts in person forces them to use intermediaries at additional expense.

Movement restrictions have created their own self-perpetuating cat-and-mouse dynamic as Palestinians find ways to circumvent them and the army imposes additional curbs, forcing people to pursue evermore inventive bypass tactics. But their clever manoeuvring may carry additional costs or even risks to their lives.

Take, for example, efforts by Palestinians – desperate to put food on the table – to illegally cross into Israel for work. Some have been shot dead when breaching Israel’s separation barrier while others have been detained.

In the months before October 2023, about 193,000 West Bank and Gaza workers were employed in Israel or Israeli settlements, mainly in construction and agriculture, contributing 20 to 25 percent to the Palestinian GDP.

Israel stopped workers from crossing the Green Line on the heels of the Hamas attack, citing security concerns, even though it has offered no evidence that Palestinian workers employed in Israel in any way played a role in the events of October 2023. Since then, the number of those permitted to go to their Israeli jobs is estimated at a mere 44,000, mostly in skilled professions.

The loss of what may be a family’s primary income has been calamitous, affecting about 750,000 people (based on an average family size of five) in a population of about 3.3 million. Meanwhile, an economic downturn has further swelled the ranks of the West Bank unemployed. Poverty rates have shot up.

Movement restrictions have also disrupted family networks, limiting participation in large gatherings, such as weddings and funerals, as extended families are spread throughout the West Bank. Curbs on movement additionally complicate access to emergency or specialised medical care and even to education. Since October 2023, Palestinian institutions of higher education have reduced in-class teaching as students have faced repeated delays – often of unpredictable length – in coming to school. Online classes can only partially compensate for this disruption.

What purpose do the myriad movement restrictions serve? Palestinians often describe their experience of navigating army checkpoints as a humiliation and a form of harassment, an effort by Israeli soldiers to both show who is boss and make the population’s life difficult. Many Palestinians see in soldiers’ conduct a way of taking revenge for the Hamas attacks.

Yet by increasing the occupation’s severity, checkpoints and other restrictions on Palestinians’ movement could well have the opposite effect of triggering greater violence and thus making Israel and its citizens, including those residing in illegal settlements, not more but less secure.

While the Israeli army might argue that a certain checkpoint at a given location and time is justified on the grounds of maintaining security, in their ubiquity and seeming arbitrariness, these restrictions have, over the years, gone far beyond what could reasonably be termed a security rationale.

A motive other than maintaining security must, therefore, be at play. It is not hard to find one when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a two-state solution and champions annexing the occupied West Bank to Israel while some members of his cabinet, like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, openly espouse policies that would encourage West Bank Palestinians to emigrate.

Whatever the declared policy, the compounding impact of Israel’s movement restrictions has been to break up the West Bank into smaller zones that the Israeli army and intelligence apparatus can more easily penetrate and control. Palestinian politics remains vibrant in these localities (elections to West Bank municipal councils were held most recently this past April) while national politics and governance have eroded, partly as a result of obstacles to movement.

And Israel has been able to suppress, for now, armed resistance to the occupation, which has assumed an increasingly local character. The army made short work of small armed groups like the Lions’ Den, for example. These had emerged five years ago in the northern West Bank, spontaneously and largely uncoordinated between localities.

Yet even as Israel splits Palestinian society into separate enclaves, it has found no effective answer to Palestinians’ enduring aspirations to free themselves from the military occupation. To the contrary, it is sowing the seeds for further resistance through its annexationist agenda and unremittingly punitive actions.

A version of this article appeared first on Al Jazeera Arabic’s website. 

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

Iran says talks with Oman are proceeding ‘positively’ as US officials say a deal could be possible soon.

As Israel gears up to hold elections in October, a dramatic surge in settlement activity has heightened concerns that the settler movement is stepping up efforts to cement its grip on the occupied West Bank, in stark defiance of international law.

Last week, the United Nations warned that attacks by Israeli settlers – often carried out alongside Israeli forces – and the creation of illegal settlements and outposts had hit “an all-time high”.

The uptick comes as members of Israel’s hard right seek to ratchet up the political temperature ahead of the crucial polls. It also follows a parliamentary term during which Israel moved to entrench control over the West Bank deeper within the machinery of the state, shifting authority from military administration to civilian institutions, accelerating settlement planning and expanding infrastructure.

However, the Religious Zionist Party of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – the man widely credited as pushing the settler project to the forefront of Israeli political debate – is suggested by numerous opinion polls to be far from certain to even meet the electoral threshold for the post-election Knesset.

This has prompted what analysts describe as a desperate scramble to promote the settlement mission while consolidating the support of the settler minority that Smotrich grew up within.

Speaking at a meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party in late July, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz boasted that, under the governing coalition and Smotrich’s supervision, Israel had approved the establishment of 104 illegal settlements and some 160 settlement farms in the West Bank since coming to power in 2022, according to Israeli media.

In August of last year, Smotrich announced the creation of the E1 settlement project, linking occupied East Jerusalem with the existing settlement of Maale Adumim, located several kilometres to the east – a proposal which, Smotrich bragged, “buries the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The race to settle

Smotrich, who made increased administrative control over the West Bank a condition for supporting Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition in 2022, has undertaken a series of measures to expand the influence of settlers within policymaking.

In 2023, he established his influential Settlements Administration agency within the Ministry of Defence – which oversees the West Bank’s occupation. And last month, he legally embedded the agency within the ministry, making it harder to reverse any of the decisions taken under its watch.

Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said it is “hard to imagine” that Netanyahu “won’t come up with some kind of imaginative ploy to keep him and the far right on the ticket”, referring to Smotrich.

“He has very strong support within the settlements and the ideological far-right,” Flaschenberg added, “but that might not be enough in and of itself to get him securely past the threshold. He’s being squeezed between the populism of [far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir and what many people in the lower middle class see as the security of Netanyahu.”

Keeping the hard right

Allied to Smotrich is a prime minister who observers describe as facing not simply an electoral battle, but an existential battle for both his freedom – as a consequence of his long-running corruption trial – and legacy, should the independent inquiry into his failings ahead of the Hamas-led attack of 2023 go ahead.

Given the stakes, some analysts have suggested the incumbent was far from ready to gamble on losing the support of Israel’s hard right and settler movement by condemning the increasing levels of violence in the West Bank.

“We saw him come out on US TV and concede that there may have been a few incidents in the West Bank, but nothing serious,” Chatham House’s Yossi Mekelberg said of Netanyahu’s response to the widespread violence that has swept the West Bank in recent weeks.

“He needs the hard right and settlers’ support, if not for him individually, then at least for his bloc.”

While Netanyahu may feel he has room to manoeuvre over the hugely controversial issue of ultra-Orthodox conscription, no such margin existed within the hard right and settlers. Ultra-Orthodox parties, a key component in the 2022 coalition government, have made the exemption of their constituents from the draft – which almost all Israeli adults are eligible for – a pillar of their political campaigning in recent years.

“Netanyahu knows that the ultra-Orthodox will likely stay with him,” added Mekelberg. “The settlers are more binary. You’re either for them or against,” he said.

Cresting the wave

Irrespective of electoral tactics, the consequences for people living in the occupied West Bank have been catastrophic. In July alone, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, there were 2,256 attacks against Palestinians and their property: 1,458 by the Israeli army and 798 by settlers.

After Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, offered a rare criticism of the settler “extremism” which triggered the latest round of violence, Katz accused him of spreading a “blood libel”.

According to leaks of the same meeting in Hebrew-language media, other ministers present called for a harsher response to any resistance from Palestinians, and for the military to be given even greater freedom to shoot at them.

“As the election gets closer, we’re seeing an even greater increase in the violence that’s been escalating ever since October 2023,” said Yair Dvir, of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

“It’s important to add this isn’t just the scale of the violence, but also its brutality and the participation of the Israeli state – both the soldiers and the political support they’re receiving.”

Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, Lebanon – Every year on August 4 since 2020, families of the victims of a massive explosion at Beirut port gather outside the site of what was one of the largest non-nuclear blasts in modern history.

They continue to press Lebanese authorities for justice and accountability for the explosion of ammonium nitrate that was unsafely stored with highly inflammable materials.

Yet there has been none, despite a change in leadership that promised to support an independent judiciary into the blast that killed more than 200 people.

This year I couldn’t attend the commemorations because I was covering another tragedy – only the latest to devastate Lebanon.

I was in Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, a small town in southern Lebanon that lies in ruins after weeks of Israeli air attacks, shelling and at times deliberate demolitions of people’s homes amid fighting with the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Residents are trying to start again – but they can’t.

Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting since October 2023, with different levels of intensity, but the former has twice escalated the conflict – first in September 2024 and then in early March this year, after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.

People in Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh had not recovered from the first escalation before they found themselves escaping bombing and displaced yet again.

The majority of houses in the town are so badly damaged they are uninhabitable.

I watched a man in his 80s cry as he showed me the mountain of concrete that used to be his home. “I feel humiliated,” he said. “I have no choice but to collect the scrap metal from my destroyed home to sell in order to be able to survive.”

In 2019, Lebanon’s economy, local currency and the banking sector all but collapsed, leaving people unable to access their savings. And little if anything has been done by the political class to carry out required financial reforms to bring in much-needed international funds.

The reconstruction bill for the latest escalation is in the billions of dollars. Officials do not have an exact figure but say it could climb to $20bn.

It might be a conservative estimate. I have been visiting villages across southern Lebanon since the reduction in violence a few weeks ago. The devastation is unprecedented. Basic services are no longer available. In some areas, there are no telecommunication networks.

And then there are the dozens of villages that we cannot access because they are occupied by the Israeli military.

There, homes continue to be demolished, water facilities destroyed, and agricultural land and olive groves torched. The deliberate destruction continues regardless of what is supposed to be a ceasefire, a framework agreement with Lebanon and condemnations by Lebanese officials who took the controversial and divisive decision to engage in direct talks with Israel.

Reconstruction as a card

When hostilities escalated in March this year, reconstruction from the previous round of fighting in 2024 had not even begun. Then, the World Bank estimated losses at $11bn – money the nearly bankrupt Lebanese government did not have.

Then, like now, there was no offer to help by international donors. Reconstruction aid was and continues to be used as leverage to force the disarmament of Hezbollah.

It was not just the lack of funds.

During the 15 months following a November 2024 ceasefire and the latest escalation, the Israeli military maintained pressure by systematically targeting all recovery and rebuilding efforts in southern Lebanon.

They bombed heavy machinery and construction equipment, destroyed factories and prefabricated house units, and attacked workers clearing rubble to prevent displaced residents from returning. Nearly 100,000 people were already displaced before this year’s war that forced more than a million people from their homes.

More destruction

On the sixth anniversary of the port blast, Lebanon has had to face more destruction.

I remember writing the same words last year, on the fifth anniversary. Like in 2025, this year’s destruction came from outside the country – from Israel. Areas where Hezbollah has influence remain covered in rubble following Israel’s attacks.

Yet again, there is a need to rebuild. Yet again, many Lebanese have to pick up the pieces of their lives on their own.

While they try, they live in fear. In the front-line town of al-Mansouri, we met the head of the municipality, Haidar Mudayhi, who told us not to approach the hills around the town’s centre.

“The Israelis drop stun grenades every time someone tries to reach those areas … every day there is machinegun fire around the village … the other day there were air strikes in the hills … there is no stability,” he said.

It is a story we hear time and time again in villages north of the occupation zone.

The relative calm is fragile. No agreement exists that guarantees Israel and Hezbollah will not go to war again.

Israel acts as if there is no ceasefire, while the signed agreement between Lebanon and Israel, which the United States has called “historic”, does not include a commitment or a timeline for an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

Second-quarter revenue jumped 93 percent but Palantir’s ties to Israel and role in military technology are controversial.

United States artificial intelligence and data analytics giant Palantir Technologies has reported “otherworldly” quarterly results, sending its shares more than 14 percent higher in after-hours trading, as its growth shows no signs of slowing despite mounting criticism over its close ties to the US and Israeli governments and concerns about its growing role in artificial intelligence and warfare.

Palantir Technologies reported a revenue of $1.94bn for the second quarter, up 93 percent from a year earlier, and raised its forecast annual revenue to between $8.15bn and $8.158bn, up from $7.65bn to $7.662bn earlier. It said strong demand from both commercial customers and government agencies drove the surge.

“This quarter was otherworldly: our US commercial revenue grew 149 percent year-over-year, our overall revenue grew 93 percent year-over-year,” Chief Executive Alex Karp said. “Demand for AI sovereignty has now been unleashed.”

In a letter to shareholders, Karp wrote: “Our business is compounding at a rate and scale that we have never before witnessed.”

Palantir holds multibillion-dollar contracts with US government agencies, including the US Army. Revenue from its US government business rose 90 percent year on year to $809m, even as the company has faced growing opposition over its role in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, which critics say has resulted in unlawful deportations and killings.

Founded in 2003 by technology entrepreneurs including Karp and multi-billionaire Peter Thiel, Palantir opened its first office in Israel in 2015 and has since expanded its work with the Israeli military.

Following what Palantir described as a “strategic partnership” with Israel in January 2024, the company significantly expanded its operations supporting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and operations in the occupied West Bank.

According to Open Intel, a platform tracking corporate involvement in the genocidal war on Gaza, Palantir has actively recruited former members of Israel’s elite Unit 8200 cyberintelligence division. The group says Palantir’s software integrates intercepted communications, satellite imagery and other datasets to help generate military targeting lists for Israeli forces.

In a statement to Al Jazeera earlier this year, Palantir UK reiterated the company’s support for Israel.

The company has also secured major contracts with the United Kingdom’s government. In January, the UK’s Ministry of Defence awarded Palantir a $323m (240-million-pound) contract. A separate $444m (330-million-pound) NHS contract awarded in November 2023 has also attracted criticism, with campaigners raising concerns about the handling of sensitive health data and the heavy redaction of contract documents.

Palantir has also faced scrutiny over its vision for the future of artificial intelligence. In The Technological Republic, a recent book co-authored by Karp and the company’s head of corporate affairs, Nicholas W Zamiska, the authors argue that technology companies have a responsibility to build advanced military AI capabilities. Critics have described the philosophy as a form of “techno-fascism”.

Al Jazeera has contacted Palantir for comment.

Venezuela’s devastating June 24 double earthquake has had major implications for the country’s foreign policy and geopolitical alignment. Days after the disaster, a diplomatic-military mission arrived from Israel. 

Former President Hugo Chávez severed ties with Tel Aviv in 2009. Both he and his successor Nicolás Maduro were stalwart supporters of the Palestinian cause, repeatedly excoriating Israel for its colonial occupation, war crimes, and genocide.

In contrast, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez held two public meetings with the Israeli team, which included multiple IDF officers, praised its members as “highly trained and professional,” and thanked them for their work.

Tel Aviv is poised to play an important role alongside Washington in post-earthquake reconstruction planning, while the formal reestablishment of diplomatic relations appears imminent.  In light of this tectonic geopolitical shift, we investigate the main officials and NGOs spearheading the Zionist infiltration of Venezuela.

Israeli state functionaries

Brigadier General Elad Edri was one of the highest-profile figures in the Israeli mission to Venezuela. In a July 7 meeting with Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, Edri was pictured presenting a slideshow titled “Project for Future Reconstruction.”

Edri, who serves as Chief of Staff of the IDF Home Front Command, reportedly led field inspections of damaged structures, provided guidance on debris removal, and eventually secured an extension of the Israeli deployment. He had previously participated in IDF missions following the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the 2017 Mexico earthquake, and the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Florida.

In his military career, Edri took part in the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon (2006), as well as multiple “mowing-the-grass” operations in the Gaza Strip, including “Cast Lead” (2008-09) and “Protective Edge” (2014), in which Tel Aviv employed its infamous “Dahiyeh Doctrine” of carpet bombing densely populated urban centers. Chávez famously denounced “Cast Lead” as “genocide” and cut diplomatic ties in 2009. 

In 2015, Edri moved to the IDF Home Front Command which, despite presenting itself as a civil defense unit, has played an active role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in addition to shielding the settler colony as it continues its genocidal wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Edri assumed the leadership of the Home Front Command’s Rescue and Training Brigade. This unit entered Gaza in 2024 and was reported to have participated in combat operations against civilian targets. More recently, the brigadier general led preparation efforts ahead of the US-Israeli war against Iran in February.

Roni Kaplan was born in Uruguay in 1982 and relocated to Israel in 2003. After completing his mandatory military service, he has mostly served as an IDF spokesperson, particularly for Spanish-language outlets. 

Kaplan is also the founder of Huellas del Cielo and Conexión Israel, two organizations focused on fostering ties between Israel and Latin America through educational trips and pilgrimages to occupied Jerusalem.

He was one of the most visible spokespersons in the Venezuela delegation. Always in uniform, Kaplan and his team reportedly provided a “dashboard” for Venezuelan authorities to classify damaged buildings in La Guaira. In an interview with private news network Venevisión, Kaplan claimed the Israeli mission had arrived to “give hope and lend a helping hand to the Venezuelan people.”

Behind the humanitarian façade, Kaplan has spent years amplifying Tel Aviv’s Goebbelian propaganda, from blaming civilian deaths on Hamas “human shields” to pretending that Israeli bombings are “preemptive and precise.” Despite overwhelming evidence, Kaplan has denied that Israel is committing genocide and imposing mass starvation on the Palestinian people.

In May 2026, a coalition of Uruguayan social movements filed a legal complaint against the IDF official, accusing him of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The petitioners argued the country’s authorities have a responsibility to investigate Kaplan.

A career diplomat who spent part of his youth in Venezuela, Yoed Magen was the first official to announce the Israeli mission to the South American country, citing contacts with high-level figures in the Venezuelan government. The diplomatic-military team that arrived on July 1 was received by Félix Plasencia, who was later named Foreign Minister.

Magen was recently appointed as Israeli ambassador to Mexico, having previously served in Panama, Colombia, Uruguay, and Paraguay. He was also a policy advisor for the IDF.

In interviews and op-eds, including for leading private Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional, Magen has been an unapologetic proponent of US-Israeli genocide. 

Magen has endorsed collective punishment, saying that Palestinians should “suffer” for supporting Hamas. He has claimed that Israel only launches “precise” attacks against Hamas, despite widespread evidence of systematically targeting civilians. Magen additionally amplified the blood libel campaign falsely accusing the anti-colonial resistance movement of mass rape and burning settler families on October 7.

Most recently, he has endorsed both US-Israeli wars against Iran, calling them “preemptive” operations against “existential threats.”

Para-state agents

Brigadier General (res.) and weapons contractor Yossi Pinto was present in a July 21 meeting with Acting President Rodríguez to mark the end of Israel’s post-earthquake mission in the country. He reportedly presented a “system” to help Venezuelan authorities assess thousands of structures damaged by the earthquakes.

A career IDF officer, Pinto participated in multiple Israeli wars and occupation missions, including the thwarted 2006 invasion of Lebanon as well as Operations “Cast Lead” (2008-09) and “Protective Edge” (2014) in Gaza. He has a documented record of war crimes and human rights violations.

The Pinto-commanded Duchifat Battalion and Kfir Brigade were caught beating and abusing Palestinian prisoners, which they filmed on their own phones in 2008. The two units have been accused of widespread unlawful killings and torture. Later, at the head of the Binyamin Brigade in the West Bank, Pinto took part in efforts to evict Palestinians from their lands, killing and maiming dozens of children (2014).

From 2018 to 2020, he commanded the IDF’s Search and Rescue Brigade. After passing to reservist status, Pinto also assumed a “land maneuver manager” role in Rafael, one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers and a major supplier of battlefield systems in the current genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.

An Orthodox rabbi, Yosef Garmon arrived in Venezuela leading the delegation from the ZAKA NGO (more below). As a fluent Spanish speaker, he has been a prominent Zionist spokesperson and religious organizer throughout Latin America. As an IDF reservist, he served in multiple Israeli wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, and re-enlisted after Israel launched its latest operation in October 2023.

As president of the so-called “Humanitarian Coalition,” Garmon has widely promoted Israeli hasbara for Latin American publics. In Venezuela, he joined right-wing student organizations to deliver aid to affected communities. Garmon’s organization pledged to maintain a long-term presence in the Caribbean nation beyond the immediate relief actions.

In his media appearances, the Orthodox rabbi has likewise provided cover for Tel Aviv and Washington’s ongoing colonial holocausts, blaming mass civilian casualties from IDF bombings on Hezbollah and Hamas. He has also rejected Israeli responsibility for mass hunger in Gaza and regurgitated the debunked mass rape hoax to justify the atrocities.

Garmon has denied that Israel is committing genocide and framed its wars as a fight in service of “humanity” against “barbarism.”

Zionist NGOs

ZAKA is an Israeli volunteer organization founded in 1995, primarily known for its emergency response and search-and-rescue operations. Though it presents itself as an independent NGO, it operates as a civil extension of Israel’s emergency services, working directly with the police, military, and government.

ZAKA is a male-only, ultra-Orthodox religious group with no medical training, but it has deployed internationally following natural disasters such as the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and severe flooding in Texas in 2025. After the 2026 earthquake in Venezuela, a team led by rabbi Yosef Garmon (see above) reportedly delivered medical aid to affected families in La Guaira.

Furthermore, ZAKA has long functioned as a “humanitarian” conduit for Israeli disinformation. One of its members, Yossi Landau, was one of the main sources behind the fake stories about beheaded babies and sexual violence during the October 7, 2023, Al-Aqsa Flood operation. ZAKA has also been shameless about leveraging such hoaxes into lucrative fundraising opportunities.

Despite claiming to focus on “saving and honoring lives,” ZAKA has applauded Israeli military operations, including attacks against hospitals.

As Israel’s highest-profile humanitarian NGO, IsraAID is pivotal to soft power initiatives aimed at laundering Tel Aviv’s international image. It has deployed in several disasters worldwide, including in Japan, Kenya, and Puerto Rico.

Following the double earthquake in Venezuela, IsraAID brought in a team from neighboring Colombia that reportedly delivered humanitarian assistance to affected communities in La Guaira.

In close coordination with Israeli occupation forces, IsraAID entered the Gaza Strip in early 2024 amid efforts to displace UNRWA and local authorities and subject millions of Palestinians to an “architecture of starvation.”

IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer has repeated “mass rape” blood libel accusations against the Palestinian resistance.

Non-profit SmartAID and private contractor Magen teamed up to send a search-and-rescue team to Venezuela following the June 24 double earthquake.

Founded by Shachar Zahavi, a former co-founder of IsraAID, SmartAID presents itself as an organization integrating technology into humanitarian aid, including solar panels, water purification systems, and other relief solutions. Highlighting its philanthropic purposes, SmartAID has deployed on-the-ground teams after the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and the 2021 earthquake in Haiti.

At the same time, SmartAID has entered Gaza alongside the Israeli occupation forces, setting up shelters and food distribution as part of Israel’s efforts to displace Palestinian authorities and UNRWA in the course of its extermination campaign.

Magen, founded by IDF Colonel Eran Magen, is deeply embedded with the Israeli military and is the premier provider of disaster management training to Israeli government, armed forces, and civilian organizations. Colonel Magen led the IDF’s Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue Unit during the 2006 Lebanon War.

Also on the ground in Venezuela was World Central Kitchen (WCK), serving meals to displaced families, rescue workers, and volunteers in the days after the earthquake. WCK was founded after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Based in the US and with close ties to US authorities, it has been instrumental to US foreign policy goals in places like Gaza and Ukraine.

The organization drew scrutiny after coordinating with Israeli occupation forces to bring aid into Gaza in early 2024 while Israel blocked relief efforts from other organizations, particularly UNRWA. WCK’s arrival was sponsored by the UAE and announced by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who alongside Netanyahu is under ICC indictment for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.”

At the same time that it targeted flotillas bringing much-needed aid to Gaza, Israel actively coordinated WCK’s efforts. The relationship was strained in April 2024 when Israeli forces bombed a WCK convoy, killing seven workers.

The organization’s founder, Spanish-American celebrity chef José Andrés, has consistently parroted Israel’s “self-defense” narrative and blasted the Spanish government for referring to Israeli actions as “genocide.” The attack against the WCK convoy led Andrés to question Israeli operations.

Netanyahu and board director Maldenov meet amid tensions over Gaza disarmament roadmap and recent Israeli attacks.

The US-led Board of Peace has said that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will only take place after the disarmament of Hamas is complete, following a meeting between the body’s director, Nickolay Mladenov, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The meeting on Monday in West Jerusalem came as Israeli politicians signalled their displeasure with the deal, announced by US President Donald Trump last Thursday.

“Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the [Israeli military] beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators,” the Board of Peace, established by Trump in January to oversee the administration of Gaza after Israel’s genocidal war, said. “This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.”

The “Yellow Line” is the term used to refer to the demarcation line behind which Israeli forces continue to base themselves in Gaza.

“The goal is clear and is not in question: the complete decommissioning of weapons in the Strip and the transition away from rule by the gun to civilian governance,” the Board of Peace added in a social media post after the meeting.

For its part, Hamas has insisted that the deal will not be implemented unless Israel implements its part of the agreement.

During the talks, Mladenov urged Netanyahu to stop attacks on Gaza, two people familiar with the meeting told The Associated Press news agency. Israel has steadfastly refused to do so, despite an October 2025 “ceasefire”, since which it has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, including more than 36 after the disarmament deal was announced.

Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza since its genocidal war began in October 2023.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu’s office said that the version of the agreement made public “does not reflect Israel’s positions”, and that its concerns had been shared with the US.

Members of the Israeli prime minister’s far-right government have already signalled that they want to backtrack on the deal.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the agreement was “completely different” to the one the Israeli government had approved, and demanded a new vote “immediately”.

Israel has repeatedly flouted agreements and has been accused of being unwilling to make concessions during negotiations. The latest reversal comes despite a push from Trump to secure a deal, but months ahead of an Israeli election in which the government is under pressure from its base to demonstrate it has achieved total victory in Gaza.

Mladenov criticised the strikes over the weekend, without directly naming Israel. “Achieving a lasting peace is hard but achievable if everyone makes their best efforts,” he wrote.

Egypt, Qatar, and Turkiye, which mediated the disarmament deal, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s targeting of civilians and healthcare facilities as a “flagrant violation of international law”.

Hamas said it and other Palestinian factions remained committed to the completion of the second phase of the ceasefire, and were awaiting a clear, official response from Mladenov and the mediators.

Israel’s highest court heard a constitutional challenge to legislation banning UNRWA’s operations in Israel. Supporters said the laws are necessary for national security, while rights advocates argued they jeopardise access to aid and basic services for millions of Palestinians.